Mobile Marketing: The Key to Supercharging Case Counts

One of the primary aspects of my job is leveraging the best tool for any given client’s particular need. For funeral home marketing, one tool stands above the rest for making case counts (especially for at-need services) skyrocket: mobile marketing.

This particular tool isn’t especially well known yet, either by funeral homes or other traditional brick-and-mortar local businesses.

But that’s also what makes it so useful: Most of your local competitors are not employing this technique yet, so you can take advantage of that fact and get a head start.

So, what is mobile marketing? It’s any type of campaign that’s specifically intended to reach mobile users. That mostly refers to people using smartphones, but it can include tablets as well — and lately, even smartwatches.

The key is that you’re reaching users who have a highly portable, handheld (or worn) device that’s connected 24/7 to the internet, which is how a rapidly growing number of Americans access the internet today.

The nature of at-need death care services lends itself to mobile marketing. For example, if you’re at a hospital and a loved one has passed, it’s natural to go to your smartphone or tablet to determine how to proceed. Your desktop or laptop computer simply isn’t available.

A core aspect of mobile marketing is geotargeting. You can create a campaign that reaches out selectively to people within a given geographic area. At-need clientele will often seek out a funeral home that’s nearby, so you can target such individuals purely based on their proximity to you.

Another method is geofencing. This lets you build a “virtual fence” around a particular location to send advertisement messages specifically within that area. Obviously, a hospital would be a perfect location to utilize this tool.

These methods take advantage of the fact that mobile devices upload very specific location data in real time to show where they are. This information is invaluable when you’re creating a mobile marketing campaign. It helps you connect specifically with people in need of your services, providing a benefit for all parties.

You can also create advertisements on search engines such as Google to target very specific locations. When someone in the target area simply searches for “funeral services,” “cremation,” “burial” or similar terms, your ad will be positioned to immediately catch the searcher’s eye.

Because mobile marketing ads are most often viewed on a smartphone, you can leverage the device’s most basic technology — it’s a phone, after all — to make contacting you incredibly convenient.

Much in the same way pay-per-click advertising lets an individual go straight to a business’ website with a single click, mobile marketing click-to-call ads let them call your business with a single touch. It’s a clear benefit to the caller and a powerful way to capture the case count immediately.

Mobile marketing is also extremely beneficial because it’s one of the easiest marketing methods to track. When you receive a phone call, a clickthrough or a website visit through mobile marketing, analytics provide you all the information on how that contact originated.

Beyond that, if you do nothing else, make sure your business’ website is mobile-friendly.

Far too many funeral home websites today still display poorly, if at all, on mobile devices. They were designed years ago to look okay on desktop computers, but that doesn’t necessarily work on mobile devices.

If the old-school “desktop” version of your site is all people get when they pull it up on a smartphone, most visitors will exit immediately. They’ll never give you a chance to make a case for your funeral home.

A website that’s optimized for mobile devices is clear and easy to navigate on small screens. It takes advantage of mobile technology, such as the click-to-call function I mentioned previously.

Additionally, Google “punishes” the rankings of websites that are not optimized for mobile viewing. Your placement in organic search results will suffer if your site does not render well and make navigation easy on mobile.

Mobile isn’t just the future of developing at-need and pre-need contracts — it’s the present. To ensure the success of your funeral home, the time to act is now.

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