10 Powerful Insights & Ideas from the 2025 Funeral (Un)Conference Marketing Experts

Just in case you missed Day Two of DISRUPT Media’s Funeral (Un)Conference in June — and didn’t click to watch the FREE recordings (SMH) — here is some of the very best marketing advice from some of the very brightest in the business.

Use your reviews ~ John Lefrandt, Elevia

John recommends regularly reading the reviews families leave on your Google business page, evaluating the information, and launching a campaign to follow up with them.  “There’s so many insights that they can glean,” John says. “That is a billboard. Basically, each one of those testimonials that’s there helps just the general health of the Google business page.”

Plug into your community’s continuum of care ~ Welton Hong, Ring Ring Marketing

Welton believes that engaging with the senior living and hospice providers in your area can be a valuable endeavor. “Senior living, hospice, and funeral homes are very intertwined,”Welton says.  “I was able to host a small dinner, with hospice sitting at the same table as my funeral home client, ‘You guys talk,’ and now we start taking home care. You guys all got to be in the same room. Just talk, and help each other out. It’s the same family, same set of data.”

Leverage your suppliers’ marketing content ~ Jenn Parvin, Batesville

The popularity of Batesville’s newly ungated product pages is an indication of how interested your potential families may be in seeing what products are available. “The traffic on that page is unreal.”

Offline marketing is not dead ~ Ryan Thogmartin, DISRUPT Media

Non-digital marketing — billboards, direct mail, and even radio — should still be included in your omnichannel approach. “I don’t think that radio is dead,” Ryan says. “I don’t think that direct mail is dead. Actually, we have a ton of success with clients when we partner strategically targeted social ads with a mail drop with memorable creative. There’s a way to partner social and direct mail and then retarget with social in those zip codes with a much higher conversion, where now you can spend less on a very targeted mail drop.”

All incoming calls aren’t created equal, Scott says, so listening to and categorizing your calls is crucial to evaluating the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. “Record your calls, listen to them, find out what’s working with your marketing,” Scott says. “Leverage AI to transcribe some of those calls and then automatically categorize. Is this a qualified lead, or is this a logistics call? You’ll be able to see how many leads and actual cases we’re getting versus just clicks and impressions.”

Don’t assume what your families know ~ Jenn Parvin, Batesville

Jenn has proof that there’s a huge gap in what you believe families understand and what they actually know about deathcare. It’s up to you to provide the answers to the questions they may not even know how to ask. “Education, education, education,” adding that according to a recent Batesville survey, “90% of people in the profession assume that families understand preneed, but less than 30% of families actually know preneed is available.”

Audit your Google business profile ~ Welton Hong, Ring Ring Marketing

Your Google page should be much more than your address and phone number. It can provide all sorts of details that help to educate and inform the public, says Welton. “These days when you look at your Google listing. You get to put in products and services,” he says. “Let’s say, you are a Jewish funeral home. If you don’t even put a description inside your Google business profile that you’re a Jewish funeral home, how does Google know? Study your Google business profile, login, click all the pencils, and make sure everything’s updated.”

Even small budgets can produce phenomenal results ~ Ryan Thogmartin, DISRUPT Media

What if you could (or would) only devote $500 to your marketing efforts? Would that even be worth the trouble? That depends on how wisely you use that money. Ryan recommends recording quick, but super educational and engaging, video content to really exceed your customers’ expectations. “It’s free to create content, so I would sit down with an iPhone, I would record a 30-second video that is answering a simple question about, let’s say, preneed,” he explains. “Then I would put $500 towards a targeted ad with that to people over the age of 55, and get really dialed in to the right consumer with that message.” 

Take a video camera into every part of your business ~ Ryan Thogmartin, DISRUPT Media

Following up on the value of creating no-cost video content, Ryan adds that those videos don’t have to be perfect, or scripted, or even edited. He recommends thinking about all the parts of your business that families may be curious about, then shooting video while you explain it. And believe it or not, it’s nearly impossible to run out of ideas. “You could create one video 30 different ways, and it would still be valuable,” Ryan says. “And people would still ask questions, because not everybody sees every piece of content. Video content. It gets 71% more engagement.”

BONUS: Here are some of Ryan’s suggestions for educational video content: 

• Three things families should know about preneed.
• Prep room tour: Show the embalming machine or talk about embalming fluid, “What’s the purpose of embalming fluid? Why do you need to be embalmed?”
• Unpack a casket, fluff up a pillow
• Show how a female funeral director uses a mortuary lift to help with heavy bodies
• “Did you know that we have pink caskets?”
• “Hey it’s 3am – this is what a first call looks like.”

Smashing Records and Demolishing Barriers, the 2025 Funeral (Un)Conference Raised the Bar

You know when someone tries to explain an amazing experience and says, “I guess you just had to be there…?” Well, that’s the best thing about the fifth annual Funeral (Un)Conference, which happened live from Scottsdale, Arizona on June 17 and 18. You didn’t have to be there to witness what an absolute monster this year’s event morphed into — you just had to watch. 

And here’s the best news: you still can … and for free.

Down with records, up with the bar

This year, DISRUPT Media CEO and Connecting Directors founder Ryan Thogmartin packed the stage with leaders from more than 20 deathcare powerhouses for eight hours of real talk — no fluff, BS-free, bold, and brutally honest conversations about the state of industry and what the future holds. More than 1,600 attendees registered and tuned in for the (Un)Conference, making it, hands-down, the largest virtual event in deathcare history.

