How Facebook Works for Funeral Homes: Serve, Engage, Expand!

By Bill A Johnston

Effective Local Advertising for Funeral Homes on Facebook

 

As a funeral home owner or operator, do you:

• Know what Facebook is and want to discover how it could help you better serve your community and grow your audience and business?
• Always struggle with what you can or can't say in your local advertising?
• Wonder how other funeral homes are successfully using Facebook to expand visibility within their communities, their brand recognition, and ultimately their call volume?

This book answers those questions for you! Inside you'll discover:

• How advertising on Facebook in a certain way yields highly effective, local advertising results
• Strategies for engaging with readers and instantly receiving priceless word-of-mouth advertising
• A clear roadmap for your long-term business expansion using effective Facebook advertising 

Bill A Johnston is a Facebook Expert for Funeral Homes, President of Post and Boost® (a Facebook advertising service), an author and continuing education speaker on the topic of how Facebook works for funeral homes. Born in Jamestown NY, Bill holds a degree in Television and Radio from the Newhouse School at Syracuse and has 25 years of experience managing radio stations.

 

As the creator of the proprietary Post and Boost software platform and process that composes, posts, and boosts custom advertising for funeral homes on Facebook, Bill is dedicated to changing the way funeral homes advertise, grow, and expand.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bill A Johnston
• Release date: Sep 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9780997274561

Bill A Johnston

Bill A Johnston is a Facebook Expert for Funeral Homes, President of Post and Boost®, a Facebook advertising service, an author, and Continuing Education speaker on the topic of how Facebook works for Funeral Homes. Bill was born in Jamestown NY, graduated from the Newhouse School at Syracuse with a degree in Television and Radio, and has 25-years of experience managing radio stations. In 2000 he founded iconnectv.com, an interactive media company for cable television. He produced national television commercials and interactive lead-generating platforms including the Answers! CD and The Time Warner Cable Business Analyzer. In 2016 he became a Facebook expert, created a proprietary software platform that composes, posts, and boosts custom advertising for Funeral Homes on Facebook, and is dedicated to changing the way Funeral Homes advertise. He’s married to his wife of 42-years, Cecelia, has two children and four grandchildren. He lives in Daphne, Alabama.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

In 2019, I published the first version of this book, Why Facebook Works for Funeral Homes. As I sat down to create a revised version, I realized that a simple revision was almost impossible. After publishing thousands of posts for funeral homes on Facebook, my company and our team have learned so much that practically all of Part I had to be rewritten as new text. Part II features the latest examples of our work from a broader group of clients than in the first edition.

Although the first book was titled Why Facebook works for funeral homes, this book is more about the How. The subtitle lays out three important elements of the How:

Serve: Serving represents the underlying core of your business. If you have a reputation for serving and have touched countless families because of your amazing service, then Facebook readers will already love you, your funeral home, and your staff.

Engage: By advertising on Facebook, you will give these readers the opportunity to express the love they felt when engaging with your funeral home and your staff. They will like or love your posts, share your posts, and make comments on your posts. Reader comments will praise staff members for who they are and what they do, and they will express gratitude for services provided months or years ago. Readers will be thankful that your funeral home is a part of their family and their lives.

Expand: There are only two kinds of businesses—those that are expanding and those that are contracting. By continuing to serve, continuing to engage, and continuing to advertise on Facebook in a certain way, your firm will expand its visibility within the community, expand the reputation for your brand, and ultimately expand your call volume. If you own the funeral home of record in your community, Facebook will give you the social proof. If you aspire to be the funeral home of record, Facebook can be part of your strategy to make it so.

Although furniture stores, restaurants, car dealers, and other traditional retailers can freely advertise to expand their sales and market share, such a strategy has never been easy for funeral homes. The rules for winning in local advertising for any kind of business, including funeral homes, are not widely known. When you add in the historical difficulties that funeral homes have always faced in buying local advertising that works, a clear route for including effective local advertising in an expansion strategy for many has proven to be elusive.

This book, How Facebook Works for Funeral Homes, will give you a clear roadmap for effective advertising to carry out an expansion strategy. After reading Chapter 7, Advertising on Facebook in a Certain Way, and considering the topics presented in Part II, you will know exactly how to create effective local advertising on Facebook.

