Customer surveys

September 21, 2020

NFDA Consumer Awareness and Preferences Survey: My 2020 Takeaway

Before I comment on the top slides in the survey I think every funeral director should be focused on, allow me to say that I love the fact that this survey is intentionally trying to be more inclusive. One key point I must assert first is brought about by these changes in survey demographics. The 2020 survey takes into consideration people of wider race and age than ever before. It’s weighting younger this year, with 62.1% of respondents between ages 40 and 54 (compared to 36.1% in 2019 and 23.7% in 2018). The survey is also weighting more diverse. A higher percentage of respondents identified themselves as Hispanic (15.5%, compared to 11.1% in 2019), and fewer identified themselves as white (52.4%, compared to 57.9% in 2019). I also believe that leading to a shift in perceived results is the higher […]
November 5, 2018

Watch Your Profits Skyrocket

Do you understand why your business has a profit? It is simple math. Revenue, minus Cost of Goods Sold, minus Operating Expenses equals Profit. If profit is as simple as a 3 entry math equation, then why have profits declined 60% or more during the past 30 years of the funeral profession? The simple reason is: profit is simple math but analyzing how to maximize profit is complex. OGR has enlisted Dan Isard’s The Foresight Companies to help its members with The Strategic Business Analysis (“SBA”) that requires heavy analysis. The average profit margin of a funeral home is less than 7%. The average Foresight client profit is anywhere from 28% to 32%. The reason is our deductive intelligent tools that help clients understand their operating metrics, set prices and manage their operations to a revenue and profit goal. Now, […]
November 2, 2018

Marketing Your Funeral Home with Making a Profit in Mind

Relationships and reputation are the keys to convincing undecided consumers to choose your funeral home. Make sure your marketing is based on that fact. Funeral service professionals continue to face challenges as consumers shift away from “traditional funerals.” In fact, “traditional funeral” is jargon specific to funeral directors which often evokes misty eyes and wistful thoughts of yesteryear. The reality is that a “traditional funeral” is becoming as extinct as those who continue to use the jargon. Positioning a funeral home in today’s market and educating consumers requires a multifaceted marketing approach. Like it or not, services and products are for sale; there is a price for each and a consumer must choose to make a purchase. Creating the message to attract “buyers” is more important now than ever before. Even though most consumers understand that funeral homes care for […]
October 1, 2018

Too Much Alphabet Soup?

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 […]
September 18, 2018

An Online Respective

Over the past three years, I have led the startup of a company, Funeralocity, which is making inroads into the funeral profession by creating an independent online source to help consumers identify the right funeral home to serve them. After three years of development, we launched in May 2017 in Atlanta. Since then, we have inter- acted with more than 100,000 users. In this article, I will give my perspective on the recently issued NFDA Consumer Awareness and Preferences Survey and contrast it to the 2016 Harris Poll we commissioned. I’ll also share some consumer insights we’ve gained over our year of operation and make some predictions that funeral home owners and managers can use to plan their futures in online marketing. As this is the first time I am sharing this company information with the profession, please let me […]
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