4 Reasons Your Funeral Home Is In Danger Of Getting Left Behind
August 28th, 2015
We may still be a few months out from Halloween, but that’s not stopping a terrifying, haunting figure from floating around the funeral profession. No, we’re not talking about spirits, ghosts, or any of the other frightening beings that families think wander around the halls of your funeral home. We’re talking about something much scarier. A cold, hard fact about our profession that should scare the daylights out of you…
The world of funeral homes is changing. Every year, the families that enter your funeral home are different than the years before. And soon enough, the methods you have always used to bring in new families will no longer work, and you’ll be in danger of losing business to your competitors who have embraced the changing tides.
If you want to avoid the horrors and hauntings of getting left behind, it’s about time you learn how to attract families outside of your current customers. That starts with avoiding these huge mistakes that you may be making, and may be driving away new families.
1. You’re Assuming You Know What Families Want
As a funeral director, you are the resident expert in your town when it comes to services, products and what goes into creating a beautiful funeral. But that doesn’t mean that you always know what your families want. For instance, when they call up your funeral home looking for information on cremation, don’t just start listing off prices and assuming they mean direct cremation. If you do, you’ll be selling yourself short. Instead, talk to families, listen to their story, and see if you can help them arrive at a service that fits their wants and needs. They may be interested in hosting a beautiful visitation before the cremation, or they may want to hold a unique scattering service for the ashes. You’ll never know if you don’t offer them the chance to tell you what they’re looking for.
2. You’re Not Embracing Your Website
The best way to be sure that you are selling your value to new families is to give them the information they are looking for in the places that they are looking. In today’s times, chances are, that’s your website. Families of today are looking to arm themselves with as much information on your services, pricing and testimonials as possible before making their decision. This means that a lot of the families in your town that are planning a funeral are making their decisions about your funeral home before they ever call or walk through your doors.
This is why it’s so important to make your funeral home website a hub of educational resources that will show your families just how much value you provide. Share the unique services that you offer, the products that your families want, grief resources for family and friends, and details on community events that you may be holding. Is your funeral home website far from this vision? Don’t fret – funeralOne’s f1Connect website was created and built around the information that today’s families are looking for when making their purchasing decisions.
3. You’re Not Attending Conferences and Trade Shows
We know that there are few people in the world busier than funeral professionals, and you may laugh at the prospect of leaving your funeral home for a few days – especially if those days involve even more funeral talk, and not a much-needed vacation. But when it comes to being the best possible funeral professional that you can be, there are few resources that are more educational or more helpful than those offered at local and national funeral director’s association conferences.
Not only are these shows an amazing opportunity to connect with the other vendors, funeral professionals and influencers, but they also offer the first insight into the trends and products that are changing our profession. Many conferences also offer educational tracks throughout the show, where you can go to learn more about important topics like how to market cremation to your families, or how to take your funeral services to the next level. Plus, if you come to one of the many state conferences that the funeralOne team attends each year, you can even stop by and hang out with us at our booth, which should be reason enough to attend!
4. You Don’t Offer The Options Your Families Are Looking For
What’s the quickest way to ensure that you don’t get left behind in the funeral profession? Offer the products and services that your families want from their funeral experience. If families are seeking out a celebratory, personalized funeral service, they are going to be looking for funeral homes that offer things like memorial tribute videos or a trained celebrant on staff. If you don’t offer these popular services, you can bet that your families are going to move on to whichever of your competitors DOES. So be sure that you are listening to the needs of today’s growing families, and that you’re open to trying new products and services that enhance the overall funeral experience. Not only will your families benefit from these powerful, healing products, but your funeral home will continue to grow and attract new families in today’s changing market.
If you want to attract new families to your funeral home and avoid getting left behind, it’s time you offered a funeral home website that both educates and attracts today’s families – even beyond your current customers. Click here to learn more about f1Connect today.
My experience has clearly shown me that what families truly want, but often don’t know how to express, is to find some kind of meaning in the death of their loved one. I fear that we funeral directors have lost touch with the real reason that human beings have had funerals since the beginning of time and what made us relevant in the first place. Trinkets and other assorted histrionics are NOT the answer. Too many of those in the profession today have never really experienced the death of a close family member themselves and have no experiences to draw on when trying to help a grieving family create a good beginning on the path of mourning; facing the fact of death by viewing the dead body, embracing the pain of the loss, bringing grief out in authentic mourning and, eventually, reconciling and accepting the loss (not experiencing the imaginary phenomenon our society calls “closure”). If real funeral directors don’t step up soon and regain their position as keepers of important ceremonies and educators about the innate human need for ritual when words and trinkets are not adequate, we are going to be relegated to the dustbin of history while our ritually adrift culture continues to grope hopelessly for meaning in death via one empty, aimless “celebration of life” party after another.