Quick Tips to Increase Engagement and Educate Customers Through Social Media with Powell Feed
Participants:
Francesca Halberg – General Manager/CPO of New Media Retailer
Casey Patton – Marketing Manager of Powell Feed
Video Transcript
Francesca (00:03):
Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for joining me. My name is Francesca with the New Media Retailer podcast. I am joined today by Casey Patton from Powell Feed. Casey, thank you so much for joining us today.
Casey (00:16):
Thank you for having me. Like she said, my name — oh, sorry. What’d you say?
Francesca (00:20):
No, no, go ahead. Go ahead. Tell us a little bit about you.
A small business but a big entity
Casey (00:25):
Okay. Like I said, or like she said, my name is Casey Patton, and I’m with Powell Feed. Just a little about our store locations, we’re kind of a big entity, but a small business in one Powell Feed and Milling has been manufacturing livestock feed in Greenforce, Arkansas since 1942. We’re a family owned and customer-based company. We have four feed mills and 10 retail locations. We pride ourselves in providing what our customers want when they want it. However, that has not been as easy because of COVID. The Powell family has been in production of agriculture for three generations, to tell you just a little bit about it.
Francesca (01:08):
Perfect. Thank you so much. I have questions off of that, but first tell us a little bit about what you do at the stores and a little bit of your day to day.
The lack of supply has had an effect on marketing strategy
Casey (01:19):
I do a little bit of everything. Whatever my boss tells me to do. I do a lot with our social media. I try to make sure that our website is up to date, thanks to the help of y’all. But it’s been a little bit difficult because we get our products in on the shelf and then it’s gone quick. Then we can’t get it because of COVID, so it’s been very hard keeping products on the shelf. From a marketing standpoint, it’s been very difficult because I didn’t get enough in on the shipment to be able to advertise because it’s gone just by customers walking in. Then people get mad because we advertised it and then we don’t have it on the shelf and it’s gone. So it’s been very challenging from a marketing standpoint. So we try to be creative, and we’ve had to make sure that we treat our customers the best, that we are very customer friendly business so that we can keep our customers coming in, that even though we might not have the product they’re looking for, we can help them find something close to it or even a new product that they weren’t even aware of.
Francesca (02:37):
Yeah. I love that. When you say “get creative” — I mean, obviously you just touched on trying to recommend other products that might be similar, that they might not be aware of — but is there anything specific on social media that you’ve tried to be creative about? Like lack of inventory, shortage issues, things like that?
Interactive social media posts have increased the customer base
Casey (02:56):
Well, from the social — this is kind of off-topic, I guess I’m not really answering your question — but one thing that’s helped us more than anything is our Trivia Tuesday. So then people, when we do post stuff, they’re aware that we carry more products, different products, stuff like that. Trying to get a following on social media has not been the easiest, so our Trivia Tuesday has opened up that opportunity. I feel like in the last year or two, it has gotten really popular. It started out something very small. We had maybe two people at the most that would like it and they weren’t really engaged, but now we’ve made it kind of a ritual. Every Tuesday we do Trivia Tuesday. We have a following now where they’re waiting, and if we miss they’re asking, “Why didn’t you do this?
Casey (03:46):
You know, why did you skip?” We don’t miss very much, but they keep us on our toes. That’s been really good because not only are they following us for that, but when we post different stuff, now it’s starting to show up more in their news feed and so on. That’s been really good. Even though those customers aren’t coming into our store on a weekly basis, it allows them to say, “Oh, they carry wildlife products” or “Oh, they have bird feeders or bird feed,” or you know, different stuff that you really wouldn’t think of. A lot of stock feeds we have.
Francesca (04:22):
Yeah. I want to pause there and just tell the listeners. If you guys are not familiar, what Casey’s talking about is the more often someone likes or comments on your page, or the more often that they’re interacting with your posts, the more often your posts are showing up in their newsfeed, so Casey had this really good idea. A lot of stores do Trivia Tuesday. It’s an easy way to try to create some organic engagement on the page for that reason so that you’re showing up in their newsfeed, but Casey had this really good idea of like, “What if we continue doing Trivia Tuesday, but we add a small incentive?” I think last week you guys gave away like a hat that said Powell Feed, and I think you guys will do gift cards and things like that. Right?
Casey (05:03):
Right. We’re so thankful. With a lot of our vendors and stuff, they donate a lot of the stuff that we’re able to give away. It’s good advertisement for them and for us as well. So a lot of this stuff is donated, or we’ll do like — Black Friday deals are coming up on Friday and for the weekend at a couple of our stores, so we are doing gift certificate this week and stuff like that so that people will hopefully be able to come in and spend for this weekend or save towards something that they really want.
