By Joe Weigel, owner, Weigel Strategic Marketing
It’s not unusual for some funeral home owners to have healthy egos. Guiding a small business like a funeral home through the never-ending ups and downs takes great confidence. Unfortunately, in some cases, egos can inflate into so much self-confidence it impedes short–and long–term marketing success.
I thought about that after I finished a conversation with a funeral home owner who responded to my question about why families turned to her firm. “Honestly, they do business with my funeral home because they want to do business with me,” was her reply.
I’ve heard similar responses frequently over the years. On the one hand, that’s not unusual. The simple fact is that a firm’s reputation can’t – and shouldn’t – be all about one person. Oh, sure, that one person can be a tremendous inspiration, a great leader, or a skilled manager. His or her family is the one that built the funeral home from the ground up. However, for a funeral home to thrive, it has to transcend the individuals behind it. As people say, the whole has to be bigger than the sum of the parts.
Otherwise, the company’s future depends completely on your presence and direct involvement. Your reputation outshines the company. No matter how well you hire, your presence will overshadow everything and everyone. People will assume the company’s collective expertise is limited to only what’s stored between your ears.
The same goes for how you market your firm. Are you front and center in all your marketing communications? Are you featured in the advertising rather than the services you offer or the skilled staff you employ? This singular approach to marketing communications has been employed over the years by companies.
This brings to mind a little ditty that most advertising folks have heard (and often credited to David Ogilvy) about the process for creating advertising for small businesses:
“When the client moans and sighs,
Make his logo twice the size.
If he still should balk and squirm
Show a picture of his firm.
But only in the gravest cases
Should you show the clients’ faces.”
I’ll admit that this rhyme is a bit over the top as it relates to funeral home owners being featured in their marketing efforts. However, just because your family’s name is on the sign outside, doesn’t mean that you have the right to be the exclusive focus of your firm’s marketing efforts.
So, if you’re one of those funeral home owners who truly believe you make the firm what it is, and if you want the company to grow and exemplify your values and standards after you walk away, you need to move the spotlight off of you for a while and shine it on the organization you’ve built.
Don’t get me wrong – there is a time and place for you to be featured in your marketing efforts. You have helped get the firm to where it is today. Just be sure that your messaging is not overly reliant on showcasing you.
And even if the idea you’re the reason families choose your funeral home is not true and is merely a product of your ego, your staff and your families alike are going to sense it in your behavior and hear it in your words. It’s hard for employees to feel confident in their knowledge or want to feed their growth when your image always looms over them. Wondering why your staff doesn’t show more initiative? Why they’re afraid to make decisions on their own? A look in the mirror might provide a clue.
Here’s the important point to ponder – you may be financially shortchanging yourself and your team. How? There will come a day when you’re ready to make your exit, and you’ll expect to be rewarded for the sweat equity and heart you put into the funeral home.
If you are planning to completely walk away from the business after the sale, what you started will be worth a lot more if it’s a company with its reputation. Put another way, if your company’s reputation hinges primarily on your involvement, what’s it going to be worth when you’re no longer around?
There’s the other scenario, too – the one where you don’t get to choose when you exit. Hopefully, it doesn’t happen, but life throws us, from time to time, curveballs that spell the end of your career. Will your funeral home continue to thrive? That depends on how closely its reputation is tied in with your involvement. Your firm may be the clear leader in your community, but without you, it may cease to exist in a year or two.
A lot is written about effective exit strategies, which is a common topic in funeral magazines. You may already be thinking about a change in ownership. If that’s so, you should also be thinking about moving away from some of the day-to-day activities. In addition, you should make some deliberate efforts to take you away from the center of the company’s reputation built through marketing tactics and branding initiatives.
In the end, the marketing goal is to preserve the good elements you brought to your funeral home and show how the team you created is building upon them. Handled successfully, this kind of marketing approach can increase your team’s morale and motivation, encourage your company’s growth and ensure its value will reward your exit appropriately.
Joe Weigel is the founder of Weigel Strategic Marketing, a marketing communications firm focused on the funeral profession that delivers expertise across three disciplines: public relations, branding, and communications. Visit weigelstrategicmarketing.webs.com to learn more. He also can be reached via email.
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