Give your families multiple ways to pay.
By giving your families options, they can focus on creating a funeral that honors their loved one’s life, instead of worrying about how they’re going to afford it.
READ OUR FREE EBOOK TO LEARN MORE A B O U T PAY M E N T O P T I O N S !
frazerconsultants.com/tmf-payments-ebook
ISSUE 20
Table of Contents
Ways to Exceed 13 Six Families’ Funeral Expectations
Whether it’s before the funeral, during the service, or following up after, there are many ways to go the extra mile.
06 What’s New at Frazer F E AT U R E A R T I C L E
We’ve been up to a lot of exciting new things to make your lives easier.
to Ask for 17 How Testimonials and
Respond to Online Reviews By following these tips, you can keep your funeral home’s online reputation on track.
Generation for 21 Lead Funeral Homes In today’s digital age, it’s more important than ever to understand and implement lead generation.
26 Employee Feature
Signs Your 36 Nine Funeral Home Website
Meet one of the members of our Frazer family — Will — and learn about his role at Frazer and his hobbies.
Steps for Creating 28 10Lead-Generating
Marketing Content for Your Funeral Home Creating educational resources has many benefits for your funeral home and your families.
Needs an Upgrade
It takes users just 0.05 seconds to choose whether they want to stay on your website or go elsewhere.
33 Test Your Knowledge QUIZ
About Websites
Take this quiz to see how much you know about funeral home websites.
Family and 41 Juggling a Funeral Home: Tips for Family-Owned Funeral Homes
While there are many benefits of working with your family, there also are challenges.
Road Ahead: 45 The How Funeral
Directors Can Be as Prepared for the Future as Possible As the world opens back up, we want to share some tips on navigating the funeral profession.
Letter from the Editor Dear readers, Welcome to The Meaningful Funeral magazine, an exclusive publication by Frazer Consultants. Our goal with this magazine is to be a resource for your funeral home and to help you learn new skills, keep up with funeral trends, and serve your current client families in more meaningful ways. This issue of The Meaningful Funeral is a special one, as we’re celebrating our 20th issue! Over the years, our team has worked hard writing and designing a magazine that you look forward to receiving in your mailbox. We hope that you enjoy the 20th issue and more to come. In this 20th issue, a few topics you will learn about are how to request testimonials from families, signs your website needs an upgrade, and tips for family-owned funeral homes. With the variety of topics covered, there’s something for everyone! Want to read The Meaningful Funeral on the go? Every issue is available for free on our website, all you have to do is visit frazerconsultants.com/meaningful and click the “magazine” tab. I hope you enjoy reading this issue of The Meaningful Funeral, and I look forward to hearing your feedback. If you have any suggestions for future magazine content, we would love to hear them — just email us at marketing@frazerconsultants.com. And if you really love our content, visit frazerconsultants.com/meaningful and sign up for our newsletter to have fresh content delivered to your inbox!
M AT T F R A Z E R P R E S I D E N T, F R A Z E R C O N S U LTA N T S
Create funerals that are truly personalized to a loved one’s interests.
There are many ways to incorporate special details into funerals based on the professions, passions, and hobbies that make each of us unique. With a software solution like Tribute Center, you can even create personalized funeral stationery products to match the funeral theme.
READ OUR FREE EBOOK TO SEE SOME FUNERAL THEME EXAMPLES!
frazerconsultants.com/tmf-personalization-ebook
Curious What’s New at Frazer? Check out these exciting new updates created to make your job easier.
06 | The Meaningful Funeral
Easily Customize Your Website with Our Website Builder With our drag-and-drop website builder, you can easily edit your funeral home’s website to meet your unique business needs. It also lets you differentiate your firm from the competition. We know your day-to-day schedule is busy, so the website builder is designed to save you time. It has a user-friendly design that’s clean and efficient, but if you ever have any questions, our customer support team is here to help, or you can set up a meeting with your account representative to learn more.
Additionally, with our easy-to-use website builder, you can: Take control of customizing your website design and content.
Choose from hundreds of themes to create unique, permanent Tribute Wall memorial pages for families’ loved ones.
Provide your families with an easy-to-navigate website.
Make collecting the funds from families much easier with our payment features.
Integrate seamlessly with your other favorite Frazer features like the online planner, Tribute Store for flower and tree orders, and Growth Engine Marketing Hub.
Save time from entering data with the FrazerGO management software integration.
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Save Time with FrazerGO Funeral Home Management Software FrazerGO management software is browserbased. That means it’s accessible from anywhere across virtually any device, including Mac and PC devices, tablets, and soon smartphones with the Mobile App. We designed the software so it’s easy to navigate your cases and add as much information as you need. It eliminates entering data in multiple places with a single-data entry feature allowing you and your staff to be even more efficient.
To save you even more time, our all-in-one software lets you: Share files and chat with families in real-time if they live out of town or state.
Collect signatures virtually with its built-in tool.
See a full schedule of your outstanding tasks.
Process payments in the software.
08 | The Meaningful Funeral
And so much more.