So, let me say that I am excited that you are reading my book, and I am delighted that we have discovered a successful system for funeral homes to use on Facebook. We believe in using faces on Facebook, which is why much of the content that we publish features the faces of our funeral home clients. Because Facebook is a one-to-one media—that is, each version of Facebook is uniquely created for each user—we can be direct with readers in our copy styles, topics, and messages. Because Facebook is a type of personal media, we can write ads designed to reach readers in their hearts and souls. People may not immediately think of funeral homes in terms of love. Nevertheless, we have discovered that Facebook readers love their funeral homes and the people who work in them. When we made that discovery, our practice began to take off.

On a personal note, my late mom and dad—Greta and Don Johnston of Jamestown, New York—are always foremost in my mind whenever I walk into any funeral home. I believe that watching them live, and then seeing them in death, taught me valuable lessons that aid in my writing for my wonderful and valued clients in the funeral home industry. These clients include Ven Faulk, Paula and the late Jim Lowe, JimmiAnne Lowe, Jeff Nobles, Dan and Jack Briggs, Staton and Summie Carter, Neil Fair, Les and Robert Powell, Bryan Small, John Piotrowski, Patrick and Miriam Forbis, Joe Trippodo III, Paul Phillips, J.B. Rhodes III, John Vogler, Bobby Hodges, Chipper Smith, Felicia Smith-Charles, Barry Watson, Justin Smith, John Herzig, Brian Bowser, Mitch Colvin, Rob Earle Jr., Dwayne Josey, Barry Theriot, Doug Huggins, Jeff Fraley, Rodney McFarland, Brad Conner, Shawn Troy, the late Richard Diehl, Gary and Tina Wolfe, Casey Young, Jack and Michael McGaffigan, Justin Nalls, Adam Roper, Kathryn Adams, Terry Brackney, Nick Page, Kelly Clements, Greg and Chelsi Compean, Velma Sue and Leon De Leon, Ann Williams, Jay Fisher III, Greg Henderson, Nathan Minnich, Nancy and Bill Mullins, Greg Jerdan, Andy Huffine, Kirk Goodman, Nancy Swaringen, David Breece, Jason Smith, Alan MacKinnon CCE, Jay Wilkinson, Eric Thomas, Sam Way, and Amy Justice. I look forward to the honor of writing for additional clients in the funeral industry during the years to come.

PART I

How Facebook Works

for Funeral Homes

What is Facebook?

At the turn of the 21st century, just about everybody got the newspaper. Early in the morning, delivery people brought the paper to almost every house and apartment. Newsstands kept the papers ready for sale in huge stacks. Restaurants sold them for 25 cents a copy out of metal boxes found at their entryways. The boxes had see-through windows displaying that day’s cover and headlines. If you stayed in a three-star or better hotel, the paper would be dropped in front of your room’s door, usually hitting the floor with a thud that would wake you up. In many cities, there was also an afternoon or evening edition of the paper.

The 2000-era newspapers were printed on larger-sized paper than you see today. And the papers were satisfyingly thick—especially the Sunday edition, which was filled with extensive news content, special inserts, and lots of advertising. Indeed, advertisers thought of newspapers as the local media of record. Below is a partial list of the many things you would typically find in a 2000-era Sunday newspaper:

World and national news

State and regional news

Weather

Local news and stories of interest

Pictures of local folks

Opinions and editorials

Wedding announcements and anniversaries

Obituaries

Comics and other sections devoted to humor

Puzzles

Gossip

Sports

Items for sale by readers

Real estate ads

And, most importantly, business advertising

2000 was Newspapers' Peak Year

According to the Newspaper Association of America, the industry reached its sales peak in 2000, amassing $67 billion in advertising revenue in that year. By 2014, ad sales had plummeted to $16.4 billion, reflecting a major loss of readers. That is a 75% decrease in ad sales and, no doubt, sales and readership are down even further today. What was behind this amazing and dramatic decline, and why are today’s newspapers so small and thin? The availability of online news has contributed substantially to the circulation drop in printed news, and the ease of digital delivery has created strong new competition. However, the two milestones that played the most significant role in the newspaper’s decline and fall are