Do you ever feel as if you are being pulled in too many directions? As a funeral home director, you are first and foremost a grief counselor whose job it is to initiate the grieving process for your clients by creating a meaningful funeral service that embodies the life of their loved one. You have to also be a guide to lay out the steps they need to take to make all the funeral arrangements. You have to be a motivator to get them moving to complete all these tasks on time, and finally you are a salesperson who runs your own business.
It takes time and energy to do all this day in and day out. Sometimes, with all the “people” responsibilities you have to do, certain critical aspects of your business may be regrettably shoved to the side.
Selling More than Caskets
To keep your funeral home business viable, you need to be selling. Obviously, the caskets and urns are your big ticket items, along with funeral services on your premises. You, however, also need to be actively selling much more than these items. You must sell your funeral home brand. The individual components that make up your business are all tied up in how your community and future clients perceive you and your funeral home. What are you doing to transform the traditionally negative image of funeral homes into that of a positive care provider? What you offer is as vital emotionally and psychologically as what any other kind of mental health facilitator provides. But how many people are aware of this aspect of your funeral home?
Enrich the Impression You Make
Your funeral home’s image is the key. The more things you can do to proactively promote a sense of comfort, peace, understanding, support, and, yes, even convenience, the more open potential clients will be to trusting your judgment and expertise when they are faced with a death in the family. Most people abruptly select funeral homes. They may have passed yours on the way to work, or may call the funeral home that a relative had used. More often, they decide by doing a variation of covering their eyes, and dropping a finger on an open phone book. To avoid being the victim of Russian Roulette, your funeral home must become a household name like Kenmore or Sony.
If it’s been a while since you’ve updated your website, Google it to see where it appears on the local search page. It should show up near the top. If it is hard to find, have your web developer check your keywords and tweak the wording of that listing so that it makes your funeral home stand out from the others. Go to your website and pretend that you are someone who is desperately trying to find the right funeral home. What kind of impression does yours make? People immediately respond either positively or negatively to colors, photos, and text. Dismal browns, grays, and even certain blues are too depressing. People consider death depressing enough without being reminded that this is a funeral home website. Instead aim for uplifting colors and gentle hues, along with peaceful, heartwarming photos of landscapes and people. Keep your text short, and to the point. Important details get lost in long paragraphs on websites. Instead, break up long passages into shorter paragraphs with spaces in between. It’s better to have more pages than to force visitors to keep scrolling down, down, down.
With a creative and informative website, you will be able to portray yourself and your funeral home in a way that tells people that you are here to help them, provide encouragement and support throughout this difficult time. Here is where you can also introduce all the other services and funeral-related items that you offer and sell. If your site is well organized, potential clients will appreciate the convenience of having everything at their fingertips, from obituary templates to flowers arrangements, to a list of what to do when. If you have photos of you and your staff on your About Us page, clients will feel as if they already know you when they walk in the door and will be ready to let you guide them through all the preparations.
Ways to Brand your Funeral Home
When it comes to branding your funeral home, the best approach is to use a combination of old and new. Send out colorful postcards, direct mail coupons or place ads or a flier in the local newspaper, targeting a different segment of your community each time. Seeing your funeral home logo with an appealing photo of the inside or outside of your building and a brief list of your services will let people who don’t ride past your funeral home on the way to work become familiar with your business. Send out a community newsletter with articles and thoughtful quotes that appeal to most everyone. Reserve a small portion of one page for your blog and website URL. The more often people see your funeral home name and logo, the more likely they will come to you when they need your services.
Don’t forget to be creative. Invite your local florist to hold a flower arranging class at your funeral home, or have a photographer demonstrate how to take great photos for family photo albums. As more people feel that they can come by any time, your funeral home will begin to feel like part of the community to them.
With newer tools like Facebook and Twitter, you will be able to sell your funeral home brand even more effectively. It may even become a household word. Use Pinterest to post pictures of obituary styles, flower arrangements, and a funeral arranging handbook. Another great social media venue is PaperlessPost, which lets you send cards electronically by email. This opens up a wide variety of promotional options.
With time-saving, cost-saving and effort-saving business marketing tools like these, you can concentrate on caring for your clients, knowing that much of the business side of your business is almost on autopilot, reaching potential clients 24/7.
