10 Powerful Insights & Ideas from the 2025 Funeral (Un)Conference Marketing Experts

Just in case you missed Day Two of DISRUPT Media’s Funeral (Un)Conference in June — and didn’t click to watch the FREE recordings (SMH) — here is some of the very best marketing advice from some of the very brightest in the business.

Use your reviews ~ John Lefrandt, Elevia

John recommends regularly reading the reviews families leave on your Google business page, evaluating the information, and launching a campaign to follow up with them.  “There’s so many insights that they can glean,” John says. “That is a billboard. Basically, each one of those testimonials that’s there helps just the general health of the Google business page.”

Plug into your community’s continuum of care ~ Welton Hong, Ring Ring Marketing

Welton believes that engaging with the senior living and hospice providers in your area can be a valuable endeavor. “Senior living, hospice, and funeral homes are very intertwined,”Welton says.  “I was able to host a small dinner, with hospice sitting at the same table as my funeral home client, ‘You guys talk,’ and now we start taking home care. You guys all got to be in the same room. Just talk, and help each other out. It’s the same family, same set of data.”

Leverage your suppliers’ marketing content ~ Jenn Parvin, Batesville

The popularity of Batesville’s newly ungated product pages is an indication of how interested your potential families may be in seeing what products are available. “The traffic on that page is unreal.”

Offline marketing is not dead ~ Ryan Thogmartin, DISRUPT Media

Non-digital marketing — billboards, direct mail, and even radio — should still be included in your omnichannel approach. “I don’t think that radio is dead,” Ryan says. “I don’t think that direct mail is dead. Actually, we have a ton of success with clients when we partner strategically targeted social ads with a mail drop with memorable creative. There’s a way to partner social and direct mail and then retarget with social in those zip codes with a much higher conversion, where now you can spend less on a very targeted mail drop.”

All incoming calls aren’t created equal, Scott says, so listening to and categorizing your calls is crucial to evaluating the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. “Record your calls, listen to them, find out what’s working with your marketing,” Scott says. “Leverage AI to transcribe some of those calls and then automatically categorize. Is this a qualified lead, or is this a logistics call? You’ll be able to see how many leads and actual cases we’re getting versus just clicks and impressions.”

Don’t assume what your families know ~ Jenn Parvin, Batesville

Jenn has proof that there’s a huge gap in what you believe families understand and what they actually know about deathcare. It’s up to you to provide the answers to the questions they may not even know how to ask. “Education, education, education,” adding that according to a recent Batesville survey, “90% of people in the profession assume that families understand preneed, but less than 30% of families actually know preneed is available.”

Audit your Google business profile ~ Welton Hong, Ring Ring Marketing

Your Google page should be much more than your address and phone number. It can provide all sorts of details that help to educate and inform the public, says Welton. “These days when you look at your Google listing. You get to put in products and services,” he says. “Let’s say, you are a Jewish funeral home. If you don’t even put a description inside your Google business profile that you’re a Jewish funeral home, how does Google know? Study your Google business profile, login, click all the pencils, and make sure everything’s updated.”

Even small budgets can produce phenomenal results ~ Ryan Thogmartin, DISRUPT Media

What if you could (or would) only devote $500 to your marketing efforts? Would that even be worth the trouble? That depends on how wisely you use that money. Ryan recommends recording quick, but super educational and engaging, video content to really exceed your customers’ expectations. “It’s free to create content, so I would sit down with an iPhone, I would record a 30-second video that is answering a simple question about, let’s say, preneed,” he explains. “Then I would put $500 towards a targeted ad with that to people over the age of 55, and get really dialed in to the right consumer with that message.” 

Take a video camera into every part of your business ~ Ryan Thogmartin, DISRUPT Media

Following up on the value of creating no-cost video content, Ryan adds that those videos don’t have to be perfect, or scripted, or even edited. He recommends thinking about all the parts of your business that families may be curious about, then shooting video while you explain it. And believe it or not, it’s nearly impossible to run out of ideas. “You could create one video 30 different ways, and it would still be valuable,” Ryan says. “And people would still ask questions, because not everybody sees every piece of content. Video content. It gets 71% more engagement.”

BONUS: Here are some of Ryan’s suggestions for educational video content: 

• Three things families should know about preneed.
• Prep room tour: Show the embalming machine or talk about embalming fluid, “What’s the purpose of embalming fluid? Why do you need to be embalmed?”
• Unpack a casket, fluff up a pillow
• Show how a female funeral director uses a mortuary lift to help with heavy bodies
• “Did you know that we have pink caskets?”
• “Hey it’s 3am – this is what a first call looks like.”

The registration for an upcoming WilbertEDU educational program offering continuing education credits explains the one-hour seminar as such, “Barbara Kemmis and Brie Bingham share the latest CANA consumer research revealing how cremation is becoming the new tradition and discuss what the profession currently offers to meet this growing demand.”

In addition, according to the registration, participants will hear “Barbara and Brie also cover effective strategies for retaining clients and maintaining a competitive edge in this rapidly changing market.”

In this one-hour free seminar provided by Wilbert you will hear from two of the most knowledgeable people in cremation circles.  Kemmis is Executive Director of the Cremation Association of North America (CANA) and Bingham is a CANA certified cremation operator and coordinates the CANA blog that helps keep crematory operators up to date on knowledge of the profession.

This seminar will be held on Thursday, October 31, at 1:00 pm Central time.  To learn more and register to participate and receive continuing education credits please click here.

Click here to learn about more upcoming WilbertEDU sessions.

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