Today I attended a meeting of angels. No, not the kind with wings but the more earthly ones with money to invest. Presenting to them were a bevy of start-up companies looking to become the next big thing. As each presented his (I’m not sexist; they were all guys) story, I was surprised at how uniformly they said they intended to market using social media alone. OK, they were trying to prove to possible investors that they would be frugal with the marketing dollars – and sure, Twitter and Facebook are free, at least on the surface. They figured that it would require only minimal spend to influence their customers to Tweet or post their enthusiastic endorsements to their BFF’s on Facebook, and then the rest would fall into place.

First, I have to admit, these guys were mostly in their 30’s (and I’m just “slightly” older) so they are more comfortable adapting to every new gadget and app. But they are also focusing on the wrong thing. It’s not the medium du jour that’s important here. It’s the message. The horse always has to go ahead of the cart and not the other way around. It’s a mistake to be thinking about where to tell the message without having decided on exactly what the right message is, given the product and the buyer. Maybe social media is the right medium, maybe it’s not – but it should always be the message that drives where and how the story is to be told. And these guys have already settled on Twitter!

Frankly, I don’t believe the Internet pundits have it right when they tout Social Media as the new and only way to go and claim that “push” advertising (they call it Marketing 1.0) is dead. Sound marketing strategy requires a combination of both push and pull. Tell the consumer about the product and then help them tell each other.

My point is, don’t get so enamored of some “hot” new marketing technique as to forget the basics. The right message, strategically developed, skillfully crafted and inventively told will win out in any medium. It’s about message first and foremost. That’s when the angels sing.

Have you ever noticed how every time a competing funeral home runs a new ad, you see it immediately? And if the ad is particularly effective, you may even respond in some way.

When you visit one of the major funeral industry trade shows, don’t you come back with lots of new ideas? Maybe it’s a new online memorialization solution that inspires you or a new kind of urn display that makes you want to look at your own display room.

What could be wrong with that?

The answer is that you’re looking in the wrong place! Seeking good ideas from within your own industry is just a step away from examining your own navel. It’s incestuous thinking. What you need in order to grow is to branch out. And how you do that is by looking at industries and businesses outside your own.

Instead of just exploring funeral expos for new ideas, why aren’t you looking at boat shows? What’s happening at Best Buy or Home Depot that you could apply? What are their new customer service initiatives? What interesting displays and literature seem to pull?

Some years back, there was a Consumer Electronics trade publication that had a monthly feature highlighting ideas from such enterprises as Veterinary clinics, country clubs and Army recruiting stations in order to generate new thinking. Sadly, the publication didn’t make it, but its message was not lost on me. It’s why I love the range of advertising clients I’ve served, from running shoes to bagels to auto auctions (and yes, funeral homes and cemeteries) because I believe in cross-pollinating good ideas. I once took a staff training strategy that I developed for a combo cemetery/mortuary and used it for a loudspeaker company and it was a hit! I don’t recall if I told them where I stole it from.

I forget its author, but there is a great quote about creativity being nothing more or less than taking old elements and putting them together in new ways. This certainly applies to creative marketing strategies. Take ideas from outside the funeral industry, put them together with what you know about your business and you’ll find exciting new directions that will help you compete in ways you never expected.

A few years back, I had decided to take a brief hiatus from advertising and open my own flight school. I thought it would be interesting to put my money where my mouth is and be my own client for a change. Knowing that branding is one of the most vital parts of a any company’s success, I created a unique identity for my flight school, calling it “Hollywood Aviators.” In part it was because we were located close to the film capital, and in part I wanted to attract that crowd. (Angelina Jolie had just earned her pilots license, but there were plenty of others…and we even got a few!) I created a logo in the style of the famous Hollywood Walk of Fame, and we put up floor-to-ceiling photos of John Wayne, Clark Gable and Jimmy Stewart in aviation roles. Our slogan was “Star treatment from the ground up.” But with all that, I knew that a logo and a slogan were the most superficial parts of branding. What really gives a brand its value is saying and doing those things that are in alignment with the brand. So, for us to be Hollywood Aviators, we had to perform as Hollywood Aviators, from providing star-level customer service to assuring that our facilities and aircraft were as exceptional as possible…even on a shoestring budget. It didn’t take long for people to notice us, and in short time, with a little publicity and advertising to prime the pump, we started to grow.

