As the year 2015 progresses, we are most certain to see how new technologies for online marketing will unfold. There is also one thing that is certain: Most of the technologies, tools, and trends that we have already been using for online marketing within the past five years or so haven’t changed that much.

If you’re just starting out with your online funeral marketing efforts, or if you’re looking for ways to jumpstart your campaigns this year, check out some of the tools that you should use, or may have already used and should use some more.

Curation tools for content marketing

Content is still king, but people are changing the ways they consume content online. Some types of content are now much more preferred than others, such as video. Content should be the centerpiece of every online marketing campaign, even for funeral marketing. But the tough thing about content creation is that it’s sometimes difficult to keep track of the relevant content to provide your web visitors. But there are tools out there that you can use, such as Kapost, Percolate, and Curata. You can also talk to us about helping you populate your website with relevant content.

Content distribution

There are lots of ways to distribute your content for wider exposure and SEO value, like posting your videos on YouTube and doing guest posting on other funeral blogs to share your expertise in the funeral and cremation industry. These are for free, but there are also premium services that allow you to get more targeted results. Some of these tools include Hootsuite, Oktopost, and Sendible.

Integrated management tools for Content, SEO, and Social Media

We can’t do everything at once when it comes to optimizing our website’s content, back links, and social media efforts. If only there’s a tool out there that will help us organize and automate all these. But there are existing tools out there that help us simplify how we do our online marketing efforts. These tools include Raven Tools, Moz, and Analytics SEO.

Tools for user engagement

It’s important to see how our campaigns engage our intended audience. How do client families find your website? How does your content engage them? How do they use your website to find the right funeral or cremation service they are looking for. What devices do they use to find your funeral website? It’s important to know all these so we can better optimize our website and provide even more value to them. Google Analytics can provide you with insights that will help you improve user engagement, and there are other tools that offer more, such as Chartbeat, Ecommera (if you have an ecommerce integrated into your website), Mixpanel, and Kissmetrics.

Improving user experience

Poor conversion is born out of poor user experience. A funeral website that fails in the user-friendly department will very likely see a drop in ranking for high bounce rate, a drop in web traffic, and ultimately a drop in sales. That is why it’s important to analyze how optimized your funeral website is, first for user experience, and for conversion. You can use Optimizely, Sitecore, Adobe Customer Experience Manager, and Visual Website Optimizer. Or you can also take advantage of our web development service to help you organize your conversion and user experience optimization.

Ecommerce optimization

At Funeral Results Marketing, we can help you optimize merchandising on your funeral or cremation website. We offer tools that provide you with insights on customer behavior, engagement, and conversion. You can learn more about it here.

There are lots of other tools that you can use to help you get more organized with your funeral and cremation marketing efforts this year that we would like to talk to you about. If there’s anything that we can assist you with, let’s talk today. Call us at (800) 810-3595.