Streamline Your Accounting and Billing Process with Tribute Pay Tribute Pay’s built into FrazerGO and your Frazer website. It’s an included feature, so there are no additional monthly or annual fees to use it. This way, families have more ways to pay, which means more ways for you to get paid faster and easier than ever before. Whatever option a family chooses, the payment flows into FrazerGO, which gives both families and funeral directors a clearer picture when it comes to billing.
Whether it’s preneed or at-need services, your families have multiple ways to pay from anywhere at any time, including: Using one of Tribute Pay’s additional features, including crowdfunding, financing, and life insurance assignments.
Paying in-person during the arrangement conference.
Paying by credit card or eCheck directly on your website.
Through an email invoice.
The Meaningful Funeral | 09
Generate More Leads for Your Funeral Home with Growth Engine We partner with Growth Engine, the first marketing automation software designed specifically for funeral homes and cemeteries. Select end-of-life content from Growth Engine’s library of pre-made templates, like Facebook posts and emails in 25+ categories. Schedule the content using the built-in calendar, then let Growth Engine act as your digital assistant to post and send for you.
To make your firm’s marketing even easier for you, Growth Engine also can: Save you the time and effort of writing and planning your marketing content yourself.
Track what topics people in your area like and follow up with nurturing emails.
Automatically send text messages for aftercare and ask for reviews.
Generate leads and score them, which you can easily access.
Create custom content with the Growth+ package.
10 | The Meaningful Funeral
To learn more about these exciting new features, visit: frazerconsultants.com/whats-new
Mention promo code GOFrazer and get your first month free!*
* Conditions Apply - contact us for full details about this promotion.
The Meaningful Funeral | 11
12 | The Meaningful Funeral
Six Ways to Exceed Families’ Funeral Expectations By exceeding families’ funeral expectations, you can show them that you truly care about honoring their loved one’s life. Whether it’s before the funeral, during the service, or following up afterward, there are many ways that you can go the extra mile. From providing educational resources to kind gestures, here are six ideas to get your funeral home started! How to Exceed Families’ Funeral Expectations Before the Service 0 1 — G I V E FA M I L I E S C A R E PA C K A G E S
Help families stock up on food, toiletries, and other supplies while their grief is still very new. This way, they don’t have to tackle running errands. For help gathering supplies, you could ask your community for donations, or see about partnering with a local grocery store. Not sure what to include in your care packages? A few ideas are canned goods, cereal, granola bars, toilet paper, toothbrushes, and toothpaste. 02 — PROVIDE THEM WITH GRIEF RESOURCES
Along with groceries and other supplies, you also can provide your families with grief resources. These can be books, blogs, or your own grief resources. To put all your grief resources in one place, you could create a grief guide. Along with your recommended books and blogs, you also could include contact information for grief organizations and counselors, dates for upcoming grief-related events that you’re hosting, suggestions for healthy ways to cope with grief, and any other helpful information.
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Ways to Exceed Funeral Expectations During the Planning Process and Service 0 3 — B R A I N S T O R M F U N E R A L P E R S O N A L I Z AT I O N I D E A S
There are many creative ways to personalize a funeral. To help families create a service as unique as their loved one’s life story, you can start by learning the little details for personalizing the obituary. For displaying mementos, you could provide them with tables, hooks, and other supplies. You also could help them choose a funeral theme, such as a loved one’s profession or hobby. For the postfuneral reception, you could serve their loved one’s favorite dishes. 0 4 — I N V E S T I N I N N O VAT I V E T E C H N O L O G Y S O L U T I O N S
With the right funeral technology solutions, you can offer your families even more ways to personalize their loved one’s funeral. Features like an online memorial wall for leaving condolences and software for creating funeral stationery products can help take personalization to the next level. With Frazer, your funeral home can get these tools and so much more!
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Continue to Exceed Expectations After the Funeral Service Is Over 0 5 — O F F E R FA M I L I E S M E M O R I A L G I F T S
Like we mentioned earlier, investing in funeral personalization software makes it easy to create one-of-kind mementos, such as prayer cards and bookmarks. For the holiday season, you could offer your families holiday remembrance ornaments to display on their tree or even year-round. If a family wants a DIY project, you could share some ideas. A few examples are a T-shirt blanket, photo wreath, and painted memorial stones. If you want to take it a step further, you could even have the craft directions on hand, so it’s less work for the family. Or host a community event for making the memorial crafts. 06 — ASK THEM FOR FEEDBACK
Asking families for feedback on their experience working with your funeral home is a great way to show them that you value their opinions. It’s also a great way for your team to get an insight into what families think about your funeral home. To get feedback, you could send them a short survey link via email. You can even get permission to use their feedback as a testimonial. T O R E A D M O R E , V I S I T:
frazerconsultants.com/meaningful
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How to Ask for Testimonials and Respond to Online Reviews Your funeral home’s online reviews can make or break your reputation, but by following these tips, you can keep your online reputation on track. It’s not uncommon for a business to get a negative review online. But you can retain your positive online reputation by responding to your reviews and asking other families for positive testimonials. ASKING FOR TESTIMONIALS
According to Big Commerce, 72% of consumers trust a business more after reading positive reviews and testimonials. They build your credibility by letting families hear a reallife example of someone’s great experience with your funeral home. It helps you build trusting relationships with families before they even walk in your door. So whether they’re preplanning or planning a loved one’s funeral at-need, your funeral home will be in mind.
