Can Funerary Homes and Funeral Services use Facebook to market their businesses? That’s a question that I get a lot from my clients. Hi, my name is Francisco. I am the owner of Planet Marketing, a Digital Marketing Agency. My company specializes in Facebook Ads, Google Ads and Remarketing. I this article, I am going to highlight how those in the funeral business can use Facebook to market their businesses. The article has the following sections;
- Do Facebook Ads work for funeral homes?
- The Free Marketing option on Facebook.
- Challenges to Advertising Funerary Homes and Funeral Services on Facebook.
- How to create your first Facebook ad for a funeral service.
Do Facebook Ads Work for Funerary Homes and Funeral Services?
What’s the first thing that most people do when they get a bereavement in the family? You will be surprised to note that they go to Facebook to post on their walls about their loss. Fact of the matter is, the internet has truly revolutionized the advertising space.
Traditional outlets such as newspapers, radio and television are still prominent. However, they have lost a lot of their luster to the new kids on the block, including Facebook. But why are Facebook Ads worthwhile for Funerary Homes and Funeral Services?
Your audience is already on Facebook
Facebook’s strength as a marketing platform comes from its numbers. As of the time of writing this post, there were over 1.8 billion daily active users on Facebook. These figures are constantly changing. You can check out the current figures in the following graph from Statista.
Find more statistics at Statista
But what do these numbers mean? Well, they simply mean most businesses can find their space on Facebook. Their audiences are already on the platform. The challenge lies in knowing how to go about coming up with Facebook ads that bring results. But not to worry! That’s what I am here for!
Facebook has great targeting options
Funeral services can be hard to market. Imagine sending out an ad about a funerary home to everyone on TV? Even on Facebook, you need to know what you are doing in terms of audience targeting. Otherwise, you are only going to bother people who are not interested in what you have to offer.
The fortunate thing is that Facebook offers a lot of targeting options that make it a worthwhile advertising platform for funerary homes and funeral services. As an example, you can target someone at a personal level, meaning your ads will only be seen by that individual.
Facebook ads are affordable
If you are worried about the cost of advertising on Facebook, then you need not be. The platform is one of the cheapest that you will be able to find out there. It’s definitely cheaper than Google. I know, most people worry about the cost of doing Facebook ads.
But did you know that you can get started for as little as a $1? For that amount, you can mass target people on the platform. Of course, we have just noted that this targeting option is not the best for those in the funeral business.
We will talk about audience targeting options for funeral services that advertise on Facebook later in this article. In general, businesses get $8 from an investment of a single dollar on Facebook. So, the platform has a very good ROI.
You can run your own campaigns
Another great thing about Facebook marketing is that anybody can do it. Not that I am trying to talk myself out of business. It’s just a simple fact. In fact, this article will show you the basics of creating your own Facebook Ads Marketing Campaigns for funeral services.
Let me be frank with you; it’s not an easy task. Facebook Ads can be complicated. There are so many angles that it becomes easy for you to get lost along the way. But with time and perseverance, this is something that you can learn.
If you need help, check out my Facebook Ads Marketing Course. It’s where I go into detail on how to properly do Facebook Ads Marketing for any conceivable type of business that can be found out there.
The Free Marketing Option on Facebook for Funeral Services
This article talks about creating paid Facebook Ads. You can also do paid boosted posts on Facebook. However, before you even get there, you should know that it’s possible to start marketing your Funerary Home or Funeral Service free of charge on the platform. But how do you do this?
Create a Facebook Page
Does your Funeral Home have a Facebook Page? If not, then this is something that you need to do right now. Facebook Pages are created free of charge. All that you need to do is to dedicate a little of your time to its creation.
But once it is up and running, a Facebook Page serves as an ambassador for your business on the platform. It’s where people who have already used your service go to like your brand. That’s a great way of getting the word about you to spread far and wide.
Your page increases your visibility on Facebook. The next time that someone is looking for services that are similar to yours, they may find your Page in search results. You can also use your page to generate a target audience. That’s useful for brand awareness campaigns. If you need to learn more, here is our article on how to properly run a Facebook business page.
