Cardinal Funeral Homes Digital Marketing Strategy

For the most part, funeral homes advertise through very traditional channels such as radio/print/tv advertisements, sponsoring of community activities or direct mail. Like most consumers these days, may families are beginning to find and choose a funeral home through the internet. While we have a good online presence on Facebook, Google and YouTube, we spend very little marketing online. We would like to increase our presence digitally and be found by customers that may not know of us otherwise. We are looking to create a digital marketing strategy that helps people find us and then ultimately offers them the opportunity to contact us directly at the time of need or to pre-arrange and pre-pay for services ahead of time.

Cardinal Funeral Homes Next Generation

We are in the middle of a transition from the 3rd generation owner to the 4th generation. With the new generation assuming control of the company, we are looking to position ourselves for success for years to come. The funeral profession is going through many changes and just like other businesses, we must contend with a changing consumer, increase of technology and increased competition. We are very excited to work with students to identify new opportunities to achieve our business goals. We are open to feedback about areas of focus, as we would like our assigned person or team to preform a comprehensive analysis of our business. We have shared a few high priority goals and desired benefits below to help guide you: Some Challenges we are facing: - Increased cremation rate - Less traditional funerals (lower margins) - New competitors in our space (low cost/online providers) - Difficulty in attracting high level talent to work at a funeral home - Increased consolidation, fewer independent businesses to compete with large, (in some cases) multi-national firms - Consumers looking for increased convenience (cemetery and funeral home on same location, which we do not have) Opportunities we would like to take advantage of: - Increase in death rate as Baby Boomers continue to increase in age - Fewer family owned businesses, which typically have better service, can set us apart - Possibility of new technology to increase efficiency, find new customers, provide new/different products/services Benefits of participating in a project like this: - Plan strategically to take advantage of future opportunities - Increase efficiency of operating the business - Identify other revenue streams, areas of business that haven't been taken advantage of - Explore opportunities and viability of expansion through acquisition