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On today’s show we will answer the question “Does it usually make good business sense to offer a cremation arrangement website so families can arrange a cremation by themselves?”
We’ll look at what a Batesville Study and other relevant numbers have revealed, and then explore the benefits, advantages and challenges that result from offering a cremation arrangement website.
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Topics discussed / In this video:
01:19 – Reasons to offer shoppers a cremation arrangement website
06:08 – Changing purchasing behavior of consumers
09:35 – What happens when people finds a cremation website
14:48 – Benefits, advantages and challenges from offering a cremation arrangement website
33:09 – War Room Program at Funeral Results Marketing
Links and Resources Mentioned In This Episode:
CremationConference.com
Neptune Cremation
Carmon Funeral Homes
Scott County Cremation
Transcription:
Robin Heppell: [00:00] On today’s show, we will answer the question, does it really make good business sense to offer a cremation arrangement website so families can arrange their cremation by themselves?
[00:10] We’ll look at what a base full study and other relevant numbers have revealed, and then explore the benefits, advantages, and challenges that result from offering a cremation arrangement website.
[00:22] Welcome to another episode of “Strategy Talks” by Funeral Results Marketing. We’re going to be talking about one of the hottest topics in funeral care today, cremation arrangement websites. We’ll be tapping into the experience of Brian Young to help us do this.
[00:37] Brian has helped more business owners get up and running with cremation arrangement websites than anyone else in the industry, so he has a lot of background in this area. Before getting started, I wanted to let you know that we will be offering a free market potential analysis at the end of the show, no strings attached.
[00:54] You can find out exactly how many cremations are happening in your market right now at several radius points from your business address. Let’s get in today’s topic.
[01:04] Brian, today we see a small but growing number of cremation arrangement websites in the marketplace. These websites allow families to arrange and purchase a cremation through the Internet. In many cases, without ever meeting with the funeral director.
[01:19] I know this is a big topic that we’ll be discussing in several Strategy Talk installments. Today, I though we’d start out by asking one question which is foundational. Why would a funeral home or cremation business want to offer shoppers a cremation arrangement website, a website that gives them the option to arrange and purchase the complete cremation online?
Brian Young: [01:45] Thanks, Rob. That is a question many business owners are asking themselves today. I’m looking forward answering it. I’d also like to discuss some of the benefits and the advantages as well as the challenges that are occurring as a result to this new approach to serving families.
[02:02] To repeat your question, why would a cremation business or a funeral home want to offer shoppers a cremation arrangement website and let families have the option to arrange and purchase a cremation online?
[02:15] To fully answer that question, I think we need to answer several other questions. The first one is just how many consumers are actually willing to arrange online or are actually looking for that ability? Is this just a bunch of hype to some hot fad in the marketplace, or is there actually real evidence that this is working, that it’s not just a fad, that it’s a long term trend that’s here to stay?
[02:41] The second question we need to answer, to answer a larger question is, what are the benefits, what the advantages and challenges that come from offering the cremation arrangement website as an outlet to purchase your services?
[02:55] How many consumers are looking for the ability to arrange a cremation online? There’s not any study I’m aware of that gives a clear answer regarding that question for the death care industry, for the funeral industry. We have to connect the dots.
[03:10] I think when you see the dots that I have here, and actually, there’s quite a few we could talk about, they make is pretty easy to see the picture. Dot number one is probably the state of mind of cremation shoppers.
[03:22] Here’s what I mean by that. This is one of my favorite statistics to cite because I think it just blew the doors right off, so to speak. Suddenly, the industry got a look at something we never knew before.
[03:36] If you were at the CANA Convention in either 2008 in Toronto, or in 2009 in Denver. In 2009 in Denver, I heard Nectar Ramirez shared this number. She’s from Batesville. If you’re in the industry, you probably know who she is. It turns out that every few years, Batesville has commissioned a study of families.
[03:57] What she shared with us is that death families who had previously arranged a cremation, whether or not they agreed with the statement. The statement was, “Making arrangements does not require the help of a funeral director.” The answer was either scary and/or exciting, depending on your perspective.
