Podcast Interview: Deadly Serious CMO – The Fractional CMO Show

I had the pleasure and opportunity to have a conversation with Casey Stanton of the Fractional CMO Show. You can listen to the episode here:

Here is the transcript of the interview:

Casey Stanton:

Marketers of the world. Why do we work hard to solve small problems? It’s time to bring home bigger paychecks. It’s time to create the lifestyle we deserve and to make a greater impact. This is the Fractional CMO Show and I’m Casey Stanton. Join me as we explore this growing industry and learn to solve bigger problems. The Fractional CMO Show is sponsored by CMO X, the number one company to teach you how to attract, convert and serve clients as an in-demand, fractional CMO.

Casey Stanton:

Hey, it’s Casey here with the Fractional CMO Show and I’m here with the founder of Funeral Results Marketing, a digital marketing agency for funeral homes. He’s also Funeral Boardroom, founder, and fractional CMO for funeral homes. Robin Heppell. Rob’s calling in from Victoria British Columbia. Hey, Rob, excited to have you here.

Robin Heppell:

Thanks, Casey. Looking forward to it.

Casey Stanton:

Yes, man, I’m super excited because I find your industry just like, so kind of hidden in plain sight. I’ve obviously seen funeral homes. I’ve been to funeral homes and it’s just like such an interesting market that comes with it. I think a lot of just like general avoidance that people have, they don’t want to think about death and you just have like leaned in completely into this. I’ve learned so much in our conversations around so many interesting things that I think we’ll get into on, on the call today. But, but first I want us to like dive into this idea of kind of one of the things that makes a funeral service unique, which is someone has a pressing need and they need a service immediately. And if you don’t win that, you don’t get it. This happens in funeral homes. If, if a funeral home, if someone in a community passes away, the family looks for a funeral home and if you know your funeral home, doesn’t get it. Someone else will, and you’ll never be able to win that business back. So I’d love to, for us to talk about capturing this intent-based traffic how, how would you like to start this conversation?

Robin Heppell:

Sure. Well, part of it is what we, in the, since like the mid-nineties, there’s been a push for funeral pre-planning or, people planning their funerals in advance. So we, we offer that out to people. Most people don’t want to deal with it as they’re just avoiding it, but that part of the business is more like some traditional marketing where there’s a bit of a funnel and you’ve got time to work them through get messages out there. You’re going to interrupt them and have them come in. But that only maybe equates to 25% of the number of funerals that a funeral home looks after in a year. So the other part is people who avoid it, don’t want to talk about it until it’s time the death has occurred and you’re right. So the cycle I’ll use for you and your listeners, like the sales cycle.

And I wouldn’t say that <laugh> inside of ours, but and we would say instead, like closing the deal, we would like winning the call or the first call. Right. So that, and that’s how we talk about it in the industry is when that family makes that first call to the funeral home, that’s actually the noun, right? Oh, we have we had two first calls last night, meaning, okay. It was the first time that the family reached out to us and then things happened. And so the window is, is only a few hours or maybe a day or two at the max because you, after the death, there’s after the death, because the, the deceased is somewhere and probably needs to get transferred somewhere else. They can’t stay at the nursing home. Like the hospital doesn’t want them to stay there. So the

Casey Stanton:

They’re in the home, I would assume.

Robin Heppell:

Right. They, Yes. And they don’t want the deceased to be in the home for too long either. Right. So, there is a, a need for them to make a decision quickly. And there are a group of if someone’s been in a city for a town for a long time, they might be using the same funeral home that, their parents did or, grandparents and, and there’s in some places there’d be the Protestant funeral home in the Catholic funeral home and the Jewish funeral home. But in, as societies change, then we’re trying to, and my job as a marketer to help them is to get their reputation online and through being found in, in the search engines and with online reviews and, and that you’re, you’re trying to hold out your presence online.