What can you post on your Facebook Page?
A Facebook Page is great for promoting engagement with your Target Audience, as already noted. That’s important if you are looking for brand awareness. The following are some of the activities that you can carry out on your Facebook Page;
- You can post information about how to preplan for a funeral.
- Post photos of your firm and your work.
- Post tips on how to deal with grief in times of bereavement.
- You can talk about how to celebrate the life of a dearly departed.
- You can also post testimonials from those that have already used your services.
Challenges when Advertising Funerary Homes and Funeral Services on Facebook
Facebook Ads are a great way through which to promote any business. But there are a few challenges that you are going to meet along the way. I thought I should highlight them here so you don’t fall into a pitfall that makes your Campaigns unsuccessful.
Funeral Services are highly targeted
This is something that we have already discussed. You cannot simply splash ads for your Funerary Home or Funeral Service on Facebook. Your ads need to be targeted at the right audience. Otherwise, they will be seen by people who will think them rather strange and depressing.
On the face of it, Google appears to be a better option for advertising funeral services
In fact, when a person needs the service of a funerary home, they will probably go to Google first off. They will carry out a search and they will get results, an example of which is highlighted in the above screenshot.
You can see from the screenshot that there are a couple of ads featuring Funeral Homes in Denver, Colorado. Having your home appear at the top can be what you need in terms of getting clients. That does not mean, however, that Facebook cannot be used in this regard.
In fact, it offers a lot of unique opportunities. You can, as an example, create brand awareness on the platform. It means the next time that the unfortunate need arises; a person that has previously seen your ad will seek out your company. Google is not great for engagement and brand awareness.
People do not go to Facebook for Ads
Another challenge is that people do not go to Facebook for Ads. They go there to chat with their friends. They go there to share the latest bit of fake news and to see the latest videos of pets playing pranks on their owners.
With such important matters on their minds, it’s difficult for any advertiser advertising ANY product to break through and get people’s attention. You need to know what you are doing to be able to do that.
However, that does not mean that all is lost. Facebook is actually a great advertising platform, in spite of this shortcoming.
Creating your first Facebook Ad
The above information should help get you into the right frame of mind for creating Facebook Ads for Funerary Homes and Funeral Services. In this section, I show you how to start creating your Facebook Ads.
Facebook Ads are created in Ads Manager. To get there, you need to have a Facebook Business Manager Account. You can sign up for one using your personal Facebook credentials. The process of creating Facebook Ads has the following 3 steps;
- You need to choose a Campaign Objective.
- Next, you need to define and refine your Target Audience.
- Finally, you can create the ad itself.
Choose a Campaign Objective
To get started creating Facebook Ads for funerary homes and funeral services, you need to choose a Campaign Objective. What is it that you wish to accomplish with your Facebook Ads? Facebook gives you 11 Campaign Objectives. From these, you can only choose one per Campaign. So, you need to know what you wish to achieve. The following are the available Facebook Ads Campaign Objectives;
- Brand awareness
- Catalog sales
- Video views
- App installs
- Engagements
- Traffic
- Reach
- Store traffic
- Messages
- Lead generation
- Conversions
Best Campaign Objective when doing Facebook Ads for Funeral Services
Choose a Campaign Objective for your Facebook Ads
I often get asked which Campaign Objective would work best when doing Facebook Ads marketing for funerary homes and funeral services. My answer to that is; it depends on what you wish to achieve for that Campaign.
There is no Campaign Objective that’s prescribed for any given situation. In fact, one company can have several campaigns running on different Campaign Objectives. For this example, we are going to go with Messages as our Campaign Objective.
We are going to have people who see our ads instantly send out messages to us. That’s in sync with the nature of our business. Perhaps these people are in immediate need for our services. So, we will give them the option to immediately get in touch.
Setting up your Target Audience in the Ad Set
Once you have chosen your Campaign Objective, you will need to set up your Target Audience in the Ad Set. Needless to say this is a very important step. If you get it wrong in terms of audience definition, you probably won’t get the results that you are looking for.
