| Owning any business is a challenge. You’ve got customers to satisfy, cash flow to manage and every now and then it would be nice to be able to get home from work in time to see your kid’s baseball game. Funeral home owners are no different than the vast majority of small business owners. They are trained in a specific skill set that allows them to strike out on their own. In your case you’re a trained/licensed funeral director who makes the transition to funeral home owner. It’s no different than an auto mechanic who opens their own repair shop, or an attorney who opens their own practice, or a doctor who opens their own clinic. At least 95% of funeral home owners I’ve worked with come from a funeral director background and the vast majority of them still care for families on a daily basis. Caring for families is an extremely important role in your business, but as the owner it’s critical that you keep your focus on your number one job (hint, it’s not being a funeral director). The number one job for any business owner is the acquisition of a new customer. Everything else is secondary because without customers you do not have a business. In the funeral business this translates into your number one job is to win the call. More specifically, you need to win price shoppers. But there is a powerful entity in the background that is making this a very difficult task….Google. Yes, the same Google that has replaced the Yellow Pages is changing the marketing world so dramatically that it is impacted all local businesses not just funeral homes. In the old days you would write a check to your Yellow Pages sales rep, submit your ad and you were all set for the next year. But with Google you are trying to work with a business that is constantly changing the rules and it is always in their favor. In future blog posts I will give you more details on what Google has been doing but for now suffice it to say that they are working very hard to move money out of your pocket into their pocket. This does not mean you need to turn into a Google search engine optimization (SEO) or a Google My Business expert, but you should definitely have one or two in your contact list. Let’s summarize…. 1. If you’re the owner, your #1 job is to win the call 2. The #1 way people find funeral homes is searching Google 3. Google is constantly changing their system in their favor 4. Staying on page one of Google is getting harder and more expensive More to come… John PS: I just released my new book on the Funeral Business Builder Master Plan. Click here to check it out. |
