Does your community know the value of your services? Check out Alex’s video (or read the transcription) explaining how to combat price shoppers.
Hey everyone. Alex McCracken back again with Funeral Innovations. Today I want to talk about the value of your funeral service and why you’re getting price shoppers in your community.
Price shopping is directly related to people viewing your services as a commodity. People generally won’t see any difference in the services that funeral home A or funeral home B are providing; so the only thing they can compare them on is price.
Let’s look at an example of this: oranges. When you go to a grocery store, you’re going to find the cheapest orange, because to you, an orange is an orange no matter where you get it from. At that point, you’re just comparing prices until you know the difference between an organic orange and a conventional orange. When you look at the difference between the two, you’ve now been educated on the benefits of wanting to get an organic orange vs wanting a conventional orange. You want the organic orange and you’re willing to spend more money because to you, the value has increased and you see more benefits to it.
It’s no different from how we can position funeral service to not be a commodity and show that value. There are three ways to address a price shopper:
- Lower or meet the price of your competitor. This is a race to the bottom. No one wins that war. Everyone loses because the prices keep dropping. You make it more of a commodity by doing that.
- Increase the amount of advertising and awareness. Drown your competitor out so they never get the call and families won’t even realize that there was a lower price. This can obviously get pretty expensive.
- Educate your community on the value of your service. Just like we can educate people on the difference between organic and a conventional orange. We can do the same thing with funeral services.
You can educate your community to understand that all services are not created equal. There are many more questions they need to be asking you besides “what is your price?” Things like:
- How do you treat the family?
- How do I get death certificates?
- When are your hours?
- What type of things do you provide for me for grief support?
Any of these can increase the value of your service and make sure that your community understands your value. By doing this, you can combat the number of price shoppers and people will start asking you more about your service as opposed to your price.
If you’re interested in some ways to communicate that value of your funeral service to your community, reach out to me at alex@funeralinnovations.com or go on our website and ask to be contacted. We will provide you with some free ways to educate your community on the value of funeral service. Thank you!