[04:19] In the year 2000, 47 percent of families who had previously been through a cremation, cremation arrangement, agreed with the statement, “Making arrangements does not require the help of a funeral director.” By the year 2008, that number had jumped up to 62 percent. That means it was growing by, if you want to be exact, 1.875 percent per year, almost two percent per year.
[04:44] I haven’t seen it talked about since then. Maybe that’s because of how we’ve been talking about, I’m not sure. In talking to a client in 2013, his Batesville rep had told him that that number was now right at 70 percent. If you do that math, that checks out. That’s right about the 1.875 per year, give or take a tad.
[05:04] The conclusion is obviously, a large majority of families who have previously had a cremation are at least not opposed to arranging themselves. Let me just stop right there and say I realized our audience, most of us, or you guys are funeral directors, and guys and ladies I should say. You’re funeral directors, you serve families all the time.
[05:27] This is not meant to be the tact on what we do as an industry. Certainly, the majority of the clients I’ve worked with over the last 10 years, I’ve been in funeral homes and funeral directors. This is just an objective effort to address the changing market reality out there. That’s why the study, it is eye opening.
[05:49] There are a lot of people who are at least not opposed to arranging online by themselves. They didn’t say they don’t like funeral directors. They didn’t say that I want to use funeral homes, but they did say they didn’t think they needed the help of a funeral director to arrange a cremation. The state of mind of cremation shoppers is obviously changing.
[06:08] Dot number two regards the changing purchasing behavior of consumers. To talk about that, I wanted to refer to a very important study that just came out not a few months ago from Pew Research.
[06:23] You probably know Pew is one of the largest and most respected research institutions in the country. It gives us a lot better insight into just how many people are willing to or wanting to shop online. We can connect the dots and see how that connects to cremation.
[06:40] Does that mean these numbers are the same when a family is shopping for a funeral or cremation? No, it doesn’t. It does show us how the average American is shopping each day. That daily behavior has to influence how they shop even in special situations.
[06:56] Let met share just a couple points from that Pew study that came out in December of 2016. In fact, you’ll find it written about in a lot of different blogs and newspaper articles. They found that 8 out of 10 Americans now shop online. That’s amazing. That’s actually 79 percent, but 8 out of 10. 51% percent of people have actually bought something from their smartphone.
[07:19] Remember five of six years ago when most people didn’t have a smartphone yet? Maybe it’s been seven or eight now. Time flies to fast. 51 percent have even bought something from their smartphone. Here’s the more important number. 43 percent say that several times per month, they use the Internet to buy things.
[07:35] There’s a smaller group that does it weekly, but at least 43 percent, getting close to half of Americans say that several times per month, they’re using the Internet to buy things.
[07:46] That’s a massive change when we were back in the year 2000 or 2010 even. Although study’s main focus is to detail how many people shop online, where they shop, how often they shop, what platforms they’re using, what’s more interesting for us here is to see how it teases up the answer as to why they’re shopping online.
[08:08] Surprisingly, it’s not necessarily the convenience of being able to click a few buttons to have product shipped to their door, the consumer said what’s most appealing. Notice this. It was cost and the ability to research those costs and other matters more efficiently across the web ahead of their purchase. That’s what was driving so many of them to the Internet.
[08:34] While we know that for a life event as large and as important as a funeral or celebration of life service, families have a lot that they’re thinking about including cost. For the cremation shoppers, and specifically today, I’m talking about those shoppers looking for a disposition option because they don’t want any kind of a funeral, at least not at a funeral home. This is highly relevant.
[08:58] Let’s connect dots one and two and ask what happens when 70 percent of families that have previously had a cremation who don’t think they need a funeral director’s help to arrange a cremation, and 80 percent of those folks shop online?
[09:15] Let’s connect dots one and two now and ask the question. What happens when 70 percent of families that have previously had a cremation who don’t think they need the help of a funeral director to arrange their next cremation, and 80 percent of them regularly shop online or sometimes shop online?
