visitors. “You can get what’s called a cookie
from Facebook and put it on your website,” he
explained. “It allows Facebook to figure out who
is visiting your site. When you create an audience
of people who have been to your website, you
can run Facebook ads back to them since they
will be more likely to respond because they
know who you are. By adding that retargeting
into your website you’re able to get much more
conversion rate from your Facebook ads. [...]
e-Commerce
Turning to e-Commerce, Garbow used the Wired
magazine model i.e., what’s required, what’s
wired, and what’s inspired. What’s required?
Flowers. Offer those sympathy items on your
website. Before funeral homes offered flowers
on their websites, people would visit a website for
an obituary to find out the service information.
Now, these people wanted to show support for the
family but, at the time, most websites were basically
just static billboards, so they had to go to Google to
find a florist in a town they might not know. “That’s
not providing them a good experience,” Garbow
said. “Then e-Commerce and flower stores came
around and made it so much easier. People can
come to their obituary and, to show support, they
can easily purchase flowers and have them sent to
the service. That provides a level of convenience
that people now expect on every website.”
“To me, this isn’t just about generating revenue
for your funeral home – your website is providing
people what they want in that time of need,”
he added. “If they want to purchase flowers
and show support, which a lot of them do, you
should make that easy for them because that’s
what they expect.” Garbow said that when you
make buying flowers that easy, you get about
five times as many orders.
How do you take the next step with your
e-Commerce? Garbow said he would consider
looking at online arranging. “This is when you
provide a visitor the ability to arrange a funeral
ahead of time or at-need,” he said. “Why would
you do this? Well, first of all, your website is
about providing people what they’re looking for.
If they’re looking for options, figuring out prices
and seeing what you provide and have to offer,
they’re going to expect that.”
“And if you don’t provide it because you don’t
want to get price shoppers, or you don’t want to
give away all that information before they come
talk to you, then they’re probably going to go
somewhere else,” Garbow said. [...]
When it comes to direct cremation, a family can
visit your website and you can just have them
fill out their information. Or, they can make their
selections, sign the forms that they need to sign,
and even pay for the whole cremation.
But what about a more full-service funeral on
your website? “I think a lot of you are probably
hesitant to do something like this,” Garbow said.
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No. 102 – SUMMER 2023 | THANOS MAGAZINE
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