Francesca (05:36):
Yes, that’s so smart and such a good way to think about it too, like “Black Friday is coming, let’s give them one more reason to come in.” I love that. But as you mentioned, you guys were maybe getting one or two comments previously, and since you started adding that incentive — which I don’t think costs you guys a lot of money, and as you said the different brands started to participating too, which is great — sometimes you get over a hundred comments,
Casey (06:03):
Right. Sometimes we do. Yeah. Even in 2022, I need to get a little bit more creative and try to vamp that up just a little bit that it needs. We need to do better.
Francesca (06:18):
Oh, that’s really good. Yeah. That’s awesome. And because so many people are engaging in it, when Powell Feed has posts about like, “Hey, I’m so sorry, we completely ran out of X, Y, Z,” there is an opportunity for that post to be seen by more people because they have so many customers interacting with the Trivia Tuesday post, so that is awesome. Again, you guys have really, really killed it with the Trivia Tuesday posts. That’s great.
Casey (06:44):
Yeah. Something kind of funny is that we have people who are all like local, you know? Even though we have 10 locations all across the Northern part of Arkansas from one side to the other, we still have people from Texas and Louisiana and stuff like that that will join in our Trivia Tuesday just to participate in that. It’s so crazy.
Francesca (07:07):
Yeah. Your reach is really getting out there. That’s awesome. And then you use one page for all the stores, right? So it’s a mix of like a lot of different kinds of things.
Casey (07:16):
Yes. We use the one page for most of our locations.
Black Friday for a small business
Francesca (07:22):
Got it. Very cool. What about, like, you mentioned Black Friday already, and I’m sure you guys have sales running in most of your stores this coming weekend.
Casey (07:33):
Actually we only have two big clothing stores that have a lot of odd new stuff. It’s kinda like Powell Homan Ranch is what we like to call it, because it’s a lot of home stuff, clothing stuff, things like that. So two of our locations will be doing 20% off starting Friday through the weekend. And then there’s a lot of extra sales going on. Ariat, that’s doing a big deal, and we have a lot of Ariat stuff, and they do a pretty good cash back deal. And then there is different markdowns that we’ll have throughout the store that are 50 to 75%, you know, things like that. We have an amazing toy section, a lot of different, unique, outdoor and indoor toys for pets or for children.
Francesca (08:29):
Very cool.
Casey (08:32):
I know we have pet toys, and for the children toys, we have a ton of outdoor slides and all kinds of cool John Deere stuff and tool sets and, you know, things like that, and then a lot of indoor stuff too, for them
Francesca (08:48):
Love that. It’s funny. You don’t always think about that, but we have a local feed store here too. When I went there to get dog food, they had so many of those Melissa and Doug wood toys that I love for my kids. And so I went crazy, cause you don’t always find the good wood toys in stores sometimes. They’re hard, and so you are forced to shop online, but that was really, really cool. I was very excited to see that. So that’s awesome. Obviously you talked about promoting that stuff on social media. How else are you guys still promoting events? Whether it be Black Friday or using email, do you do print stuff? Flyers in the store? How else do you promote those events?
Print marketing can still be very effective
Casey (09:30):
So we’re kind of old school. We need to step it up a little. We still have a large customer base on a couple of the big newspapers for two of our biggest locations. There’s a group of locations that are in one county, like the county newspaper. It has a lot of our locations, like four of them within the surrounding counties, because it’s such a rural area that that newspaper covers so much. Even though it’s the county newspaper, it goes all around to the surrounding counties and stuff like that. A lot of our customer base is very rural. We don’t have a lot of internet access, and that’s a lot of our locations from one side to the other is that our service and internet access is not always good, right? So we have a couple of radio stations that we still run with the big ad in a couple newspapers.
Casey (10:27):
And if we do not run stuff in the newspaper or on our radio stations that we normally do, our customers start complaining. The first thing they say is that you’re not on there. So we have a large following from that. And then papers have kind of done a good job of kind of revamping their deal. For instance, Black Friday is coming this weekend, and one of the newspapers is doing all of their locations to try to keep people to shop local in town. And so a lot of the businesses come together and they’re doing a lot of fun things for the kids through the weekend, and open house kind of deals, things like that, to try to draw the community to stay local.
