Dealing with Google Review Churn in Your Funeral Home Marketing Strategy

Do you rely on word of mouth and online reviews to help generate new clientele for your funeral home? Did you know Google has veto power over reviews on its digital properties, and your hard-won reviews can disappear at any time?

Reasons Google might decide to boot your reviews include that they were left by anonymous sources, the reviews don’t follow Google guidelines, or a lot of reviews came in from the same IP address, which looks suspicious.

So do you ditch Google reviews as a source of online branding power because you don’t have control over them? No, because those same reviews are simply too important to your online funeral home marketing efforts.

Instead, you need a plan to constantly encourage new reviews so families in need or individuals looking to plan their own final arrangements see positive feedback from prior clientele when they begin their search for a provider online.

Here are a few things you can do to keep up positive online word of mouth if Google deletes reviews on your GMB page:

• Continue to ask for Google reviews in a way that’s compliant with the search engine’s rules and sympathetic to the immediate needs of your clientele.
• Regularly review and respond to your Google reviews. Thank individuals who leave positive reviews and respond in a proactive manner to negative reviews. When you’re active on your review pages, it shows others that you care about your clientele and are willing to work to meet their needs.
• Spread your funeral home marketing efforts across multiple review platforms to avoid pinning all your digital word-of-mouth hope on Google. You can also publish reviews and testimonials on your own site.

Diversifying while keeping an eye and effort on your Google reviews ensures your brand is more likely to be seen — and paid attention to — by families or individuals looking for funeral services. That’s true whether you have plenty of Google reviews right now or you’re seeing a decrease in the number of displayed reviews.