December 2020

Page A28 DECEMBER 2020 FUNERAL HOME & CEMETERY NEWS Se c t i on A 3” HEARSE NAMEPLATES 1-8 spaces $80.50 per nameplate 9-13 spaces $92.50 per nameplate 14-15 spaces $109.00 per nameplate 16-18 spaces $119.00 per nameplate Many Letter Styles and Sizes Available DEDUCT $10.00 each for Satin Aluminum Finish Order Direct at 1-800-782-8249 Free UPS Ground Shipping www.mccordcasketsandvaults.com 800-331-9093 For over thirty years Rick and Elizabeth Roberts have been supplying the funeral industry with superior quality handcrafted hardwood chapel furniture, still handcrafted by Rick & his craftsmen on a custom built to order basis. Large Baby Bier/Cremation Altar as the base of the Urn Carrier, offers multi-purpose functionality. Guaranteed 1 Unit in Stock on the 1 st of Each month! Urn Carrier Provincial Large Baby Bier/Cremation Altar RD/129 Cherry Queen Anne Formal Altar pictured with optional lighted Urn Riser Queen Anne Collection Introducing the Formal Altar Web Special! 15% Discount on all Furniture Extended through 12/31/20 robertsanddowney.com Pictured with Urn Carrier and Flag/Bible Holder Take Advantage of Schedule 179 Deductions on purchases made before 12/31/20 said Layer. “That yields a lot of benefits—truth, stability, service—but it’s important, every now and then, to pick your head up and look around to make sure that those old assumptions have held true. The Genogram is a way of doing that—and it’s already showing that perhaps we take more for granted than we can afford to.” MW+C and Passare plan to reach out to those firms who participated in the study to confirm their findings and further develop insights. In the meantime, Passare’s andMW+C’s an- alytics teams are currently combing through millions of data entries to paint an insightful portrait of the industry – includ- ing data that rocks longstanding industry assumptions. The title of the study comes from a medical term for a dia- gram of family and medical history, showing hereditary pat- terns, risk factors, and predispositions to disease. McKee Wallwork + Co applies the concept to business by plotting a complete “family tree” picture of an entire category and then identifying comparison points, trends, and inconsistencies by analyzing specific businesses relative to their cohort. McKee Wallwork + Co is a marketing advisory firm that generates new momentum for stalled, stuck and stale or- ganizations and industries across North America. MW+C has worked with dozens of death care brands in award- winning and disruptive work since 2008, including the now-famous “YODO” campaign, the documentary The Empty Chair, and the inception of “Scatter Day.” MW+C Partner Eric Layer is the author of The Right Way of Death: Restoring the American Funeral Business to Its True Calling. In addition to twice winning “Southwest Small Agency of the Year” from Advertising Age, MW+C also won its national “B2B Campaign of the Year” award. Advertising Age has also repeatedly recognized MW+C as one of the nation’s Best Places to Work in marketing. Passare offers the funeral profession’s only funeral home col- laboration software. Through Passare, funeral directors can connect and communicate with families and access case in- formation anytime, anywhere, using any internet-connected device. Offering unlimited users, unlimited devices, unlimit- ed updates, and 24/7 customer support, Passare is helping fu- neral staff to save time, streamline processes, and spend more quality time with the families they serve and with their own families at home. To learn more about Passare and request a free demo, visit www.passare.com. Passare, MW+C Map Death Care Risk Factors from Cremation to COVID SAN FRANCISCO,CA— Amidst a watershed year for the industry, funeral home owners now have access to ground- breaking research showing never-before-seen insight into the greatest risks and challenges facing the death care business. Death care technology company Passare and marketing consultancy MW+C have released the preliminary findings of their Death Care Genogram project, a unique research project that overlays cutting-edge qualitative diagnostic research with comprehensive quantitative financial data. The result is an in- valuable map of trends, risk factors, and overall health of busi- nesses related to end-of-life products and services. Among the initial findings were a number of valuable in- sights about the state of the industry in 2020: • Immediate COVID Impact was surprisingly minimal: Perhaps most surprisingly, initial data shows that CO- VID -19 may not have had the immediate negative im- pact on the industry that many had originally feared. 70 percent of firms studied reported an increase in to- tal revenue from Q1 to Q2 this year. • Region matters…a lot: A funeral home’s location, more than almost any other variable, seems to play the biggest role in its overall health and revenue. Funeral homes lo- cated in the Midwest generally report much lower rev- enue growth and much poorer overall company health than their colleagues in the Northeast and South. Nearly half of Midwestern firms studied reported a decrease in revenue—more than twice as many as in other regions. Midwestern firms were also much more likely to describe themselves as operating within a saturated or commod- itized market (where competition is most intense and in- novation most lacking), as opposed to a healthy, mature market with plenty of opportunity for growth. • Revenue is strongly linked to self-perception: Interest- ingly, the self-reported health of the company corre- lates strongly with total revenue. This may indicate that short-term success has a masking effect on more insidious underlying factors. Or, it may indicate that healthier firms simply make more money. • Cases don’t equal success: Early analysis shows little cor- relation between case count and overall health or rev- enue of funeral homes. Some firms saw significant declines in case count while revenue grew, and other firms with case growth saw revenue decline. This find- ing calls into question the usefulness of case volume, which has long been used by funeral homes as a metric of month-to-month success. “The Genogram’s results have already yielded so much insight and challenged traditional industry assumptions,” said Josh McQueen, vice president at Passare. “We exist to serve the funeral homes who, in turn, serve grieving families. This data gives us more tools and better clarity as to how we can do so.” Eric Layer, partner at MW+C, agreed. “Funeral ser- vice is a well-established and very traditional business,” Local SEO: The What, Why, and How for Funeral Homes isfaction with your services, mention that you can always use more Google reviews. Put tactful requests for reviews on your website and in email communications. Next, claim your online citations and en- sure your NAP data is consistent across all of them. NAP stands for business name, address, and phone number. When this information is presented the same way across the web, it helps provide authority that you are who you say you are. It also helps ensure Google is certain you’re a rel- evant local business, which can boost your performance in SERPs. Start with your own pages and ensure NAP data is formatted the same way on all of them. Then check your social media pro- files, including Facebook and Google My Business, to ensure the same. Claim your listing on review sites so you can edit NAP data, and look at listings on local chamber of commerce or industry pages. If your NAP data isn’t correct, contact the organization and ask for it to be edited. By taking these steps, you can boost your local SEO performance, helping the right people find your funeral home when they’re ready to begin preneed planning or have an immediate need for deathcare services. Welton  Hong is the founder of Ring Ring Marketing® and a leading expert in creating case generation from online to the phone line. He is the author of Making Your Phone Ring with Internet Marketing for Funeral Homes. For more information, visit www.FuneralHomeProfits.com. Continued from Page A26