And so you have this very short period of time to let these client families know, to choose your funeral home then than someone else. And, and you’re right. The very unique thing about funeral service is that you’ve done all this work, you’ve done all this marketing. Someone has to die for you to potentially get the business and then your marketing has to work. And then the person fielding that, if there’s an information call, they have to convey some rapport and confidence that that family would then choose you because if they then choose that other funeral home, that opportunity is, is gone. You have to mm-hmm, <affirmative> basically wait for the next person to pass away. So it’s and so it can get quite competitive too in depending on the different markets, right? If there’s just a few funeral homes, they’re, they’re fighting for every to serve every family that they get.

Casey Stanton:

And I would assume that the commitment of a family is, oh, my grandma was buried here and I didn’t have a bad time. So I’m going to bury my parents here. And it just kind of there’s like a lot of what’s the word that you would, you would use to.

Robin Heppell:

Loyalty, like loyalty, loyalty right there. Yes. So there’d be loyalty, but with, in today’s age with places being so transient mm-hmm, <affirmative> like, like people move around and, even lately we’ve seen lots of people moving from one place to another where, where I am in Victoria, we’re on. So we’re on the west coast of Canada and we’ve had so many people come and retire here. So it’s very few Victorians that are actually born and raised here. I was, my, my dad was, but I’d say 80% of the population are from, they were born somewhere else. So they don’t. So there’s no family legacy. There’s no they didn’t use a funeral home before.

Casey Stanton:

And there’s no plot for them too. Right?

Robin Heppell:

Correct. And that’s why Victoria is the highest we have the highest cremation rate in North America which is like 93% roughly. So in just, as an aside in the US, I believe it’s 58% overall in Canada, it’s a bit higher. I think it’s like in the sixties and British Columbia in itself is in the eighties. But there’s, but there’s also a lot of different groups or com communities. And so there’s still some ethnic groups that are always a burial. And so there’s, I don’t think it’s, it’s never going to be a hundred percent but there’s here consistently, we’ve we, and we’ve been, when I started in 86, it was like 67%. And that, that was the highest, and then it’s gone up from there, gone up from there. And, but it has levelled off for, I would say the last five years or so at about 93%.

Casey Stanton:

Got it. Okay. Got it. So this notion that like, people are moving from a more traditional burial process of having a plot of land, their families have a plot of land. I live in Philadelphia and we’ve got a couple of graveyards that I’ve walked and I see grandparents and parents and their kids, and kids that died childbirth, like, like it’s, it’s a whole kind of story and family tree in, in the plot, but then those numbers stop that stops at 1904 or 1915 or something like that. And then there’s just no more burials. So the market is shifting to this cremation, which makes sense, because why would you want to be buried in the ground in a place that you just kind of lived in for a little while? There’s like really no significance, no one’s going to come to visit you. So the market’s kind of like fundamentally changing. I find that to be very interesting. And is that something that’s happened recently? Is it over the last 10 years?

Robin Heppell:

It’s been happening longer than that, Casey. But it, with, so with, with people moving and with the choice of cremation, so there’s still a number of people that do get cremated that may have their cremated remains placed in that family plot. And depending on the cemetery you might have like in the local cemetery here, that’s close to me for every casket burial plot, you could have two sets of cremator remains in the older cemetery. Downtown, you can have three urns per plot, and some churchyard cemeteries. You could have 6, 8, or 10. They don’t, there may not be the same restrictions cemeteries too are now also a business, right? So even though spatially, you could put, physically put a number of urns in a plot. They are just for record-keeping and keeping things organized. They, they include, or they allow like say two or three.

So we also get some people that scatter their cremated remains. Some people will take their urn and have it sent back to the family, but maybe they’ve come from the Midwest or out east and or overseas. And their part of their creative meetings will be sent there and right. And, and that’s common too, where they get separated. So maybe some are scattered here. Some are back at the church art cemetery where they grew up and some could be, in Hawaii people there’s, they have more options with cremated remains. So it’s, it’s now depending on the person themselves, like if they have any specific wishes or even the survivors, what they, what they’re going to choose to have that kind of lasting place for the deceased.

