Homesteaders Blog

Top 5 Blog Posts for Funeral Professionals in 2023

As we close out another year, we’re grateful for our Homesteaders Blog readers and the time you’ve dedicated to learning how to better serve client families and improve your business. In 2023, we dove into solutions to boost creativity and increase your community’s awareness about your funeral home’s services. While there are many great posts from the past year, we’ve identified these five popular posts that are worth another look as we enter 2024.

Efficiency Strategies for Funeral Homes Managing Multiple Locations

Managing multiple funeral home locations can present unique challenges, but with the right strategies it's possible to streamline operations and provide seamless support to grieving families in your communities.

Productivity and Task Automation Tools for Funeral Professionals

Digital tools are a great way to help with time management and productivity so you can spend your time doing what you truly value: serving client families. These tools include ways to increase efficiency for project management, marketing, communication within the team and day-to-day operations.

Why Families Prearrange: Trends Funeral Professionals Need to Know

Not all families have an opportunity to prepare for or understand their loved one’s end-of-life wishes. In situations where death occurs unexpectedly, the process of planning a meaningful service or celebration of life without their loved one’s input can take an emotional and financial toll on the family members they left behind. That is why it is important to ensure families know that making advance funeral plans can help relieve that burden for their loved ones. 

How Your Funeral Home Can Provide Solutions for Preneed Clients

The most successful companies often build a loyal customer base, at least in part, because of one very simple idea: They solve problems for the people they serve. Not only do they solve those problems, but they also clearly share why their offerings can provide the highest satisfaction in the process.

Using Data to Connect with and Retain Funeral Home Client Families

For many funeral homes, goal setting includes defining a target for the amount of preneed and at-need business your firm will generate. The most successful firms maintain a preneed to at-need ratio 60/40, which may seem like a stretch goal. Fortunately, you can turn to easily accessible data to help you find and retain your client families.

3 Common Missed Opportunities to Increase Preneed Sales

You provide exceptional service and support to each family you serve, but do you have what it takes to build the same meaningful connections with everyone in your community, and do you have the time to do so?

Funeral providers that have an active preneed program aim to generate quality leads by casting a wide net in their community. However, this process takes time, and you often need to nurture these individuals over a longer period until they feel ready to prearrange their own funeral. In fact, 29% of respondents to our latest policy owner survey reported that it took two years or more from the time they first learned about prearranging until they finalized and made their own arrangements.

Keep reading to discover three common opportunities funeral providers miss when trying to capture more preneed sales.

Build a Successful Funeral Home Social Media Strategy

At Homesteaders, we survey our policy owners every two years and ask how many funeral homes they considered when they made their prearrangements. In our latest survey, nearly 75% of respondents indicated they considered just one funeral home. This response shows why brand-building funeral marketing efforts are so important for a funeral business. If you aren’t the first call a potential preneed client makes, chances are good you will miss out on that business entirely.

How to Connect with More Preneed Families

There are more ways than ever to connect with preneed families. The challenge is to find the methods that are effective for your funeral home and community – and implement them well.

Trends to Watch for Your Funeral Home Business

Business owners and managers have constant access to new information about trends in consumer demographics and preferences that have the potential to impact major decisions. One of the biggest challenges is simply prioritizing and sifting through the data to analyze what it could mean for your firm.