July 2017

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Page A4 JULY 2017 FUNERAL HOME & CEMETERY NEWS S ec t i on A
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By Nancy Weil
It’s Baseball
Season, So What’s Your Pitch?
A funeral home or cemetery handling a funeral or buri-
al is not newsworthy, unless something goes horribly
wrong. So how can you get press coverage to raise com-
munity awareness about your business? Just like in base-
ball, you have to pitch it. Just like it baseball, there is a
process from wind up to pitch to success.
Let me coach you through the process that I have used
successfully:
• Plan a newsworthy event – Right now there is a fu-
neral home in Georgia that is arranging the arrival,
wake, funeral and burial of a resident who was MIA
since WorldWar II and only recently found and iden-
tified. Unless you have a service like this, you need
to have something else to pitch. What events, work-
shops, and programs do you run? Start planning the
event with the end game in mind. When I began my
Before I Die board project, I was already planning my
pitch with the Buffalo News and, not only did the
story make the front page, the photo was just used
again for a different event I am involved in. So double
the exposure and a great program as well!
• Press release – Write up a professional press release.
Make sure all of the details are covered –date/time/
Random
Musings
place, etc. Don’t forget your contact information for
them to find you with follow up questions.
• Call send call – Media people are busy. They have more
faxes, emails, phone calls than they can handle. So I always
call the newsroom or reporter first and offer my quick
overview of what is going on. I then ask them where I can
send the press release. That way they know to watch for it
and it goes to the correct person. Finally I follow up with
a phone call a few days later to see if they have any other
questions.
• Presentation is everything – Every station has an adver-
tising department that would love to sell you air time or
a printed ad. They aren’t interested in giving you free ad-
vertising, so you have to pitch the local angle, the commu-
nity service aspect, the emotional pull, the “you’re help-
ing those in our community by letting them know about
this” pitch.
• Grow your connections – Reporters are people. Once
you meet them, build a relationship. If you see they wrote
a great article or ran an interesting story, shoot them an
email and let them know. I now have a group of media
contacts that I can call when I have something that is truly
worthy of their attention and they will usually cover it, be-
cause they trust me.
• Follow up – If you get results, phone calls, letters, any type
of response from the viewing public, let the reporter know.
They want to know that their work has made a difference.
• Go big or go home – It is great for your business to get
local coverage, but if you have something of national in-
terest, pitch it that way. This may be a long shot, but it is
still worth an email inquiry. They are looking for stories to
cover, so why not give it a try? Good Morning America,
the Ellen show, CNN – look on the website and see if they
have a place to submit a story idea.
• The important work starts when the story has run –
Once the story is out, capture a copy of it. Put it on your
social media pages. Try to house the original story on your
own server and place it on your website. Be careful of just
putting a link on your website. If the station ever takes
the story down, you have nothing to show. Play it at
events, frame the newspaper story and hang it in your
office, etc. Keep the story alive for as long as you can.
• Their SEO vs. your SEO – One of the benefits of
getting coverage may not be evident for years. Since
they have a stronger search engine people may find
you during a google search through their story. I once
received a call two years after a story had run from
someone who was looking for grief support groups
and found me.
So what are you going to pitch this summer?
WithcertificationsasaGriefServicesProviderandGriefManagement
Specialist, Funeral Celebrant, as well as Laughter Leader, Nancy Weil
is uniquely qualified to bring new perspectives into how to best meet
the needs of the families you serve. A professional speaker, Nancy
travels the country bringing effective tools to reduce stress, combat
compassion fatigue and handle grief to companies, associations and
conferences large and small. With a passionate interest in the healing
qualities of laughter, she is known for her energetic, entertaining and
content rich programs. In addition to talks geared to the general
public, she has also been brought in by funeral directors to offer
(CEU) programs to funeral staff, nurses, chaplains and social work-
ers in their communities.
Nancy has developed the most comprehensive aftercare program
of any cemetery or funeral home in the country and is currently di-
recting aftercare programs, community outreach and marketing at
Veterans Funeral Care. She consults with industry professionals in
how they can develop or grow their own grief support program in
order to maintain contact with the families they serve and develop
stronger relationships within their community.
Her book, If Stress Doesn’t Kill You, Your Family Might, is filled with
tools that work to reduce stress and find your “inner happy.” For
more information on how Nancy can help you and your business
grow, visit her website: or by email at:
.
SAN ANTONIO,TX— Freedom Solar recently installed more
than 530 kilowatts of solar power on seven locations of Mis-
sion Park Funeral Chapels and Cemeteries, the largest and
oldest privately owned funeral company in San Antonio.
Powered by 1,634 high-efficiency solar panels, the new
solar projects will offset more than 55 percent of Mis-
Historic Funeral Business leaps into 21st Century
with Rooftop Solar Arrays on Seven Locations
Mission Park Funeral Chapel North
Brookehill Funeral Home
Palm Heights Mortuary
Oak Hills Mortuary
Mission Park teams up with local contractor Freedom Solar to go green
sion Park’s electricity needs
at the seven locations: two
mortuaries (Oak Hill and
Palm Heights), its corpo-
rate office, three funer-
al chapels and cemeteries
(North, South, and Do-
minion), and its funeral
home (Brookehill).
The entire system is ex-
pected to pay for itself in
less than four and a half
years.
A generous local utili-
ty rebate covered roughly
46 percent of total system
costs. Mission Park will also
receive the Federal Invest-
ment Tax Credit (ITC) for
30 percent of the project’s
total cost, saving the com-
pany a total of 76 percent.
Robert “Dick” Tips,
chairman and CEO
of Mission Park, is the
fourth-generation owner
and one of San Antonio’s
most prominent business leaders. While
San Antonio’s landmark funeral company
is more than a century old, Mission Park
has grown dramatically in the past quarter
century, thanks to Tips’ emphasis on pre-
planning and his vision for development.
“For us, the best part of solar energy is
that doing the right thing environmen-
tally is also the right thing to do finan-
cially,” Tips says. “Solar reduces our long-
term operating costs and paves the way for