Funeral Home Marketing: John Callaghan on the Hot Seat

You’ve heard of John Callaghan, haven’t you?

To refresh your memory, he’s one of the industry’s top speakers on funeral home marketing.

In his new book, “2009 Strategic Marketing Plan for Funeral Service Professionals” he reveals how funeral homes should market in during tough economic times.

Why am I telling you this?

I’m telling you this because I convinced John to allow me to grill him during a LIVE 120-minute teleseminar on January 30!

It actually went for 2 1/2 hours.

We talked for just over an hour about his book and then we tackled dozens of questions that the attendees submitted.

You can read a partial list of questions below.

86 Pages of Funeral-Specific Marketing Advice

and over 2.5 hours of recordings

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If you follow John’s recommendations, you will save money on advertising, get better results with your marketing, and overall, Attract More Calls!

…Hepp

Partial List of Questions

• Could you discuss the use of tasteful humor in funeral home marketing?
• Telephones, yellow page ads – How do you set yourself apart?
• How do I market my firm against the “low price firm” in the market place?
• What are your thoughts on marketing during tough economic times? Is it actually a time when you can get more bang for your buck, attract a wider audience etc?
• How do we use permission marketing in funeral service, especially with the increasing use of online guest books and internet communications with our customers?
• With a downtown location and smaller parking area, how do you compete with funeral home not downtown and more parking area?
• What is the most effective advertising in a small rural community? Should we sponsoring and attending community events, sponsor information seminars, weekly newspaper ads, local magazines etc?
• Are there new words in the death care language that are more acceptable to the public?
• What kind of ad and or marketing should a funeral home do in response to a cremation society’s direct mailing piece that they continue to do in our community?
• When asked why our funeral home was chosen, my family follow up surveys reflect that I receive 0 calls from advertising. How should I interpret this?
• How do you get the message out to Hospice that there are many more options for a family other than direct cremation?
• What would the best way to market a second location in the next city with two corporate competitors presently operate there?
• How do you determine what are the most effective strategies?
• When conducting market research in my area, what are some good sources for Secondary data or information regarding the opinions and buying preferences of ANY of my target markets?
• I’m in a small market. How do I attract more calls, when it appears, my competitor has more money for unlimited advertising?
• How can I get people out of the mindset that cremation means no viewing?
• I’m losing market share to a new funeral home, How can I combat an upstate with a better location?
• If we have a web site, what are the best strategies to make certain that someone using a search engine, such as Google, will see our listing at the top of the results list? Are there other techniques that can be used in addition to the “keywords” that are embedded into the pages of the site?
• What is the best way to counteract, “I want the cheapest funeral?
• I am an independent operated firm in my town with two other firms who are corporate run, what can I do in ads to beat them as competitors?
• What medium is the best advertising in a conservative area?

5 Reasons to have Careers on your Funeral Home Website

Recently, I created a “Help Wanted Ad” for some a support position to help me with the growth of my business and posted it to my website.  In stead of the old way of posting ads with newspapers and then sifting through a stack of job-seeking-tire-kickers, I wanted to elevate the relationship level to one of someone who was familiar with my work (via my website) or at least to get a referral – friend of a friend.  So why I am telling you this story?  Well it seems to be a topic of interest lately – getting good calibre staff – and we seem to turn to our travelling sales reps and ask them if they know of anyone looking.  As funeral directors, we forget that we have a large volume of “eyeballs” checking out obituaries on our websites and leaving condolences.  Why not have a “Careers” or “Job Opportunities” section on your website?

Here is a list of the reasons why you should have a Careers section on your website:

• It’s free! Well, depending on how your site is set up you may have to pay your web developer to create this section, or if you use a Content Management system like WordPress – it’s completely Free.
• Gives visitors an insight into your company.  Even if someone isn’t looking for a job – maybe they are trying to decide what funeral home to choose and if you communicate in your Help Ads that you need a certain type of person that will go above and beyond for your client families, they may see that is a deciding factor – “Attracting Families through Help Wanted Ads”
• The job seeker will get a better understanding of your operations since they are already at your website (although if someone comes in to an interview without researching you on your website, maybe you should keep looking).
• The Referral – maybe someone has been to your website to leave a condolence and they see your Careers tab and they know of someone who may be perfect for funeral service and they are already familiar with your company via the website (this referral will never happen if you only used help wanted ads).
• Good Economic Community Member – in economic times like this, it is good to show that you are investing back into the community – Job Creation (even if it is a replacement situation for you, you don’t have to tell everyone that)

I am sure that there are other benefits to posting job opportunities on your funeral home website. Can you think of any other reasons?  Please leave a comment below.