Casey Stanton:

Got it. Okay. That makes sense. So kind of, regardless of the transitory nature of, of things like, I mean, I guess that would probably even increase the pressure of the funeral home to get that first call because there is no legacy here that says, I went to this funeral home because now I’m in another state or another city or whatever. And who gets that first call is, is really important. So this first call also happens with other things. I’m sure, like towing, like tow trucks, right? Like I need a tow who do I call? Well, you call your insurance company, but maybe you got to call someone else. It probably makes sense for emergency things. What emergency room am I going to go to? What urgent care facility am I going to go to? So this, this idea that there’s intent-based, immediate need traffic, you mentioned you get in front of it a bit through like your reviews, your online presence, but give me more on that. Like, do you measure things like speed to lead? Do you want phone calls to come in? Is that the best thing? Do you want form submits? What matters the most?

Robin Heppell:

Well, probably ideally you’d want them to pick up the phone and call, right? Because then they, there’s, it’s a, because there’s a number of things choices that they’re going to have to make in decisions. And one of them is price. And because there’s, there has a thought out there like, oh, gee funerals are expensive. And not, I’m not saying that they’re not caskets are, caskets are, can be expensive. And so there is somewhat we would call shopping, like shopping around. And we’re not, I’m talking as a funeral director. It’s not like we’re great sales people. We’re, we’re in this very nurturing servant-type business. Right. And so it’s, it can be hard for people to express why they should do, why someone should do business with you. And you have to go beyond to saying, well, we provide great service.

Because the families, the client families want an idea of like, it doesn’t mean that they want the cheapest but they don’t want, like, they don’t want to overspend either. And so there’s this balance of, of that. What are the facilities do you offer different amenities, like out here and on out west memorial receptions are really big. So local funeral home here has catering, so it’s not just the receptions. Like when I started, it would be like, you go to the church basement after the service and, and the ladies at the church would’ve made like eggs salad sandwiches. Right. And that would be the reception. now it is 15, $20 per person you’re getting quiche and hot hors d’oeuvres and then they offer beer and wine.

And so it’s, it’s now part of it’s part of the revenue structure sure. With more people that choose cremation, there’s, there’s less revenue from say from a casket sale. But, but with that, and with those changes, there’s less people are going to church, so they don’t have the same connection where they could, oh, we’ll just have the reception at the church. They’re not belonging to something like that. So it’s, they don’t have oh, interest. Yes. So what do they go like the VFW hall or, or, well, no, they, they, a lot of funeral homes most jurisdictions now allow food to be served in the funeral homes, but there’s some certain states around here area Casey, that prevent food to be served at the funeral. Right. Even though there’s a cafeteria at the hospital, something about food at the funeral home doesn’t equate to the same.

And my colleagues within the profession are, continued to battle that with their state regulators. But so where fascinating, where, where some people have where it’s changed where people, maybe if people have become less religious, so maybe they’re not getting buried and they’re going to choose cremation. That same sentiment of being religious is now they don’t belong to the church where they’d had the reception. So then here’s a little fact, the term undertaker, which was used a century ago actually has its origin of meaning as an entrepreneur and the concept of the undertaker was they would undertake all the services that would go on when someone died. Right. So they, they were the like my grandfather and great-grandfather, they had the furniture store and that’s where the caskets were from. But they would do, they would, they would do the embalming at the farmhouse. They would bring their little doctor bag out and, and do that there. And then they would look after the flowers and they would get, they would organize the service to be at the church.

Casey Stanton:

They, if the event manager, the doer kind of the whole thing. Wow.

Robin Heppell:

Correct. And so they undertook all the tasks that, that revolved around someone dying. And that’s where the name came from. And then over time in say the mid-fifties, it became very like they became more funeral directors and, and funerals were very similar to, for everyone. There was, you could see from beginning to end, they went through all these steps and maybe they were at a church, maybe they were at the funeral home, but they were very similar. And then in the later part of last century, so maybe in the seventies, eighties, nineties, it that’s where more options came cremation started to become more popular. And so it changed again. And so in, in some parts, the funeral professionals are having to become almost like a born again, undertaker, because, so even though the family wants to get together with people where they would’ve 20 years ago had that at the church, they don’t have that anymore. So they could go to the country club, but the funeral home may have created their space into a place to hold that reception and, and then serve the ORs and beer and wine, if that’s what the family wanted. So, it’s a constant shift of, we’re still catering for all these tasks that revolve around when someone dies. They’re just not the same as they were a hundred years ago.

