Yesterday’s announcement that Tributes.com was acquired by Legacy.com just screwed thousands of funeral homes.
Look, I get business and I understand why Tributes.com took the big money over staying the course and accomplishing the mission by forever changing the way funeral homes published obituaries.
Over the years Tributes.com has been thrown into the same nasty pit with Legacy.com (who in my opinion is doing absolutely nothing to better funeral service) when obituary conversations come up and they have spent many years trying to explain to the funeral profession as to why they are different then Legacy.com. They didn’t want to be considered evil like Legacy.com.
Need proof? Here is an interview we did with John Heald, VP of Tributes.com and funeral home owner. John talks about the value of Tributes.com and how they are building a solid obituary platform by partnering with funeral homes not hindering them. John talks in-depth about the goal of Tributes.com and how proud he is that Tributes.com is changing the game by partnering with funeral homes.
Fast-forward 3 years to today and now those funeral homes who bought into the goal of Tributes.com and partnered with Tributes.com just got railed because Tributes.com sold to the devil.
It’s a huge win for Tributes.com but a total punch in the stomach for funeral homes.
Here is how Legacy.com works:
From my understanding it goes something like this; funeral home/director spends multiple hours crafting an obituary with family – family pays $400 to have obituary published in newspaper – Legacy.com grabs the obituary from the newspaper or serves the obituary to the newspaper depending on arrangement with funeral home – obituary now lives on Legacy.com where they are cashing in on visits to the obituary by displaying distasteful belly fat ads (among other crap) – someone in local community searches Google for the obituary – instead of the local community member visiting the funeral home website to read the obituary, they end up at Legacy.com because Legacy.com has 5 links that appear for the obituary ahead of the funeral home website in Google search results.
One of the main valuables in funeral homes partnering with Tributes.com was that Tributes.com had the ability to appear above Legacy.com in obituary search results – meaning if the funeral home was partnered with Tributes then the funeral home would still get the web traffic when a user click the Tributes.com obituary search result. Guess what happens now? Refer to above where is says, ‘Here is how Legacy.com works’.
If you have a thought or opinion on this issue please leave it in the comments below.
Wanna read all the articles we have published about Legacy.com over the years. Click this link: http://connectingdirectors.com/?s=legacy.com&submit=Search
