By conducting marketing research, you can learn about your families before they even step foot in your funeral home. From their average age to their income, these factors and more come into play when funeral planning. 

Knowing this information about your funeral home’s community helps you better market your services, as well as decide which services to offer. This way, you can create the most personalized funeral experiences as possible for your families. 

Are you ready to get started? Let’s go over some marketing research tips below. 

Conduct Secondary Research with Already Published Data About Your Community 

Despite its name, secondary research is the type of marketing research that you do first. It involves researching already published data to learn basic facts about your community’s demographics.  

When beginning your research, two websites that you can start with are the U.S. Census Bureau and City-Data. On websites like these, you can see a breakdown of your community’s population, age, gender, race, income, and other demographics. 

Don’t forget about print resources, as they can be helpful for your research too. Your local library, college campus, or small business center are all good places to start when looking for print resources.  

Of course, we know that funeral directors are busy people. Despite wanting to learn more about your community, you may not have the time. If this sounds like you, consider hiring a research intern! This way, you can focus on doing what you do best: caring for families.  

Conduct Primary Research Through Surveys and Interviews in Your Community 

Along with secondary research, you want to conduct your own primary research, such as through surveys and interviews. There are many easy-to-use survey tools out there, like SurveyMonkey or Google Forms. These are great for learning basic information about your community’s demographics and funeral wishes. 

While interviews are good for learning more in-depth information about a smaller sample of your community. These can be done over the phone, via video chat, or in person.  

You also could host a focus group, which is a guided discussion about a specific topic. For these, you want to invite a diverse group of people who represent the different demographics within your community. 

Once you’ve completed your primary research, don’t forget to compare your findings to your secondary research. 

Determine Your Funeral Home’s Brand 

Before using your research to create buyer personas, you should determine your funeral home’s brand. To put it simply, your brand is the meaning behind everything you do. It’s what you want your community to think of when your funeral home comes to mind.  

When determining your brand, have your employees list a few adjectives that you hope families use when describing your staff to a friend. You also can list a few words to describe a family’s ideal funeral experience. Ask yourself questions like, “how do we want families to remember their experience with our funeral home?” “What makes us unique?” Or “what makes us stand out from our competitors?” 

For more tips on determining your funeral home’s brand, check out this article! 

Create Buyer Personas with Your Funeral Home’s Marketing Research Data 

Now, you can use your data to create buyer personas. These are semi-fictional representations of your funeral home’s ideal customers. Depending on what you found, you may want to create several personas to represent the main demographics in your community. 

For example, one persona may represent someone who is older and ready to preplan. While another one may be for someone who experienced an unexpected death and isn’t financially prepared. To learn more about creating personas, check out this article!  

Once you create your personas, make sure they’re available for your entire staff to reference. As you learn more about your community over the years, you can adjust them as needed. 

Download our free marketing research eBook to learn more! You’ll get access to sample interview questions, buyer persona examples, and more.