Photo by Flickr user Nettsu

I spent the last few weeks getting stuff ready for the Eustis Fire Department’s first annual Fire Muster in the Park.  For the uninitiated, a muster is an event that brings together firefighting teams and antique vehicle owners to compete in old-fashioned firefighting games (bucket brigade, hose cart race, etc.).

We held our event in Ferran Park on the waterfront in downtown Eustis.  We shared the park with the 7th Annual Lake Eustis Chili Cook-off - a natural partnership, in my mind - and then braced for a really wet day, as the forecast called for 60% chance of thunderstorms.

We knew the event would be enjoyable for the participants who bothered to show up in the bad weather, but we had no idea how good the events would be for spectators.  So we made a difficult decision:  we didn’t push a lot of advertising.

We ended up with about 600 visitors to watch the games, check out the antique fire apparatus and buy our famous 1/2-pound hamburgers.  And the rain held off until an hour before we expected to finish up.

Had we expected better weather, a greater amount of participants (we had just four teams this time) or more antique trucks for display, we’d have advertised a lot more and tried to turn out thousands of visitors.

So why didn’t we?

Because if the event had been disappointing (bad weather, few teams, only a handful of trucks) we would have done more damage to our fledgling “brand” than not holding the event at all.

Every new or relaunched brand needs “early adopters,” the folks who take a chance on a new product or give the new funeral director in town the opportunity to provide services.  These people can become great evangelists for a new product or refer friends to the funeral director who did an awesome job, boosting a product or service to success.

But they can also do a WHOLE LOTTA DAMAGE to a company that does a bad job or provides a crappy product.

Movie producers know this, so they like to give sneek peaks of their good movies to film buffs.  These are usually advertised in entertainment magazines and occur a week or two before the movie’s general release date.  The bad movies generally get a big bunch of advertising without screenings for buffs and critics.  The really awful ones are sent straight to video.

But what if your product is bad?  What if getting more customers just means disappointing more people?

Truth is, advertising only helps if you have a decent product/service in place.

A good/decent funeral home can survive without traditional advertising, because satisfied client families will tell others.

And for most products, advertising can’t save a bad/awful company. 

Interestingly, funeral homes serve a different kind of customer:  one who reluctantly buys services only when they’re needed, every 5-10 years.

That may be why some bad funeral homes - the ones that never serve a family more than once - can survive on a heavy advertising campaign.  But they can’t rely upon word-of-mouth, since their service is atrocious.

So yes, you can advertise before you’re good enough.  But only if you’re willing to advertise A LOT and not care how bad your services are.  Otherwise, advertising before you’re ready will just destroy positive word-of-mouth and cause you a whole lot of pain.

When we first started to get serious about selling our cot covers to the general public (before that time, we sold through a traveling salesman - you can read that whole saga in the post, “Crippling Challenge + Determination = Business Reward/Failure (Part 1)“) I decided to try eBay as an option.

 EBay allows a seller to setup either auctions or “Buy It Now” links for products for a set fee.  Adding pictures or text to a listing costs a little extra, but for people selling similar items, pictures and enhanced graphic text can be the difference between a sale and wasted money. 

I found the eBay model compelling, since we had no provision for taking credit cards or checks, an eBay store would prevent us from having to build a website and auction-style selling would allow us to sometimes make a lot more for our product.

So we tried it out.

And I thought we had failed miserably.

First, the new “Funeral and cremation merchandise” section on eBay was still quite new, so only a handful of funeral directors were on it.  Second, I listed our product with a $75 opening bid, which was the only bid we ever got.  A funeral home in Oregon got a great cover for a fraction of the regular retail price.  Thirdly, and most importantly, auctions listed with a “buy it now” link cost a lot more than a standard auction, meaning eBay was not, at the time, a viable way for us to build an online store.

So we abandoned it as a platform.  I categorized our time and our single eBay sale as a waste of time and money and promptly forgot about it.

Until last week, when the funeral home that won our only eBay auction called to order another cover.  Suddenly, the $4 we spent to list the item and the $100+ in lost revenue turned into a $225 order.  In fact, the young lady who called indicated that they were getting ready to place an order for several more, just as soon as they saw the new lining in person.

Who knew our failed eBay experience just needed 4 years to turn into a moneymaker?!?

I’ve never lamented our eBay experience, just as I don’t regret the hundreds of dollars I spent mailing postcards to Stewart firms and the time I invested in trying to offer a group discount to SCI’s main office.  None of those efforts paid off, but all were successful, since they taught me what didn’t work.

