Ten tips to increase obituary revenues
Ready to increase obituary revenues using self serve options? Here are ten tips from our most successful publishing partners. Use these tips to secure unbreakable relationships with funeral homes, give families what they want and increase revenues.
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Know all your funeral homes
Even funeral homes who are not advertisers will be interested in these partnerships, even if they are working with a different company. So get to know them all, and start building the relationships.
2. Keep calls on homes informational, and plans flexible
Funeral home partners are not a traditional customer and calls on funeral homes should be informational rather than sales oriented. Once the program is set-up, only a couple of face-to-face calls per year may suffice, but funeral homes are the key to a successful program.
"The funeral home is your best ally. They are recommending what the family should do. If you have a good relationship, they are going to offer obits," says one top seller who tripled obituary revenues using self serve in the first year.
When starting out, so not try to force funeral homes on to the self-serve platform; they may “hear” that you are trying to eliminate their sales rep. Rather offer self-serve as an option service, almost all will migrate anyway when they see the benefits.
3. Offer free logos
As tempting as it may be to either charge the funeral homes for logos, or offer a monetary incentive, neither one is appropriate. Offering monetary perks actually violates ethics. Instead, increase the free branding with a logo on each ad works wonders in persuading them to take orders from families.
4. Create a family planning brochure or hand-out
If you are using a built in obit writer that helps families write their obits all the better. But it never hurts to have a simple hand-out that funeral homes can leave with families explaining what to do. Include deadlines, contact information and writers guidelines.
5. Leave pricing lower at funeral homes, and give them a head start.
Again, it all about keeping your funeral homes happy. It is important for them to be able to tell families, that, even newspapers allow placement over the phone, families will they get the lowest pricing through the home. Another tip is that when rolling a new program, release it through funeral homes first.
6. Do continue to proof the obituaries
While newspapers have reduced or shifted obituary order-takers, having someone proof and approve ads is a last important service that funeral homes want to keep in place, and will will maintain the value of the relationship.
7. Offer “lifetime” memorial sites not just ads
Families have developed a preference sof being able to invite friends and extended family members to post stories and images via interactive memorial sites. Again, this is a simple upsell that is in demand. Don´t make the mistake of granting a short term or annual licence to the family, creating a problem down the line. Do it right the first time, by giving families who host memorial sites a life time licence.
8. “Bundle-in” an upsell to obituary print special sections
These “Tributes” special sections are pre-paginated using AdPortal Memoriams, and will generate more than $1 million for Gatehouse media properties in 2018. This is one of the easiest ways to build in a price increase.
9. Run special sections monthly if possible.
Publishers have found that annually, and even quarterly, obituary sections have less impact than ones that are closer to the date of the funers., So except for very small markets, a safe bet is to run these monthly where families can see an immediate benefit. How small is too small? If there are at least 8 pages of obituaries in the print section, that is enough for a viable section.
10. . Plan an overrun of the Tributes sections
One experience that most media running special sections have is multiple requests by families for the printed section. Plan on a 1000 to 2000 overrun and increase as needed.