Casey Stanton:

Yes. Okay. Got it. That makes sense. Okay. So, so back to this kind of game of it being high stakes, you want that call to come in what kind of ground game is needed to cover in order to be the preeminent solution? What do you think is important? Is it notoriety? Is it trust pilot reviews? Is it just raw Google reviews? Like what are some of these like core things that local service companies need to have that you think is critical?

Robin Heppell:

I think that, and it’s, it’s quite hard to convey, but they do want to have to show that they can provide a very meaningful service, right? So there are, there are some places that may not put the effort into making that service as meaningful as maybe others and some funeral homes can get a, a really great reputation on, on having very meaningful services where others who maybe are a little bit stuck back in the times are, are holding onto the really formal, rigid type of traditional funeral service. And that’s fine for, for some people. And the more progressive funeral homes can still offer that type of service. So they’re in, in, again, we’re dealing with this short period of time where you have to convey, like we can we’re, we’re reasonably priced. We offer a variety of these services and we’ll help the family create a very meaningful service for their loved ones.

So that’s how they try to convey that. But it’s, but it’s hard. Some, and some people may, like, not every funeral home would have like a nice reception area. So that might be one key factor. And where maybe others are dislocated in a better location, maybe they’re right beside the cemetery, or maybe they’re, closer to some other place in town. So there, there are some factors and that zero moment of truth. Once people make that decision, that information could have been gathered over time. Even if they’ve never chosen a funeral home, they are probably aware of them. A lot of funeral directors are very involved in the community, so maybe they’ve, they’ve met someone and they’ve built that rapport with them, but it can be, it can just be priced too. Yes. If they don’t, if they don’t want much and they and we hear this a lot, like, oh Yes.

When dad died, or dad told us that when he dies, he just, don’t spend any money on me, just put me in a cremation, like just cremate me. And that’s it put me in a pine box and cremate me. So funeral homes off her, those li more limited services also. So it’s hard. Right. And it’s a balancing act of when I think the toughest thing that funeral homes wrestle with in our marketing services, we, we help them put their prices online.  but if they’re more expensive, it, if you just put a price list, it’s very hard for the fam for the family to see like, well, why do these people charge a couple of thousand dollars more than these people? Right. And just written word. Right. So that’s why you’re trying to convey the value and get the call right. And get the call. That’s, that’s the name of the game.

Casey Stanton:

People buy ultimately on a motion and if you put too much logic in front of them, they’re going to make a decision that isn’t right. For them, you want to choose the decision that makes the most sense. And I’m sure if the funeral homes that you support, get people on phone calls, they’re able to sell in a way that has lasting memory instead of just like price.

Robin Heppell:

Yes. And, and that’s the tough thing though, because when, when we get a phone call, I’m talking as a funeral director. And if the first thing they ask about price, our, we have this immediate kind of we take a step back and, and not offended, but closely they’re just asking for price. And, and it’s not that, and I try to work with them and say, look, it’s they’re that price is just information that they’re gathering, just because they ask for it. They, it doesn’t mean that it’s the cheapest, but, they kind of get, they get on guard and they and sometimes, and we work with them in training and that’s not to think that this is it right. That you have to have the lowest price or some places will price match, right?

