Study Summary
Penland Family Funeral Home is a single-location funeral home in Swannanoa, North Carolina, serving the greater Asheville area. The funeral home offers a broad range of personalized services to the families it serves. While Penland Family Funeral Home is already a popular funeral home in the community, Daniel P. Branson, funeral director at Penland Family Funeral Homes, is always seeking new ways to promote their services to more families in the area.
Capitalizing on the Newspaper Reach
As we cited in our article The Gold Standard, the local newspaper is the best place to reach your community about the news of a death. Print newspapers reach one-third of all people over age 45, and Legacy.com’s newspaper partner sites reach over 22 percent of all individuals over 55 years old (more than twice the internet average). Branson learned about Legacy.com’s Funeral Home Local Spotlight (FHLS) program that was being offered through the Asheville Citizen-Times. The easy-to-implement program showcases the funeral home’s brand and services in the most relevant place in their community – their local newspaper’s obituary home page. In April 2017, Penland Family Funeral Home signed up for FHLS. The premier placement on the Asheville Citizen-Times’ obituary section home page increased the funeral home’s exposure significantly.
“The Asheville Citizen-Times is the first place a lot of people in our community look for obituaries. By promoting our funeral home on the website’s home page, we’ve already seen an increase in traffic to our site.”
Liz Hamilton-Ferrand

Funeral Assistant, Penland Family Funeral Home

Funeral Home Local Spotlight is not solely a prominent placement on the newspaper’s obituary home page; it also gives participating funeral homes the most prominent brand positioning on the obituary page itself, drives users to the funeral home’s pre-planning page, and shares revenue from flowers sales back to the funeral home. Families benefit from the Local Spotlight program as well: They receive a premium obituary with no ads, making this program a win-win scenario for both the funeral homes and the families they serve.
“Funeral Home Local Spotlight doesn’t just benefit us; it allows us to best serve the families we work with. Families love the ad-free experience and prominent placement on the newspaper site.”
Liz Hamilton-Ferrand

Funeral Assistant, Penland Family Funeral Home

Penland Family Funeral Home Increases Brand Exposure
One of Funeral Home Local Spotlight’s biggest benefits is the additional branding and exposure it gives to the participating funeral home and its obituaries. In the first full month post-launch, Penland Family Funeral Home saw 127 percent more impressions than they saw on average per month before joining the Spotlight program. With over 40 million visitors a month and ranked as a top-50 domain in the U.S. by Quantcast, the Legacy Network is the No. 1 destination for people looking for obituaries and funeral service information. Take advantage of this highly targeted position by promoting your services to more families in your community. To learn more about the program features and benefits, click here.

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