Are you looking to grow your funeral home business? In this video, I discuss the top 4 strategic options you can use to grow your business. You can find the ChatGPT summary below the video and the full transcript below that.
ChatGPT Summary of the Top 4 Options for Growing Your Funeral Home Business
Hello, I’m John Callaghan, and in this video, I’ll be sharing the top four options for expanding your funeral home business. Having consulted with numerous funeral homes, I’ve come to understand that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. Each business and situation is unique. Nonetheless, these four growth strategies have proven effective across various funeral homes over the years.
It’s crucial to recognize that the traditional funeral market is on the decline in most parts of the country. This traditional model typically involves visitation with the body present, followed by a church service, cemetery service, and perhaps a reception. However, rather than investing efforts into a declining market, it’s wise to explore avenues for growth.
Here are the four options to consider:
- Low-Cost Traditional Funerals:
This option involves providing minimal personalization and shorter service durations, akin to firms like Newcomer. These services aim to streamline the process, resembling the efficiency of fast-food restaurants compared to traditional dining establishments. While this approach presents an opportunity for growth, it requires a different mindset from staff and owners and may necessitate specific facility adaptations.
- Top-Rated Traditional Funeral Home:
Becoming the highest-rated funeral home in your market, with exceptional Google reviews and a substantial social media following, can attract customers even in a declining market. People tend to trust and choose the top-rated options, offering an opportunity for growth despite market trends.
- Unique Farewell Services:
Diverging from traditional funerals, offering creative and personalized events, often facilitated by celebrants, can appeal to families seeking alternatives to conventional services. Terms like “Celebration of Life” or “Beautiful Farewell” are becoming more common, reflecting this shift towards more unique offerings. This segment represents a growing market for funeral homes.
- Multicultural Services:
In multicultural cities, catering to diverse cultural traditions presents a significant growth opportunity. By accommodating various cultural practices and offering specialized services like expedited ceremonies or international shipping, funeral homes can tap into underserved markets and support families in preserving their traditions.
These options align with the strategic positioning of outside perception growth strategies. While traditional funerals and direct cremation were not extensively discussed due to market decline and limited profitability, focusing on one or a combination of these growth strategies can significantly increase the chances of expanding your funeral home business.
In conclusion, selecting a growth strategy and dedicating efforts towards its implementation can greatly enhance your business’s prospects. I’ll be back next week with more insights. Goodbye for now.
Full Transcript of the Top 4 Options for Growing Your Funeral Home Business
Hi, this is John Callaghan. In this video, I will give you the top four options for growing your funeral home business.
Now, I’ve consulted with hundreds, maybe thousands of funeral homes, and I can tell you that no one answer works for everybody. Everybody’s a little bit different. Every situation is slightly different, but these are the top four growth options I found after having worked with all of these funeral homes for all these years.
The thing to consider is that the traditional funeral market is declining in most of the country. Now, by traditional, I’m talking about a visitation with the body present, church service, cemetery service, and maybe a reception afterward. In most of the country, that’s declining, but not everywhere. It’s still growing in some areas, but in most countries, it’s declining.
We’re looking for other options. Why put your efforts into a declining market? Put your efforts into a growing market.
Here are four options for you.
Option one is the low-cost traditional funeral market. The best example of this is a firm that I’ve competed with many times called Newcomer. They are generally in the Midwest, but they’re also down in Florida, and I believe they’re also up in Colorado these days.
They offer minimal personalization, and typically, the services are shorter than a day and a half of visitation. You’re cramming it into those two hours, and you’re getting down to the shortest service possible, and it’s really all about turning things over as quickly as possible.
It’s about bringing that family in, moving them through the process, and getting them out the door so you can bring the next one in.
It’s as different from the traditional funeral business as, say, a fast food restaurant is from a traditional restaurant. It’s just a different model. I’m not judging it; it’s just different.
Yes, this is an option for you, but you should consider that it typically takes a different type of mindset from the staff and from the owner. Again, it’s more of a fast food versus an extensive service model.
It also takes a slightly different kind of facility. You need something so people can come in quickly, get into the door, find their place, and get out as fast as possible. That’s not the normal model for most funeral homes, but it is an option if you want to grow.
Option two is to be the top-rated traditional funeral home in your market. If you are a 4.9 and above in Google reviews and have a hundred-plus reviews and a thousand-plus Facebook followers, this might be a good option for you.
You’re still offering traditional funerals, and yes, the market is declining, but in a declining market, people will always gravitate to the top-rated.
They trust Google, and if you’re the top rated and have got lots of proof, you really are that good, there’s still an opportunity for you because even though the market’s declining, people will give their money to the top rated funeral home.
Option number three is to offer unique farewell services. These services are outside of the box from a traditional funeral home. I talked about them last week in my training module.
You’re offering a more creative, more personalized event. Typically, you’re going to have a celebrant involved in it.
The term Celebration Of Life is overused, but that is what people are starting to call them, and I use the term Beautiful Farewell, one of my trademark terms. Some of my clients use that. Some people use the term farewell toast.
The idea is to come up with something a little bit different for that family that says, I don’t want a funeral. That doesn’t mean they don’t want anything. It really just means, what else have you got? So, if you have a good option, this is a growing market option.
Number four is multicultural. This is a very different angle, but because so many of our cities are becoming real melting pots of cultures, and a lot of those cultures are very underserved,
if you can serve cultures, especially multiple cultures, and be open to a wide range of traditions, you have a good chance of growing your business.
You’re supporting families, cultures, and their traditions, and if you can do that, there’s a market for you.
Sometimes, that means having to do an expedited service, such as the Muslim service, where the service has to be completed within a very short time window.
It might involve being very good at international shipping out so that you can send the body back to the home country. But multicultural is a growing market, and I see a lot of my clients heading in that way.
Those four options again are, low cost, traditional funerals, yes, there’s an option there.
Highest-rated funerals in town – definitely an option.
Unique farewell services – definitely an option.
And multicultural depends on your community, but if it works out for you, that’s a good growing market.
Most of my recommendations typically involve numbers two and three, which are the highest rated and offer unique farewell services. Depending on the community, we might mix in some multicultural as well.
If you are wondering where this fits on the mind map, it’s under the outside perception growth strategy under strategic positioning, and we’re looking at the options for growth. Those are the top four that I went through.
Notice I didn’t discuss traditional funerals too much because, again, it’s a declining market in most of the country. And I didn’t discuss direct cremation because, frankly, that’s not really going to help grow your bottom line very much. You might win more calls, but you won’t make much money doing that. So, I don’t typically recommend that as a growth strategy.
Those are your top four recommendations for growth strategy. It’s a lot easier to grow your business if you pick a strategy and put all your efforts towards that; the chances of you growing go up dramatically. I’ll be back next week.
Bye for now.