When asking for and planning a testimonial, follow these steps: DECIDE WHO TO ASK
You may want to ask a family who gave you a good review or expressed their satisfaction with their funeral experience. It may help to create a list of client families who liked your services or used them in a unique way. REACH OUT TO THEM
Once you’ve determined some possible families, reach out to them to see if they’d be interested. You can send them an email, give them a call, or invite them to discuss it at your funeral home. Just be sure to wait an appropriate amount of time to give them space after their loss.
The Meaningful Funeral | 17
CHOOSE A TOPIC
Decide what elements from their funeral experience you want to highlight. Did they have several personalized funeral elements? Or did they have a successful crowdfunding campaign? Determine a meaningful and memorable funeral element that will attract more families to your funeral home. S E L E C T A F O R M AT
Your testimonial can be written or you can create an engaging video of the family talking about their funeral experience. SHARE IT
Post your testimonial on your funeral home’s website. You also can share and promote it on your funeral home’s social media pages, such as Facebook or YouTube. RESPONDING TO ONLINE REVIEWS
Whether it’s on social media or review sites like Yelp, public online reviews can positively or negatively impact your funeral home. According to Qualtrics, 93% of customers read online reviews before deciding to purchase a product. You should always respond to negative reviews. However, don’t respond when you’re angry; take a moment to relax. When you’re ready to respond, stay positive, keep it simple, and don’t get defensive. A defensive response can do more damage than a negative review. When responding to a negative review, even if you believe the complaint isn’t valid, your goal
18 | The Meaningful Funeral
is to make that person happy. Not only does this show the reviewer that you want to make things right, but it also shows other families that you took the time to respond and learn more about that family’s experience, which will lead them to consider your services even after seeing the negative review. By responding publicly to a negative review, you show potential client families you care about providing the best possible funeral experience. You also can directly message the reviewer in addition to your public response to learn more about their experience and see if there’s a way to resolve the issue. By reaching out and expressing your concern, they may even decide to change their review. You also can use this as an opportunity to highlight your funeral home’s brand. For example, you can say: “We’re sorry you had a bad experience. At (insert funeral home name), we strive to provide our families with a memorable and meaningful funeral to honor their loved one. Please message us directly, so we can work together to find a resolution to your problem.” And don’t leave your positive reviews unnoticed, either. Respond to these to thank them for their feedback and say you’re glad they had a positive experience. These positive reviewers also are possible candidates for your testimonials, so consider reaching out to them. T O R E A D M O R E , V I S I T:
frazerconsultants.com/meaningful
Does your website look beautiful on all devices?
A responsive design allows families to easily navigate your website from any device, whether it’s on a smartphone, tablet, computer, or even a TV screen. That’s why Frazer websites respond to all device types.
LEARN MORE ABOUT RESPONSIVE DESIGN IN OUR FREE EBOOK!
frazerconsultants.com/tmf-mobile-ebook
The Meaningful Funeral | 19
20 | The Meaningful Funeral
Lead Generation for Funeral Homes In today’s digital age, it’s more important than ever to understand and implement lead generation.
The Meaningful Funeral | 21
By knowing the most successful ways to market your funeral home’s products and services, you will get more leads which can turn into more business. In this comprehensive guide, you will learn what a lead is, what lead generation is, and successful lead generation tactics your funeral home can use. W H AT I S A L E A D ?
According to HubSpot, a lead is “a person who has indicated interest in your company’s product or service in some way, shape, or form.” This interest may be shown by the person providing their contact information or inquiring more about your business and services. It could even be as subtle as a person “liking” your funeral home’s Facebook Page. When you notice a lead, it’s important to act fast to secure your business with them. As a business, it’s important for you to define who your potential leads are, so you know who to direct your marketing efforts toward. While funeral homes should be focusing on at-need families, they also should be putting a lot of their marketing efforts toward individuals who are curious about preneed. At-need families typically choose a funeral home in a rush whereas preneed clients do more research since they have more time to do their planning. That’s why it’s so important to show these potential leads what preneed services your funeral home offers. W H AT I S L E A D G E N E R AT I O N ?
The process of lead generation looks different depending on your marketing process. For instance, leads can be generated by getting people to sign up for a newsletter or through direct mail. It’s all about deciding which marketing strategies are best for your funeral home. The process of lead generation can be broken down as the following:
22 | The Meaningful Funeral
First, people are complete strangers to your business. They have never heard of you and don’t know you exist. Therefore, things such as search engine optimization and social media are so important because they make your funeral home visible to your potential client families. When they begin to recognize your funeral home, they become visitors. This is when you want to encourage them to sign up for your mailing list or fill out your contact forms. This is done by creating calls-to-action (CTA) on your marketing materials. Your goal is to get their contact information, so you can continue to market your services and products to them. Once they express their interest in your funeral home, they become a lead. As stated earlier, this interest may be shown by providing their contact information or inquiring more about your services. After they become a lead, it’s important to keep them in your sales pipeline. You’ll want to continue to pique their interest by showing them how great your funeral home is. By implementing some of the lead generation tactics we’ll discuss next, your leads will soon become customers. If you go above and beyond for your clients and leave them with a lasting impression, they may even become promoters that spread the word about your services for you. At this point, everything comes full circle, and the promoters start converting strangers into visitors and leads on your behalf. L E A D G E N E R AT I O N TA C T I C S
Lead generation content provides families with useful, free information in return for their contact information. It can be broken down into two main types: digital and non-digital.
