Elevating Funeral Service

DNA testing has become popular the last few years with promotion from companies that offer in-home testing and the possibility of discovering information about someone that otherwise wouldn't be accessible. For families who have lost a loved one, but never had their DNA tested, the last opportunity to do so would be at the funeral home, prior to final disposition. On this episode, we talk with the team at DNA Memorial about what DNA preservation is, why it's important, how it...

Do funeral consumers see your funeral home as being friendly to members of the LGBTQ+ community? Do prospective employees (or current) view your funeral home as a place that is inclusive and welcoming? On this episode, we talk with Timothy McLoone, a funeral director from Fluehr Funeral Home, and Dr. Sara Murphy, a death educator and faculty member at the University of Rhode Island, about why this topic is so important and how the right or wrong approach can impact your business.

When you work "in" your funeral home, you make it run. When you work "on" your funeral home, you make it grow. In this episode, we talk about working "on" your funeral home, and the first step in doing that is taking a snapshot of where things are now. A SWOT analysis is merely reviewing the landscape and examining your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, & Threats. An honest assessment of where you stand in each area is the starting point to growing your funera...

Funeral home owners will face increased competition in 2021 and it's critical to have the right strategy. On this episode, we discuss three things owners should focus on to win more calls and increase their market share.

Do you have defined goals for growing your at-need calls, preneed, or your profitability in 2021? Have you analyzed what you've done so far in 2021 and what you need to do differently heading into the next year? The Peter Drucker quote "you can't manage what you don't measure" is absolutely true, and on this episode, we discuss how successful funeral home operators think about their business and why goal setting is critical to their success. Ellery and Welton share insights ...

If you're a funeral home owner, at some point, you're going to exit the business, and hopefully, that is through a successful acquisition. Whether an interested party has approached you or you've put it on the market, the offer(s) you receive, and eventual selling price, can be significantly impacted by a few key metrics that you may not even realize. On this episode, we talk with Jake Johnson about what acquirers look at when purchasing a funeral home or cemetery and why this shou...

The biggest convention in funeral service is going virtual this year and we asked Anthony Kaniuk and Troy Blewett to give us an overview of the convention and what we can expect. Surprisingly, other than the obvious fact that it's virtual, the same opportunities exist for education, CE credits, networking, and, of course, the exhibit hall. The staff at NFDA have put a lot of work into making this a great experience for the attendees and exhibitors and we are all looking forward to ...

One of the most important assets a funeral home owns is their domain name, and if not protected properly, it can unknowingly be at risk. A few common problems we see are the funeral homes not actually owning their domain names, or domain names expire and are lost because they weren't renewed on time. Another problem we see is when a funeral home wants to change website providers, they face roadblocks as they try to transfer the domain name to the new company. These problems ...

If your phone isn't ringing as much as you'd like, there are a few things you can do to change that. Before a consumer calls your funeral home they've likely done some research on your site, your competitor's sites and more. What they're doing is to getting their questions answered, they are arming themselves with as much information as possible, and they're making a judgement about your value proposition. If you provide the answers, information, and value they are seeking, y...

Think of a blog like the game of Jeopardy. On that game, the answer is given and the contestant must state the question to win. A blog is similar in that you're going to write articles that are the "answer" to a person's search query before they ask. When a user searches for something, Google matches that query to your content. In short, if you don't have content that answers a searcher's question, Google will never send them to your site. On this episode you will...