Marketing for the little guy
By Anne Keisman
Late last year, Purcellville resident John Mizerak gutted and cleaned a building in southeast Leesburg that in a former life had housed a small-machine repair shop. The space has emerged with a new identity: a marketing company and print shop built to serve Loudoun’s growing number of small- to mid-size businesses.Every business -- from wineries to doctors' offices -- needs a marketing plan to succeed in a competitive marketplace like Northern Virginia. In a sign of the increasingly savvy Loudoun business world, Mizerak’s Unity Business Solutions has stepped up to help.
“Most small companies don’t think about branding,” he said. Many times, he said, it’s simply that small companies don’t have the money to invest in an in-house marketing team.
Mizerak knows that a hard-to-navigate Web site or a poorly targeted direct mailing campaign can spell disaster for a business. He said he wants to do more than just print brochures and mailers, as he did when he owned Allegra Print and Imaging of Dulles, and help business owners strategize their marketing efforts so their money is well-spent.
“We want to be a partner, not just a vendor,” said Mizerak, who developed his new business after 20 years owning and running a print and copy shop in Sterling.
Providing services to smaller businesses in Loudoun has the potential to mean big business for Mizerak. According to the county’s Annual Growth Summary, about 85 percent of businesses in Loudoun have 25 or fewer employees.
With a staff of 12 on-site employees and five consultants, UBS offers printing services, Web site design, professional photography, graphic design and other services necessary for effective marketing. UBS still provides basic print jobs, too.
Mizerak said last year was a soul-searching year for him as he explored a new professional path for him and his company. In addition to his desire to expand his business, Mizerak’s decision to switch gears was influenced by the rise of big print shops like Kinko’s and the rising sophistication of home and office printers.
But the driving force behind his decision, he said, was his 20-year experience as a small-business owner who worked with other small businesses on their brochures and other promotional material. This gave him keen insight into what marketing worked and what didn’t, he said, as well as how to spend money wisely.
“I grew up in the small-business world, so I want to be as cost effective as possible,” Mizerak said.
If a client tells him cost is an issue, he offers a range of possible strategies -- what he calls the hamburger, meatloaf or steak options – to satisfy different budgets.
His team first assesses the client’s existing marketing plan through interviews and a questionnaire, then the team gives the client a proposal for a package of marketing projects. Once a price and strategy are agreed upon, payments can be set up over a year or more. The packages UBS offers range from $2,300 to $15,000 a year.
Each package is custom-made for each business, Mizerak said. Some businesses need to build awareness within their potential market. That kind of package might include logo creation, Web site design and other branding exercises.
Mizerak believes marketing is not just about getting new customers, but retaining loyal ones as well. For example, a marketing campaign designed to spread goodwill to existing customers could be a holiday mailing of movie tickets or coffee gift cards – which also develops all-important word-of-mouth marketing.
So far, Mizerak said he hasn’t lost any of his Sterling customers since moving to Leesburg, and he now has more than 500 active clients. He hopes to add about 100 more in 2008. He projects UBS's revenue in 2008 will be about $2 million.
His most successful area of growth so far has been with churches and medical offices, he said. On Feb. 28, Mizerak announced that Paxson and Hawthorne Insurance, a 100-year-old business in downtown Leesburg, just hired UBS to support the firm's marketing and business development efforts for 2008.
Growing his business takes a lot of time, but he also finds time to spend with his wife, Molly, one son, Christopher, 21, and two daughters, Sammy, 19, and Jamie, 18. Mizerak lived in Buffalo, N.Y., before moving to Sterling in 1984. He has lived in Purcellville since 1999.
He is also very involved in his church, Washington Christian Life Centre in Manassas, which has plans to expand into Loudoun County. He plays drums in 4tified, a Southern Gospel band comprised of guys from several churches in western Loudoun. The group travels up and down the East Coast, performing more than 30 concerts a year.