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Some digital lead generation tactics include downloadables, blog posts, emails, social media posts, customer reviews, and, of course, your website. While some non-digital tactics include direct mail and your funeral home’s events. Let’s discuss some of these tactics in more detail.
D O W N LOA DA B L E C O N T E N T
Email opens up another lead generation opportunity. There are several types of emails your funeral home can send, such as a newsletter. It can be a weekly, biweekly, or monthly email that highlights educational and inspirational content that isn’t too salesy. For example, you can share links to your funeral home’s blog posts.
Downloadable content is free information users download from a landing page. Landing pages include a short description of the downloadable content, a CTA, and a form for downloading it. Families input their information such as their name and email in return for the useful, free information. And then, your funeral home has their contact information to continue nurturing that lead into a potential customer.
You can use personalized URLs (PURLs) to track who clicked on the blog posts from your newsletter. There are many tools out there for creating PURLs and tracking the results, such as with Google Analytics parameters. With the Google Analytics URL Builder, you can create customized URLs for campaigns and easily track the results.
Digital
Some examples of downloadable content include eBooks, checklists, infographics, and case studies. As for funeral homes, some ideas are a funeral preplanning guide, preplanning checklist, checklist of the legal documents needed when someone passes away, and a funeral personalization infographic. Plus, your funeral home can repurpose a lot of your current website, blog, or other marketing content for this downloadable content. B LO G
Your funeral home’s blog on your website is a great way to gain new leads. Within your blog post content, you can include a CTA that has a form or leads them to a landing page. For example, for a blog post about preplanning, the CTA could be to download your free preplanning guide or to fill out your online planner on your website. Some other blog post ideas include the basics of funeral planning, healthy grieving strategies, memorial ideas, funeral flower types, and final disposition options. Anything families would find valuable when it comes to funeral planning and memorialization is an excellent blog topic.
24 | The Meaningful Funeral
SOCIAL MEDIA
Social media is a great tool for engaging with current client families and finding new ones. It allows you to connect with families before they even step into your funeral home. Some examples of popular social media platforms are Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and Pinterest. However, you don’t have to be present on all of them. Just focus on one or two of them. It’s better to have a well-thought-out and engaging presence on one social media platform than a weaker presence on all of them. For funeral homes, you should first focus on Facebook, where most of your target audience spends their time. You can share your funeral home’s blog posts and other content to find leads and get people to your funeral home’s website. Some other social media post ideas are sharing obituaries, writing posts about relevant topics such as burial versus cremation, and creating short videos such as why you should have a funeral service. You also should include CTAs in your posts and boost them, so they’re seen by more people.
WA N T T O R E A D M O R E ?
Download the rest of our free eBook to learn more about lead generation!
frazerconsultants.com/tmf-lead-gen
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Getting to Know Frazer Consultants Meet one of the members of our Frazer family — Will — and learn about his role at Frazer and what he likes to do in his free time.
NAME
Will YEARS
> 1 year ROLE
Sales Lead
W H AT I D O AT F R A Z E R :
With more than 12 years of experience working in the deathcare technology space, I decided to take on a new role as sales Lead at Frazer Consultants — the funeral profession’s leading website provider. I started working with funeral homes back in 2009. Fresh out of business school and looking to acquire some experience, I started working as a sales representative for a funeral technology company called FrontRunner Professional. We primary provided websites and funeral data management software for funeral homes across North America. After gaining a wealth of knowledge working closely with deathcare professionals at FrontRunner for more than four years, I played a key role in putting together a group of investors to start the deathcare technology company called FuneralTech. I worked with FuneralTech for the next seven years to build their client base to well over 3000 funeral homes globally before selling my shares in the company and taking on a new challenge with another leading software company in the deathcare space called SRS. There I focused on expanding their proprietary
26 | The Meaningful Funeral
merchant account service platform. I stayed with SRS for a year and a half until April 2021 when I was offered the position of Sales Lead with Frazer Consultants. Now I am more than thrilled to be able to offer my knowledge in the deathcare technology space to all future and existing Frazer customers. I truly pride myself on the relationships I build with my clients. There is nothing more rewarding to me than hearing a funeral professional tell me how thankful they are for having taken my advice with regards to the technology they chose for their business. HOW I SPEND MY FREE TIME:
Born and raised in the beautiful 1000 Islands on the St. Lawrence Seaway in Ontario Canada, when I’m not working with deathcare professionals I can be found boating and fishing on the river. I’ve been married for just over two years now to a beautiful nurse practitioner and we are expecting our first child in October 2021. The most important things in my life are my wife, my family, my French Bulldog – Dennis, and soon to be Baby Wright! Some of my hobbies include strength and cardio training, snowboarding, and playing sports like hockey and volleyball, as well as watching sports like football, hockey, and baseball. Some of my close friends refer to me as “Weekend Willie,” and if we ever have the pleasure of meeting in the lobby bar at a funeral convention some day, you’ll understand why. I always enjoy a social beverage or two and I live by the motto “work hard, so you can play harder.”