Here are some steps that you should remember:

• Let the firm’s caring, empathic personality come out in your ad, and describe what it is like to be apart of your team (others are reading it too)
• After the position has been filled, leave it up as a sample and still offer to accept resumes
• Embed or link to the Lynch’s “The Undertaking” documentary video clips from YouTube or PBS – these hold the entire profession in a more positive light
• Create a “Footer” link to your Careers section for each page – visitors’ curiosity will make them check out what’s available
• Secret tactic: use Social Network sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and even Twitter to direct people to your new job posting

I hope that this has been helpful – again please add your thoughts by leaving a comment below – thanks.

…Hepp

Part 5 – Q & A: Relationship Marketing for Funeral Homes

Here is the Q and A section.  It runs 27:48 minutes and mainly focuses on websites, online video, and search engine rankings.

Please give me your feedback below…

Hepp’s Internet Marketing Tips for Funeral Service

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Funeral Marketing with YouTube

What is better than being “number one” in Google?  By being number one through ten of course.  To accomplish this Google domination you have to look beyond your website and harass the power of other websites – like the number one content site, YouTube.  Of all websites, YouTube ranks fourth, but only behind the three main search engines: Google, Yahoo, and MSN’s Live Search. No matter how great your website is it is a speck of dust compared to YouTube and the other online video sharing websites like Google Video, Revver, and AOL Video.

If you would like to see real life examples for the funeral industry, you have to check out the case study that I conducted where McCall Bros. Funeral Home now occupies seven out of ten results for ‘Funeral planning in Victoria BC’ – including spots one through four.  The study shows how the videos impacted the search results in Google, Yahoo, and Live Search, within one day and also over a six week period.  To see all of the results along with my commentary, visit:

http://www.funeralfuturist.com/case-study-online-video-for-funeral-cemetery-promotion/

So if you are still with me here, you may be wondering what video content you would use on YouTube.  I always look for the easiest solution first, so I would suggest using those TV commercials that you had to pay thousands of dollars for and upload them to YouTube.  If you do not have a commercial ready to go, you could use the same software that you use to create your DVD memorial videos and create a three minute infomercial demonstrating how you are different than your competition.

Also you might be thinking that it sounds like a lot of work to upload these videos to all of these different video sharing site.  I use a tool called Traffic Geyser that allows you to upload one video to over 30 different sites.  It saves me a ton of time, and they have a lot of tips and training as well.  The guys at Traffic Geyser have also made this guide available for you to download free! Click this link or click on the image to download.

Before you fire that video up on YouTube be sure to read my article titled, “Upload your Funeral Home’s Welcome Message on YouTube.” This will explain how to title your video properly and what to include in the description and your tags to make sure that your video ranks well in Google.  You can read the article hear at:

http://fromthehep.com/2007/08/upload-your-funeral-homes-welcome.html

Please let me know of your successes after you upload your first video.  Also, if you have any other questions or suggestions, please let me know.

10 Golden Rules gets 10 out of 10

Jay Berkowitz and his team at “10 Golden Rules of Internet Marketing” do a great job in laying out practical advise in an easy to follow format. I have referred back to specific podcasts as well as the show notes when I need to take my blog (I mean, website) and podcast (I mean, online radio) to the next level. If this is the first time hearing about 10 Golden Rules, I would recommend to download all of the episodes – within one day you will have taken a crash course in Podcasting and Internet Marketing and will have a great grasp of what you need. Visit Jay’s site at www.TenGoldenRules.com or subscribe to the podcast on iTunes: itpc://feeds.feedburner.com/10goldenrules

Check out Jay’s video about “Ten Free or Low Cost Ways to Use the Internet to Help Your Business in Down Times.” Even though not all of these suggestions may apply to your funeral home or cemetery, let them open your mind to the possibilities of connecting to your client families and community.

Ideas for marketing on the internet include:

• Maximize web site traffic by using Free Search Engine Optimization techniques
• Create a FREE Offer on your site to get leads
• Measure the cost to acquire a lead and a sale
• Learn from the competition by using Competitive Intelligence Tools
• Take advantage of FREE Internet products like Google Optimizer to improve conversion on your web site
• Generate greater awareness for your business or product by using Free or low cost Internet Press Releases
• Develop an eNewsletter
• Create a virtual internet sales force using Affiliate Marketing
• Build your company’s position on high traffic Social Media
• Cut out the middle man by selling direct

What are your thoughts about what Jay had to say? Please leave your comments below.