I’m often asked why I am successful, when so many businesses fail.  I can only say that while I’ve failed plenty, I also know when to quit and go for the next thing and I never give up.  Imagine if I’d let our eBay experience convince me that there wasn’t an online demand for quilted mortuary cot covers?  Imagine if I’d let 200 unanswered postcards discourage me against direct mail selling to funeral homes?

I always get nervous when I place an ad in one of the industry trade magazines.

I just published ads in The Director, Funeral Business Advisor and ICFM.  And they’re already working.

I just took three orders from folks who saw our ads in one of the magazines and checked out the website.  I took another order this morning from a man who did an Internet search for covers, but only after he remembered that he had seen them recently in a magazine.

Does magazine advertising always work?  Of course not.  Our ads in Mortuary Management had an impressive effect the first time (we sold 9 covers from the first ad) but offered diminishing returns the next four times we published it, until we got nothing on the final try.

We also don’t spend huge money on these ads (I have an obligation to keep my covers competitively priced!) so we don’t get the “full-page” effect that some might expect.

Except, our covers don’t really need a “full-page” push.  How much can you write about quilted cot covers?  They’re covers, they’re quilted, they’re the best on the market.  End of story.

Of course, this message is for other product/service makers out there.  Ads in the trades do work.  Just make sure you can afford them.  And then measure their effectiveness.

I always ask our clients how they heard about us and what made them order today.  During our first few years, the answer was “Internet search.”  Now, the answer is more often “we knew there were quilted covers out there, so we searched the Internet” or “we heard about them and saw an ad for your website.”

Even better, some say “we used to buy ones from your competitor, but we think yours have better patterns and features.”

Here’s the ad we put in the December Director Magazine: final_embrace_nfda_dec_2007.pdf

Our friends at Funeral Business Advisor (including Michael Manley, a regular contributor to Final Embrace) have been enjoying continued success.

 In fact, the success is so… well, successful, that they’re increasing their page count for their January/February issue.

In a private email (don’t worry, I got permission to share this with you), Michael told me how increased advertising demand is forcing him to expand his magazine by four pages!

But it gets better for you, my readers.  Michael’s new plan calls for 56 pages, but because the printing company only charges a miniscule amount to go four more to 60 pages, he wants to offer something special to our readers.

FBA has a limited amount of additional advertising available at full-, half- and quarter-pages.  He’s also adding content, which means you’ll see some an editorial from me in those extra pages and an ad from COTCOVERS.com.

Michael has given me the ad rates (they’re quite attractive!) and has allowed me to share them with any interested readers.

Want to know more?  Call Tim (that’s me!) at 321-287-0628 or email me at finalembraceonline@gmail.com.

Time’s short, so call or email ASAP.

Tomorrow will begin the (shortened) week of our newest sponsor, COTCOVERS.com.

If you’ve been paying attention to this blog, you’ll know that we own both COTCOVERS.com and Final Embrace.

And yes, while I love to talk about our quilted mortuary cot covers, I also want to make sure that ya’ll know that revenue from our cot cover sales help keep Final Embrace running. 

But the real reason I’ve picked this week is that it’s quite a short one, since Thanksgiving falls right in the middle and most of you will be very un-faithful readers for the next five or six days (don’t worry - I forgive you!).

So tomorrow I’ll say goodbye to our very first sponsor, Connecting Directors, and welcome our newest sponsor, COTCOVERS.com.

If you don’t want the hassle of starting your own charity, you can contribute by either financially supporting charities of your employees’ choice or giving paid time off for your employees to volunteer at the charity of their choice.

By granting paid time off for these tasks, you’ll not only build good will at the charities your employees support, but you’ll be dispatching loyal ambassadors of your funeral home into the outside world.

Remember, you can be the greatest funeral director in the world who provides the finest funerals in town, but no one will come to you unless they hear that fact from trusted voices.

More than one funeral home has suffered because the employees don’t feel appreciated and won’t tell the community about the fine work going on inside the doors.

I’d like to welcome our first sponsor, Connecting Directors!

While their sponsorship doesn’t officially start until Monday, when I’ll bring you a great story about their site and how they’re helping connect funeral directors, just like their name suggests!

Their logo and a link to their site can be seen at the end of each of our posts next week and the banner at the top of the blog will show their sponsorship for the entire week.

We’ve already got the next few weeks lined up, so get your requests in now if you’d like to sponsor a week.  It’s only $25 for a full seven days of advertising!

