Arguments for Building Your Funeral Home's Brand Using Online Reviews

BY JOE WEIGEL

In today’s online world, families rely on search results, social media, and peer reviews to research and gather feedback on businesses they are considering visiting or products they’re considering purchasing. And while it can be easy to turn a blind eye to the reviews your business receives, simply ignoring those review sites can damage your bottom line.

While this probably comes as no surprise, more than 90% of consumers read online reviews before making a purchase. As they seek out peer reviews on brands or companies that they’re considering doing business with, they’re looking for specific things. Consumers look for negative reviews to discover authentic feedback from real customers. In addition to negative reviews, they want to see how a business handled that situation and responded to a negative experience.

The funeral profession is not immune from these reviews and how they impact the firm’s online reputation. Managing your reputation has always been important and will become even more crucial in the coming years. Now is the time to become better equipped to handle the good and the bad of online reviews.

Still not convinced or not sure where to start? Here are ten reasons online reviews are important and how they can impact your funeral home’s business.

1. Increase Calls – One of the biggest reasons why online reviews are important is that ultimately positive reviews increase calls by giving families the objective information they need to decide to contact your funeral home – whether for pre-need or an at-need situation. People are always much more likely to use a company that has already been recommended by others.

2. Understand and Better Serve Your Families – Online reviews can tell you whether you are doing a good job or conversely what you are doing wrong and need to address to improve your service to families. This allows you to better serve your families by quickly and efficiently resolving any issues they have, thereby creating a positive experience for the family that will only help your business in the future.

3. Improve Rankings – Online reviews do more than just create better relationships between your firm and your families, they work towards improving your website's ranking on search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo! and more. The more that is written about your funeral home online, the more important a search engine considers you to be!

4. Enhance Higher Keyword Content – Online reviews help your funeral home’s website to have a steady influx of SEO keywords that can help your firm have a more prominent online presence for families. This is because many of the keywords included in online reviews help to bring up your website in search results for families looking for a funeral home to contact.

5. Allow Families to Have a Voice and Create Loyalty

Consumers who take the time to leave an online review for a business are far more likely to feel a certain loyalty to that business. Through the act of leaving an online review and establishing a relationship with the firm, it allows your families to feel like they have a voice and can provide feedback in a positive and meaningful way.