It was the fall of 2002 that I took my first steps into the Borek Jennings Funeral Home in Howell, Michigan. I had been a professional marketing consultant for many years and worked with hundreds of clients in 15 different industries. My passion was, and is, to help business owners take their companies to the next level. Yet, I had never had a client in the funeral home industry and frankly I wasn’t sure I wanted one.
As a business person, I looked at the funeral home industry as being on the edge of a major chasm. The industry reports that I had read told me that less than 50% of funeral homes would make it over the chasm. The rest would crumble under the weight of declining market share and rising cremation rates. The reports also talked about the consolidation going on in the industry and how the days of the independent funeral home owner were numbered.
As a consumer, I walked into the building with the same sense of dread that I always had when walking into any funeral home. I had attended too many funerals over the years and had always left with an overwhelming feeling of “whew…I’m glad that’s over with” or “I’d never want to put my family through that”. I had never personally met a funeral home owner and I wondered what kind of person could work in this environment and deal with such a painful issue (i.e., death) day in and day out.
My perception of funeral home owners was about to change…
I was ushered into a conference room where I met Todd Borek and Karl Jennings, the owners of 4 funeral homes in Michigan. They immediately surprised me on many levels. More energized than I expected, more business savvy than I expected, and absolutely passionate about dominating each of their four markets. They also saw funeral service as a calling, almost a ministry. Their passion for helping people shined through.
Over the course of the next 3 hours we mutually interviewed each other. They had met with dozens of different marketing consultants from inside the funeral home industry and were looking for a fresh perspective. I was committed to only working with the best company in a given industry because my style of marketing is very truth-based and only works if the company can deliver on the promises we make.
In hindsight, I won them over when I told them “Never spend a dollar on any marketing or advertising unless you can measure the results. Otherwise you’re just throwing your money away.” They won me over when Karl said “The cremation crisis is a bunch of bull. Cremation only deals with the disposition of the remains and it has nothing to do with how you can deliver a service that addresses the emotional, relational, and spiritual needs of the family.”
And with that….a business relationship was launched and a transformation process began.
Skipping ahead to today, you may wonder if the transformation has worked. Well, we’ve increased overall revenues at our funeral homes by 65%, our average revenues related to cremation services are up 110%, and our customer satisfaction rating is at 99.5%. We didn’t get here by selling more merchandise that people don’t care about. Instead, we offer a unique style of funeral service that families find to be extremely valuable and price is rarely an issue.
So how did we get here?
Like most of their fellow funeral home owners, Todd and Karl had watched the cremation rates increase every year for the past 20+ years. They also had a number of new cremation services popping up in their markets advertising “Discount Cremation for $695”. Each of the 4 markets in which they operated had at least 20% cremation and one of their markets had over 65%. The real problem was that the vast majority of cremations involved little or no visitation time or memorial services. We knew that in order grow the business we were going to have to find a way to serve the cremation client.
There’s an old adage in the marketing industry that says “In order to understand why John Smith buys what John Smith buys you need to look at the world through John Smith’s eyes”. With this in mind, we began a detailed process of looking at the funeral home business from the perspective of our cremation client (our John Smith). Key to this research was a series of interviews we conducted with past, present, and prospective cremation clients. Here are some of our findings….
- The cremation client was highly motivated by a desire to “keep it simple”. They dreaded the thought of picking out a casket and didn’t want the “production” of a funeral.
- The cremation client typically saw nothing of value in a funeral home’s services. Since they didn’t need embalming or a casket they saw no reason to do business with a traditional funeral home.
- The majority of cremation clients that we interviewed had a very poor perception of funeral home owners, directors, and the staff. They had awful experience in the past and saw no reason to repeat.
With our clearer understanding of “John Smith”, we began to transform every major aspect of how we attracted families to our business. Marketing innovations were all based on the concepts of Nurture Marketing which differs dramatically from the mass marketing approach used by 99% of funeral homes. The following list highlights our top 4 innovations.
Innovation #1 – Marketing Message
One of the earliest concerns that Todd communicated to me was that no matter how hard he tried, most of the local community assumed that he was nor different than any of his competitors. As a passionate, innovative businessman…this drove him crazy!The solution to this problem was to develop and implement a clear, concise marketing message. Some marketing books refer to this as your Unique Selling Proposition. The goal is to create a brief statement that allows a business owner to quickly separate themselves from their competition.
