Find out everything you need to know on How to Brand Your Funeral Home in this expert written article
What do families do when they lost someone and they don’t and they didn’t pick the funeral provider? The answer is simple – they Google it.
In the crowd of online ads, social networks, and commercial content, there is a single factor that gives you 4 times more visibility than your competitors. That incredibly important factor is branding.
The benefits of branding are seemingly endless. Branding reduces costs across the organization while increasing revenue. Branding supports all your marketing and advertising efforts, helping you work more effectively. You will get the most for your investment in the company. What other benefits of branding should you know about?
By branding your funeral home you get a lot, so let’s find together what and how!
1. Build trust
If you want to brand your funeral home – the first thing you need to do is build trust.
Have you ever gone to a brand’s website by accident, but ready to buy something? How can you tell if selling through that website is actually a legitimate business? You know, anyone can make a website and sell anything they want. I believe you feel significantly safer if you go to a physical location, a store where you can buy the same product. However, bad products and bad sellers can be found there just as much as on that website you stumbled upon. The thing is that people are more willing to pay for something, even online, if there is a well-known NAME behind it, a brand. If you need your car repaired, do you go to an authorized service/recommended auto mechanic or do you go to an auto mechanic you’ve never heard of? If you didn’t get a great recommendation, you’ll probably trust that auto mechanic you know. Regardless of whether you have an online business or not, all consumers will have a certain distance from businesses they don’t know. This is why they often don’t buy their products or buy them in small quantities to test them. If you have a strong brand, customers will see you as a stable company. They won’t be afraid to deal with you because you’ve already proven expertise in your industry. In fact, studies have shown that customers prefer established brands to revamped ones. This means that, even as a small business, you can compete with large companies if you know how to build your brand effectively.
2. Professional Photos of Your Funeral Home and Staff
You invested a significant amount of money and resources in your funeral home facility – but your potential clients don’t know that. They see how it looks now and they don’t think further than that, You organize significant events that can hold a few hundred people, but no one can see it. Well, that’s a shame and you need to change that.
High-quality pictures of your funeral home, as well as a 3D video tour on your website, is a must. That will help people to see everything they need without leaving their chairs, and they will come to a decision much easier and faster.
Our recommendation is to hire a professional photographer to do that job for you by highlighting the things people usually seek and prefer to see.
Put yourself in the consumer’s perspective, think of important questions and unknowns you can answer with pictures that could be an immediate bonus for you:
– How many people can your chapel accommodate? (picture)
– What style is the decor? (picture)
– Do you have an area for a reception? (picture)
– Is the entrance approachable (picture)
– Your staff (picture)
High-quality pictures and video materials done in a specific and recognizable manner will help you to brand your funeral home.
3. Unique Differentiators
If you are specialized in providing funeral services, you should focus on showing everyone what differentiates your service from the competition and what your advantages are. Make a list of all your services, advantages your facility offers to clients, and benefits you provide, and spotlight them!
Always remember that you created your unique business model and facility style and that those will not be liked by everyone, and that is ok. Your style and uniqueness will be appealing to an audience targeted by you and that is what you are seeking. After all, you can’t be liked by everyone, because those who are liked by everyone are in the end liked by no one.
So, be free to stand out. That way you will attract long-term, loyal clients and build a strong and recognizable name and brand.
4. Become a magnet
One of the benefits of branding is that the bigger the brand, the more customer magnet your business becomes. Nearly 80% of people say “name recognition” is the #1 reason they click on a search result on a search engine like Google. You could do everything to optimize your website for search engines through search engine optimization (SEO), but if they don’t recognize your brand thanks to strong branding, they probably won’t click on your website.
5. Fair, Honest, and Transparent Pricing
This highly important topic, because pricing, no matter what, is always an “issue”, and a big part of the clients decision. If you provide excellent services, no one expects you to do it cheaply, but the best performing funeral homes didn’t just have the most affordable prices. The ones that achieved the most success were the ones that had the most justifiable prices. As a business owner, you are absolutely free to charge as much, or as little, as you want. But, keep in mind that pricing and its transparency can be an element that can decide in your favor or against you. So, be smart and keep your prices in a reasonable range. Clients, especially yours who are in grief and experiencing probably the hardest days in their lives, will appreciate that and will not consider you as an opportunist.
That’s one more way to brand your funeral home and build an impeccable reputation.
6. Be Highly Responsive
By responding in a short time frame to phone calls, emails, and messages, you gain people’s affection, because you appreciate and save their time and efforts.
Nowadays, with various communication channels open and information at one click from us, no one is going to sit by the phone and wait for you to call them back or answer their email hours or days later. If you don’t think that responsiveness is important, you’re so wrong. Funeral homes that answered calls immediately saw over 100x more connections than those who responded back over 30 mins later. That’s how big a difference makes just 30 minutes – remember that!
The math is very simple – when people who just lost a loved one call to inquire about your services and they don’t get information from you, or they don’t reach you at all – they will immediately try to get it somewhere else. Inbound calls are what we call “hot leads” and should be treated like gold.
Running a funeral home is not an easy task. You’re balancing customer service, staff, emotion, standards, and people in grief, all with the additional stress of making sure you can pay your expenses and your employees and make a living for your family. That means that you need to sell your services in a way that you don’t sell yourself short!
By branding your funeral home, you will find it much easier to juggle all those tasks and you will be under a lot less stress because your brand will do its part of the job.
7. Increase click-through rates when advertising
Branding is much more than a name. Maybe potential customers recognize the font, visual and communication style, colors or something else. When they see it, they recognize your brand. Consistent branding helps your business become a brand that people recognize when they see it. Because they recognize you, they are more likely to click on your ads and book your service.
8. Keep your best employees
Your employees are an inseparable part of your brand, and loyal ones, those who are with you for years are landmarks of your brand and its strength, resilience, and business consistency.
We’ll throw in just one more employee-related branding benefit. The loss of an employee costs around several hundred thousand dollars. Lost productivity, wasted time, and actual employment costs add to this high cost. Branding increases employee loyalty. Loyal employees are even 300% more productive than other employees. Branding saves you money and brings you more revenue.
7. Reduce Risk and Build a Strong Foundation for Long-Term Success
A constantly maintained brand becomes a solid foundation on which to build your business. Risks such as loss of leadership, economic downturns, bad advertising or a new competitor in town have less impact when a strong brand is built around your business. Not only do these things have less of an impact on your business because you’re stronger, but customers who feel connected to your brand will rally around you, helping you through storms and setbacks.
Funeral home brand building has enormous benefits. But perhaps the most important key among the benefits of branding is that your brand lays the foundation for long-term success. It is difficult to topple a brand from its “throne” once it has achieved a level of branding in a niche with a larger customer base.
If you have learned about funeral home branding significance from this article, and you want to elevate your business to the next level and establish a strong brand name – reach out and contact Monument SEO & Design, a specialized digital marketing agency. Our expert team will create a personalized plan of branding and provide you with a full digital marketing service like SEO, PPC, web development, and social media marketing.
Call today at +1 786 442 3622 and get FREE personalized assessments and consultations with our digital marketing experts.