So if you go to Stanton Funeral Home, they’re $5,000, but if you go to Heppell Funeral Home, you know what, we’ll, we normally charge six, but we’ll do it for five. So you don’t have to go over there. Right. Some of that happens sometimes, but I think a well-trained funeral director on the phone is going to receive that call, provide the information that they’re asking for and find out what other information is going to that they need to make their decision. Right. Yes, so it’s not always the lowest price, but sometimes we get defensive and for sure. So

Casey Stanton:

I think we do it as marketers, too. Right. We get defensive when someone is like, how much are you? And you’re like, first, let me figure out if I can help you, let me sell you the story, let me sell you the emotions. So you’re right. That’s, that’s always difficult for folks to work with. So. Okay. I know that you have, you have a history with obituaries that I think is novel.

Robin Heppell:

Yes.

Casey Stanton:

Share what you’ve done there and like how that is like an approachable by people who maybe aren’t with obituaries, but maybe with like lists and other things.

Robin Heppell:

Sure. Yes. Well, the interesting thing about obituaries is that especially when things started coming online it would, instead of having just a marketing website, so 20-page website, static by adding obituaries to the website, it really would increase the traffic and to, and we have, we have clients throughout North America, and there’ll be some, we have some small funeral homes that get a million visitors a year to their website in, in these, in these smaller towns. That’s where people go to see who’s died. So they’ll even my mom. So my mom wakes up in the morning. She lives here on the west coast, but she’s from Ontario. And she wakes up in the morning. She turns on her computer. She goes to the bathroom, she comes back to the computer after it’s booted up, she goes to the local funeral home website and looks to see who’s died. Like it’s a connection to the community. Oh, wow. Yes. So now that’s not the same in, in a big Metro area, like Philadelphia, where you’re going to have dozens and dozens of funerals.

Casey Stanton:

But in my hometown, my parents, I mean, they looked at two things. I think they looked at who got arrested. Right. And then they looked at who died. So I guess you’re right. Yes,

Robin Heppell:

Yes. <Laugh> Yes. Yes. So it’s become very valuable. And one of, so one of the things that I stumbled upon in the mid-two thousands, when I was starting to do some consulting, I’d been selling websites that had for a company out of Texas, that they had online obituaries. But back then, they’re all kind of stored in a database. And it wasn’t, wasn’t indexed by Google. We weren’t really thinking of that. Right. We weren’t thinking of XML site maps or getting all the pages index. So when I had when I created my own consulting WordPress site, I published an article and, back then I had, well, I still have it, but my Google alert for my name. Right. And 15 minutes, I got an email and it said oh, Hey, here’s your name was just, on the internet. And it was the article that I just published and that was with WordPress. And so it had the structure of WordPress would be highly indexable. That’s the right term by Google.

Casey Stanton:

And Yes. WordPress was hot when it came out. Right? Yes. Cause everyone was just like dream weaving sites.

Robin Heppell:

Yes, exactly. Well, custom HTML. And then, so, so I thought, well, I bet you, people are looking because when you hear someone died, right. You’re going to Google their name. Like, I heard Rob died. Robin Heppell death, Robin Heppell obituary. Right. and, but we, no one knew that this was going on because no one had OITs that were indexed. As soon as we started offering this 10 minutes, 15 minutes, you could start seeing people, the searches were coming in. Because the word was out because the obituary usually, might take a number of hours or a day or two because the, so the death occurs and the family has to choose the funeral home and then, then they have to plan the funeral and make the arrangements and, and then confirm it with whatever the location is. So it could be a day or two. And we’ve noticed that people would start searching and searching to the point now where, where we see hundreds of visits per funeral, even though 50 people might attend this service, there could be 200 people interacting with that obituary leaving a condolence.

Casey Stanton:

So you got in front of people. So this idea of like getting obituaries indexed meant that people would find someone who had died, they would see that it came from the local funeral home. Then they would kind of create a mental kind of connection to that funeral home. And that would drive more funeral home business. Is that right?

Robin Heppell:

Well, at least it’s giving you more exposure. Right. For sure. We can’t, it’s really hard to measure that because,

Casey Stanton:

Or the attribution is tough.

