Although it hasn’t been around for long, social media has created a lasting impact on both people and businesses around the world. As a funeral home, social media should be a key part of your advertising strategy.
However, every day more people and businesses are creating accounts and crowding the market place. It’s becoming harder and harder to capture someone’s attention on social media. To help make sure your firm is doing everything it can to stand out and be successful, here are three funeral home social media mistakes to avoid.
Although it may seem obvious, plenty of companies are active on social media with no real plan in place. Social media isn’t something you should just do on the fly. If you feel like you’ve fallen into the trap of just posting whatever comes to mind, it’s time to stop.
Take some time to sit down and create a list of specific objectives you want to accomplish through social media. Next, set a budget of what you want to spend on ads. Keep in mind that it’s becoming increasingly more difficult for businesses to reach people online organically (for free). If you really want to reach people in your area and get them engaging with your funeral home’s posts, you’ll likely need to purchase advertisements and pay to promote your posts.
Once you have a budget in place and objectives set, it’s time to develop a plan of action. You don’t need to create new posts every day, especially if you’re running ads that are sending people to your website. Still, make sure to create a social media calendar that sets what days you will post content or advertisements on.
If you’re running advertisements for your firm on social media, make sure to build a specific audience you want to target. If you fail to build a detailed audience, or just use the same one for every post you promote or advertise, you might be selling yourself short.
Before you purchase an ad, take some time to make sure you set a target audience. For instance, if you know that most of the people coming to preplan services with you are in their mid-fifties or older, it doesn’t make sense to be running ads for people 25 and up. By creating a detailed audience of who you want to reach, you’ll be able to generate more quality leads and put more money towards reaching people who might actually be interested in your services.
Social media networks provide you with some of the most detailed customer data. This means you can target your audience at a very in-depth level. Rather than simply trying to reach a certain age or gender, your ads can be directed to specific interests or behaviors a person has expressed.
Make sure to monitor how your ads are performing and adjust accordingly. If you aren’t getting the level of engagement you want, it might mean you need to adjust your audience or your messaging.
The great thing about running advertisements for your funeral home on social media is you can look at your advertising spend in real time and see what’s working and what’s not. By actively monitoring this and adjusting when needed, you can create more quality leads, for less.
Looking to start advertising your firm and services on Facebook. Our 2019 Facebook Advertising Guide for funeral homes cover different types of ads and how to best use them. Download your free copy today!
Tommy holds a Communications degree from Laurentian University and an Integrated Marketing Communications Graduate Certificate from St. Lawrence College. He is a Content Marketing Specialist at FrontRunner and focuses on producing engaging content that funeral homes can use to connect with families. In addition, Tommy crafts SEO content for clients and specializes in helping the general public connect with the death care industry as a whole.