Use the powerful resources available at your fingertips to load up on leads early in the year. Preneed agents who make a concrete marketing strategy using digital marketing as one lead-generating aspect find more success than those not willing to utilize technological platforms.
Funeral homes are not exempt from the changes of the modern era, as preneed agents are well aware. Your potential clients are using the internet to research your business, your reputation, and whether or not preneed insurance is an investment that is worthwhile for them. What does this mean for you? First, make your online presence something valuable for your clients.
What does someone get from visiting your website?
Offer something valuable, educational, and in-demand to potential clients to get them interested and involved in your online presence. Ebooks, guides, planning tools, blogs, and even savings codes or special offers can really engage an online audience and turn a casual inquiry into a promising lead. One thing that gets positive feedback from preneed agents is price comparison tools and breakdowns of service packages. Having some sort of “Request a Quote” tool may not be a new concept for you as a preneed agent, but this effective tool becomes more useful when your website is getting more traffic because people are using it and passing it around as an educational resource and not just a marketing tool or an overview of basic information.
Are you easy to find online?
Your stunning website full of valuable resources and contact information means nothing to clients if they can’t find you online. When looking for a preneed agent or funeral home, most customers turn to a search engine (like Google or Internet Explorer) to find what they’re looking for. Is your website one that is easy to access that way? If not, consider turning to a marketing service that could help improve your social media or search engine optimization—although some improvement to these can be made by novices (like you) by researching how you can be more visible to search engine programs.
How can I start using digital marketing today?
To increase your leads, consider these possibly surprising statistics from a recent article by Qualtrics:
- 93% of customers read online reviews before buying a product. These consumers say that online reviews do, in fact, influence their decision-making process.
- Positive online reviews are directly linked to customers’ willingness to spend money on a service or product. Consumers are willing to spend 31% more money on something if it has positive online reviews.
- On the other hand, negative online reviews can be detrimental to a funeral home, as 94% of customers admit to avoiding a business or product based on an online review.
Online reviews are a great first step to optimized digital marketing for preneed agents. Incentivize your current and recent clients to leave you positive reviews on platforms like Google, Facebook, and Yelp. Spend some time looking through the reviews that are already there to get an impression of the reputation put forth to the world wide web. More positive reviews will result in more leads in your pipeline, and it’s a great place to start an online marketing strategy.