Robin Heppell:

Yes. Like 95% of that traffic that goes to that funeral website is all about obituaries and only 5% of it. Or maybe even less is about doing business with that funeral home. Sure. So you’re, but you’re providing, what I like to say is you’re providing a community service and you want people to interact with within your virtual walls.  so they’re seeing your brand, they’re seeing your colors. And maybe there’s like a video of the service on there or we do lots of or funeral homes will do slideshow tributes. Right. So a number of photos, like 50 photos from when they’re born to, up until when they died and you put some royalty-free music to it and any things like that, that make that honor that person’s life.

Casey Stanton:

Yes. Yes. That’s great. That’s great. Okay, cool. So I feel like we’ve learned a lot about you. And, and you’ve got this Funeral Results Marketing digital marketing agency that you’ve, that you’ve run for a long time. You’ve got Funeral Boardroom as well, and you’re a fractional CMO. And I’m wondering if you had a time when you weren’t a fractional CMO where you were really in it, in these funeral homes you were supporting on some of the day-to-day operations on the marketing side. Like you were the guy who was on the inside and after you’ve mastered that you’ve built teams, you’ve built your agency. And you founded that, but now you’re doing this fractional CMO stuff. So what’s different between being a fractional CMO for a funeral home versus having an agency that provides services.

Robin Heppell:

Sure. Well, there’s the kind of three basic offerings, right? So there’s your done for you services, which is our, which is our agency. So we develop websites, we host websites, we do Google ads, management, SEO, online reputation, and that’s done for you hands off. You don’t have to worry about it. Great. And then with the we also, I also have a training site called the Funeral Gurus and that’s where I’ll put some training up there. If people ask me a question, I’ll, I’ll post it there and that’s more of a do yourself. So people who want to learn, but they don’t, they’re not going to really engage. But the kind of the done with you is the funeral boardroom. So where I would be working somewhat like a, like a consultant and it, with my variety of experiences in funeral service that could, it could be focused on technology.

It could be focused on marketing. It could be focused on strategy competition. And, but the, the nice thing about the being a fractional CMO is it provides structure and where before with Funeral Boardroom, we would just work on it. We would kind of come up with an agreement of what they wanted help with and I would work them through what they wanted.  Now, with the fractional CMO, the great thing is, and with help with some of the frameworks that you make available to us is that there is a system and a process in place and where, where we can then become the leader of their marketing services. So with that, then they don’t have to worry about it. They don’t have to think, oh, like, Hey, I’m going to try social media for a couple months, and I’m going to try Google ads and where we can look at it from top-down, make sure that the main things are being looked after and then tweak the other things and put, make sure that there’s a process in place.

And it makes us more accountable to them. They can they’re not the ones that are being come up with the ideas I, as, probably more than most, things are always changing. There are different resources out there. And what I think one thing that that I provided and I tell my clients is too, I’m going to tell you the latest things that you could be doing, but I’m also not going to tell you a ton of latest things that aren’t going to apply, which could be a real, like, time waste on your end.

Casey Stanton:

Oh, dude, what comes to mind for me is this idea that like, it, it’s not what you do. It’s what you don’t do sometimes.

Robin Heppell:

Yes. Right? Absolutely.

Casey Stanton:

Don’t focus on the stuff that doesn’t matter. And if all you’re doing is telling someone specifically do these few things, they could be like, wow, that’s really simple. You’re like, yes, but you’re not doing all of the garbage that’s going to waste your time and money. I think you’re onto something for sure.

Robin Heppell:

Well, Yes, they’ll say like, Hey, do you think we should do a TikTok campaign? <Laugh> I’m like, no, absolutely. Now no, there is in funeral service there are Tic Talkers that they’re doing their thing and it’s actually very beneficial to attract new people to funerals. Like we need just like lots of industries and professions. We need more people taking funeral service as a career. And, and so that’s going well, but that’s, those are just individuals and the funeral home’s not getting new first calls because that’s our, our main goal. Right. So we want to make sure that we weed that out and have the, have the goal and like just what’s the goal. You want more calls? Do you want more? Prearrangements are okay. If that’s the goal, then we look at the different channels to use and the different strategies to accomplish that goal. But it’s not going to be, we should just use social media now versus why don’t we do Google AdWord and if I just could take a second here. Yes. so Google, Google Ads search, not display is to get those we call them at like at the time of need or at-need desk, like someone’s died or about to die,

Casey Stanton:

 Your keywords for this, right? Yes.

