How to Deal with Google Review Churn in Your Funeral Home Marketing Strategy

Do you rely upon 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 obviously looks very suspicious.  

(In the last situation, Google correctly figures either one party is specifically trashing a business with a flurry of negative reviews, or—and this is just as bad, of course—one party is trying to artificially inflate the positive reviews for its own business.) 

Does that mean you should ditch Google reviews as a source of online branding power because you don’t have control over them?  

Absolutely not. Those same reviews are far 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 maintain 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 (and always polite and professional) manner to negative reviews. When you’re active on your review pages, it shows other families 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 on your Google reviews ensures your brand is more likely to be seen by families or individuals looking for burial and cremation services. That’s true whether you have plenty of Google reviews right now or are seeing a decrease in the number of displayed reviews. 

(NOTE:€¯Monitoring your funeral home€™s online reputation is a requirement for success in the digital age. Try our free€¯Review Scan now€¯for an instant reputation report on your funeral home.)