When seeking an expert who can manage your organic Facebook content strategy and Facebook advertising campaigns, you are met with a few options. You have to decide - should your funeral home or cemetery hire a social media marketing agency, a freelancer, or an in-house account manager? Though different options may work for different people, they may not all be the right fit for you. So, before you choose the partner with whom you want to work with, consider these five perks of hiring an agency.

1. No Training Costs

If you’re considering hiring an in-house marketing/social media specialist, one consideration is the cost of training an individual to do the job. First, you have to train them in the funeral profession and what you do. Some estimates show that training a new employee costs a company approximately $1,252, and that doesn’t include the time and energy you expend getting them ready for the position. Using a freelance marketer or local social media agency still costs time to train in the standards of your business - even using a family member not working in the business (college-age son or daughter) comes with training obstacles. Also, just because someone has grown up around a funeral home or cemetery and they personally use social media, doesn’t make them a professional marketer. You wouldn’t let them walk in off the street and embalm a body, would you? Of course not, they aren’t trained and they certainly aren’t the expert. See where I’m going here? It wouldn’t make much sense, right? Regardless, in all three cases, you run the risk of overspending to train and having to re-train the candidates if they choose to get another job. 

Let’s be honest, what happens most of the time in a funeral home or cemetery is the person that is hired to do ‘marketing’ also becomes the ‘catch-all’ for clerical work, gardening, assistance staging a life celebration and so on. Marketing becomes number two, three or even four on the list and you’re right back where you started, you still need a full-time marketing person.

When you work with a funeral specific social media marketing agency, you skip all of these training costs. Agency staff are trained in-house. The agency has expertise working with funeral homes and cemeteries, and the creatives and Facebook advertising specialists of that agency know your funeral home or cemeteries needs. They already have all of the consumer data, targeting metrics, and they know exactly how to create content and what to create to achieve the business goals and market share increase you want to achieve. You save on the training and your money is spent far more efficiently. Money is not spent on testing (trial and error), they already know what needs to be done and how to optimize your marketing strategy to stretch the dollar further.

2. Dependable

Human beings are unpredictable and so are you. Family emergencies, illnesses, internet outages and tasks unrelated to the job they were hired for are a few of the dilemmas that can put an in-house marketer behind the eight-ball. Although, as a human being, you may be understanding of these situational mishaps, as a business person, they can put you in a bind.

Working with a funeral specific social media agency provides you with stability and predictability. Even if an individual advertising specialist, account manager or creative is sick or leaves his or her position in the agency, there is an entire team available to pick up the slack and ensure your content strategy and ad campaigns are polished and ready to go when you need them. You never have to worry about tracking down a flaky employee. You can, instead, expend your time and energy on serving families and handling the business side of things.

3. Many Brains Are Better Than One

Sometimes, content and advertising strategies fail. When you only have one in-house person working on your project, that single person is the only one who can provide a solution. This may turn into an issue if that person has tried everything he or she could to get your social media marketing and Facebook advertising campaigns off to a good start. In these cases, you may be stuck paying for additional training to help the in-house person find new ideas.

When you work with a funeral specific social media agency, you skip these problems. While you may still have Facebook ad campaigns that don’t run as well as you’d like, when that happens, an entire team can work together to solve the problem and hatch up a new strategy for you. 

Don’t confuse what I am saying, it is not a BAD thing to have an in-house marketing person, but most often, especially with funeral homes and cemeteries, that in-house person is not a social media expert. They don’t understand that a newspaper ad design is terrible Facebook content or how a 30-sec commercial spot performs terribly on television but could be reshot into 5-10 second Facebook ads that would outperform anything you’ve ever done before.

An in-house person or not, partnering with the right funeral specific social media agency will make all the difference.

4. Massively Reduce Overhead and Increase Bottomline

The cost of an in-house person themselves aren’t the only costs you’ll incur if you hire an in-house specialist. Often, your funeral home or cemetery may need specialized tools and applications to achieve the results you want. When you hire an individual, these costs—whether they be video editing software, content management applications or analytics software—fall entirely on your shoulders.

Agencies, on the other hand, tend to already have the software, subscriptions, and tools they need, and they use the technologies with all of their clients. This means that you cut out the overhead costs associated with hiring individuals. You also get to work with experts in software you might not have otherwise been able to afford. Just for kicks and giggles, DISRUPT Media spends over $50,000/yr on one single campaign management and analytics application.

5. High-Quality Content and Optimized Advertisements

Funeral specific social media marketing agencies have the ability to hire specialists in video advertising, copywriting, graphic design, and more. Each of these specialists works to create high-quality content and advertisements for your funeral home or cemetery. In contrast, in-house marketers often have to be able to do a little bit of everything to bring an advertisement together, which means that the quality of the pieces isn’t as high, it takes more time and resources or you still end up farming out some of the responsibilities to a local company who doesn’t understand your brand of the funeral profession.

When partnering with a funeral specific social media agency you should consider a few key things:

1. Organic Content Strategy: Are they creating an organic content strategy specifically crafted for your funeral home or cemetery or are they selling you cookie-cutter, generic fluff, grief and inspirational content?
2. Social Media is their Specialty: Is their main business social media or is it a secondary niche they play in because they can make a few bucks selling content? Example: Were they a software company first and now have a social media product or preneed insurance company and all of a sudden have a Facebook solution that promises to drive leads?
3. Facebook Agency Partner: Facebook provides Agency Partners with advanced support, tools, and agency-specific resources to help their Partners accelerate client success across Facebook platforms. Facebook Agency Partners also have direct access to the Facebook ad team for ad campaign optimization, helping stretch your dollar further when spending through an Agency Partner.

You want to partner with a funeral specific social media agency that can check all three boxes.

There are many benefits to hiring a funeral specific social media agency. If interested in growing your funeral home’s or cemetery’s market share with Facebook content and ads, contact DISRUPT Media.