The end of another year means another opportunity for a year-end list! Here's you'll find the 5 most popular Funeral Innovations blog posts of 2011. If you missed any of these, be sure to read up on them to stay on top of the industry!
As a bonus, I've included a short summary of what made each post imporant and why it was particularly popular in 2011.
5. Top 5 Reasons Why Your Obituaries Should be Hosted on Your Website
Many companies sperad misinformation to take advantage of funeral directors, particularly when it comes to the value of obituaries and search engine optimization. This article busts one of those lies and educates funeral directors about why it is critically important for your obituaries to be hosted on your own website, rather than through a 3rd party site or iframe.
This article was particularly popular because many funeral directors can relate to how companies within this industry try to take advantage of them. Educating and empowering funeral directors on the importance of having the obituaries on their website was very eye openeing to many folks.
4. SEO for Small Funeral Homes
Small funeral homes have a distinct disadvantage when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), since their funeral home website naturally has fewer backlinks and less authority within Google. Fortunately, this article offered several tips that can drammatically help a small funeral home's SEO, and increase the amount of organic traffic they attain.
This blog post appealed to many funeral directors because the tips for improving SEO, while targeted towards small funeral homes, can actually improve the performance of any funeral home website!
3. Announcing Remembrance Codes
This year Funeral Innovations became the first company in the industry to use QR codes as a way of memorializing your loved ones. Funeral Innovations released a new way for these small barcodes to be scanned by people's cellphones to be brought to a loved one's permanent online memorial. While many other companies have since followed our lead, we were the first to put the QR codes on monuments, to link the physical stone to the online memorial. We now are using QR codes within service folders so service attendees can quickly access to the funeral home's mobile website and leave a tribute.
Read the article to learn more about how Remembrance Codes work. This article garnered a lot of attention because it introduced a new concept of using QR codes within the funeral industry, that has since been more widely adopted by others.
2. Leaders vs Followers in the Funeral Industry
In 2011, Funeral Innovations became the industry's leader in Facebook for Funeral Homes, offering custom Facebook Pages for funeral homes, including powerful fan-gating techniques and Facebook Microsites, full-fledged tabbed websites right within Facebook. Our new approach to Facebook for funeral homes, along with our beautiful designs gained us a lot of attention. Our competitors were caught off guard by our offerings and scrambled to catch up, in some cases copying our designs and marketing a little too closely! But imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and we are indeed humbled by the overwhelmingly enthusiastic reception to our Facebook solution.
A little controversy is always good for getting attention, and this post was no exception. Published at the end of 2011, it quickly became one of the most popular posts on this blog, receiving a huge amount of viral traffic through Twitter and Facebook.
1. Top 25 Funeral Companies and Funeral Homes on Twitter
In advance of our presentation on social media for the funeral industry at the ICCFA Wide World of Sales Conference, we compiled a list of the top funeral homes and funeral companies on Twitter. Little did we know just how popular this list would become! It has driven an enormous amount of viral and organic visitors, and continues to be one of our most popular posts ever, even a year after it was initially published!
This post became popular for several reasons. It's particularly useful to know the top funeral companies on Twitter, especially with so many funeral homes now recognizing the value of social media. Additionally, many people who are searching for top funeral companies are coming across this post, and it has consistently ranked as one of our most trafficked organic results.
And the good news is we'll be compiling a new list of top funeral companies in social media in 2012. So keep your eyes open for that!
What's Coming in 2012?
We hope you enjoyed all the amazing and exciting developments from 2011. We encourage you to continue returning to this blog for education, insights and announcements of the latest innovations in the funeral industry. We promise you that 2012 will be an even bigger year than the last!
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At Funeral Innovations, we've always had a friendly relationship with Ryan Thogmartin, founder of Connecting Directors. We've demoed our products to him, and he's praised our web based solutions' simplicity and effectiveness. We've even spent money advertising on his website.
