How WordPress can help Funeral Homes and Cremation Providers

Rob shares the back story of why he chose WordPress to be the CMS (Content Management System) for all of the funeral home marketing websites and cremation arrangement websites that he and his team have created. He also gives a brief history of WordPress and how its features can help funeral homes create a powerful online marketing tool for their firms. For more information about Funeral Results Marketing, checkout our Funeral Home Website section, Cremation Arrangement section or Digital Marketing Services section on our website or contact Rob at [e-mail] or at 1-800-810-3595. Fact Check: Rob referred to the creator of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg as a billionaire but at the time of the recording, his net worth is estimated at $450 Million and he is from Houston, Texas, not Austin, Texas. See the complete transcript here: Rob Heppell: Welcome back to the Funeral X Podcast. I'm Robin Heppell and I'm joined with my Funeral Results Marketing business partner, Jake Johnson. Hey there, Jake. Jake Johnson: Hey Rob. Rob Heppell: Hey, that was a fun little walk down memory lane there about the beginnings of Funeral Results Marketing and where it kind of all started. A number of times we kept talking about WordPress and I think it's a good topic to just dive into a little bit more for folks who haven't heard of WordPress or what it is and how it can be used for funeral homes and cemeteries and cremation providers. Jake Johnson: Yep, I agree. I learned a lot, just things that I... There are things that we discussed that I had known in connection with our relationship and the things that you do, and then I learned a lot about the other things that filled in to make Funeral Results Marketing what it is. Yes, you're right. We talked about WordPress and I've got a little experience in WordPress but I'm pretty sure you've got a lot more. So I'd love to hear you dive into that more. I think it's a valuable topic for people here. Rob Heppell: Sure. Well, yes. Looking back at the last time we chatted, I had got into the funeral home websites early, like in '96 with McCalls. And then in the early 2000s, met up with Todd Abrams from Aldor Solutions in Texas. So I started to really get into how websites were getting developed and that tenure lasted to 2006. And then I took a bit of a break from website development and I reached out to a local marketer guy, his name's Tris Hussey. He was the one that introduced me to WordPress. I said that we had the three options, Joomla, Drupal and WordPress, and he nudged me towards WordPress, and thankfully he did. But it was more of the marketing platform compared to the other two content management systems. Rob Heppell: At that time, I realized that, hey, this is really search engine friendly and Google friendly right out of the box. I thought that it would be a great platform for funeral homes. But at that time, it was still just a blogging platform. It didn't look like a website. And right at that time, there was this little bit of movement of going from a blogging platform to a CMS, a content management system. And really there wasn't anything inside the software of WordPress. It was just how it was applied basically through the themes. I was working with a developer and he introduced me to a couple of theme developers, one guy named Cory Miller from iThemes and Brian Gardner from StudioPress and Genesis. Rob Heppell: These guys are quite well known in the theme development space. I was having conversations, direct conversations with them because I'd be kind of pushing the limits on them like, hey, can't we make it look like a website, can't we create a navigation bar, and working through these little things. So it was kind of neat to be working with these guys. They've gone on to create lots of high-performance WordPress themes, and we'll get into themes in a little bit. And as I mentioned before,