Market Research

Consumers are shifting away from burial toward cremation, so what does that mean for the future of caskets? The answer depends on the lens from which you are viewing the funeral world. As a funeral home owner, the future looks dim for your casket merchandising. The same number of caskets are sold in the U.S. today as compared to 20 years ago, even though we have almost 700,000 more deaths. Today, the mix of caskets is weighted on the 20- and 18-gauge caskets and less expensive woods. Years ago, more expensive metals (bronze, copper and stainless steel) were being sold. If your casket selection for consumers is priced appropriately and your service fees are the emphasis of your pricing, you will have families choose caskets for burial and cremation services. The key is to train your funeral directors to present […]

Financial and operational plans aren’t the only aspects of strategic business planning. Astute owners will also consider marketing. My fear in composing an article on strategic planning is repeating myself. Funny that I don’t have that same fear when telling jokes to an audience, but to an audience of readers, I am concerned about this. Strategic planning brings out this fear because every year for the 44 years I have been doing management and financial consulting, I write on this topic. Like the swallows returning to Capistrano, I return to this subject. I’ll take a different approach this year. I won’t talk about financial or operational aspects of advanced planning, but marketing. Funeral home owners/managers are terrible marketers, and the reason is simple: To market, you must first understand why families come to you. But the fact is, most firms […]

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 […]

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 […]