So imagine my surprise when I received an email from his mailing list on Friday, promoting his Facebook solutions, with his headline copied directly from our Facebook Marketing Page!
Here's the headline used on our Funeral Innovations Facebook marketing page, which I wrote over a week ago.
There are 800 million people on Facebook. Are you getting their business?
Now look what Ryan wrote in his email on Friday, a full week after we published our page!
There are 0ver 800 million People on Facebook. Shouldn't you be getting their business?
Wow, pretty similar, right? He changed a few words, but took the rest verbatim. At first I chuckled at his lack of creativity. But as I continued to read his email, it was apparent that he stole much more than a simple headline.
For our Facebook Fan-Gating technique, I wrote the following:
Did you know that sending new visitors to your Facebook Page's wall is a lost opportunity? If they don't fan your page the first time they see it, they'll probably never return.
Social Site's "Fan-Gating" shows non-fans a custom splash page to convince new visitors to become a fan, thus gaining you long-term marketing exposure to them. We'll help you increase your fan conversions by up to 300%!
Now let's see what Ryan wrote:
The main goal of your Facebook Page is to get visitors to click the "Like" button! Sending a first time visitor to your Facebook Page's wall is a major no no and a huge lost opportunity.
With Disrupt MG's custom designed landing pages a first time visitor (has never "liked" your page) will be directed to a custom landing page that guides them to click the "like" button, giving you marketing exposure to them. Our custom landing pages will help increase your "Like" conversions by up to 300%.
At least he had the sense here to change a few more words. But still: "lost opportunity", "marketing exposure to them", "increase conversions up to 300%". He even ripped off our stats!
It gets worse. Not only did he copy the marketing material I wrote myself, but he also directly copied our actual product!
Take a look at the beautiful custom Fan-Gate we created for Fred Hunter's Memorial Services Facebook Page over a month ago:
Over a week ago Ryan became a fan of the Fred Hunter's Facebook Page. He must have realized how great our Facebook Pages looked because lo and behold, he showed off his new design, which looks almost exactly like the one we created for Fred Hunter's (just less polished)!
Can you spot the similarities? They are hard to miss. Same style arrow pointing to the Like button, vibrantly graphical background, logo with the soft glow. Granted, we didn't invent these techniques, but out of all the ways you can design a Facebook Page, it's amazing how closely he copied ours.
Here are some more "tells":
See the nice looking ribbon technique we use around "Become a Fan"?
Looks like Ryan decided he likes our ribbon as well!
We promote 4 key benefits of following Fred Hunter's Facebook Page as a listing within a semi-transparent white box, including "Community News" as one of the benefits.
Guess who else has a new-found fondness of semi-transparent white boxes, vertical listings of 4 benefits, and the value of "Community News"!
Of course, he even separated the benefits with opaque white lines. I wonder where he came up with such a small detail.
Apparently our Facebook pre-planning widget got his attention as well. Funeral Innovations was the first to release a Facebook-embedded pre-planning widget. In fact, we put it right within our customer's tabbed Microsites on Facebook. Now, we'll gladly admit we did not invent the concept of a pre-planning widget. But there a million ways you can construct and word the pre-planning form and questions. Ryan couldn't figure out how to put the pre-planning widget in a Microsite like ours, but he did manage to steal the wording on our pre-planning widget verbatim!
First look at ours, which we created over a month ago.
Look closely at the wording used in Ryan's new pre-planning widget, including the section names, the steps shown at the top, and the individual options.
I love competition. I started my career at IBM, spent time living and developing a startup in Silicon Valley, and enjoy nothing more than pushing ourselves and our competitors towards more and more innovative solutions within the funeral industry. Competition is the lifeblood of innovation. But Funeral Innovations would never, ever blatantly copy our competitors' products or steal their marketing material. That is not competition, that is not innovation, and that is not how we were raised.
So as you choose who you place your firm's reputation with when working on a social media solution, you must ask yourself:
- Does your technology partner share your firm's values and morals?
