Social media has taken every industry and profession by storm. But it’s not like it came quietly, we have been talking about it for years. Everyone saw it coming, but no one in the death care space was prepared.

Music City jammin’ for ICCFA 2017! The camera rolls in Nashville for Episode 006. Get an inside perspective on the strategic conversations that happen during ‘quick pitch’ opportunities. See and hear how the approach we use isn’t about selling content to a funeral home or cemetery. This isn’t a smash and grab – we are all about driving leads and ROI for our clients, plain and simple. Listen to Ryan layout the plan and process we use with clients to drive over $20,000 a month in Preneed leads through results driven Facebook marketing.

To win you need attention and trust. It's a circle. Attention…trust, they feed each other, and without one, you don't get the other. You've got to be able to capture attention, but you also need your audience to trust you. The marketing element in which the funeral profession has been terribly lacking is in building trust. All of what we hear mainstream about the funeral profession is negativity. Being able to capture somebody's attention while building trust is extremely, extremely valuable when it comes to engaging with the consumer and securing business for now and for the future.

2017 is the year of Instagram for funeral professionals - I called it last year and it is more valuable then ever before. Why? Simple: ATTENTION

I’m going to name them right at the beginning of this article. If you use Yellow Pages, television or radio commercials, direct mail, billboards, or telemarketing to promote your funeral business you should dump them right along with your flip phone. I realize this may hurt your tender feelings or step on your toes, but sometimes it’s necessary to straight up tell the truth even if it makes you angry.

Lead generation lacking for your funeral home? Ramp up your efforts this year simply through running a few Facebook contests. Increase engagement on your Facebook page and recognize deserving individuals in your local communities all while capturing email and phone numbers that you can add to your CRM.

It’s 2017. Are you still marketing your funeral business like it’s 1979 (I know most of you are)? Are you spending the bulk of your advertising dollars on old school methods that are expensive and ineffective? There is a major problem in this profession where funeral directors think they can be guarded from change - like you're untouchable from what the market (consumer) demands or wants. Regardless of what you do or how you market, you think families you have served in the past are always going to come back to you, this is just not true. Yet, we (the profession) continue to do things the same way we always have. The market doesn't owe you anything. Every family is fair game and the funeral home that gets their attention is the funeral home that will win.

I talk with numerous funeral directors every week. When we discuss how they are currently marketing their business, they list the usual methods: radio, newspaper, television, Yellow Pages, direct mail, and…word of mouth (WOM). Almost always they will comment that word of mouth marketing is, by far, the most effective.

What Is Facebook Reach?

Let’s assume your Facebook business page has 324 fans (people who have Liked you page). You make a post on your page, so you assume that all 324 fans will see your post. You are wrong. Less than 6% of your current fans will have the content you post actually show up in their Facebook profile news feed. Does this shock you?

Most funeral home Facebook users who maintain a business page understand the importance of increasing their fan base so their content has a better chance of being seen by more people. But we’ve made it clear in a previous article that the average Facebook user will NEVER see all the content posted by his or her friends and by the businesses s/he follows. There is simply too much, so Facebook utilizes algorithms to filter users’ news feeds and prioritize the content that rises to the top (if Facebook didn’t filter the news feed users could see up to 15,000 pieces of content each day). The end result of this filtering is that, on average, only 6% of the content posted by a business is ever seen by the fans of their page.