[09:35] What happens when that group of people finds a website that not only provides prices but lets you know the cremation package with all the contents that you want at the price you decide is OK? What happens for those folks? Before we try to just run off those two dots, let’s go into a third dot, proof that they are more willing to buy online.
[09:57] I’d like to share a quick story with you. I had the privilege to work with a gentleman, his name is Buddy Phaneuf. Many of you may have heard of him. He runs the Cremation Society of New Hampshire up in the State of New Hampshire. Also, his family’s funeral home’s there, the Phaneuf Family Funeral Homes.
[10:18] Very successful man. In fact, I think it’s probably fair to say he’s the creator of the cremation arrangement website approach, the first person I know who did it or certainly did it in any kind of volume, starting back in…What was that? About 1995? I’d have to check that date.
[10:35] Anyway, here’s what’s important regarding proof of our people more than willing to buy online. In 2014 or 2015, he was sharing some numbers with me. I think in 2015 is the first time he broke over a million in revenue on his website. That is public knowledge, doing about 1,500 calls a year.
[10:56] He still had 90 percent of his shoppers who would call on the phone before they’d go ahead and make the purchase online. In 2014 or 2015, this is a 24-year-old cremation business, this isn’t two, or three, or five years old. It’s 24 years old, and he has 90 percent of shoppers who call on the phone for about a 1,500 call business.
[11:21] Here’s the kicker. After anywhere from a minute and a half, to three, four minutes, when they’re offered the use of the website, over 90 percent readily accept that. Granted, this is for the cremation business, the Cremation Society of New Hampshire, what does that tell us?
[11:37] It tells us that many cremation-oriented shoppers are ready, and based on his numbers at 1,500 per year, 90 percent are very willing to arrange online. Maybe that number is growing all the time, but at 90 percent, who cares? That is, for sure, the lion’s share, so people are more than willing to buy online.
[11:58] I also want to share one other story with you. This is regarding a man I worked with, named Frank Carmon, in Hartford, Connecticut. Many people know of the Carmon Funeral Homes.
[12:09] He shared with me that one day, he was in the office there, and he looked out the window. He saw this big shiny black Mercedes pull into the parking lot, and a lady got out. She was very well-dressed. She was from over an hour away, down on the coast.
[12:28] When she got out and came up to him, he introduced himself and said, “Hi, I’m Frank Carmon,” when she came in. She recognized the name. After he brought back the remains of the loved one, she said to him, “Oh, thank you for offering us this option. This was exactly what we wanted.”
[12:44] He told me, “That’s when I got it. That’s when I realized, ‘Hey, guys. Buddy, I see what they’re talking about because here’s this segment of the market, and they don’t want what’s traditional. They want to use a website and do arrangements themselves, but it’s not because they don’t have money.”
[13:00] This lady had plenty of money, it looked like, but she was thanking me. In fact, she drove from an hour away just so she could do the arrangement online. That’s exactly what she wanted was the quote.
[13:12] Again, please understand, I’m not trying to say that funeral homes and funeral directors and quality funeral care, as we know it, are doomed and on the way out, by no means. Guys like Buddy Phaneuf, Frank Carmon, and others, they’re growing their call volumes at their funeral home at the same time they’re growing their volumes of the cremation business.
[13:31] What I am saying is that the market has already diversified and segmented. It’s just whether or not you’re noticing it yet in your market. If you aren’t, if you haven’t seen anybody in your market roll out of cremation business yet, that’s starting to become a small number of markets.
[13:49] That doesn’t mean there aren’t any regional or national companies competing in your space and taking your business. We’ve all heard of Neptune Cremation, right? They’re still selling cremations every year. The appeal of a business like Neptune, I would argue, is probably increasing over time, except for the fact they’re facing the competitive pressures regarding prices.
[14:10] I could go on and share and connect more dots, but for the sake of time, I’ll just say that the growing number of online arranged cremations year over year at cremation businesses along with these numbers says it all.