See why this funeral home loves Tribute Store!
“People love the florist link! If someone from out of town calls to ask us what florist they should use, we direct them to our website and explain that our local florist is the one who gets those orders, not a large corporation that is going to ship flowers in a box.” Veronica Haskell of Haskell Funeral & Cremation Services
D O W N LOA D O U R C A S E S T U DY TO R E A D M O R E !
frazerconsultants.com/tmf-HF
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10 Steps for Creating LeadGenerating Marketing Content for Your Funeral Home Creating educational resources has many benefits for your funeral home and the families you serve.
28 | The Meaningful Funeral
The main goal of creating downloadable content is to turn people into client families for your funeral home. But that’s not the only reason. Along with generating leads for your business, it also helps you become the go-to funeral resource in your community. To start creating educational content, follow these ten steps.
blog, website, brochures, and any other content you’ve created. If you don’t have a lot of existing content to work with, that’s okay! A lot of the content you need is already in your head; you just need to get it down on paper. You could also do some research to get further insight into the topic, whether that’s a quick Google search or taking a trip to your local library.
STEP 1: DECIDE THE TOPIC
To choose your topic, consider what your funeral home’s current goals are. For example, if you want more families to preplan, then preplanning may be a good topic. Or if you recently started offering cremation services, you may want to create a resource about that end-of-life option. Once you choose your topic, narrow it down to a subtopic if it’s broad.
S T E P 4 : O U T L I N E YO U R C O N T E N T
The way you go about your outline may depend on the resource type you choose. If it’s a textbased resource like an eBook, you could plan your title and sections. For example, if your eBook is about the benefits of preplanning, each of the benefits may work as their own section. Or if it’s an infographic, you may have a more visual outline with placeholder images.
STEP 2: CHOOSE THE RESOURCE TYPE
A few resource types are eBooks, how-to guides, case studies, and infographics. As an example, let’s say your topic is preplanning. For an eBook, your subtopic may be about the benefits of preplanning. For a how-to guide, you could go over the step-by-step preplanning process. For a case study, you could reach out to a family to get feedback. Or if you want something visual, create an infographic with images of everything families need to collect for the funeral. These are just a few ideas, and a lot of these could work for multiple resource types. S T E P 3 : D O YO U R R E S E A RC H
To start, gather existing resources that you could repurpose content from to save time. A few places to look are your funeral home’s
S T E P 5 : W R I T E YO U R C O N T E N T
Once your outline is in a good place, you can begin writing the content. To make sure you can stay focused, choose a non-distracting writing environment. If you can’t get away from noise, you could listen to music or wear noise-canceling headphones. Also, don’t feel like you must finish it in one go. If you’re feeling uninspired or tired, take a break and come back to it later. S T E P 6 : E D I T, R E V I S E , R E P E AT
When you’re done with your first draft, it’s time to edit it. The author can edit it, but it’s also a good idea to have someone else review it. Some things to look for are grammar and spelling errors, fact accuracy, ways to be more
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concise, awkward or confusing wording, and making sure the voice and tone of the piece match your funeral home’s brand. STEP 7: DESIGN IT
Depending on the resource type you choose, you may want to hire a professional designer if you don’t have someone on your team with design training. Another option is to hire a design intern to create your resources. There are also a lot of tools out there like Canva or Easelly that have premade templates that you can customize to your funeral home by adding your logo and brand colors. This way, you can keep the design simple while still making sure that your resource is visually interesting.
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S T E P 8 : E D I T, R E V I S E , R E P E AT
Like with editing your content, you want to tweak the design of your resource. Along with making sure it’s visually appealing, also make sure it’s easy for your families to read and understand. It’s one thing if it grabs their attention, but if they can’t follow it, then it defeats the purpose of creating the resource. STEP 9: PROMOTE IT
Congratulations! You created a beautiful and engaging resource to educate your families and find new leads for your business. To make sure it gets found, you should promote it across your funeral home’s marketing channels. This may include creating a landing page with a form
to download it on your funeral home’s website, promoting it on your social media pages through boosted posts or ads, and including it in your email newsletter. S T E P 1 0 : T R A C K T H E R E S U LT S
Wait, you’re not done yet! To see how your resource performed, you need to track the results. This may include reviewing how many families viewed the landing page and filled out the form to download it and where they accessed it from, such as from your social media page or your email newsletter. For families who downloaded it, you can continue to nurture them with other educational resources with the end goal of turning them into client families for your funeral home.
