The yellow pages are gone. The newspapers are gone. After 80 years, we found the broadest way to reach everyone from elementary students to seniors — and it’s radio.

Mike Spino

Owner, Speno Music

Industry

Retail / Music

Location

Downtown Auburn, NY

Products

Radio

Four generations and eighty years is a long time to be selling instruments on the same downtown Auburn block. Mike Spino knows this better than anyone. He grew up in Speno Music, learned the rhythms of the business from the people who came before him, and has spent his adult life carrying something rare forward — a local institution that still smells like rosin and sounds like a beginner’s first scale.

But longevity, Mike will tell you, is not the same as momentum. “After eighty years, reaching your demographic has gotten harder and harder.” The yellow pages are gone. The newspaper inserts are gone. The formats that built Speno Music’s customer base for decades quietly disappeared, and the store had to find a new way to stay in front of people who don’t yet know they need a music lesson or a new guitar string or a student instrument for a fourth-grader who just joined band.

That search led him to radio — and specifically to FLX Local Media.

FLX Local Media has a real heartbeat on what goes on in central New York and the Finger Lakes region.

Speno Music’s market is wider than most people realize. Yes, there are the elementary school kids just starting on clarinet or violin, the ones whose parents come in nervous and hopeful. But there are also seniors picking up an instrument as a hobby, and everyone in between. The store’s reach has been stretching west — toward Canandaigua, Geneva, the Waterloo area — drawing customers who make the drive into Auburn and often say the same thing when they walk through the door: we didn’t know you were here. Or: we’re so glad to find a local mom and pop store.

That kind of discovery doesn’t happen by accident. It happens because someone heard something on the radio during a commute and filed it away, and then one day they needed exactly what Speno Music sells.

Mike is not a start-and-stop advertiser. He understands, the way experienced business owners do, that advertising is not a faucet you turn on when sales slow and off when they’re comfortable. “You can never reach your hand in your customer’s pocket,” he says. “When they decide to buy, you need to already be in their mind.” That means showing up consistently, staying present in the background of people’s lives, and trusting that the investment is working even when you can’t see it directly.

If you’re not trying to expand and grow your business, your business is going to stagnate and falter.

It’s an old-fashioned philosophy in the best sense — the kind of thinking that keeps a fourth-generation business alive when everything around it is changing. And it’s the kind of thinking that makes him a demanding judge of his advertising partners. Eighty years gives you a long comparison set.

Which is why he doesn’t hesitate when he talks about the difference FLX Local Media has made. The creativity. The responsiveness. The sense that someone on the other end of the phone actually knows the region, knows the communities, knows who’s listening and why.

The creativity and personal attention you get from FLX Local Media is by far the best we’ve encountered in our eighty-year history.

For Mike Spino, radio isn’t a nostalgic fallback. It’s a conclusion he arrived at after watching format after format fade out. “I see radio is still a viable, most successful way to advertise your business,” he says. “FLX Local Media seems to reach a broad age group” — and for a store that serves everyone from a seven-year-old picking up a recorder to a retiree finally learning the piano, that breadth matters.

Eighty years in, Speno Music is still in downtown Auburn. Still local. Still growing. And still on the air.

Interviewer: Tell me your name, the name of your business, and what you do here.

Mike Spino: My name is Mike Spino, and I'm the owner of Spino Music. We're a local music store spanning four generations and 80 years in downtown Auburn.

Interviewer: You did one of these testimonials before, and you continue to advertise. A lot of people will stop and start and stop, but you keep going. Why?

Mike Spino: Because after 80 years, reaching your demographic has gotten harder and harder. We're not advertising the way we obviously did even 10 years ago. FLX Local Media has a real heartbeat on what goes on in Central New York and the Finger Lakes region, and the success speaks for itself. They don't have to twist my arm to advertise — we're glad to be with them and partnering up with them.

Interviewer: How do you know it's working?

Mike Spino: By the number of people we're drawing in. We've been concentrating our advertising west of us, and we're pulling people from the Canandaigua, Geneva, and Waterloo areas. People mention the ads when they come in and say things like, "We didn't know you were there," or "We're glad to find a local mom and pop store." And that's all because of FLX Media.

Interviewer: If you had a friend who was getting into business — or maybe someone who's been in business for a long time — and they were asking your opinion about advertising, what would you tell them?

Mike Spino: I tell them that the creativity and the personal attention you get from FLX Local Media is by far the best we've encountered in our 80-year history. You have to think a little differently these days because there are so many sources and different platforms to reach your customers. FLX Local Media seems to reach a broad age group, and we are completely satisfied with what they've done for us.

Interviewer: A lot of businesses only advertise during sales or infrequently, but you're on fairly often. Why do you think that's important?

Mike Spino: Because you can never reach into your customer's pocket or know when they decide it's time to go out and look for an item. If you're in their mind — if they've heard you repeatedly — then when the time comes to grab something you sell or a service you offer, that constant reminder of who you are and that you're local means the world to sales and the bottom line.

Interviewer: Some businesses think advertising is just an expense, not an investment. What do you think?

Mike Spino: I think if you're not trying to expand and grow your business, your business is going to stagnate and falter. We're always looking to find new customers — even after 80 years in business, you're never satisfied. You want to reach new people and show them what you have to offer, and the only way to do that is by being at the forefront of their mind. You have to constantly run some type of ad to let them know what you offer and that you're out there.

Interviewer: Some people say not as many people are listening to the radio anymore, but you're still getting results. Tell me about that.

Mike Spino: I still think most people — when you ask our customers — whether they play the radio at work or listen to the local DJs and morning programs, there are certain things you just can't get from streaming services. People are even tuning in for local news programming, and I hear a lot about that. With all the platforms that FLX Local Media offers — from a news station to classic rock to contemporary pop hits — you can reach a pretty broad market. Nothing is 100 percent guaranteed, but so far everything we've tried has reached the widest variety of customer base we've ever encountered.

Interviewer: What did you use years ago for advertising?

Mike Spino: Years ago, if you didn't run a full-page ad in the yellow pages and didn't have a contract for print ads, you had no advertising presence. Those two formats have all but disappeared — there's no yellow pages or phone book, and there certainly isn't any meaningful local newspaper coverage anymore. So we found that FLX Local Media gives us the broadest base to reach our target markets. Our markets run from elementary music students to seniors playing music as a hobby, and we've reached all of our demographics through FLX Local Media.

Interviewer: Why do you think you'll continue to advertise with us?

Mike Spino: Because unless things change drastically, in order to reach a large target market, I see radio as still the most viable and most successful way to advertise your business.