[14:25] As I wrap up answering this question, I want to emphasize that the success of cremation arrangement website, is a matter of cause and effect. People buying online, that’s an effect. The better we understand the causes that are driving their behavior and choices, the more attractive we can make their services.
[14:42] That’s probably a whole other discussion for another podcast at another time, Rob.
Robin: [14:48] Agreed, Brian. It is pretty obvious that many consumers are ready for, if not actually looking for, the ability to arrange online. The other question you said you wanted to answer today is, what are some of the benefits, advantages, and challenges that come from offering a cremation arrangement website?
Brian: [15:07] To answer the larger question that we’re addressing today, which was, just to recap, why would a cremation business want to offer shoppers a cremation arrangement website?
[15:15] We do need the answers to the question I just answered, but then we also need to know what are all the benefits, and advantages, and challenges that come from offering a cremation arrangement website.
[15:26] Families and shoppers purchase services through that channel. Let me get into the benefits and advantages here. Probably the biggest reason we’re here, and I know you know this in talking to a lot of our clients.
[15:37] The biggest reason is funeral home owners are tired of losing shopper calls that are price-oriented for low-cost cremations to the guy down the street. Whether it’s a funeral home who is undercutting their prices, or there’s a low-cost competitor in the market that’s getting more respect or at least getting more volume than it used to, and they’re tired of it.
[16:00] They want to protect their market share and not contribute to their competitor’s market share and overall revenue. That’s probably the biggest reason. Along with that, though I think it’s probably not as relevant anymore due to how many regional competitors can reach in, thanks to Google.
[16:17] I’ll explain what I mean in a minute, but the Firewall Strategy was made famous in this industry by the McQueens, Anderson-McQueen, John McQueen. They talked about how they put up the cremation brand in their St. Petersburg, Florida market in order to discourage somebody else from coming into the market and setting up a low-cost business.
[16:40] At that time, I guess there weren’t any. They wanted to occupy that space so that the guy would decide to drive them down the road and start up shop somewhere else.
[16:49] Today, thanks to Google. As we’ll talk about in a minute, it’s really easy to advertise and win business out of small community markets that are 20, 30, 40, 50 miles away, or even far marketing, right? These are some of the biggest reasons owners are doing this that I see.
[17:10] As far as benefits and advantages, most everybody recognizes the benefit of a reduced overhead. When the family is arranging online, obviously, you’re not spending time with them in the arrangement room, you’re not tying up your facilities, your staff. Your staff member can be doing something else that makes money for the firm.
[17:31] A lot of cases, cremation businesses are only meeting with the family on average once, whether that is the time they pick up the remains or whether it’s at the time the family comes into the office to pick up the remains. In a lot of cases, it won’t be both.
[17:46] Obviously, a reduced overhead is a big reason why a lot of funeral homes or cremation businesses start to make use of a cremation arrangement website. Families who completely arrange online aren’t tying up funeral director time in the arrangement room. You don’t have your facilities being bogged down. That way, your staff can be generating revenue for the company.
[18:08] A lot of cases, remains are shipped to families, or somebody will come into the office to pick up the remains, but that may be the only time you see them, especially if the death did not occur in a home. You could also make use of free staff time for removals or schedule removals on a time that’s more convenient to you.
[18:30] On this point, I have found over the years, there seems to be a line in the sand. Some owners are like, “Yeah, I get that, and that’s fine, but the lower cost, I’m happy to say, hey, we’ll pick up your loved one from 6:00 in the morning until midnight, but we don’t work at over six hour spot right there.”
[18:52] That way, they don’t have to worry about that. Other firms don’t want to do that, but another way you can reduce overhead is by not having to work 24/7, 365 days a year. It just keeps your cost down.
[19:08] Here’s what most people don’t know is that families who arrange online don’t feel like they’re getting ripped off. Again, I’ll go back to a study that was done by the families served by Cremation Society of New Hampshire, which belongs to Buddy Phaneuf.
