New Idea – Funeral Homes Using Flickr as a Revenue Source

Funeral Industry News April 13, 2010
CDFuneralNews

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New Idea – Funeral Homes Using Flickr as a Revenue Source

imageThe following is a guest article from Heritage Coach Company.

The Internet has created countless opportunities for new businesses, as well as, helped existing businesses create new revenue streams. As I?m sure many of you know, the funeral industry has taken a hit over the past few years, and without innovation, it?s looking like sales will continue to decline. This is where Heritage Coach comes in.

As you may have read, last month we wrote about Funeral Directors using video as a new revenue source by allowing out-of-town family and friends to attend the viewing remotely. With ideas like this, and the one we want to talk about today, we are hoping to use this blog as a vehicle for promoting innovation in the Funeral Industry. For this post, we want to talk about how Funeral Home Owners and Funeral Directors can use Flickr, a photo-sharing social tool, as a platform for creating a new revenue stream for your business.

Flickr is a Photo-Sharing social platform that allows users to upload photos, comment on those photos, tag them for easier search, and share them with the world. Best of all, Flickr is free. By getting creative, Funeral Home Owners can use Flickr to create a brand new service offering to sell to customers. Funeral Directors can collect digital photos of the lost loved-one and setup a Flickr Slide Show full of photos of the lost loved-one. You may be saying, well, I?m sure customers don?t want to share their photos with the world. That?s OK. Flickr has privacy settings that can be leveraged.

For privacy, create a new Flickr group for each customer and then invite family and friends to join your Flickr group. This way all photos and discussions will be private to group members only. Creating groups is easy and free. Within a group, people can upload photos and videos, as well as, use the discussion board to communicate with one another. For Funeral Directors, they can have a process whereby the collect photos, create a Flickr group, share photos within the Flickr group, and send out invites to all family and friends to join the Flickr group and participate in photo-sharing and discussions around their lost loved-one.

Here?s how Funeral Home Owners can execute on this new Flickr Photo-Sharing service offering:

* Set guidelines on what customers will get and for what price ? It?s recommended that there is some sort of limit on the number of photos that you will upload into the Slide Show

* Create a process for explaining the service to potential customers

* Setup a way to collect digital photos from customers? friends and family

* Create a Flickr account and learn the tool ? Determine how exactly you?ll setup your groups and inform friends & family

* Promote the heck out of your new service ? Use it as an add-on service

I think Funeral Home Owners can charge somewhere around $200 ? $300 for this service, but ultimately, the market will decide. The most important thing is to get started. Figure out your plan for how you?ll offer this service out to customers, what you will charge for it, and how you will execute on it when the first set of customers order the service. Over time, Funeral Home Owners will learn what a fair price is (based on what their market is willing to pay). Either way, setting up a Flickr Slide Show for customers is a valuable service, yet one that has high margins for Funeral Home Owners. Another option is to buy a scanner and let customers know that if they don?t have digital photos, you can scan their hard-copy photos (for an additional fee of course). I hope that many of you will consider adding Flickr Slide Shows as a service for your customers.

Heritage Coach Insider Program

If you like what you read here in this post, and want more information like this, along with great saving opportunities on new and used limousine and hearses, please consider signing up for our free Heritage Coach Insider Program. Each month we will send you 1-2 emails. We will not share your information with outside parties. As part of each email, we will inform you on the latest Heritage Happenings, as well as, provide you with savings coupons. We hope you considering signing up to be Heritage Coach Insider today.