Francesca (11:14):
Yeah. I love that. Oh, that’s awesome. That’s really, really cool. Yeah. It’s such an interesting thing in today’s world. I feel like before you could just do newspaper and have a good assurance that you were reaching the majority of your customer base and then maybe like radio too, you know? And then now as things start to shift, like even in just my immediate family, I have a sibling that doesn’t use social media. So while I’m very into social media and I’m constantly encouraging people to post there, it is important to make sure that you are well-represented across a lot of different platforms because you do want to make sure you are hitting a little bit of everybody. It’s very relatable to be doing print, to be doing radio, to be doing social media, some email stuff, a website; you kind of have to do a little bit of everything to make sure you are hitting the majority of people today. It’s a very, very diverse customer base in today’s world.
Casey (12:11):
It is. It’s really sad because of our older base that are passing away. And so we have the younger generation that’s coming up, but they’re not as much as farming and stuff like that, so we’re having to be creative to keep everybody entertained, to try to get everybody, you know, at least aware that we’re there and what we carry.
New customers came from COVID
Francesca (12:31):
Yeah. Definitely. Now like younger customer base, you know, I feel like for me, a lot of people that I saw on social media and things like that, when COVID happened and they were inside or at home a lot more than they were before that, they got into like chickens for the first time or gardening for the first time or a new hobby. Did you guys experience that in your stores?
Casey (12:53):
Oh my goodness. I’m going to not keep enough stuff on the shelf. We had a lot of our small animals stuff — like our goats, sheep and our chicken poultry stuff, really — where it flew off the shelf during COVID and stuff. And to be honest, it really hasn’t slowed down very well. So, let’s back up a little bit with the COVID deal and all that. I hate that COVID happened, but it was a great opportunity for us to be able to draw in new customers that we’ve never seen, you know? New customers that we never would have touched if it wasn’t because of COVID. A lot of people, instead of running to Walmart and things like that to get a few things, they were trying to come to us. Instead of going to Walmart to get their dogs and their dog’s supplies, they would come to our stores, the smaller facility, with not as many people and not the crowd. We were wiping stuff down constantly trying to reassure customers.
Casey (14:06):
So that was a big deal. Another thing that we’ve started doing recently is that we have guides “Local Raised,” “How Beef,” and “It’s Grain Fed Beef,” that we have at two of our locations. So that’s brought in another group of people. So that’s been nice carrying the beef. Carrying our small animal, animal products, stuff like that has been very, very, very popular. Especially now all these people got all these animals and the winter coming for the first time. They’re not very familiar with it, so they’re going to have to make sure that they have heated items like heated waters, heated stuff for their nesting boxes and stuff like that, depending on how cold it’s going to get. We are not used to below freezing and snow and stuff like that for long periods of time. Last year, it hit us and it was pretty rough for about a week. So I think that people will kind of be buying more and be kind of on their toes more this year. Nothing will probably happen this year. We’re trying to get prepared. You have people on board that their chickens make it just fine, but ours are not meant to make it like that. Our chickens are in the lights and are not meant to make it there. They’re not used to that, you know, for us to get hit with that cell like that. So we’ll get them if it gets too cold for too many days in a row.
Powell Feed took advantage of their partners to keep customers educated
Francesca (15:41):
Right. So how was that education process? I mean, I feel like first of all, kudos to people that took this on. Like, I feel really bad about myself. There were people that were like, “Ooh, let me try raising goats.” And I did nothing.
Casey (16:04):
Because I feel like people jumped into it and they had no idea what they were getting themselves into.
Francesca (16:11):
Well, that’s what I was going to say. I feel like it’s so easy to feel like, “Oh, I can do this,” based on the 30 second Instagram video that you see or the pictures on Pinterest. So talk about how is the staff educating all of these new customers that maybe consider themselves experts because they read an article online, but maybe have a strong dose of reality heading their way.
Casey (16:38):
Right, so we actually worked really close with Purina and they offer a lot. We do a lot of meetings that are in-person meetings, and we kept this small so that everybody was safe and social distanced and stuff, but we had opportunities throughout the year. They were poultry, sheep and goats, and cattle meetings, stuff like that. We did a few, and we also try to share a lot of social media. We tried to do a lot of online meetings, so we could reach a bigger group of people to teach kind of basics. We had PhD Purina and people that joined us that were on the equine side, the cattle side, the poultry side, the sheep and goat side, you know, trying to help them get down to help us to be able to help our customers on just the basic education of stuff.
