funeral packages

The Best Way to Set Up Your Funeral Packages

By Rae Gresso, Account Executive

Picture this:

It’s a Friday night. You settle in on the couch and decide to turn on your streaming service to find something to watch. You land on the home page and see hundreds of options, so you start scrolling.

And scrolling.

And scrolling.

There are so many options. What should I watch? You think.

You start reading the show descriptions, looking at reviews, and watching preview clips. Before you know it, 30 minutes have flown by, and you’re not any closer to a decision.

Eventually, you give up and put in reruns of your favorite sitcom. Again.

This phenomenon is called “the paradox of choice.”

The Paradox of Choice

Like with the streaming service example, you might think more choices equal more freedom. In his theory known as “the paradox of choice,” psychologist Barry Schwartz conducted research that found the opposite is actually true.

While we value some options, we become overwhelmed when we’re presented with too many options, which results in us never making a choice. This is why you’ll forever scroll trying to find something to watch and end up choosing what you’re most familiar with, the path of least resistance.

Your families experience this paradox if they’re presented with too many options from your funeral home.

Let’s say you take a family into your merchandise room. You tell them, “We have over 50 casket designs and styles and 100+ urn options. We can also customize something for you. On top of that, you can schedule a viewing, a traditional service, graveside service, and more. We also provide hundreds of different ways to memorialize your loved one. Our catalog shows everything we can do for you, including keepsakes, ornaments, and more…”

Wouldn’t you be a little overwhelmed?

It’s no surprise that when presented with those options, a family will say, “Let’s just do something simple.” Or worse, “Let’s go with a direct cremation.”

To remedy this, you might show families a few options in your merchandise room.

But how can you help those people that want to start the preplanning process online?

You need a way to present package recommendations in a simple way. The good news is you can do this with an online preplanning tool housed on your website, like Arrangement Guide.

With a tool like this, you can eliminate the “paradox of choice.” We’ll explain how below.

The Best Way to Present Funeral Packages

With your online preplanning tool, you must figure out what packages to offer.

Bundling your services and merchandise together into a package is a far more effective way to show value than offering each item individually.

When putting together your packages, though, it can be very tempting to create packages for every type of circumstance you can imagine. But if you do this, you can also run into “the paradox of choice.”

That’s why we recommend a “Good-Better-Best” pricing strategy.

Here’s how this works:

Offer 6 total packages: 3 for cremation and 3 for burials. Within each of these disposition types, provide a low-cost option, an average option, and a high-cost option.

For instance, you might lay out your 3 cremation packages like this:

A $1,199 direct cremation option (good)

A $3,499 cremation with a viewing (better)

And a $4,999 cremation with a viewing and traditional service (best)

This price anchoring strategy is wildly successful because it takes into consideration human nature. People want to have a frame of reference when making decisions. If you provide 3 options, you’re making the decision-making process easy for them because they only need to compare 3 options, not every available one.

Let’s think back to the Friday night scenario again.

Imagine you were given 3 different shows to compare. You spend 2 minutes reading each description and watching the show previews before selecting the latest crime drama.

You think: That was easy.

Ready to offer the same easy experience to your families?

Request a digital marketing demo today to learn more about Arragement Guide!

This article is an excerpt from our eBook, “Serving Today’s Families Online.” Read the whole resource here.

Note: Arrangement Guide is available in participating states. 

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