Community Outreach How to Get Free, Positive Publicity By Nancy Weil, OGR Member Resources Director W hen was the last time you had press walk into your funeral home? Have you been interviewed on drive time radio lately? Other than the obituary page, where is your funeral home mentioned in your local newspaper? If your answer is “never” or “rarely,” then you need to make a marketing plan…and that plan starts now. Creating Events That Get You Noticed Holding a funeral is not going to get the press to your door. Hosting a Holistic Open House will, as it did for OGR Past President Charles Castiglia of Lakeside Memorial Funeral Home. Plan an event with the end goal of being worthy of press attention, bringing the public into your funeral home and raising community awareness of your business. That may mean doing something that seems incongruous with a funeral home, such as holding a laugher club or drum circle that is open to the community at your place. It could mean holding a mainstream event, such as a community remembrance service, but at an unusual time. Instead of having it during the holidays, consider switching yours to what I call the “forgotten holiday of grief”: Valentine’s Day. 8 www.ogr.org | Summer 2021 What’s Your Pitch? Once you have decided on an event, it is time to start pitching to the press. This will require a call/send/call approach. Call up the local newsroom and be ready with your short “elevator pitch” about the event. Make sure it is skewed toward how your event will help your community (such as a grief support program) or how you need the community’s help to accomplish a goal (such as collecting food or toys for those in need in your town). Do not make it sound like a request for free exposure for your funeral home. That will lead to a referral to their advertising department (or just a polite but decisive, "No thank you"). Once you have made your pitch, offer to send more details in an email and get the correct email address they want you to send this to. That ensures your email does not end up in a general mailbox with hundreds of others. Instead, you will have someone at the station or paper that is waiting to read it. Then you wait…not too long, but just enough to make sure they have had time to review your proposal, share it with their producers and determine if they are interested. How long you wait is based on which media type you approached, how urgent the need is to get the
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