- Does your technology partner innovate or do they copy others?
- Do you want to align your firm with a leader or a follower?
Note: I've reached out to Ryan to seek an explanation but he has not responded to my emails.
Magic Videos by Funeral Innovations were already the fastest and simplest way to generate beautiful tribute videos and engage obituary visitors online. Magic Videos are the first and only solution to automatically publish tribute videos to the online obituary without lifting a finger. It is the first and only solution to let you use photos submitted by the family and friends from the online obituary.
Now, Magic Videos have become the first and only solution to automatically publish videos to your Facebook Page!
Why is this such a big deal? Because videos shared on Facebook have over 200% engagement versus text only status updates. And videos shared on Facebook have twice the reach of photos. In short, sharing tribute videos to Facebook can drive more traffic to your website and more fans to your Facebook Page.
It all boils down to this: in under 5 minutes you can generate a beautiful tribute video, have the video and its photos automatically published to the online obituary, and now have it automatically posted to your Facebook Page!
Be sure to fan our Facebook Page. We've got some big, exciting changes coming!
Magic Videos by Funeral Innovations are the easiest and fastest way to create and publish tribute videos. If you are unfamiliar with Magic Videos, they let any funeral director generate beautiful tribute videos online in literally minutes.
What makes our videos so magical?
First of all, any photos posted to an online obituary are automatically available for use in a Magic Video. That means family and friends of a deceased individual collaboratively contribute the photos to be used in their tribute video. The funeral director can then easily add more photos through a simple drag and drop interface.
But the real magic occurs next. Once the photos are loaded and a song is chosen, a funeral director clicks "Submit." By the time he or she is done with their cup of coffee, the video is rendered and published straight to the online obituary! Not only that, but any new photos used for the video are published to the photo gallery of the online obituary as well. The video file is then available for the funeral director to burn to a DVD to offer to the family or play at the service.
Think about that for a moment: within minutes, not only can you generate a gorgeous video tribute, but also have the video and the photos published to the obituary without lifting a finger!
Oh, and did we mention that the Magic Videos arecompletely web-based, meaning there's nothing to download and you can generate videos on any computer anywhere in the world?
Having photos and videos on your funeral home's obituaries are important for multiple reasons:
- The obituaries become much more engaging to the visitors
- More content drives more traffic to your funeral home's website
- Rich, beautiful obituaries shows that your funeral home values permanent, online memorialization, helping differentiate your brand
Want to see a Magic Video in action? Watch Savitri Jeethan's tribute video.
Steve Jobs was perhaps the foremost innovator in technology history. His ability to focus relentlessly on his core principles of simplicity, ease of use, and beauty is unmatched in this world. He has been an inspiration to myself and my company; he will be greatly missed.
After reading this article, I realized just how far some companies will go to spread misinformation and take advantage of funeral directors' trust and lack of web experience.
The article is titled "Traffic vs Visitors" and attempts to convince a funeral home why it's ok to host their obituaries on a 3rd party site instead of embedded directly in your funeral homes' website.
It is critical to your funeral home's online success to host the obituaries on your own website, rather than on a 3rd party obituary providers'. It results in more traffic, better SEO, more leads, increased sales conversions, and increased revenue. It allows the obituaries of the families you serve to benefit your funeral home, rather than some other company. And with today's technologies, there is no technical reason you should be using iframes or a 3rd party obituary host.
Our customers have seen up to 15,000 visits for a single obituary! To claim that amount traffic (times thousands of obituaries) has no value to the funeral home demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding modern web strategies. In fact, these obituary providers know exactly how valuable that traffic is, which is the reason they choose to keep it on their own site rather than the funeral homes'!
So to help set the record straight and educate you on how your funeral home can succeed online, here are the top 5 reasons why it is critically important for your obituaries to be hosted on your website within your funeral home's domain.
