Three Steps to Create a Website That Markets Your Cremation Business

To find client families for your cremation business, you need to invest in your online presence, starting with your website. Your website is an extension of your funeral home that can market your products and services 24/7.

Follow these three steps to create an enticing website that brings more families through your doors.

1. Showcase Your Offerings and What Makes You Unique To show families what you have to offer and how you stand out from the rest, add this information to your website.

Mention Your Cremation Products and Services Share what service types you offer, such as direct cremation, traditional funeral services, and celebrations of life. For each type, write a brief description so families better understand them. Also include information about your cremation products, such as urns and jewelry. 

Include Your General Price List (GPL) Being open about the costs builds trust. If the prices aren’t definite, let them know you’re willing to work with them. The GPL can at least give them a starting point. You may also want to link to your funeral payment options, such as crowdfunding or life insurance assignments.

Share Educational Resources About Cremation Sharing educational resources establishes your firm as a reliable resource. These are a few resources that you can start with.

1. Regularly update your website’s blog. A few topic ideas are cremation funeral planning, tips for attending a funeral, and advice for grief and memorialization.

2. Build an FAQ hub by asking your employees what questions they hear the most. By including those in your hub, you save your staff time while still educating your families.

3. Explain in basic terms how cremation works and the reasons why someone may choose it. This gives people valuable insight to decide if cremation is the right disposition option for them.

4. Have a resources page with downloadable resources about cremation funeral planning, such as a how-to guide to plan and personalize a cremation funeral and a preplanning checklist.

5. Ask for testimonials to showcase families who chose cremation and had a positive experience working with you. You also should have a form for people to submit their own testimonials.

Describe What Makes You Unique

Your firm’s unique offerings could be an innovative product or service, a special way you personalize each service, your knowledgeable employees, or anything else your families can’t find elsewhere. If you’re not sure what your unique selling point is, research your competition. Visit their websites to gain a better understanding of their brand. Then, you can better determine what makes your firm unique.

Don’t Forget About Calls-to-Action (CTAs)

To easily track interest coming from your website, write  clear CTAs paired with contact forms. CTA stands for “call to action.” A typical CTA looks like a clickable button on your website with a snippet of text on it, like “Learn More” or “Start Now” or “Contact Us.” For example, your cremation-related blog post could have a “Download Now” CTA on it offering a how-to guide on planning a service after a cremation. Your webpages about cremation funeral planning could have CTAs for beginning preneed or at-need funeral planning with your firm.

2. Don’t Forget About Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

After updating your website content, you’re not done yet. To make sure your website is found by more families, you need to optimize it for the web. By following SEO best practices, your website is more likely to show up higher on search engine results pages (SERPs). Remember that many people researching funeral homes in your area are from out of town. If they don’t live in the same city as the deceased, they’re going to take to the internet to find what they need. That’s why it’s so important to have an effective SEO strategy in place.

It’s best to work with an SEO expert to develop a personalized plan for your firm. In the meantime, these are a few SEO basics that you can start with. 

Have a Responsive Design

Responsive design simply means your website adapts to whatever device the visitor is using, such as a laptop, phone, or tablet. Search engines like Google prefer websites with user-friendly designs and responsiveness is a key ingredient in user-friendliness. If your website isn’t optimized for the mobile experience, this can hurt your SEO.

Regularly Update Your Content

Regularly publishing and updating content can boost your SEO. Your blog is a good place to start. For blog topics, ask your staff for common questions they hear families ask. These topics can make great blogs. Several people should proofread your blog posts, since spelling and grammar errors can damage your SEO. Also remove spam comments that can hurt your SEO and credibility.

Add Links

Add external and internal links to your website content. Internal links go to pages within your website, while external links go to other relevant websites. Before linking to a website, make sure it’s reliable and secure. Also make sure to regularly update any broken links.

Use an SSL Certificate

SSL certificates keep your data safe, but they also boost your SEO. Search engines prefer websites with secure connections, because they don’t want to direct people to unsafe websites. Many search engines include padlock symbols that clearly show if a website is secure or not.

Optimize Your Meta Data

Meta data describes the content on a webpage. A few examples of meta data are meta titles and descriptions and keywords. Your meta titles and descriptions are what appear on SERPs, so you want to make sure it accurately describes the page content and includes keywords. Your keywords should be related to cremation and your products and services. Along with your meta titles and descriptions, include them in your webpage headings and body copy, but don’t overstuff them. Instead, use variations of your keywords rather than repeating the same keywords multiple times.

3. Link Back to Your Website in Your Marketing Materials

To get more traffic to your website, you should link to it in your marketing materials and other reputable sources. This way, you’re taking your potential client families to your website where they can explore your products, services, and educational content. These are just a few ways to get people back to your website.

Post on Social Media

Include links back to your funeral home’s website in your social media posts. For example, you could share the link to your latest blog post and write a brief description that makes people curious to click and read it to learn more. Don’t forget to update your social media pages’ about sections with your website link as well.

Send Newsletters and Email Series

To get people to your website, utilize your newsletter to share your blog posts, guides, and other educational resources. You also can send email series tailored to topics like preplanning. For example, after someone downloads your guide, that could automatically trigger an email series with related resources. The last email could link to your preplanning form to get started.

Publish Online Ads

Online advertising is another way to get more website visits. For example, you could showcase your cremation-related resources, products, and services. One place to start with is Facebook. For just a few dollars a day, you can boost your posts on your Facebook Page’s timeline to reach more people, or you can create ads that allow for even more customization.

Put Links in Your Educational Resources

Before you publish your blog posts, make sure to include some internal links. These could be links to other blog posts or pages on your website. Your howto guides, checklists, and any other downloadable resources should have internal links as well. This keeps people clicking through your website and exploring what you have to offer.

Write Guest Articles

Writing guest articles is an easy way to get links back to your website from reputable sources. Reach out to funeral professionals and local businesses to see if they’d be open to publishing a guest blog post from you on their website. A few people and places to start with are grief counselors, funeral profession influencers, funeral technology providers, and mortuary schools.

Let Your Website Find Cremation Leads for You

By following these three steps, your website can act like an additional employee for your funeral home and find more cremation leads for you. First, include website content that showcases your services and what makes you unique. Next, optimize that content for  SEO. Finally, incorporate your website links into your marketing to bring more people to your website. 

About the Author

For the past five years, Jenny Goldade has been writing and learning about the funeral profession as the Senior Content Specialist at Frazer Consultants, a funeral technology company that specializes in website design, personalization software, and more. She writes articles, guides, and other resources to give funeral directors the tools they need to be successful. When Jenny is not writing, she spends time with her family, has board game nights with friends, and takes her family’s dog Rosie for walks. She also enjoys reading mystery novels, making crafts, and baking all kinds of cookies.