LET GROWTH ENGINE HELP
We hope you found this article helpful, but understandably, even if you want to create your own educational resources, you may not have the time. That’s where Growth Engine Marketing Hub can come in! We partner with Growth Engine, so your funeral home gets access to software that posts and sends pre-made content on your funeral home’s behalf. They have a library with hundreds of pre-made content to choose from on 25+ topics. This way, you can focus on caring for your families while Growth Engine handles your marketing. T O R E A D M O R E , V I S I T:
frazerconsultants.com/meaningful
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Quiz: Test Your Knowledge About Websites Take this quiz to see how much you know about funeral home websites. Answers are on the next page. What is a website design that responds to the device type that the user is viewing it from? 01 —
Where does most of your funeral home’s website traffic come from? 05 —
Obituaries
Responsive design
Grief resources
Adaptive design
Service options
Mobile design
Contact information
0 2 — T R U E O R FA L S E :
0 6 — T R U E O R FA L S E :
Your funeral home doesn’t need a website if you don’t have competitors.
Your website content should be as long as possible.
True
True
False
False
0 3 — C H E C K A L L T H AT A P P LY:
Which of the following are website design mistakes to avoid? Unexpected locations for content Too much information on a single webpage Not using any images
How much website traffic in the U.S. came from mobile devices in 2020? 07 —
43% 55% 61%
0 4 — T R U E O R FA L S E :
A responsive website design helps your funeral home’s search engine optimization. True False
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Answers 01 — A. RESPONSIVE DESIGN
05 — A. OBITUARIES
Your funeral home should have a responsive website design, so it responds to users’ device types, whether that’s a mobile phone, tablet, computer, or even a TV screen.
That’s why it’s so important for your obituaries to be easy to find. However, all the answer options are still important to include on your funeral home’s website.
0 2 — FA L S E
0 6 — FA L S E
Even if you’re the only funeral home in your community, a website can provide you with lead generation opportunities, online payment tools, extra revenue from flower orders, and more.
Your website content should be concise, yet informative. No one has the time to read giant walls of text, especially while at-need planning. 07 — C. 61%
0 3 — A- C .
These are all website design mistakes that you want to avoid. Instead, your website content should be easy to locate, as concise as possible, and have some images to break up the text. 04 — TRUE
Search engines like Google favor responsive websites, so your funeral home’s website may appear higher on the search engine results page.
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Per a study by Perficient, 61% of website traffic in the U.S. came from mobile devices in 2020, which is up from 57% in 2019. TO LEARN MORE ABOUT FUNERAL HOME W E B S I T E S , V I S I T:
frazerconsultants.com/meaningful
Less than four in ten Americans can afford an unexpected expense of $1,000.*
By offering funeral crowdfunding, your families can raise funds for the funeral expenses, medical bills, memorial funds, and more. With our Tribute Crowdfunding program, the funds go directly into your funeral home’s bank account.
L E A R N E V E R Y T H I N G YO U N E E D TO K N O W A B O U T CROWDFUNDING IN OUR FREE EBOOK!
frazerconsultants.com/tmf-crowdfunding-guide *
Per this Bankrate article: https://www.bankrate.com/banking/savings/financial-security-january-2021/
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Nine Signs Your Funeral Home Website Needs an Upgrade Did you know that it only takes users 0.05 seconds to choose whether they want to stay on your website or go elsewhere?
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Per CXL, it’s in that little amount of time that users decide what they think of your website. Things like your website design, the content, and its features all contribute to your website’s user friendliness. If your website is lacking in any of these areas it’s time for an upgrade. To make sure your funeral home website exceeds families’ expectations, let’s go over nine signs your website needs an upgrade. 0 1 — YO U R F U N E R A L H O M E W E B S I T E D O E S N ’ T H AV E A R E S P O N S I V E D E S I G N
Families are viewing your website on all sorts of devices, from smartphones and tablets to desktop computers and laptops. If your website doesn’t respond to the screen type it’s being viewed from, they may have a bad viewing experience, such as having to pinch or drag the screen. Most likely, they will become frustrated and go elsewhere. To make sure your website looks beautiful on all devices, it should have a responsive design. 0 2 — Y O U R W E B PA G E S H AV E L A R G E C H U N K S OF TEXT
No one wants to read a large wall of text. It makes it difficult to digest the content, so you should break up your text so it’s easier to read. Things like adding headings and subheadings, paragraphs, and bulleted and numbered lists make your text more visually appealing and easy to understand. 0 3 — Y O U D O N ’ T H AV E A N Y I M A G E S F O R Y O U R O B I T U A R I E S O R S TA F F B I O S
Images for your employee bios and obituaries are extremely important, but especially for obituaries. Your obituaries shouldn’t just be text-based; an image of the deceased helps their loved ones properly honor their memory. Nowadays, many funeral home websites even have interactive memorial pages for ordering flowers, leaving condolences, and more.