[19:24] If you’ve ever heard him speak or talk about it, he’ll share the fact that they use Greystone to do surveying and their families and their staff. What they found is that families were just as happy with the website as they were with the staff. In fact, he said his website was top performer, even outperformed him, the owner.
[19:47] They were shocked to find that people were just as happy with the website. The key, of course, is to be very upfront and complete with your information so that it’s easy to understand. Frustration comes in purchasing a cremation, just like it would in purchasing anything else online.
[20:04] If it’s not a clear and complete explanation and picture of what’s available to buy, what the price is and included cost, then frustration starts. When frustration starts, bad things can happen like bad reviews or abandonment of the cremation purchase.
[20:23] Downright cremation arrangement websites obviously reduce overhead. One of the more surprising benefits is that in many cases, cremation sales will be higher on the website than they actually are in the presence of the funeral director in your arrangement room. I’ve been shocked to see this over the years. I’ve heard it more than once.
[20:45] I’m going to continue to use numbers from the Cremation Society of New Hampshire because Buddy has made those public. Last time I heard those, he was averaging about five percent higher sales for pre-needs online than in the arrangement room. About 10 percent higher sales revenue for at-need cremations arranged online versus in the arrangement room.
[21:12] That was really surprising. I remember talking to another gentleman. His name is Blair Nelson. He ran a cremation site in Virginia before he sold that and retired out of there. I asked him, “Why do you think you’re experiencing this higher averages online?” He said, “I think it’s a combination of a couple of things. One, every family has to see every choice, every time.”
[21:36] A lot of times in the arrangement room, it might be a real busy day, and/or we know we’re interacting with a family that seems to be only interested in low cost. Maybe my staff or I, we don’t talk about something we should. We don’t take the time to mention cremation jewelry, or a memorial candle, or a video tribute, or something like that.
[22:01] There might be lot of opportunity missed there, especially when you start to apply the law of large numbers, however many families we meet over the course of the year. The website shows every choice, every time. Also, families feel more comfortable. They don’t have the fear of being sold something they don’t want.
[22:20] I’ve been told a number of times, the newspapers and the press, they don’t do us any favors. It seems like more often than not, they talk about the negatives, and so a lot of families have fears. They got their guard up when they come in. Obviously, if you’re in front of the website at home, and you get to pick what you want and buy what you want, then your guard is down.
[22:38] Those are the two most common reasons I’ve heard when asking owners, why do you think your cremation website is outselling your staff when it comes to dealing with the low cost cremation crap? That’s one benefit that was really a surprise.
[22:54] Another benefit is increased market size. This is one that can be easy to forget. That being said, not all owners want to go out there and compete across a larger market size.
[23:05] I’ll just share with you, Rob and I both had this experience for years. On average, 30 to 35 miles is a very common radius to have your business show up when somebody Googles, cremation, and they’re looking for cremation services. It’s very easy to draw a business from a larger market size, thanks to Google.
[23:26] Some people who are used to thinking, like a funeral home owner say, “Well, if they don’t know me that far away, they wouldn’t use me.” Or, “If I’m so far away, they wouldn’t want to work with me.” What they don’t understand is the cremation shopper is a very different type of shopper based on performance and behavior and choices.
[23:44] It’s been recorded now and evidenced well over a decade of online cremation arrangement, we see that shoppers are much more concerned about price. They’re also concerned about trust. It’s to a lesser extent than price, but they are concerned about trust. Do they trust this business? Do they feel like it is what it says it is, how it’s portraying itself?
[24:06] They’re concerned about, can they get what they want? Are the packages clear? Sometimes they may want flexibility. Other times, people are just at a take it or leave it situations. We could talk about that in a different podcast that really gets into packaging strategy.
[24:21] If your prices are fairly competitive, you appear trustworthy, then it doesn’t matter if you’re 25 miles away. If you’re willing to service them, and they believe you’re going to do a good job, then you’re just as competitive as the guy five miles away. This shopper is not interested in a relationship with the funeral home, they’re just interested in getting the cremation part taken care of.