1. SEO, aka "Google"
An average funeral home gets between 30-50% of their traffic from search engines. Much of that traffic results from people searching for a particular obituary, and the rest of it is for potential customers who are searching for a funeral home in your area.
If someone searches for "funeral home in iowa city", how does Google (or another search engine) decide which to show first? Here are some ways your funeral home SEO is calculated, but the main criteria is popularity. What makes a website popular? Other sites linking to pages on that site. And can you guess what pages other sites are most likely to link to on a funeral home website? Yes, the obituaries.
In other words, if the obituaries aren't hosted on your site (and your domain), then you aren't getting credit for any of the links, and as a result Google and other search engines will not consider your website popular. So the next person that searches the web for a funeral home in your town will see your competitors' website come up before yours. You've just lost a sale!
2. Branding
Most funeral homes, like other small businesses, spend a lot of money on branding and marketing. It's important for your firm to project a single vision and voice, so potential customers understand what you stand for and why they should use your services. It's so important that businesses spend tens of billions of dollars per year on advertising!
If your obituaries do not project the same look and voice as the rest of your website, you are losing a branding opportunity. The visitor to your obituary no longer associates it with your funeral home. Therefore, your obituaries not only need to be top of the line in terms of user experience and engagement, but they also need clearly link that experience with your brand. If not, your obituary visitors (which is up to 80% of your web traffic) are using your resources without you receiving any credit!
While some 3rd party obituary providers put your name on the obituaries they host, that it not enough. The obituaries should be part of your funeral home's brand, and thus need to be fully embedded in your website.
3. Control
If your obituaries are not on your website then they are out of your control. The links found on the obituaries likely point back to the obituary provider's website, and are put there in order to benefit your obituary provider, not you. Any link on the obituary that does not point back to your own website or services is potentially stealing away traffic and conversion opportunities. If a visitor clicks a link that takes them away from the obituary, they will likely not come back and they will certainly be unable to visit any other part of your website at that point. Again, a lost sale.
Even worse, if you don't control your own obituaries, someone else does. And they might put tracking cookies or even ads and content on the obituaries or their linked-to pages that you or the families you serve don't approve of.
4. Monetization
If the obituaries are hosted on your website, you can control the monetization options. If you want to sell flowers, goods or services on the obituaries, that's a way for you to make money from the service you are providing. If you want to keep the obituaries free, that is up to you as well. It all comes down to your funeral home's approach and how you want to balance serving families with increasing your revenue. We advocate both approaches!
However, if you do not control the obituaries, guess who is likely trying to make money from them in your place. Yes, the obituary provider. Many obituary providers put ads or try to sell flowers, goods, and services within their obituary directories, or even worse, right on the obituary itself. In our view, the obituary and its content is the property of the funeral home, and if it's going to be monetized, that money should rightfully go to the funeral home!
5. Mobility
At Funeral Innovations, we pride ourselves on partnering closely with funeral homes and providing the best customer service in the industry. In fact, our customers are so impressed with this approach that they have never left for another provider!
But what happens if a funeral home wants to leave whomever is providing their website and obituaries to find a better provider? If the obituaries are hosted right within your website, then the old provider will work with the new provider to seemlessly transfer the obituary data and there will be no negative impact on your brand or SEO. All of your existing obituaries will still be found right on your site.
However, if your obituaries are hosted outside of your website, then you will be shocked to discover that the obituary provider was poaching your traffic and search engine optimization all along. Since the obituaries were hosted by them, not on your site, you will have very few pages indexed in Google's search engines. You will realize that the obituary provider is your competitor, not your partner. In that case, you are trapped and the obituary provider knows it. Therefore they have little incentive to keep up with the competition and as a result, they become old, slow and stale in comparison.
Conclusion
As the funeral industry's reliance on the web continues to accelerate, your firm's online success depends on you optimizing your web presence. You literally can't afford to be giving away your most precious online asset: the obituaries.
