A Guide To Simple, Affordable Marketing for Funeral Directors

August 2025

Marketing your business as a funeral director and acquiring new customers has become increasingly challenging in recent years, especially with the rapidly changing ways that popular search engines like Google and traditional marketing options operate.

The Farewell Guide has put together a marketing guide for local, independent funeral directors to help them stay visible and get new business for years to come.

Keep reading to learn more about:

Marketing challenges faced by funeral directors.

Why search engines are no longer enough for marketing your funeral director business.

How The Farewell Guide helps funeral directors with marketing and customer acquisition.

How to join The Farewell Guide and get started.

Marketing Challenges Faced by Funeral Directors

We at The Farewell Guide understand how challenging marketing can be as an independent funeral director. As an independent business you have to contend with rising advertising costs, rapidly evolving technology, and unfavourable algorithms - all affecting your bottom line. Many local funeral directors are facing these difficulties when marketing their business:

Google and search engines are no longer effective marketing tools for independent funeral directors.

Google was, until recently, a wonderful marketing tool for businesses as the search engine would rank your website in their search results based on relevance and merit. Potential customers would be able to find your business by simply searching “funeral director in my area”. However a huge shift has taken place as funeral directors with much bigger advertising budgets can pay more to have their websites featured in Google result rankings. These big funeral director companies are chains with millions of pounds to spend like Co-op Funeralcare, Dignity, Funeral Partners and Pure Cremation.

The impact of AI.

Search engines have integrated AI in their technology. When a customer searches for a local funeral director what pops up is an information-heavy article that the AI has come up with by scouring several different websites. Users have found this information to be sometimes irrelevant or factually incorrect, and the AI tool may not point users to your website at all. The unreliable nature of AI-powered search engines is resulting in fewer clicks for independent funeral director websites.

Traditional advertising can be expensive.

Advertising in newspapers, outdoor, radio or TV can be expensive for independent funeral directors who may have a limited budget. Other marketing tools like newsletters or social media marketing like creating reels and posts on TikTok and Instagram can be time consuming and may not guarantee new business.

How The Farewell Guide Helps Funeral Directors with Marketing and New Customer Acquisition

The Farewell Guide champions local, independent funeral directors and provides an easy-to-use platform for funeral directors to advertise their funeral services and be seen by millions of potential customers.

The Farewell Guide lets you focus on what you do best.

The Farewell Guide is your ideal marketing partner for two main reasons:

We have a free funeral planning tool (https://www.thefarewellguide.co.uk/funeral-plan) to help people arrange a funeral, input their end-of-life wishes, upload important documents, and plan their budget.

We provide a funeral director comparison tool that seamlessly allows users to match with a local, independent funeral director that suits their budget and requirements.

This leaves you to focus on what you do best, which is provide exemplary funeral services to your customers without worrying about unnecessary marketing costs or strategy.

The Farewell Guide invests millions of pounds in marketing for our funeral directors.

The Farewell Guide’s multi-million pound nationwide TV campaign (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sn3xNC4etc8) with UKTV and their seven linear channels - Dave, W, Gold, Alibi, Drama, Yesterday, and Eden - went live in July 2024. The TV campaign had an estimated viewership of 25 million people across the UK(https://www.thefarewellguide.co.uk/the-farewell-guide-and-uktv-advert-goes-live).

We have also run radio and outdoor campaigns - you’ll be seeing The Farewell Guide ads on buses soon! We’ve spent hundreds of thousands on Google Ads and SEO where we consistently rank in the top search results to millions of Google users. All of this investment in marketing directly benefits our funeral directors.

We provide consumer support.

We have a support centre (https://www.thefarewellguide.co.uk/support-and-advice) where consumers and funeral directors can find helpful and supportive guides, resources and articles. Consumers can also contact us directly to address grievances.

We don’t use or sell your data to third party brokers.

Some platforms such as Funeral Guide and Local Funerals have been known to track your customers using website cookies to sell their own products. They also use funeral directors’ names to upsell to consumers.

We are an independent guide - not owned by a large corporation.

The Farewell Guide is an independent guide focused purely on supporting consumers looking to arrange a funeral and local, independent funeral directors.

The Farewell Guide receives great press coverage.

Our website gets high traffic.

Thefarewellguide.co.uk has more than 200,000 visitors every month, putting your business in front of potentially thousands of new customers.

We have more victors than any other Funeral site in the UK.

Let Us Help You: Sign Up or Claim Your Profile for Free

It’s completely free to list your business on The Farewell Guide and get started. Visit our Funeral Director Portal here (https://www.thefarewellguide.co.uk/funeral-directors) where you can learn more about getting listed, membership packages, request a demo, manage clients, expand your online presence, and showcase your business.

Want to speak with our expert call us on 01270 447774 and we can talk you through the benefits of partnering with The Farewell Guide.

Need extra support to sign up? Contact us directly here (https://www.thefarewellguide.co.uk/funeral-directors-contact) and a team member will assist you shortly.