Robin Heppell:

Yes. And there’s a handful of ones that are that you need funeral homes in Philadelphia pro funeral costs in Philadelphia and then different derivatives of that. And obviously, it’s not just half a dozen, but sure. But those are people that are actively searching. They have buying intent and they need to find a funeral home. So our job is to then get those people who are searching for that, get my client’s ad in front of them. And then to a landing page that then break, leads them through the process to get them to phone the funeral home and win the first call. Yep. On the, for social media, isn’t good for acne business or, for, at the time of deaf business, but for people who are pre-planning it’s a good place to do it. So maybe you’re having an estate planning seminar and you’re planning an event or you’re sending out like a funeral planning checklist. So, for people who are retiring because there you’re using that interrupt interruption or disrupting marketing where, they’re just sitting down, going through the Facebook team.

Casey Stanton:

Intent.

Robin Heppell:

Yes. They, just see it. They oh Yes. My mortality. I better make up some arrangements because I keep it seeing,

Casey Stanton:

But those ads don’t do very well. Right. Like, I mean, well non-intent-based just like finding people while they’re like cruising Facebook looking at fail videos and now you say like, oh, you’re going to die. What’s your plan.

Robin Heppell:

<Laugh> Yes. You have to be a little softer than that. And yes, I think that that too Casey is the art of marking for film service. Because we haven’t talked about this part yet, but you have to be very cautious. Right. And that’s there’s some things that would, you don’t want to like sure. You could see, we’ll we see within industry publications, oh, look at this, creative ad and oh sure. It’s kind of funny for us to see it, but really like my mom would be offended if she saw right. Like some of these things. Right. So you need to know your target market of who you’re trying to reach and then what, what marketing channels you’re going to use. So yes. It’s you just need to know what your goal and your objectives are. Yes. And then use the appropriate marketing channels.

Casey Stanton:

Absolutely. Okay, great. So let, let’s go to this question, which is if a funeral home is seeking marketing support, they’re going to go look for a marketing agency and every city has a marketing agency. So they’re going to find a local marketing agency and they’re going to call them up. What do you see as an issue from hiring a local marketing agency versus an agency that specializes in funeral services?

Robin Heppell:

Well, I think just part of, of just what it explained of, of the type of person that you’re trying to, like who are you trying to attract with the marketing is one and the, you, there are a number of sensitivities that, that are just been ingrained in me growing up. And but I also see that they’re, they almost are a bit more short term. So as an example they might offer everything right. They’re going to do branding. They’re going to do we’re going to do create a style guide for you. Yes. We’ll do a new website for you and Yes, we can make sure the SEO’s okay. But they don’t know the value of the obituaries. So I’ve had, I’ve had in and more than one occasion have come in in the middle and or afterwards, and then, someone will say, Hey know, we use this local company, I go to rotary with them and, and like, we’re we lost all our ranking.

And I said, well, I look and like, they messed up all the ops. So they, and I’ve even seen them. We use WordPress. And one of the value, one of the benefits of WordPress is you can have the same structure and you can just put a new theme on it. And so you can, it looks like a brand new website, but you haven’t, you haven’t changed any of the structure and, and all the history and because some prominent people who have their obituary and they could have hundreds of condolences on that and they might have even a bunch of backlinks coming to that. Well, if you don’t preserve that right then it’s just gone.

Casey Stanton:

Gone, you lose all that kind of authority that you’ve had years and years and years. Yes. Online. It’s just so important. Yes. That’s a really good point. I feel like news sites do that. They like to let news articles disappear and there are links that go to dead pages. We just can’t have that if you want to maintain credibility long-term.