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You also should consider adding images to your funeral home’s staff bios. By having images, it can help families feel like they know your employees better instead of them remaining a mystery. When grieving the loss of a loved one, establishing that human connection is important, especially as funeral planning goes more virtual. 0 4 — Y O U H AV E I M A G E S , B U T T H E Y D O N ’ T A D D TO YO U R W E B S I T E ’ S P U R P O S E
Images are great, but not if they don’t add to your website’s purpose. For example, generic stock images may not add much value to your website content. Instead, your images should help families gain a better understanding of your offerings and the funeral process. This doesn’t mean that you can’t use stock images; it just means to make sure that you have a reason for adding them. 0 5 — YO U R B AC KG RO U N D C O LO R O R PAT T E R N I S D I S T R A C T I N G
Bright colors or distracting patterns have no place as your website’s background. It just takes away the focus from your website’s content and features. If you work with a professional website designer, they’ll be able to help you decide on a background color that doesn’t distract your visitors. By working with a provider who specializes in funeral home websites, you can be sure that they understand what makes funeral homes unique from other business websites. 0 6 — Y O U H AV E PA G E S T H AT A R E B L A N K
If a potential customer comes across a webpage hoping for some informational content, but only to be left with a blank page, they may become frustrated. So if your website has any blank
pages, either fill it with content, write that “content is coming soon,” or delete the page. If you do plan on adding content soon, make sure to give yourself a deadline in the near future so the webpage isn’t sitting blank for too long. 0 7 — T H E T E X T I S D I F F I C U LT T O R E A D
There are many things that can contribute to website text being hard to read, from the font type and size to the text color. So when choosing how to stylize your text, you should make sure to choose a font, size, and color that’s easy to read even on a small smartphone. 0 8 — Y O U R N AV I G AT I O N M E N U B A R I S C O N F U S I N G TO F O L LO W
Or worse, it has broken links. Your website’s menu should be easy for visitors to understand. To not overwhelm users with too many tabs, you should condense your number of tabs as much as possible without compromising the quality of the content. Like we mentioned earlier, you don’t want to cram as much content as possible on a page. 0 9 — Y O U R W E B S I T E D O E S N ’ T H AV E A N Y VIRTUAL FUNERAL PLANNING TOOLS
With the right tools, your website can be like an additional employee for your funeral home! It also can make virtual funeral planning so much easier for everyone involved. A few tool examples are an online payment center with multiple payment options and a flower store for conveniently ordering flowers directly from a loved one’s obituary. With a Frazer website, you can get access to these tools and more. T O R E A D M O R E , V I S I T:
frazerconsultants.com/meaningful
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Juggling Family and a Funeral Home: Tips for Family-Owned Funeral Homes Family-owned funeral homes are a reward on their own. You get to work side by side with your family members doing something that you’re passionate about. For family-owned funeral homes, teamwork often comes naturally, as you know each other well and how you best work and think. However, with all the benefits of working with your family, there also are some challenges that you’ll need to work through. But as long as you have a plan and work together as a team, you can have a successful business. Let’s discuss some tips for family-owned funeral homes to have both a successful business and home life. E S TA B L I S H A W O R K - L I F E B A L A N C E
Establishing a work-life balance is crucial for family-owned funeral homes. For this reason, it’s best to keep work-related discussions at work and separate from your home life. However, this doesn’t mean you can’t talk about your workday around the dinner table. It just suggests you save more important workrelated discussions for your funeral home
rather than your home. Your home should be a place for relaxing and spending quality time with your family. Of course this isn’t always easy, as funeral directors are on call 24/7. But whenever possible, save work-related conversations for your funeral home to create a healthy worklife balance. C R E AT E A S U C C E S S I O N P L A N
Especially for family-owned businesses, you should have a detailed succession plan. Who is going to run the business once the current owner retires? For funeral home owners with multiple family employees, this could be a more difficult discussion. It’s important to have an open and honest discussion with your family to decide who is the most qualified candidate. You also shouldn’t forget to consider non-family employees who may be eligible for the job, as
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well. By having a plan in place, you can avoid conflicts down the road when the time comes for a new owner to step up. H AV E R U L E S F O R H A N D L I N G C O N F L I C T S
In a perfect world, everything would run smoothly. But, unfortunately, conflicts arise and you should prepare for how to address them. They can also serve as learning moments for everyone and improve your business for the better. For example, oftentimes, conflicts arise between the different generations. Each generation has its own way of doing things, but it’s important to take into account everyone’s point of view. Change is scary, but being stagnant is even worse for a business. Embrace ideas for innovation so your funeral home can continue to grow and better serve your client families. Going back to the work-life balance, don’t let family conflicts get brought into the workplace. This not only creates a tense and awkward situation for your staff, but also for your client families. Resolve these conflicts at your home so they aren’t brought into your funeral home. DON’T BE AFRAID TO RECRUIT OUTSIDE HELP
You’re still a family-owned funeral home at your core, even if all your employees aren’t family members. Hire employees that feel like family that you forget aren’t blood-related. Whether it’s another funeral director or an accountant, you can welcome them to your funeral home family with open arms. D O N ’ T P L AY FAV O R I T E S
Treat family and non-family employees equally, as no one should receive special treatment just because they’re family. Evaluate everyone based on their skills and work ethic and have annual reviews to make sure everyone’s living up to their potential. T O R E A D M O R E , V I S I T:
frazerconsultants.com/meaningful
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See why this funeral home loves their Frazer website!