Of course, then I realized that I really missed my advertising career so I sold the school.

But what I took away from this experience was a first-hand understanding of the power of branding at the deepest levels.

A brand is far more than a logo. It is more than a clever tagline. A successful brand is the living realization of all you promise in your marketing. It’s how you answer the phones. It’s how you follow through on your promises. It’s how you relate to your employees and how your employees relate to your customers. In other words, your brand is also your culture. Being the brand is just as important as executing your branding consistently across all the marketing platforms.

Let’s take the funeral business. If a funeral home’s slogan is “Caring 24/7” for instance, it had better not have an answering machine or an impersonal third-party service if a family calls after hours. And everyone from the maintenance staff to the secretaries to the attendants should understand that they all play a vital role in helping ease a family’s pain in difficult times, even if they hardly ever interface with them directly. If a cemetery’s message is “A New Way,” then everything it does should feel fresh and unexpected, from how the lobby looks to the way the contract is written. Otherwise, it’s only lip service and customers quickly catch on.

In the funeral business, consumers automatically default to stereotypical images which are not very flattering.

So it’s up to you to brand your business in a way that demonstrates you’re in a class all your own. And don’t just tell them with clever marketing, but prove it to them in all the ways your business can actually be the brand.

I’m a fan of great quotes.  One of my favorites is from Bill Cosby:  “I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.”   In fact, this is more than a brilliant quote but an absolute truth, particularly as applied to advertising.

There is no better way to assure an ad’s failure than to try to make it fit all people, all needs and all occasions.  The natural fear is that if an ad doesn’t include all possible reasons-why, or is too narrowly targeted, or is possibly off-putting to one reader in a hundred, the ad will fall flat on its face.  You know the kind of ad I’m talking about, that has three subheads and a dozen bullet points – just in case one point doesn’t fit some reader’s need.

One example of an actual funeral home ad says:

• Serving with Compassion Since 1954
• Cremation Services Available
• Funeral Services / Ceremonial Casket
• Monuments & Markers
• Many Plans & Options to Choose From
• Pre-Planning Available In-Home
• Family Owned & Operated
• Member of (state) Funeral Directors Association

Yikes!  And this is supposed to get attention and generate action?  Instead of having one strong and specific point-of-view, it has no point-of-view whatsoever.  Instead of a crisp, insightful message, all the starch has been taken out and the ad is a soggy mess.

The best ads are those that are absolutely single-minded in message and every word of copy is directed to that one message to the exclusion of all others.  That’s provocative advertising!

Consider this ad, for instance.

It only has a single topic and a rather unusual (some might even say too-edgy) headline.  The ad absolutely hit its mark and helped reverse eroding casket sales.  Did it offend anyone?  Well, there were three irate calls after the ad was launched. But the positive sales figures tell the rest of the story!  In fact, the low-budget casket retailer whose competing business prompted this ad told me that he absolutely felt the sting of this ad’s success.

If you are in the funeral business, the very fact that you run advertising at all will offend someone. But as long as you are respectful and are not deliberately trying to tick off your audience, the plusses will far outweigh the minuses.  So go ahead and get creative.  Go for razor sharp ideas that get attention, even if they risk raising eyebrows in some quarters.

When you stop trying to satisfy everyone, stop shooting your ad full of bullets, you’ll find new life in the results.

You spend thousands, perhaps tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars on your advertising and yet you’re still completely invisible to most of your audience.  What’s going on?  Why after all this time and all those dollars are you still the best-kept-secret in town?

Well, think about it from another perspective.

Do you need a plumber right at this moment?  (If you do, let’s pretend you don’t for the sake of this illustration.)  People who don’t need plumbers probably don’t see all those plumber ads in the papers, or on bus benches, or hear them on the radio.  Oh, they’re there all right, lots of them, but to you, they’re completely invisible…Unless.  The “unless” is if the ad happens to be really creative or interesting in some way that grabs you regardless.  But most plumber ads are pretty much what you expect, and are therefore completely unnoticeable to the 98% of the audience who is not at-need.  (You see where I’m going with this…)

In this case, the best that the plumber can hope for is an equal shot along with all his competition at the time the faucet starts dripping, and not a moment before.  But let’s take the plumber whose advertising is really fresh and interesting, that makes people take notice even when everything is fine.  Then he’s going to be the first name on people’s minds when the sink backs up.

