“Buyer persona” is a term that marketers are familiar with, but it’s also something that all businesses should know and use. By creating buyer personas for your funeral home, you can better market your products and services to your target audience.

To makes things easy for you, we’ve created this guide to help you out!

Buyer Personas Defined

A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your funeral home’s ideal customer. They help you paint a better picture of your target audience and what their wants and needs are for funerals. They also can help you better understand their knowledge about funeral planning.

What to Include in Buyer Personas

To create your buyer personas, you need to conduct secondary and primary marketing research in your funeral home’s community. Secondary research is done first and involves already published data. While primary research is your own research, such as through surveys and interviews.

Some basic demographics you may want to include in your research and personas are age, education, occupation, income, relationship status, number of children, race, ethnicity, and religion. While some funeral-specific demographics are the reason for researching funeral homes, funeral knowledge, funeral desires, funeral needs, and extent of preplanning completed.

Buyer Persona Example

Below is an example of a buyer persona from our marketing research eBook.

Name: Susan Sample

Age: 38

Education: Bachelor’s degree

Relationship Status: Widowed

Children: Three

Income: $45,000

Savings: $1,000

Reason for researching funeral homes: Susan’s husband died unexpectedly in a car accident.

Funeral knowledge: She is unsure of her options and costs.

Preplanning: None

Funeral desires: She wants inexpensive options that will still honor her husband’s life.

Funeral needs: She needs an alternative payment method, such as life insurance, financing, or crowdfunding.

Starting Your Own Buyer Personas

Remember, the above buyer persona is just an example. Your buyer personas will vary depending on your funeral home and your community. For instance, the personas of a funeral home in a busy city that’s up to date on the latest funeral trends may be different than a funeral home in a rural area that’s slower to adapt to change.

Your funeral home’s location also plays a factor, as some states don’t allow certain alternative burial practices. For example, a funeral home in Washington where human composting is allowed may have different personas than a funeral home in another state that’s slower to adapt alternative burial options.

Before starting your research, determine what demographics are most important for your funeral home. It could be religion if your community is made up of a lot of different religions. Or, it could be age if you’re finding a variety in the ages of people who are funeral planning. For funeral-related demographics, it could be someone who is interested in alternative burials and someone who is more traditional. Or, it can be someone who has preplanned and someone who isn’t financially prepared for a funeral.

When creating your buyer personas, you don’t need to go overboard. Just focus on a few important demographics. Of course, no will perfectly fit these personas, but they’ll help you better cater to your client families.

Has your funeral home conducted marketing research in your community? Share how the process went in the comments below!