Robin Heppell:

Yes. And it’s, it’s just basic and basic. So, so there’s that. And then they’ll even, and sometimes like, these are generational companies, so over time maybe the, the names change or change slightly and what’ll happen is they’ll go. And they’ll like, okay, well, we’re going to change that domain. We got the new domain for you and they like, to let the domain die.

Casey Stanton:

And some squatter buys it and then they rebuild the website and have the old contact information and then they put links over to Viagra or health insurance or something else to get that high-quality backlink. And you can never get it back. I’ve seen that happen. And that’s scary.

Robin Heppell:

Yes. So and, and it’s just, again, not understanding the like the whole business and, and the uniqueness of a funeral home website versus some like a lawyer website. Right. So, or an accountant website. So, here are three professional services in town, but two of those websites are very similar and this other one is this huge community service that gets Yes. 1,000 times the traffic. And the

Casey Stanton:

That’s fascinating considering the funeral service though. Funeral website, as, as the funeral home website is more of a community service. I think that that’s very unique. You think of a law firm and what they, that’s not a community service,

Robin Heppell:

No people aren’t checking there on a regular. No, one’s waking up and logging into the <laugh> the local.

Casey Stanton:

Yes.

Robin Heppell:

Exactly. So, Yes, it’s we, we find this in the kind of the last thing, and this is more on the Google ads side of it is because of all this traffic for obituaries, we’ve had some clients say like we’re spending all this money with this company on, on, Google ads and we’re getting no business and right. I look, and they’re like, they’re bidding on obituary. Like they’re bidding on the word obituary because Google will tell you to suggest like, they suggested, well, Casey, no, this is even worse.

Casey Stanton:

Broad match. Yes.

Robin Heppell:

Yes, exactly. So funeral, cremation, cemetery and obituary are all synonymous now. So we heavily rely on negative keywords to you’d have to either way, because it’s just a, it’s a nightmare. So which keeps us in business. Right. Because, and, and it’s now hard for the, do it yourself or to, to do, do it for themselves. Right. So it’s overtime and again, us really knowing, knowing the business that can help them out. And it’s not like we’re any more expensive than, than using a, a local marketing company. We just, we just know more. And there’s always the argument of, oh, well we would just want a fresh approach. Well, okay. You can maybe get a fresh approach from, from a company. But when, when it comes down to the, like the mechanics of marketing for funeral services, they’re not going to be able to compete or have anywhere near the knowledge that like my, someone like me that would bring as a fractional CMO.

Casey Stanton:

Yes, totally. Absolutely. And you, you’re not even talking about short-term knowledge that you put together in the last few years, you’re talking about generational knowledge and experience and tact and, and everything. Awesome. So let, let’s pull this stool a close. So I feel like I’ve learned a ton here. I love talking about this stuff because it’s like, I don’t want to call it dark. Right. But it’s just, it’s just not out in the open. No one talks about this stuff. And folks that run funeral homes need support. They need to grow their business. They’re not going to publicly share their revenue. Like some startups would or something like that, right? Like that’s, that’s not appropriate, but they still have the same needs. They’re still feeding their family. They’re still serving their community. They still need the same level of business development and strategy around growth.

And it’s awesome that you’re coming from just kind of a history of that. You’ve got this pedigree of undertaker all the way through to like digital marketer, all supporting folks through this. And it feels like, I mean, to me, it’s unique. I think I know a lot of people in marketing and you’re the only person I know here. And you’re at the top. You’re the number one. That’s why you have the website funeral cmo.com. And you offered folks here. You mentioned that I could, I could share this that if anyone’s interested in growing their funeral home if you’re, they’re looking for a CMO in the funeral space that you’d be open to a 25-minute call and they can book that at https://FuneralCMO.com/call, that’s FuneralCMO.com/call.

Rob, this has been awesome. I mean when, when I just think of like funeral homes, I just think like all the facts I have in my mind, they all come from you. So I’m really grateful for the time today, man.

Robin Heppell:

Well I’m, I’m glad to help and thanks for the opportunity, Casey.

Casey Stanton:

Yes, absolutely. All right. Take care. Okay. You too. See

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