10 Funeral Home Marketing Ideas You Shouldn’t Overlook in 2027

A successful marketing strategy builds on the work you already do. The same instincts that make you a great funeral director make for great marketing. For a stellar 2027, your marketing strategy should put people first and make every part of the experience, from that first call to your website, feel simple and effortless.

Below are 10 funeral home marketing ideas your team should consider implementing in 2027.

Put People First, Not Products

“People are your best advertisement.” Sure, you’ve heard it again and again, but what do the numbers say? McKinsey found that 76% of consumers are frustrated by a lack of an individualized experience. This principle is all the more relevant to mortuary marketing and funeral home marketing strategies.

NFDA’s 2026 Consumer Awareness and Preferences Study found that 75.9% of people would still contact a funeral director directly if a death occurred today. People aren’t looking to be replaced by a form; they’re looking for someone who sees and understands them.

You can put people first by:

• Keeping important functional labels clear for navigation while incorporating empathetic copy in other visible locations. 
• Keeping a running log of family feedback, specifically what made them feel seen, and what didn’t. Real comments are the best tool for shaping your marketing.

Bronson & McNamara Memorial Home does a great job of incorporating empathic and thoughtful language.

Focus on the Family Experience

The easier you make things for a grieving family, the better. However, “easier” doesn’t mean sacrificing a people-first approach. It means less repetition and mitigating potential pain points. 

That being said, many families still end up giving the same information three or four times: on the phone, again at the arrangement conference, again on a paper form, etc. That repetition can be frustrating, even under less stressful circumstances.

The best way to market the ease of your proven process is to ensure every part of it is optimized for families. We have a few practical tips for you:

• Offer a Digital Planning Portal: Many case management platforms already offer one. Find a family portal tool that lets you tailor the planning process on a case-by-case basis, since every family is different.
• Name Your Conveniences Directly: If you have an online form, virtual arrangement options, etc., make sure these selling points are clearly visible to customers.
• Show, Don’t Tell: A short video walking through what a first call or an arrangement conference actually looks like removes a lot of anxiety.

Make Your Website Functional

Your website is where a family gets a first impression the majority of the time. According to NFDA’s 2026 study, 66.4% of consumers look at websites to find more information, whether they’re looking for contact information or more details on your funeral home and services.

Within the same study, it was found that over 80% of consumers are more likely to engage with a funeral home that has general pricing information accessible online. The FTC’s Funeral Rule already requires you to hand a General Price List to anyone who asks in person, so posting it online is an easy next step toward the transparency families want.

Rather than getting caught up in the details, focus on the big picture: what does your user experience look like? How can you resolve this? We have a few suggestions.

• Connect with Gather: Our team will migrate your historical obituaries and  build you a  free, mobile-focused websites with a strong SEO and AEO foundation.
• Audit Your Website Flow: Walk through the process of finding key information, such as contact information, pricing, and product offerings. Ask questions such as: How long did it take to find this? Is the path of information logical?
• Audit Your Website Responsiveness: Review your website on mobile and desktop. Is your site optimized for both?
• Feature Social Proof Creatively: Consider adding social proof in different formats outside of just Google Reviews
• Invoke a Sense of Community: Regularly host and post community events and highlights.
• Highlight More Local Resources Beyond Conventional Grief  Resources:. This is a great way to build more local authority, stronger partnerships, and future backlinks for your own website!
• Focus on a World-Class Obituary Experience: Too many websites offer the same obituary experience, and families notice those details. Tailor each obituary page in a way that uniquely honors each loved one’s life. And be sure to track the data on your average number of engagements per obituary (photos, memories, and more). 

Set Up Online Listings and Generate Reviews

The classic yellow phonebook: everyone remembers it, but very few people still use it. As we’ve discussed above, more families nowadays are searching for local funeral homes through online channels, including free online business listings like:

• Google Business Profile
• Apple Maps and Yelp
• Bing

When you set up these business listings, you allow your customers and their families to leave reviews, visit your website, and even contact you directly. The more reviews your business collects, the higher the probability that your business will be discovered online by other families. Plus, with new tools like Apple Maps Ads, more reviews can make all the difference in whether someone clicks on your funeral home instead of your competitor down the road.