“We love our new design, and the ability to purchase flowers through our website to a local florist can bring in $300 or more a month, depending how busy we are. It’s easy to use, and we’re very happy that a small family business in rural America can operate with a website that looks as good as any across the country.” Douglas Hunter of Duncan Graves & Lancaster Morgan Funeral Homes
D O W N LOA D O U R C A S E S T U DY TO R E A D M O R E !
frazerconsultants.com/tmf-DGLM
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The Road Ahead: How Funeral Directors Can Be as Prepared for the Future as Possible As the world begins to open back up, we want to share some tips on navigating the funeral profession. The past year and a half have not been easy for anyone, but especially for frontline workers like you. As a funeral director, you had to completely change how you operate to keep you and your client families safe, while also giving their loved ones the respect that they deserve. But by coming up with creative solutions, you continued to serve your community through countless numbers of live streamed funerals, drive-through services, and socially distanced gatherings.
H AV E A P L A N
Coming up with a long-term plan for your funeral home can help you feel more in control during an uncontrollable situation. Your funeral home may want to come up with two plans, one for as restrictions are lifted and another for if they’re enforced again.
As more people get vaccinated and restrictions are lifted, it may bring about a mixture of emotions for you. On the one hand, there’s excitement and hope of things beginning to resemble the pre-pandemic world. On the other hand, it may also bring fear and anxiety of what’s to come next.
If restrictions are enforced again, your funeral home should reassess how you operated last time and what you could do differently. To limit in-person meetings, consider all your tasks that can be done virtually, such as collecting the funeral payment, signatures, forms, photos, and other assets from families. Also consider any extra amenities you could have on hand for families if desired, such as masks and hand sanitizer.
While no one can predict the future, you can use the knowledge that you have to be better prepared for navigating the funeral profession after the pandemic. By coming up with a longterm plan, you can relieve yourself of some stress that the unknown often brings. Let’s go over a few tips to get you started.
Of course, due to the nature of the profession, funeral directors don’t have the luxury of working fully remote like people in other professions may have. However, there may still be other employees at your funeral home who could do their jobs from home, such as accountants or marketing managers.
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When writing your plan, keep in mind that it doesn’t have to be set in stone. Like we said, the future is unpredictable, so your plan can be flexible. But when faced with a challenge, having a tentative plan is better than no plan. K E E P E V E R YO N E I N T H E LO O P
Before you finalize your plan, you may want to have a team meeting to get any feedback from your employees. Everyone brings a unique perspective to the table, and they may suggest something that you hadn’t thought of. The meeting also could be a time for employees to voice any questions or concerns. Or another option is to send an anonymous survey. This way, you may get more honest feedback. Your plan should be saved online in a secure place that everyone has access to. If your funeral home has a cloud storage area where you store other documents, this may be a good spot. To make sure your plan is as updated with the current situation as possible, you should revisit it every few months to review and revise it as needed. For instance, you should make sure that your plan meets any new restrictions implemented in your area. B E C R E AT I V E W I T H A L I T T L E H E L P F R O M YO U R F U N E R A L T E C H N O LO G Y
Continue to brainstorm creative solutions when faced with new problems. As we learned, technology can be a huge help for taking the funeral planning process as well as the funeral itself to a virtual environment. More likely than not, many of the virtual solutions you
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implemented are here to stay, since they’re simply more convenient for everyone. So make sure that your funeral technology solutions are up to date. These may include anything from your funeral home’s website to your management software. To keep track of your technology solutions and when they were last updated, you may want to add another section to your funeral home’s plan to document this. For example, if you haven’t updated your funeral home’s website in a few years, it may be time for an upgrade. Even if your website has a beautiful design, you may be missing out on the latest features, such as integrating your website with your marketing software to automate your aftercare efforts. TA K E C A R E O F Y O U R S E L F
Lastly, don’t forget to take care of your mental and physical health. Include a process for checking in on your employees to see how they’re doing. It could be as simple as scheduling short meetings with each of your staff members to see how you can help support them. You also could schedule a time each month for your employees to do something fun together to relieve some stress. For example, you could have an in-person or virtual game night. Or to give your employees some time off to rest, you could let them leave a little bit early. T O R E A D M O R E , V I S I T:
frazerconsultants.com/meaningful
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Help families tell their loved one’s life story.
These are a few prompts that you can share with your families so they can learn more about each other and start the preplanning conversation: • What is your earliest childhood memory?
• What is your favorite book and why?
• Did you participate in any sports or
• How do you want others to remember you?
activities in school? • What is the bravest thing you’ve ever done?
READ THE REST OF THE PROMPTS IN OUR FREE LIFE STORY EBOOK!
frazerconsultants.com/tmf-story-ebook
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We’ve made life insurance assignments easier than ever.
We partner with Tribute Insurance Assignments, so your funeral home gets paid in as little as 24 hours.
READ OUR TIA BROCHURE TO LEARN MORE!
frazerconsultants.com/tmf-tia-brochure