Human beings only pay attention to the things that interest them, and block out all the rest.  It’s a natural defense mechanism that helps the brain cope with too much information.  And only those things that are of immediate interest have a way of showing up as if by magic – such as when you are shopping for a particular car and suddenly, every car on the highway is that car!

For fun, try this wonderful YouTube demonstration:

Funeral advertising is no different.  It’s easy to be visible to your audience when there’s a death in the family.  But imagine how completely invisible you are prior to that need – which is precisely when you most want to reach them!  The more “expected” your advertising, the more invisible you become. (That’s why the canned pre-made funeral ads are the worst thing you can run; they look nice but the audience tunes them out.)

If you want to be noticed, you have to be noticeable.  You need to rise above the general noise level with advertising and marketing that is different, fresh, unconventional and unexpected.  You have to be willing to step out on a limb and surprise the audience and perhaps yourself.

I realize that only a tiny percentage of marketers will actually take this to heart and do anything amazing.  That’s why 95% of ads in any medium – print, TV, billboards, direct mail – or for any industry – beer, office supplies, and yes, funeral homes – are doomed before they leave the production house.  But for those who take the risk, the reward is top-of-mind awareness before, during, and after the need.

That’s an ROI I’d take any day.

It’s an odd fact that the worst advertisers are ad agencies.  I know that from nearly 30 years working in ad agencies myself.  I guess it’s like the old expression that the shoemaker’s children are always shoeless.  So why this curious – one might say disingenuous – phenomenon?

It’s because ad agencies suffer from the same problem most other advertisers face:  you can’t easily turn your own eyeballs inward.  You can’t be a fair judge of your own marketing and messaging.  For ad professionals, who are hypercritical of all advertising, this can be simply paralyzing.  When I had my own agency, I recognized this problem and did the only right thing I could – I hired an outside team to help us.  It was obvious to me that we couldn’t get there on our own.  We were just too damn close to our own product.

And that’s the way it is with just about any business, and in particular, funeral homes and cemeteries, for whom tradition is sometimes a value, but in this case is a yoke.

What they and just about every other marketer lack is, in a word, objectivity.  They’re not going to admit to themselves that people don’t like advertising, and people really, really don’t like funeral advertising. (Hey, no mother is going to admit that her kid is ugly!)   So they do advertising and marketing that feels good to them, or the kind that the funeral industry has always done so it won’t offend anyone.  In other words, the kind of marketing that’s rewarded with indifference, or worse, avoidance.

The savvy marketer, at this point, realizes that the company needs professional help…from someone who not only has the talent and skills to create strong advertising, but also brings the objectivity that reflects the audience, not the advertiser.

The objective viewpoint will tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear, or what everybody in the company feels most comfortable with.  An outside professional can bring that objectivity to your marketing and make sure it resonates with the public, perhaps even to the discomfort of some of your staff.  You actually want disruption because nobody ever pays attention to “same old.”

I am not suggesting hiring an ad agency, design firm or free-lance guru as a full-time solution.  But they are most useful when creating a new campaign or fresh marketing message because they live in that world outside your doors.  They know marketing like you know embalming, and you shouldn’t switch hats.

What about the TV station or newspaper who says they’ll create your ad for free if you run it with them?  Not a good choice, since their mission is to sell media space, and only peripherally getting your phone to ring. (You can usually tell the ads created by their ad departments versus those done by marketing pros anyway.)

Using outside professional help, along with being willing to break the marketing molds cast long ago, can bring results as you’ve never had.

I wish, in my agency life, I’d learned that much sooner than I did.

Woody Allen once said he doesn’t want to achieve immortality through his work; he wants to achieve it by not dying. I think the rest of us have already come to terms with that inevitable reality, even if it’s not something to look forward to.

Quite a few people deal with this grim fact of fate by looking for the humor in it. Hence a crop of entertainment from books and movies like “The Loved One” (1965) to TV series such as “Six Feet Under” and “Dead Like Me.”  (I’m convinced that I turned out the way I am thanks to all those years watching “The Addams Family.”)