Aurora Funeral services has a great testimonials page, featuring numerous positive reviews.

Connect With Families Through Social Media

While many people in your community use Google on a daily basis, they also use social media. Facebook, Instagram, and many other social platforms have proven to attract enormous audiences. For example, NFDA’s 2026 study found that 37.5% of consumers have used the services of a funeral home they found on Facebook.

Many businesses leverage free-to-use platforms like Canva to help generate content. We recommend that your team create a simple content calendar to help manage your social media.

Partner With Other Local Businesses

Partnering with local businesses can be a valuable strategy for a funeral home to strengthen its community presence, boost referrals, and provide additional support to grieving families. Here are some ways a funeral home could collaborate with other local businesses (for other partnership opportunities read here!):

• Florists and Floral Shops: Forge partnerships with local florists to provide floral arrangements for funeral services. Offering package deals or discounts for combined funeral and floral services can be mutually beneficial.
• Hospices and Healthcare Providers: Establish connections with hospices and healthcare providers to offer grief support services. Providing information on grief counseling and support groups can be valuable for families dealing with loss. Plus, hospices and healthcare providers can serve as an extra referral touchpoint for more locals to become aware of your services.

The Natural Funeral takes a B2B approach with TerraCare, a partner program that equips other funeral homes to offer terramation to their own families.

Create a Referral Program

If you’re delivering an exceptional experience to every family you serve, it may be time for your business to establish a referral program. This is an easy way for your team to offer incentives or discounts for any referred business and encourage satisfied families to make more people aware of your funeral home or crematory.

For example, Gather offers a referral program to our funeral home and crematory customers. It is set up more for B2B interactions instead of B2C, but you could create something similar for your business and customers.

Focus on Video Content

Yes, it’s scary to put yourself in front of a camera and create video content, but the statistics show that it’s time for businesses to double down. 78% of marketing professionals report that videos have increased sales for their businesses.

The best part? The equipment is already at your fingertips if you have a newer phone and a simple lapel microphone. You simply need to create a video content calendar, dedicate time to producing the videos, and post the content where your community needs to see it.

Bonus: Google Search Ads are expensive, but YouTube Ads have an average cost-per-view of around $0.03. This may be a route for your business to consider, too.

Explore Email Marketing

Leverage your funeral or cremation management software to create a report of email addresses or contacts that have opted to receive communications from your business.

Based on reports you create, you can utilize an email marketing tool such as Mailchimp or Constant Contact to build targeted lists for email marketing campaigns to help promote services like pre-need planning, promote community outreach events, or even promote multi-functional event spaces at your funeral home.

In fact, we’ve created 5 free pre-need email marketing templates that you can start using today.

Invest in Professional Photography

For only $200 to $300, you can invest in professional photos of your staff, facilities, and equipment. While it may seem like a small thing, this investment can have a mighty impact on your business success.

For example, in the real estate industry, listings that include professional photography sell 32% faster than those that don’t, and 83% of buyers say that pictures are very important in helping them select a house.

Haughey Funeral Home has a beautiful Funeral Home and landscape that makes for a great front page picture.

The same goes for your funeral home! If you offer quality services but the photos on your website are poor, you’re going to lose the trust of families and community members who visit your website.

Bonus: you can utilize your new professional photos in other marketing materials, such as business cards, social media posts, email marketing graphics, brochures, business listings, and much more – so the ROI is there in case your accountant asks!

Boost Elements of Your Funeral Home Marketing Strategy With Gather

At Gather, we pride ourselves on helping funeral homes with tasks that may seem impossible. Not only do we boost funeral home marketing with our integrated websites and interactive Remember Pages, but we also provide the profession’s simplest and most effective case management platform. When you pair great funeral home marketing with even better case management, you enrich the lives of everyone around you: your team, your families, your community, and yourself.

We love funeral directors, and this one’s on us! Learn more about Gather’s free websites, or connect with our team to talk through what’s possible for your funeral home this year.