If you aren't sure whether your obituaries are optimized for the web today, give us a call and we'll be happy to review your current web strategy with you.
Our company is barely over 3 years old. We are a small (yet rapidly growing) business and we're proud of it. In fact, our competitors would be shocked to learn just how small we are!
If your funeral home is looking for a provider of websites, online obituaries, social media, and DVDs should you trust a small company likes ours, or follow a safe route with one of our much larger competitors?
In order to answer that question, it might help to review this short quiz:
- Do you want to have direct contact with the company founders?
- Do you want to have a voice in the product development and creation of new web solutions?
- Do you want to stick with the status quo, or be on the cutting edge?
- Do you want to work with a company that can execute, adapt, and innovate quickly?
- Do you want to stand out among your competition?
- Do you want to be a partner rather than simply a customer?
If you found yourself answering yes to these questions, then you understand the advantage of working with a small company. And if that is not convincing enough, consider this fact: No funeral home who has tried Funeral Innovations for a couple months has left to a competitor!
How do we manage such unmatched customer satisfaction and loyalty? It's because we are small! We listen to our customers so that they are partners in the process. We use their feedback to improve our products and develop new solutions. We give them direct access to the company co-founders, so they have a voice and know their ideas are being heard. And instead of simply saying that we are innovative, we prove it by continually releasing the most unique, cutting-edge new solutions in the industry.
So the next time a big web provider tries to convince you that a small company can't suit your needs, ask to speak with their founder and find out how quickly they are innovating. Because your business can't risk falling behind the speed of Funeral Innovations.
Previously we explained how Google's new +1 feature allows Google users to vote on search results that they find particularly useful. The votes are then used by Google to promote the pages in the search results of other people in your network.
Yesterday, Google released new +1 buttons for websites, allowing webmasters to put the voting button right into their website to make it easier for Google users to vote on their page.
Today, FI announces that we've already integrated the Google +1 buttons in all of our supported obituaries! In addition to the existing Facebook recommendation buttons we already include, the new +1 for Obituaries will make it easy for visitors of an obituary to promote and share it within their network of contacts.
The advantages of the +1 for Obituaries is that it helps distribute the obituary, and more importantly, helps the obituary page within the funeral home's website show up higher in search results and bypass 3rd party sites that often try to steal away your valuable obituary search traffic.
Want to see the +1 for Obituaries in action? Just go to any FI obituary, like this one.
Remembrance Codes are an exclusive offering developed by Funeral Innovations that creates a permanent link to a deceased individual's online memorial via a 2-D barcode (or "QR Code"). This one-of-a-kind remembrance makes it easy for the family and friends to visit the online memorial and leave memories, without having to remember a long URL or typing a Google search.
For funeral directors, Remembrance Codes drives additional traffic to the online obituary on their website, and creates customer loyalty and buzz when the Remembrance Code is displayed in a cemetery, or in the family's home.
Remembrance Codes are available to be installed within a glass case on the granite memorial, or as an elegant, framed keepsake in the family's home. Funeral Directors have also been printing Remembrance Codes right on the service handouts to allow service attendees to quickly read and write tributes from their mobile phones!
The St Paul Pioneer Press, one of the premier newspapers in Minnesota, recognized the unique value of this technology and the benefit provided by the funeral directors who use it. They talked to us about Remembrance Codes and published a very fascinating article.
I talked with one of Funeral Innovations' customers, Roberts Family Funeral Home in Forest Lake. Owner Kelly Roberts told me the QR codes used in memorial folders have been well received, once attendees figure out what the codes are (many have no idea).
"I've had to explain what it is," Roberts said. Once they understand, "They say, 'Oh, wow, that's neat.'
"They see it as a unique way to remember and honor their loved ones, from here on out well into the future," he said. "People who attend the memorial will keep the folder knowing they can go back to access the memorial" via the QR code.
Be sure to read the full article here.
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