Interviews by Deborah Jeanne Sergeant
“Most of our marketing is accomplished through word of mouth and social media. We are a small, family-oriented business, ambitious to continue to grow and take care of our good customers.”
Wayne Goppelt,
Owner, Wayne Design, Sign & Print, West Monroe
“We use several forms of marketing. Probably our No. 1 is word of mouth. When helping or assisting companies or individuals, they usually will refer us to others, which is wonderful. Our next source would be social media. Again, it’s invaluable. We never use flyers.”
Carol R. Fletcher,
President/owner, C.R. Fletcher Associates, Syracuse
“All I do is word of mouth. Ninety-nine percent of my business is word of mouth. I’m not looking to expand, so it keeps it manageable for me. It’s year-round bookkeeping, payroll, taxes and accounting. I am also an employee of the school and work for another town.
Brenda Weissenberg,
Owner Affordable Business Solutions, West Monroe
“For me, the most common method that I use is more referrals from other clients, which is always great. I also have some relationships with other businesses where we can complement each other. One of our clients might approach them with an issue about HR and I might do the same about insurance benefits or payroll or something like that. It works pretty well. As a sole practitioner, marketing is always a challenge as I’m wearing many different hats. It can be difficult when you started out as a consultant. You like to think you know your industry, but sales and marketing can always be a challenge.”
Robert Rodgers,
Owner 3C Human Resources Consulting, LLC, Syracuse
“Word of mouth, because information services is a relationship driven business and people, in general, need to trust their IT engineer.”
David Stoutenger,
Owner, Computer Outlet North Inc., Oswego
“We’ve been in business almost 20 years. We are a high-quality offset and digital printer. Mostly, we rely on our direct sales calls and building relationships with clients for marketing. Since I’ve acquired the company in the last year and a half, we’ve done more to brand the name, like getting involved with community events, helping nonprofits and donating our time and profits. That helps get out our name even more.”
Jared Massett,
Co-owner ANSUN Graphics, Syracuse
“We’re really small and focused on what we do, so we rely on word-of-mouth advertising for most of our business. The thing is, people tend to find us through Google searches. Being active in the design community and being present in that community helps. The last thing is trying to do cold calling and networking by showing up at events and identifying companies we’d like to work with to let them know we exist and we’d like to help them with their new website. We don’t do ads. We have a social media account for people to find us but we don’t use it to market ourselves in any way. We show work we do on it. We also have our website with our blog and have thought-leadership there on topics that are relevant. It’s a very saturated market and the nature of our business, if we help a company with a website, they might tell the world.”
Nate Rooke,
Owner, Adjacent, Syracuse
“This season, we’re really doing our first dive into digital marketing at Jaxon Jovie, pulling in my skills from my other endeavor at Good Monster. We’re growing organically. Even though I have a marketing company, we haven’t invested a lot in marketing. We want it to be lean and have a good strong foundation. If you spend a lot on marketing you can get a good return on investment but if you don’t have a good strategy for pleasing your customers, you can lose them in a second because there is so much noise out there. We want our customers to know us.”
John Timmerman,
Co-owner Jaxon Jovie, Clay
“I have advertised in Oswego County Business Magazine for 20 years.”
Rick Rebeor,
Valley Locksmith, Fulton
“We’re old school so there wasn’t a lot of marketing except church bulletins and that kind of thing. We just updated our website, which is a big thing for a funeral home. We’re toying with doing a radio ad and a TV ad. We had always been just in print ads, but the climate has changed.”
Matt Daley,
Licensed funeral director, Allanson-Glanville-Tappan Funeral Home, Phoenix
“We use a little bit of everything. We do radio ads, limited TV ads and we use social media and websites. We try to reach anybody and everyone so we can let people know about the travel industry and who we are. We reach a broad range, whether younger people or older.”
Marcia LaClair,
Bookkeeper and manager, Travel Leaders, Liverpool
“The primary marketing is social media, like Facebook; print advertising in the local paper, Shopper and business publications; membership in the chamber of commerce and National Federation of Independent Businesses; listing with the Jeweler’s Board of Trade; and we sponsor local events like the Theatre Du Jour, and donate to things like the Dragon Boat festival and Haborfest and Celebrities for Pediatric Cancer. We try to donate to or support any local cause that approaches us. It’s good for us to be seen in the community and it’s also good to give back to a community that supports you. There are a lot of other events and organizations we support. We work with student groups at SUNY Oswego. We do all of this to try to engage the community as a whole.”
Kevin Hill,
Co-owner, JP Jewelers, Oswego
“We use print ads. That is the most acceptable with our suppliers as far as co-op advertising. We’ll probably see more social media next year.”
Maryann Groves,
Partner, Ranmar Tractor Supply, Pulaski
We do a lot of word-of-mouth advertising. We do a lot of community sponsorships, a tiny bit of social media and a tiny bit of print advertising. We may do some radio spots. It seems to be working as we’re pretty busy.”
Christina Dix,
Sales and marketing, Volney Multiplex, Fulton
“My marketing works pretty good. I don’t ask customers how they heard of me, but I think I get a few through print media. I also sponsor community football and t-ball and that kind of thing. I use social media, too.”
Joseph Spereno,
Owner, Spereno Construction, Mexico