“This wasn’t just another webinar — this was the biggest virtual moment in deathcare history,” Thogmartin said. “We broke old barriers and brought the biggest names from the biggest companies to the same table, unfiltered. If you didn’t watch, you missed history.” 

What you (may have) missed

One of those history-making moments took place on the first day of the (Un)Conference, when representatives from three leading casket and vault companies shared the stage for the first time ever — and hopefully it won’t be the last. In a discussion that touched on everything from digital showrooms to cucumber-melon-scented embalming fluids to Ryan Thogmartin’s early days wrecking vault carts and jack-knifing trucks, Jenn Parvin from Batesville, Billy Eaton from Matthews-Aurora, and Lance Ray from The Wilbert Group shared where their respective companies are focusing their attention in the next 12 to 36 months. 

This wasn’t the only panel where competitors came together for the better good. After a one-on-one with Curtis Funk, founder of (Un)Conference title sponsor Tukios, Thogmartin gathered a tremendous panel of tech experts to join Funk, including Legacy.com’s John Heald, Funeral 365’s Eric Banks, and Tribute Technology’s Matt Powell. The top takeaway? Technology is transforming funeral home operations, websites are the windows to your firm, and artificial intelligence is the new Google. That last point was emphasized by Antonio Green, director at James H. Cole Home for Funerals in Detroit and AI aficionado, who shared some must-try hacks to easily harness the power of generative AI.

All in two days’ work

All of this (and much more) happened on day one — four hours of original, once-in-a-lifetime collabs and content … so you can imagine what day two brought to the table. 

Oh, wait — you don’t have to imagine it. You can watch it for yourself! So shed your suit, grab your popcorn, and click the links below … and enjoy.

Watch day one of Funeral (Un)Conference:

Watch day two of Funeral (Un)Conference:

You won’t want this monumental event to pass you by. Trust us, you’ll be crushing conversations next week as you spill all the knowledge your noggin can hold!

Kudos and credits

This phenomenal funeral conference wouldn’t have been possible without the following featured panelists: Tukios, Elevia, Travel Plan by Inman, Legacy.com, Foresight, Ring Ring Marketing, Global Atlantic, Treasured Memories, Batesville, Jen Graziano, C&J Financial, Antonio Green, and Cremation Recycling, as well as  Sepio Guard, Johnson Consulting Group, Funeral 365, Funeral Cremation Marketing (FCM Marketing), Matthews International, The Wilbert Group, Tribute Technology – Virtual, and Memory Share.

(Un)Conference Bombshell: Cruger Announces Brad Green’s Appointment as COO of Foresight Companies

Following a phenomenal panel discussion on the state of funeral service finances at the fifth annual Disrupt Media Funeral (Un)Conference Tuesday, Chris Cruger, Chief Executive Officer of The Foresight Companies, announced that former Park Lawn Corporation CEO J. Bradley Green has joined Foresight’s executive team.

“I’m actually thrilled to announce that Brad Green has joined Foresight as our Chief Operating Officer,” Cruger shared with a record-breaking number of virtual (Un)Conference attendees.” Brad and I became really close friends, particularly over the transition of Park Lawn from public to private.”

Strong leadership and a smooth transition

As Park Lawn’s CEO, Green spearheaded the nearly $1 billion deal that successfully transitioned the company into private ownership by the Homesteaders Company, Homesteaders affiliate Viridian Acquisition Inc., and Birch Hill Equity Partners Management Inc. in August 2024. Cruger and Foresight assisted Homesteaders in the negotiations and worked alongside Green and others to manage the change. It was this partnership that convinced Green to consider joining Cruger at Foresight.

“We’ve been spending a lot of time together and he was able to spend some time around our team,” Cruger shared with (Un)Conference leader and Disrupt Media founder Ryan Thogmartin. “He loved what we were doing. Loved the culture and wanted to be a part of it and I couldn’t be more humbled to have him on board. I mean, you look at people out there, here’s the guy who doesn’t have to work, doesn’t have to do anything, but loves the profession, loves the people, loves what we do, and it’s really an exciting opportunity. [All I can say is] welcome, welcome.”

Green announced in April 2025 that he was stepping away from Park Lawn after nearly seven years with the company. Green joined Park Lawn as President in May 2018 and assumed the CEO position in March 2020. He previously served as CEO with the Signature Group prior to the Park Lawn’s acquisition of the business. Park Lawn president and general counsel Jennifer Hay assumed the role of CEO in May 2025.

New digs for Foresight

In addition to the announcement of Green’s new role, Cruger shared that Foresight has moved its base operations from Phoenix, Arizona to Jupiter, Florida. As all of Foresight’s employees also relocated to the new Florida location, the Arizona office was permanently closed.

Since Cruger joined the Foresight team in 2019, he has helped 178 businesses transfer ownership — and according to the panel of funeral finance experts at the (Un)Conference, the merger-acquisition market is only going to grow in the coming months and years.

A bright future

During a lively and informative discussion, the five-member finance panel described an “extremely active environment” and a “lot of activity” of late. Joining Cruger on the panel were Jamie Meredith of C&J FInancial, Tim Bridgers of Global Atlantic, Jimmy Altmeyer of Altmeyer Funeral Homes and Treasured Memories, and Jake Johnson of Johnson Consulting Group. Thogmartin led the panel in talks about preneed programs, training, business intelligence, and the changing needs of families.

“There is a lot of a changing demographic, and more and more people are looking to get out of this space,” Cruger shared during the discussion. “I think that spells a lot more opportunity. Valuations are solid. I think there’s no better time to be in this space, if you’re willing to be a little more progressive.”