Your ads may be delivered to the wrong audiences. Imagine having funeral service ads delivered to people celebrating their birthdays. That would be very strange, to say the least. In the Ad Set, you have a number of tools that you can use to define your target Audience;
Choose a Messaging platform
Because we chose Messages as our Campaign Objective, we will now need to choose a messaging app for your ads. Do you wish to chat with people on Messenger, on WhatsApp or on Instagram Direct?
Location(s)
Where do you wish to have your ads delivered?
Where do you wish to have your Facebook Ads delivered? Funerary Homes and Funeral Services are usually very localized. It means they operate within a particular town or city. Of course, there are some that can be found in several States.
In this example, we will assume that our Funeral Home operates in Denver, Colorado. So, we are going to have our ads targeted at people in this location. Note that you can target multiple locations with your Facebook Ads. That would be useful for businesses that operate from various locations.
Age
To which age ranges should your ads be targeted? For this example, we will have our ads delivered to people 35 years and above. That’s the age range that’s likely to want to organize funerals.
Gender
Gender is another tool that can be used when targeting an audience for Facebook Ads for Funerary Homes and Funeral Services.
Which genders usually constitute your client base? In most instances, you will want to target both men and women. However, there are some products that are gender specific, such as perfumes.
Connections
You can also target your connections, that is, people who have previously like your Facebook Page or who have taken part in your event. This is an element of a custom Facebook audience.
Targeting these people, in some cases, increases your chances of success. These people are not hearing about you for the first time. So, if you are looking for brand awareness, your ads will cement your brand in their minds.
Detailed Targeting
Narrow down on your target audience in the Detailed Targeting section
Next, you will need to define your detailed targeting options. This is the section in the ad set where you really narrow down on your target audience. So far, we have been targeting people in a general sort of way.
That’s great for creating brand awareness. But you may wish to be specific if you want to reach people based on a particular need or desire. For this example, we will target people showed an interest in the following;
- Funeral for a Friend
- Funeral home
- National Funeral Directors Association
Budget and Schedule
The first thing that you need to do when you start advertising on Facebook is to set a limit for your spending. Otherwise, you are going to have ads running 24/7 and Facebook will charge you in spite for the fact that you may have wanted the ads to stop.
The budget and schedule section can be found in the Ad Set. It’s where you can set up how much you wish to spend for each Campaign. So, how do you limit your spending?
Well, you can do that by setting a daily spending limit, along with a start and end date for your Campaigns. Once you have done this, you will know exactly how much you will have spent at the end of each Campaign.
The Ad
The Ad is what people will see in their Facebook feeds. It’s, therefore, an important section on which you need to dedicate a lot of work. That goes without saying. Facebook gives you the option to create ads in the following formats;
- Single image
- Video
- Carousel
Which format works best?
So, which format works best when doing Facebook Ads marketing for funerary homes and funeral services? As is the case with the Campaign Objective, I am not going to prescribe anything here. One of the things that I like about Facebook is that it allows for a lot of A/B testing.
It means you can test a lot of the settings till you have a path that works best for your particular business. I would advise starting things simple with a single image ad. From there, you can try out a video ad.
Note, however, that a video ad, according to Facebook, should be no more than 15 seconds long. So, you have your work cut out for you. Remember we have already noted that people do not go to Facebook to watch ads. So, yours needs to be really interesting to be able to capture their attention.
Primary Text
Most of your Facebook Ad should be in the form of graphics. Text does not work that well when advertising on Facebook. You need to let the pictures do most of the talking.
The Primary Text appears at the top of the ad. Don’t go overboard in this section. Have Primary Text that’s one line or less. Otherwise, you will lose your target audience.
Summary
This article was dedicated to showing you how to come up with top notch Facebook Ads for funerary homes and funeral services. However, the truth of the matter is that we only just covered the basics here. If you choose a different Campaign Objective, as an example, you will be taken down a path that’s not similar to the one highlighted here.
The good news is that I have created a useful course that you can use to sharpen your understanding of how to create Facebook Ads for your business. Simply sign up for my Facebook Ads Marketing Mini course using the section below. The course has a lot of useful videos and other teaching materials to help you get the most out of advertising on Facebook.
