Dan Isard

While too many marketing acronyms can make your head spin, strategic relationships should be your focal point for increasing your firm’s market share. Dear Dan, I recently attended a two-day seminar led by “some of the brightest marketing minds.” Between the registration, travel and paying staff to cover my tasks for my time away, this seminar cost me several thousand dollars. I heard about organic marketing, online remarketing and strategic relationships, along with I don’t know how many different phrases that were just random acronyms to me, including BR (bounce rate), BANT (budget authority need timeline), CR (conversion rate) and SEO (search engine optimization). When I returned home, I created my own acronym – WOT, for waste of time. I have two questions: Does any of this stuff work in building a larger market share in the funeral profession, and […]

Ideas for financial stability, operations and marketing require implementation. We operate in a profession where “slow to change” is worn like a badge of honor even though this resistance is an impairment to your business and your profit. Those who propagate new ideas are often ridiculed with the famous phrase, “My families won’t go for that,” which translates to, “I’m uncomfortable with change and I’m not going to try anything new.” The funeral profession is experiencing a steady decline in profitability, and the pressure to be successful is greater than ever before. Interestingly, most notable ideas presented to the funeral profession in recent years have come from suppliers and are product driven. Convention floors are packed with makeover caskets (same thing, different color), expensive autos (which are in decline as much as caskets), urns (buy two, get one free) and widgets that […]

Believe it or not, there are few things I like more than looking at a survey! It’s one of geekdom’s greatest moments. The 2018 NFDA Consumer Awareness and Preferences Survey gives a million dollars’ worth of data and thought-provoking issues at no cost to members. In reviewing this year’s results, I see three key takeaways that should cause all business owners to alter their business model. This report is unique from most polling that takes place for the following two reasons: This study is ongoing; you not only get the impressions of the respondents for the current year, you’re also reminded of previous years’ replies. The commitment NFDA has made is substantial in continuing this analysis (the first versions of the survey were underwritten by FAMIC’s Wirthlin Survey). This isn’t just a survey; it’s an awareness and preferences study. There […]

I think we can all agree that from shifting consumer preferences to declining revenue per call, the funeral profession is facing challenges. Shifting consumer preferences are largely driven by the decline of religious folk and the increase of the “nones” (people that claim no religious affiliation). The culprit responsible for the decline in revenue is funeral home owners and managers’ inability to price services properly, not the “rise in cremation” we are so quick to blame. Funeral homes that serve exclusively along racial, religious or cultural lines have all the before mentioned challenges, plus some different challenges. Often, in large populated areas, we see funeral homes exclusively serving narrow segments of the community. For example, Jewish, African-American, Irish Catholic, Italian Catholic, Hispanic, Asian, and Orthodox Greek funeral homes serve narrow vertical markets. As you can see, even though some of […]

The profession has failed to continue to embrace the purpose of the basic non-declinable services fee. Dear Dan, In the 30 years of being in my family business, I have seen the inside of my competitor’s funeral home three times. They have a bronze plaque inscribed with a quote about the quality of a funeral. I am not sure who said this, but my father thinks it’s a quote from a former longtime executive director of NFDA. We don’t use the same casket company or I would ask the salesman to go over and take a picture of it. And I don’t want to ask my competitor about it because it might make him feel superior to me. I was wondering what you might know of this quote and the person who said it. Dumbfounded in Delaware   Dear Dumbfounded, […]