Page A6 march 2023 FUNERAL HOME & CEMETERY NEWS Se c t i on A www.vischerfuneralsupplies.com Caver Funeral Home, Detroit MI, recently took delivery of a 2022 Platinum Master Coach and Limousine from American Coach Sales of Cleveland, OH. Pictured are Linda Thompson and Johnell Caver Sr. Mr. Caver is the owner of Caver Memorial Funeral Home in Detroit and Johnell Caver Your Home for Funeral in Lake Wales, FL. Both funeral homes are active in their state’s funeral director’s association and believe each family deserves professional service with a personal touch. 888-321-6613 Connect with Baby Boomers on End-of-Life Issues with the Before I Die Festival in a Box™ Gail Rubin ALBUQUERQUE,NM— Funeral directors and cemeterians who want to generate pre-need sales can learn how to hold an end-of-life conversation-starting event with the Before I Die Festival in a Box™ by Gail Rubin, Certified Thanatologist and The Doyenne of Death®. The book and additional materials will be released March 15, 2023. “Before I Die Festivals provide unique and innovative ways to entertain while educating about end-of-life issues, to get people to plan for our 100% mortality rate,” said Rubin. Using behind-the-scenes tours, activities, games, speakers, and other outside-the-box activities, Before I Die Festivals offer thought-provoking content within memorable and life-affirming events. The Before I Die Festival in a Box shows how to draw potential clients to a funeral home or cemetery without having to experience the death of a loved one. The book’s contents offer ways a go; A four-DVD set of the TV interview series hosted by Rubin, A Good Goodbye: Funeral Planning for Those Who Don’t Plan to Die; Death Cafe ground rules and information sheet for participants; Bare Bones Checklist to help collect information for an Upon My Death letter; Plus, one hour of consulting time with author Gail Rubin, who has coordinated multiple Before I Die Festivals. The Before I Die Festival in a Box package is available only at www.BeforeIDieFestivals.com. The paperback book alone (ISBN 979-8-9868388-0-9), as well as an eBook version (ISBN 979-89868388-1-6), will be available separately through online retailers. The publisher is Light Tree Press. Author Gail Rubin, CT, is a pioneering death educator who uses humor, film clips and outside-the-box activities to prompt people to plan for end-of-life issues. She is a Certified Funeral Celebrant, an award-winning author and speaker, funeral industry journalist, and host of a podcast and TV series. She was one of the first people to hold a Death Cafe in the United States and has coordinated Before I Die Festivals for many years. Learn more at www.AGoodGoodbye.com. festival can help connect with boomers and younger generations, get positive local news coverage, and sell services before a family needs them. The book includes: how to find festival sponsors and partners; a step-by-step marketing plan for your festival; ways to generate publicity and draw event attendees; entertaining movies and TV programs that also educate about pre-need planning; and how to collect warm leads from festival attendees. The Before I Die Festival in a Box includes these conversation-starting tools in addition to the book: Newly-Dead® The Game playing cards and instructions for Couples and Singles, as well as Newly-Dead Bin- @Nomis.Publications Like us on Like ByWelton Hong Going into the new year with an out-of-date website is bad for deathcare digital marketing performance. It’s not just a faux pas, like wearing last season’s pants this winter. It’s a costly error that could leave you without potential clientele as consumers find your competition online before they find you. Stay competitive online in 2023 by taking some time to update your deathcare or funeral home website. If you keep up with your site and spend some time updating it each quarter, this type of maintenance isn’t even a huge resource draw. Start with some of these tips: Ensure Your Site Is Mobile-Friendly By now, you should have a mobile-friendly website. It’s been almost four years since Google announced its mobile-first indexing initiative in 2019. This initiative, which Google still follows, uses the mobile version of websites when evaluating pages for ranking purposes. If your site isn’t mobile-friendly, it may not be indexed at all. Even if it is, your pages might not show up high in search results because Google is penalizing them for not working well for mobile users. How can you check that your site is mobile-friendly? Start by navigating to it on your own mobile device. How does it look? Can you easily move around the menus and pages, or do you have to resort to zoom shenanigans just to read the text or see the images? Those are your first signs that a site isn’t ideal for mobile users—consider checking your site on several types and sizes of screens to ensure it works well for most people. Look for Ways to Address Accessibility Your page must support more than traditional desktop and mobile users. Accessibility is a growing requirement for users and search engine ranking, so always consider how all people might interact with your pages. Some easy ways to make content on your site more accessible in 2023 include: • Adding alt text to images. Not everyone can see images in the same way (or at all). Adding alt text that describes the content of an image lets people read a text version or use screen readers to hear audio explanations of media on a page. • Create custom user experience options. When possible, make it easy for visitors to your site to change font size and other elements, such as background colors, to make things easier to engage with. • Take care with color and font choices. Consider the user-friendliness of your design choices. Dark fonts on a dark background are a nuisance for almost anyone, but red fonts on a green background can be especially difficult for those with color blindness, for example. Check All Links and Other Clickable Functions Do some regular housekeeping by checking that all the functions on your site actually work. If someone likes what they read about your preplanning services and clicks to make an appointment, they might not follow through if the link doesn’t work. Google “dead link checker” or “broken link checker” to find free tools that let you check all the links on your site with a few clicks of your mouse. You should also regularly What Should You Update on Your Deathcare Website? Powerhouse Marketing with Welton put contact us forms and other interactive elements on your site to the test. Have someone from your business try to use these forms in the same way potential clientele would, thus ensuring they work correctly. Update Your Content with New Keywords Keywords don’t hold the same SEO power forever. That’s because they’re based on trends related to how people are searching for information at a specific time. For something like funeral preplanning services, the keywords probably won’t change drastically from year to year. However, new keyword research can uncover tweaks you might make to the keywords for optimal performance. It can also help you understand how searcher intent may have changed since you wrote a blog post or landing page and whether there are new common questions you can answer in your content. Welton Hong is the founder of Ring Ring Marketing® and a leading expert in creating case generation from online to the phone line. He is the author of Making Your Phone Ring with Internet Marketing for Funeral Homes. For more information, visit www.FuneralHomeProfits.com. F U N E R A L H O M E & C E M E T E R Y N E W S w w w . N o m i s P u b l i c a t i o n s . c o m Monthly Columnsonline at
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