Casey (17:46):
We try to share things from our other entities, such as Nutrena, Stanley Hay company, things like that, trying to share Priefert, other vendors of ours. They’ll have pointers. This is what you need to do in this instance, and it’s just a basic 1, 2, 3. However, Purina is wonderful. They’re great. Just kind of diagram kind of showing you the seasons change 1, 2, 3, this is what you need to do. On our social media, we try to put stuff like that. Maybe on our websites. At a lot of the stores, we’ve got a lot of our employees who have been with us for a long time, so they will have people walk in and they’ll have a catastrophe. And luckily our employee base is able to help them get the products they need. Even if we don’t have it in stock, we can also get it transferred. So say our Harrison location has it in, but our Siloam location needs it. We can transfer that and the Siloam location and it’ll get there within a couple of days.
Got it.
So we’re very fortunate for that as well. If we have a customer really needing it, we would try to be flexible and get it for them as quick as possible.
Francesca (19:07):
Awesome. Yeah. I mean, it sounds like you’ve obviously put a lot of thought into that. Cause the first thing that comes to my mind is the Instagram versus reality thing, and just like the customer service opportunity that is there when these people are like, “Okay, well now I’m invested. Like I bought these animals, like what do I do now?” So that’s so awesome. I mean, obviously when it comes to brands like Purina, you mentioned Nutrena, things like that. These people have the resources and the people on staff to create beautiful visuals or videos, which takes so much time. And like a lot of small businesses just don’t have the resources to be able to dedicate to creating a lot of those professional assets. So the fact that you guys are going out, looking for them, hosting these online meetings, hosting in-person meetings to really be there as a knowledge base from all different sources for your customers is so awesome.
Diversify promotions to gain a diverse customer base
Francesca (20:00):
That’s very cool. Very, very cool. Anything else, like going on that you want to touch on for heading into the holidays in terms of what you guys are thinking for promotions to encourage people to shop local? I feel like for me, what I’ve seen on social media, there is such a push — I don’t know if it’s more this year than other years, or if I’m just noticing it so much more this year — to shop local, which I absolutely love. And you mentioned the newspaper doing things like that, but anything you guys want to touch on about maybe what you’re doing to encourage people to come to you or check you out first?
Casey (20:38):
Well, we all probably have sales and things like that on and off throughout until Christmas. There is a big base that we’re trying to bring in, a diverse base. We’re trying to bring you in right now. We live in Arkansas, so right now it’s deer season. We’re still right in the middle of deer season. It’s huge for us. So we manufactured some of our own deer fades. We bring in some deer products. And then we also, we had these Bright Horn chats that we were getting ready for like safety stuff and things like that, that we do for a Trivia Tuesday. So we try to bring in a dip, you know, that right there is a big deal for our customers here in Arkansas with it being deer season. We also have got checkerboard days coming up and that’s actually starting on Black Friday and that runs for a week and that’s at five of our locations.
Casey (21:32):
During those checkerboard days, any Purina products that they buy within that week, they get their name put into a drawing for either a $25 Powell gift card. There will be about five $25 Powell gift cards given away. And then there’s one $100 Powell gift card given away at each of those locations that we have listed. So not only are we taking advantage of our Purina products and we have coupons that will go with a lot of those products for our customers to take advantage of. We also wanted it to be this close to Christmas, so why not give them a gift card so that they can either get something for themselves or they can do some Christmas shopping with those gift certificates that they received. Those are kind of big, big events coming up as well as the Ariat cash back rebate deal. That is a good opportunity as well because that’s for infants all the way up to adults, and that goes on until the first part, middle part of December. So it’s not like it’s just Black Friday weekend, right?
Francesca (22:43):
Yeah. Definitely giving them a lot of reasons to keep coming back. I’m actually so glad that we got to have this conversation and actually with the timeliness of it, this will get sent to our audience next week, and I feel like they’re such good tips that you gave that are so actionable for stores to still think about and implement even before Christmas comes. So I feel like this is going to be such a valuable podcast episode for stores to listen to for that. Or maybe just feeling like, “Geez, I don’t really know where to start,” or you know, “What can I do on social media? I don’t really know where to get started.” I feel like you gave people such good tips. This was a really great conversation. I’m so grateful that you took the time to do it.
Casey (23:25):
Well, thanks for having me. I hope I didn’t ramble too much.
Francesca (23:28):
No, you did great. You did awesome. Guys, be sure to check back soon for another podcast with New Media Retailer and Casey, thank you so much for joining.
Casey (23:40):
Thank you for having me.