[24:44] One other advantage is that within that context of increased market size, I’ve worked with owners over the years who plan to go regional or plan to work multi-state areas right from the beginning. Sometimes this is really advantageous.
[25:01] For instance, let’s say you’re in Rhode Island, or you are in Connecticut, and you wanted to work across the border and pull people out of Massachusetts, because in Massachusetts, they can’t own a crematory. For anybody who’s listening from Massachusetts, sorry, not trying to put you on the spot. We look for competitive avenues with anybody we help.
[25:24] You can easily compete across the state line, or if you are located really close to a state boarder, you have the opportunity to work across both states. That opens doors as well. That’s another benefit. When it comes to challenges, challenges that come with offering a cremation arrangement website, the majority of those sure are positive challenges.
[25:46] One thing, it just seems like a little thing, but it is important. You have to make sure you get a true digital signature solution in place. Over the years, in the earlier days, I don’t think it matters much, but there’s a lot more concern today about having some kind of true digital signature, like DocuSign, or Adobe Sign, or SignNow.
[26:05] You do want to make sure you have a true digital signature solution on your website for your forms in the event than any kind of legal issue ever comes up.
[26:14] Another challenge can be getting staff on board, especially if you’re just launching an online cremation business and granted this point is a little bit more towards the business than the website.
[26:28] What I’ll mention here is that a lot of times, the staff won’t get on board until they see a meaningful reason for having that low cost cremation business. We’ll talk about that more in a future podcast because there’s a lot that goes into that. Once your staff has seen the reasons, they will get behind it and be real advocates for it.
[26:50] Probably the biggest negative concern is cannibalization. What happens? Will I lose lots of calls that were going to go to my funeral home now that I have a cremation business?
[27:01] I’ve two things to say about that. If you set your packaging, and you’re pricing up right, and if you’re happy enough to appeal on what the funeral home is offering, there will be little, in some cases we’ve seen almost no cannibalization.
[27:15] That said, sometimes it does happen. I’d like to repeat a story I heard. I was told by a speaker, at a CANA event, probably back in 2009 or 2010. It goes back ways.
[27:27] He said, “I had somebody who called me on the phone. They were supposed to come in the next day. I schedule, 9:00, 10:00 or 11:00 in the morning for their arrangement conference. About an hour and a half later, here came the order through for my cremation business.
[27:44] This guy had set up our arrangements for the next day, and he found my cremation business, and he bought a cremation there.
[27:54] What was shared from this stages, some people would say this is a negative. I lost the funeral, but the speaker said, “I look at this as a positive, because I was going to lose the business anyway.”
[28:04] He was still shopping even after he set up the arrangement conference with me for tomorrow. I’m just happy that I got the business. Even if it was less, I got it, not a competitor down the road. That was a positive.
[28:16] About that more in the future, and if your packaging is set up right, and your funeral home is positioned right opposite of your cremation business, this is not really a problem.
[28:27] Probably the other most common challenges is handling the pre-need. Obviously, if it’s insurance, you’re typically going to have signatures provided on those forms in the presence of an insurance agent. In a lot of cases, I’ve heard owners say, you know what…
[28:46] Before I share that, let me back up. The beginning of the conversation for handling pre-need probably revolves around your state laws. Some states will not allow co-mingling of funds for even a moment. You have to have two separate bank accounts set up in conjunction with a cremation arrangement website so that at-need funds flow into one and pre-need funds flow into the other.
[29:13] From there, it depends, because some states will allow the owner to have 3 days or 7 days or even 20 days before they have to have that money moved into a trust or insurance. In those cases, it’s a lot more flexible. There’s a few states out there where the money has to immediately be turned over to the pre-need providers.
[29:38] What I had typically hear owners say is, “OK, I’m more than happy to handle that. I’ll send somebody out once I’ve already got the payment. I’ll let them go ahead and register online, and then we’ll go out and get the signature on the forms. If you ever want to talk about that more, feel free to give me a call. I’m happy to talk about that.”
[29:55] I know, Rob, you’ve got experience with that.