Call Tim at 321-287-0628 or email me at finalembraceonline@gmail.com to get started.

Thomas Poolton, of Colors of Honor, asks an important question:

How do I pay for a sponsorship?

The simplest way is for us to send out a PayPal invoice to the sponsoring company. 

Then, you can pay by credit card or Paypal account.

You may have heard about “viral marketing” and how it’s a byproduct of the Internet.  Everyone from political candidates to car companies are trying to get their latest marketing effort to “go viral” in hopes of turning hundreds of thousands of people on to their product.

In technology terms, viral marketing is what happens when an idea (sometimes called a ’meme’) spreads from blog to blog or through email much like a virus spreads in the organic world.

“Viral marketing” is what you and I would call “word of mouth.”

Here’s a simple, Internet-based example:

I write this blog about funeral service.  A funeral director in Missouri reads it.  He likes it.  (He knows who he is.) 

He reads every day and takes note that we sell quilted cot covers.  Someone he knows in the offline world says, “Gee wiz, I need a new cot cover.”

To which our reader says, “By golly, I happen to know a company that makes them.  And their blog sure is swell!”

At this point, a co-worker leans in to remind them that it’s no longer 1954.

So the referred person checks us out, places an order and loves the product.

The original reader sees our cover on his acquaintance’s cot and thinks, “wow, those are nice.”

And pretty soon he’s ordering a few.

Okay, maybe that example isn’t exactly viral, in the strict sense that all the techies talk about viral. 

But it illustrates an important point about the way that your customers find you.  I offered free information to everyone who wants to read it.  In fact, I’ve tried to build a specific voice (my own) through the opinion pieces and other stories I share so you’ll recognize me and want to come back to hear more.

Every once in a while, my stories have to do with the business I run everyday: quilted cot covers at www.cotcovers.com.  It makes sense that I’d talk about it, since I spend so much time thinking about it, planning the future of it and worrying over it.

You, in turn, know that I make quilted covers (which you might not need right now), but you also get a lot of other, useful stuff out of me.

When it’s time to buy a quilted cot cover, is there any doubt that you’ll be buying it from me?

The same it true for your clients.  When you sponsor the local baseball team, you don’t expect for the families of the tykes to make pre-arrangements in the stands.  When you volunteer at your church or advertise in the cheerleading program, you do so with your eye to future referrals.

Viral marketing has been around for years.  In fact, I think advertising consultants have only called it “viral marketing” so they can charge big bucks to teach companies how to use this “new” concept!

Our post-convention readership has leveled off at just over 400 people each weekday.  (Weekends are another story, as most of you are much busier and I don’t post much on Saturday or Sunday)

So I think it’s time to try to monetize the blog.  What does that mean?

Simply, I’m ready to get the blog to pay for itself. 

No, I won’t be asking any of you to pay to read the blog.  That would be foolish and, to be honest, I don’t know how many people would be willing to pay for what I write!

I plan to open the blog to limited sponsorship.

First, let me reassure you that I will NEVER, EVER allow anyone to pay for a good review of their product or service.  Every opinion I’ve brought to you on this blog has been absolutely truthful and from my heart.

On the other hand, I’ve had a few companies ask me if they can advertise here, as they know that we have a savvy readership (that means you, smarty-pants!) and that we connect on a daily basis with our visitors.  Building awareness about your brand is important, so advertising on sites like Final Embrace and in the trade magazines is an important part of getting the word out.

So I’ve decided to accept ads on a limited basis.  But we’re not going to have banner ads or flashing blocks on the side of the blog.  I’ve decided to rent out a little piece of our header (that part at the top of the site that has our logo on it) to sponsoring companies.

I’m offering weekly sponsorships of the blog for the low, low, bargain basement price of $25!

(It sounds better if you imagine a booming announcer guy voice when you read that last part!)

I’ll also write a short article about the company that sponsors the blog and I’ll add a tag at the bottom of each blog post that indicates the sponsor.

What will I do with all the mad money this sponsorship will bring in?

First, even if I sell every single week, we’re only talking $1300.  But even that amount will help pay for a few black and white ads in the trade magazines to boost our readership.  In fact, we might even be able to raise our rates when we pass 1000 readers a day!

Anyone interested?  Surely there are a some companies out there that want to sponsor this great blog for just $25 a week!

Drop me an email or respond to this post.

(Final Embrace Contributor Forum Attendees get their first week free, when they sign up for at least two weeks.  So don’t forget to remind me that you were there!)