Griffin Funeral Home in West Monroe, Louisiana is owned by a funeral director, Kenneth Griffin and several other owners who, until recently, never had a engaging user friendly website. Over the 32 years Ken Griffin have been working for funeral homes, he has observed the continual rise in overall funeral costs and has found that honoring a loved one with a lasting tribute in today’s economy can be very difficult. Therefore, after careful consideration, he made the decision to open a funeral home in this area that will allow all people to honor their loved ones in a professional and compassionate manner. Griffin Funeral Home believe that illness and death are burdensome enough without adding undue financial stress on the family. They are confident they can provide a fitting farewell that will give peace of mind while lessening the financial burden often created by emotional overspending in the time of grief.
Some of the issues the owner faced include:
• New funeral home with no name recognition
• No existing referrals or families
• Strong, established corporate competition
Starting any new business can create challenges. The problem Griffin Funeral Home and Cremation Service faced was being a brand new establishment in an industry largely defined by trusted providers. Most funeral homes have been in business for generations, have decades of community name recognition, and have an established position in the community they serve.
Creating a brand name and starting a presence in the funeral home industry can be a problem that some say can only be solved by years in business. As this case study clearly demonstrates, the answer to the brand-creation roadblock can be cleared away with the right strategy.
Establish an online web site brand presence and web marketing strategy that enhances and compliments a newly built physical location.
• Created custom website complete with funeral home tour, staff pages, and pre-planning information
• Optimized website through search engine optimization, “SEO”
• Created premium directory listing advertising on www.myarklamiss.biz
“Build it and they will come,” might work for Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams, but not in the competitive world of the funeral home industry. All homes need a physical location. Griffin Funeral Home built a state of the art, comforting, location in West Monroe, LA. However, in addition to the physical location, a virtual location was needed as well. To meet this need, BizSite Solutions executed a three-part web marketing strategy: website build, online advertising, and search engine optimization services.
During the website build, special attention was paid to the look and feel of the website to reflect the special natural beauty found in the Louisiana natural environment. Because the Internet is the #1 source of business besides referrals, the design of any funeral home website is critical. Why? Because one of the primary elements Google looks for when determining page rank is something called “bounce rate.” This is simply how quickly a user goes from search results “back” to Google to look at more results. Google rewards sites with a low bounce rate. The reward granted by Google is higher listings for search terms that drive business, or in the case of Griffin, the search term: “Funeral Home Monroe West Monroe.” The entire site built by BizSite Solutions for Griffin employed the latest search engine optimized (SEO) code specifically for the key words that drive the most pre-need and at-need traffic.
Once the visitors reach the site, the user interface layout is optimized for conversion. Conversion is
• BizSite Solutions Content Management System
• BizSite Solutions Hosting
• Web Site Design/Development
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