[29:58] A lot of cases is state-by-state. I’m not as familiar with Canada as Rob is, but that can be a challenge. How that’s going to be dealt with and just making sure you know what the laws are in your state. What’s already been done there gives you a lot of help.
[30:11] In 2010, there was only 14 or 16 cremation arrangement websites functioning in the whole country of United States. These days, you can find almost that many in one state if you know which states to look in. There’s several that are really taking off.
[30:31] Actually, it can be an advantage for you. I heard a case where a funeral home, at first, the pre-need staff was like, “Hey, you’re starting this cremation business that’s going to compete with us.”
[30:41] But the owner said, “Well, I tell you what, any pre-need I get through my website, I’ll give you 50 percent of the commission. You can go out and get the signatures that you need at a time that’s convenient for you, anytime on the next two or three days.”
[30:54] When they started thinking about it, the pre-need staff realized, “Hey, this is great for us. I can work all day long, and then shoot over and grab my signatures, literally walk it through the front door, and get a signature on a piece of paper. I’ll have to sit down and have coffee. Christine walk up and get signatures on the paper, explain a couple of things that I need to.”
[31:13] It might differ in some situations, but you get the idea. It’s a different way of thinking. I’ll save other points like that for our future podcast. This is a big topic and a lot to learn here, but hopefully, that helps understand those two basic pieces.
[31:28] That if we look at how people are thinking, and if we look at the changes in the consumer along with what the benefits and the advantages are of the cremation arrangement website, it’s pretty easy to see why the numbers of online arranged cremations continue to rise, and why personally, I’d expect this to be a long-term trend, and not just a temporary fad in the market.
Robin: [31:57] Thanks, Brian, for answering that question for us. I think you made it pretty clear that there are a large group of people looking for this type of option, that there are some sizable benefits and advantages leveraging this business tool, and the greater overall strategy for maintaining and growing your call volume. That’s what we’re here to do is to help you do that.
[32:17] That brings us almost to the end of another episode of the Strategy Talks. Just to let you know what’s happening at Funeral Results Marketing, we have the cremationconference.com. You’ll be able to start to see more information there at the website. It’s going to be held in mid-September in Florida. We’re working on having a special guest and some other treats for you there.
[32:44] We’ve just launched another cremation arrangement website for the Ballards in Scott County, Minnesota. It’s scottcountycremation.org. They’re using this as a supplement to their funeral homes sites. I’m not going to have it directly competing with them, but they’re going to be going after the greater surrounding area, just what Brian was talking about today.
[33:09] Finally, I want to let you know of a new program that we’re launching here at Funeral Results Marketing is the War Room Program. What this is going to do is it’s going to take all this information that’s available online.
[33:24] We’re going to be able to package those statistics up for you. Whether it’s your Google Analytics, your Google AdWords, your Google Search Console, your Google results, like your rankings, competitive rankings. We’ll be able to bring in stats from your social media.
[33:47] It’s going to be a report that brings all of the things that are happening online, all into one convenient reporting tool for you, plus with our analysis. Brian and I will get together periodically, review that, and see how you can then continue to grow your business and get the results that you’re looking for. Brian, I’ll turn it over to you.
Brian: [34:13] As usual, Rob, we’d like to finish by asking, what’s your burning question about online marketing or cremation business, or anything else in the industry? If you will leave it here, we will try to answer it on an upcoming episode.
[34:28] If you like what you’re hearing, please leave a comment on the blog or give it a rating on iTunes or Google Play because we want to help you and give you the type of answers and information that will help you do a better job.
Robin: [34:41] Thanks for spending time with us today. Our goal is for you to serve more families and provide them more meaningful services. Make sure you check back soon for another episode of Strategy Talks by Funeral Results Marketing. Until the next episode, this had been Brian Young and Robin Heppell.
This has been another episode of Strategy Talks with Robin Heppell and Brian Young. To ask a question or leave a comment, visit FuneralResultsMarketing.com/talks To make sure that you never miss an episode, you can subscribe to this podcast for free on iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.
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