3 Lessons about Funeral Home Video Marketing Learned from YouTube Algorithms

As a funeral home owner, video marketing might not seem like your cup of tea. But with 80 percent of global internet consumption attributed to video content as of this year, it’s a side of the web you can’t afford to ignore.

Which means it’s time to get creative.

Some ideas for death care video content include Q&As with experts from your organization, compassionate messages from your funeral directors or other staff, testimonials from families you’ve served, and virtual tours of products or your location.

Making the video is just the first step. To see marketing value, you have to get people to engage with it online.

Luckily, YouTube is fairly transparent about how things work on its platform. Check out these three tips for scoring big with funeral home video marketing on YouTube:

1. Keywords Matter
Keep tabs on the queries that bring people to your death care content, and place relevant keywords in your video’s title and descriptions. You can also place keywords in video files, image files, and other tags related to the video, as well as the SRT files (transcriptions of your video).

2. Great Images Drive More Clicks
Ensure the thumbnail image that appears for your video in YouTube and search listings is enticing. Don’t just choose a random screenshot from the video; instead, pick something active or engaging. Thumbnails with people (specifically face shots) tend to perform well because people are drawn to human faces. Research indicates posts with human faces on social platforms are 38 percent more likely to receive engagement.

3. Episodic Storytelling Engages
Finally, reel in the fish you caught with your funeral home video marketing by providing more content for them to engage with.

Episodic storytelling—a group of videos that continues the same storyline—perform well on YouTube. They also help build organic trust over time with the audience, making it more likely your YouTube viewers become clientele in the future.

A good example of this might be a series of videos explaining funeral prearrangement, an analysis of veterans’ benefits, or the various options now available for alternate services.

Video marketing doesn’t have to be big budget, and every company has a story to tell. Leverage YouTube to tell yours and engage with potential clientele.