The families we had served already new we were different. With the creation of a Marketing Message the rest of the market now knew that we were a step above our competition.
Innovation #2 – Education-based Marketing Program
Before we started our business relationship, Todd and Karl had invested a significant amount of money in marketing and advertising programs from some of the existing marketing firms in the industry. Unfortunately, they had seen very little result from their investment. After looking at the campaigns it was pretty clear to me that the generic mass marketing oriented ads did absolutely nothing to separate the Borek Jennings Funeral Homes from any of our competitors in the area. The ads were so filled with overused platitudes (e.g., courteous, caring, professional) that they could have applied to any funeral home.
One of the earliest pieces of research that Todd and Karl shared with me was an industry survey that stated that 90% of people planned to have some form of funeral service but 80% of those people didn’t know what kind of service they would have.
When I learned of this research, I knew that the funeral home market was a perfect fit for an education-based marketing program, one of the core concepts of Nurture Marketing. With this in mind we launched the country’s first information hotline specifically designed for people who were faced with making funeral arrangements but were not ready to meet with a funeral director.
Has this approach worked? In the first 3 years 6,327 people called our information hotline. Every single family that walks in our doors has already listened to the hotline. Before making arrangements they already know enough to make a good decision. Why do we care about this? Because, if people don’t know enough to make a good decision they will always choose the lowest priced option.
Innovation #3 – An Integrated Nurture Marketing System
One of the things that I was able to bring to this project as a result of my experience in other industries was the concept of thinking about marketing in terms of a system. When you’re just looking for a quick transaction you do not need a system. You just need the lowest price. But if you are looking to nurture a long term relationship with a family, a system is essential.
A successful nuture marketing strategy includes a series of integrated parts that all work together to generate revenue. For example, there is absolutely no use spending money on an advertisement that generates a bunch of pre-need leads if you don’t have a system in place to follow up and close them. It is very possible to waste a massive amount of money on marketing if you fail to think through the entire process.
With this in mind, we created the a completely integrated nurture marketing system that defines every detail of our marketing process, from our core marketing message through how we manage the overall system.
Just like how an irrigation system will nurture your garden until your crops are ripe, a nurture marketing system feeds your families the things they need to develop into loyal customer advocates.
Innovation #4 – New Arrangement Process
One of the keys to our success with the cremation client has been the development of an education based arrangement process. We had studied all of the “tried and true” arrangement methods and found that they did nothing to address the cremation client’s needs. And so… we created our own process.
The new process was based on three key concepts. First help the family to emotionally unload. Next, teach them how a memorial service helps a family to heal during this painful time. And finally, present them with very simple options for moving forward.
The result has been nothing short of incredible! Time and time again a family that just wanted direct cremation comes to understand that their family needs more than that in order to begin the healing process. What would have been a $2,100 direct cremation turns into a $4,500 memorial service. But more importantly, the family now sees the value of a funeral service and has started their own healing process…that’s what it’s all about!
Conclusion
These major nurture marketing innovations have made a massive difference in our ability to attract the cremation client. Before these innovations we averaged $2,135 per cremation. We now average over $4,500. That’s a 110% increase in revenue with very little increase in cost. By the way, 12% of our cremation services are in excess of $10,000.
The bottom line is that the cremation client isn’t poor. They just don’t see the value in spending their money on an expensive urn or an uncomfortable service that is just going to make everyone want to sprint for the exits. But show them how to truly address the emotional, relational, and spiritual needs of their family…and price is no object.
I have formed FuneralSuccess.com for the purpose of bringing nurture marketing strategies and tools to the funeral home industry. Sadly, many of the existing marketing companies in this industry have been churning out the same old thing for the past twenty years. The customer has changed….it’s time for a new approach to marketing.
Unfortunately I have very limited time for one-on-one consulting at this time. Therefore, the primary focus of FuneralSuccess.com will be to deliver turnkey nurture marketing systems that any funeral home owner can implement very quickly.
For more information call (810) 626 4080
I have been speaking with Bill McQueen about their presentation piece that you helped them with. What are the licensing fees to use your part of that?