Humor and death just seem to find a natural affinity for each other. This is particularly true among the iconoclastic Baby Boom generation.

There is a place for humor in funeral advertising – particularly with regard to before-need advertising. After all, nobody’s dead yet.

For many, humor – especially if it comes from a place of respect and empathy – is a welcome starting point to discuss funeral plans. Humor acknowledges the universality of the subject while softening the “immediacy” of it.

Can funeral adverting be humorous while still being impactful on sales?  Yes. Can it be irreverent but respectful at the same time? Absolutely!

Best of all, since humorous funeral advertising is completely unexpected, it gets attention when nearly all other funeral advertising just gets ignored.

Here are a few examples of ads that raised not only eyebrows but response rates:

Right after each Super Bowl, my friends ask me what I thought of the commercials. I am much more interested in what they think about them. Actually, I am not interested in which ads they thought were funny or clever, but which ads moved them positively toward the products! With all the millions of dollars that go into the production of each commercial and media time, with all the hoopla about the advertising showcase the Super Bowl provides, I submit that most of these prized commercials fail – even if they do show up on YouTube later on.

That’s because strong advertising isn’t about being clever. It’s about the ability to inject a strong and compelling reason to buy. With few exceptions, most Super Bowl commercials don’t motivate consumers to buy, even if they do get talked about. One great adman said it correctly, “It isn’t creative if it doesn’t sell.”

So why bother being creative, if merely capturing attention isn’t enough? Because the first job of any good ad is to get the reader/viewer/listener to invite you in. Given the amount of information and marketing overload, you have to step outside the box, rise above the noise level, grab the audience and actively be invited into his or her consciousness or you’ll be shut out. In the funeral business, this is even harder to do, given the subject matter. So it’s all the more imperative that a funeral advertiser step up and Dare to be Different or the ad will be ignored – or worse, avoided. In other words, creativity is a strong necessary delivery vehicle for the message.

But the job isn’t done. This is only the starting point! The ad still has to sell. And that means having a message that is compelling, honest, believable, clear and different.

If that isn’t the case, it’s not really creative. It’s just clever.

Welcome to a new blog that’s all about advertising for funeral homes, cemeteries and other providers of funeral services. In this and future posts, I’ll explore thoughts and suggestions related to making your funeral advertising stand out from the crowd and produce the results you want. This post today deals with a favorite topic: lead generation.

In funeral advertising, it’s all about generating new leads.  Here is some thinking about ads which compel a reader (or listener or viewer) to take action:

• The best, most meaningful response mechanism in my experience has been the offer of a Family Records Portfolio.  This is a place for a family to record the location of their wills, trusts, bank accounts, along with a list of friends and family to contact, and preferences for their funeral (funeral home, cemetery, type of service, etc.)
• Anyone who would request this  1) accepts mortality, 2) is thinking ahead for his or her family, and 3) willing to engage in a dialog with you.  But since it’s a free gift to them, you can’t push them too hard, just stay with them and nurture the relationship.
• The ad has to be large enough, or run frequently enough to be seen – and in the media that has the best reach within your audience.  Generally for a response ad to work, it should be at least half the page size or more!  As an aside, I have found that radio works GREAT for this kind of thing, believe it or not.
• Once you have the lead, you need to nurture it.  So you need a decent database that “tickles” you when it’s time to make the next follow-up call for each person who requested a planner.
• You need to have a definite internal lead follow-up program that outlines when to make the first follow-up call, when to send a letter after that, when to send a second letter, when to make the second call, etc.
• You need to have a commitment from either yourself or a staff member to stay on top of the program – that’s the part where most companies fail.

If you don’t have a planner already, you can buy them from a number of sources such as the NFDA or Pre-Need Insurance providers, or produce them yourself. (Custom planners run about $1.75 to $3 per book depending on how many colors.)  Alternately, you can promote a wallet-sized Emergency Card with your funeral home’s name on it.  The upside is it is much less expensive to produce, but the downside is that it pulls less than a planner.

Don’t forget to also offer the booklets on your website – the deal is that the user has to fill out a form before he or she downloads or requests it, which gives you the lead.

For examples of ads promoting a family records organizer, go to www.thatzkatz.com/FuneralPrintAds.htm