Paul Tomes, co-founder of Tributes.To, shares how Funeral Directors can easily make use of free online resources to promote their business. youtu.be/HhzFFkuxZr4 If you prefer you can watch it at tributes.to/how-much-free-advertising-are-you-missing-out-on/ Start of Transcript: Hi I am Paul Tomes, founder of Tributes To, and I help Funeral Directors master big business thinking and technology to help improve the experience of their client families, their staff, increase their income and importantly protect their legacy. Thanks for choosing to come back. I'm thrilled at the buzz the first video created. I have received a load of personal emails and spent a lot of time responding. If you haven't received a reply yet, please do keep an eye on your inbox, I will definitely write back in the next day or so. Seeing and hearing the challenges you face, and the benefits you are already experiencing motivates me even further. I am encouraged by how many people found this valuable and I can start to see and feel your excitement. I can also sense there may be a little nervousness, doubt and questioning on how this all fits into what you're doing today. You might be wondering whether you really need to worry or bother with all of this stuff. One of the things I hear is "This isn't relevant to me. This isn't relevant to the Funeral business". or "This isn't relevant to our little town. We are different" Well I have to tell you. It is relevant You know only too well that as an Independent Funeral Director your professional goal is, and always will be, to provide comprehensive and compassionate customer services to those in your community who call upon you in the darkest moments of their lives. Our business goal is to earn a living, provide for your staff and maintain a sustainable legacy for your next generation. These goals are not going anywhere, and they are not mutually exclusive. If our goals remain the same then what is changing? You or someone on your staff probably remember the days when it was simple enough to provide 24 hours service, ample parking, a well maintained Funeral Home and shiny up to date vehicle fleet. While those things are important, the needs of our client families are changing and today's consumer are demanding significantly more from you. Think about the changes in your own community. Think back to the days when you knew your neighbours, where you could leave your doors unlocked, where milk was delivered to your door everyday and where you wouldn't ever worry about the kids walking the streets alone. People talked to each other. We'd stop each other in the street to say hello and find out the latest gossip. We'd wait to get home to read the local newspaper or watch the TV for all the news. Samantha Fox was in the sun. We would even use the Yellow Pages and look forward to the next updated tome arriving in 6 months time. I even remember my Dad excitedly showing me his first pager in the early 1980's.. and proudly telling me that if I called a certain number, left a message and assuming he was within a 1 mile radius he would get my message within 30 minutes and then if he could find a payphone he could call me back. Yes that pager is now in the science museum alongside my ZX Spectrum and even my first Ericsson mobile phone. It's quite amazing to think that today's youth have never seen an audio casette, a video cassette for that matter, a telephone with a wire, and for anybody with teenage kids you know they prefer to text and email each other rather than speak - even if they are in the same room. Today's community is different. Today's community doesn't communicate the same way we used to. Whether we like it or not. Behaviours have changed. Word of mouth today means WhatsApp, Facebook, Google, Twitter, YouTube, FaceTime. OK, so maybe you are still saying "Yeah, got that. But that only applies to the youth and definitely doesn't apply to something as sensitive as Funeral planning" Think again Here's a graph directly from Google. This shows the relative popularity of a search term since 2004. A rising line means the search term is being used over time and a decreasing line means it is getting used less over time, as a relative term to other searches. What's the search term here? "Funeral Directors". This doesn't even show the massive exponential rise in people searching online over the last decade it's just showing the relative popularity of the term. Look Funeral Directors is becoming a fair more popular search term. Which means more people are trying to find you online. And when they find you, you want to make sure that the impression is as good as if they walked through your Funeral Home door... if not better. OK, so rather than trends let's talk numbers. How many times do you think Funeral Directors was a search term in England last month? 110,000! cont'd.....

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