Frank’s Marble & Granite LLC, Red Lion, Pa.
“As we were talking to customers about remodeling, they didn’t know what should come first,” Pantano explains. “So we started having seminars every Saturday and we’d have different contractors come in and answer questions.
“Of course, I take the opportunity to talk about getting granite countertops, but we cover everything, from start to finish, and we’ve had very good interest.”
Some Saturdays draw as many as 25 people, depending on the topic, and “You hope they remember you and come back and think about you when they’re ready to do their work,” he says. “A few have.”
If nothing else, Pantano describes it as a form of inexpensive marketing, and easily done in a showroom large enough to comfortably seat 50 – an arrangement that would be impractical at the Red Lion location.
Nor are the Maryland seminars the only non-traditional method that Frank’s uses for getting its message out. While the website is an attractive way to advertise some of the company’s unique features – such as the ready-made vanities – Carmine Pantano says he’s getting a lot of benefit from online social media.
“Facebook has been a big benefit for us,” he says. “Even though we have the website, a lot of people tend to overload their websites with pictures, and then there’s a lot of clicking on-and-off as people go through the site.”
By comparison, he says that Facebook provides Frank’s with an ever-changing slideshow for displaying its latest work.
“I’ll upload the jobs every week or two, so that people can see the work we’ve just done,” Pantano explains. “And, most of the work isn’t just the pretty stuff that people see at the end. We might have shots where the countertops are in, but not the backsplash. People like to see that because they want to see the process and how the kitchen will look all torn up.
“Definitely, online social media are the present and the future.”
FAMILY AFFAIR
However, marketing probably isn’t Carmine Pantano’s only concern. Frank’s is definitely a family operation; while the younger man says of his father, “even though he’s technically retired, he’s still around,” they’re not the only Pantanos in the business.
Both his mother, Carmela, and younger sister, Diane, help out in sales, and Diane also helps program the CNCs, although her brother explains she’s still a college student and might even consider a career outside the family business.
“A good bit of our business is through cabinet dealers, builders, remodelers and general contractors,” Carmine Pantano explains. “Then we have just the walk-in public. For instance, right now the big thing is tearing out old Formica® and putting in new granite tops.”