You Left Your Old Agency for a Bigger One. The Kickoff Call Just Told You Something. Listen to It.
You did the hard thing: left the agency you'd outgrown after years of loyalty, ran a real search, and signed the big firm with the immaculate pitch. Then the kickoff call happened — new faces, corporate vocabulary, someone calling your families "end users" — and the same instinct you use across the arrangement table said this isn't the right match. The data says that instinct is usually early, not wrong. Here's the fair 90-day test, how to exit gracefully if it fails, and what a partner with matched heart-led values actually looks like.
Before You Hire a Marketing Agency for Your Cape Cod Funeral Home, Ask Them One Question: "Have You Been to a Funeral?"
Every agency deck says "compassionate" and "trusted." The decks are interchangeable — the people aren't. Sixty years of cultural skepticism about funeral service quietly shapes how most marketers write about your profession, and that inherited doubt leaks into copy in ways a style guide can't fix. This guide explains why you should vet the actual humans on your account — have they stood in a receiving line, planned a service, thought about what funerals are for? — and gives you the eight questions that sort real partners from vendors in one meeting.