Blain’s Farm & Fleet

I've been in this platform for about 20 years. My responsibilities are in E-commerce and digital marketing. The e-commerce is around the user experience, user interface, working with both the IT team and our agency that manages our website in terms of how it looks, merchandising on the website, any added features and functionalities. The digital marketing is the responsibility of driving traffic and conversion to the website through digital marketing channels such as paid search, organic affiliates, email and many more.

What are some of the most prominent challenges that you see in the initiate today? Can you walk me through the trends and challenges existing in e-commerce marketing?

The first challenge for our company is the inflation or current economic conditions. We sell items like snacks for $399 to riding lawn mowers which are $2,000, $3,000 during inflation. We are very seasonal and have a wide variety of items that are purchased like in winter season; we sell items like snow blowers, snow removal, cold weather, clothing, etc. Due to the inflation rates, people are pulling back on purchases which impacts economic conditions. Second challenge is the lingering of supply chain issues that are result of COVID as manufacturers are not manufacturing the items that were available before the pandemic. Another challenge is that the consumers are buying more of consumables and less of durable goods. We sell both but that affect our AOV (Average Order Value) on orders as well as revenue.

How do you address these challenges? Is there a methodology or process that you take?

We control how we message to our neighbors, because we are a regional brick and mortar store as well as and we ship nationally. We use global promotions, primarily shipping promotions to drive revenue. We also use special pricing on particular items and categories. For example, if we have excess inventory in winter goods, we may push special pricing to drive revenue and help our neighbors to purchase who couldn’t afford it earlier. We use all the digital channels available to us like paid search, email, organic, text messaging affiliates, and many more.

If you understand your customer base and have a 360° view of why, what, and how they purchase products, you can drive better business outcomes

What are the upcoming trends to look out for and how do you push and how have you positioned your company to address those trends?

The trend which consumers are looking for is better pricing. They don't have the disposal income that they used to have and so they don’t spend much. The inflation is not going to be reduced much in the next 12 months and this trend will continue. So we expect that there will be a reduction in disposable income among our customer base. Therefore, we use promotions and discounts where we can without reducing our margins to help drive sales and meet the needs of what people are looking for. Consumers also look for ease of purchase which is seamless and simple and have payment options like Apple Pay, Google Pay, buy now, pay later, etc. They may not be able to buy a $2,500 tiller with complete amount, but they can buy it in installment at buy now, pay later where they're only charged $500 or $600 a month and pay off that amount.

What would be your piece of advice to your fellow peers and aspiring professionals in the field to tackle these challenges and upcoming trends? What do you think they need to do to better position themselves against the challenges as well as the trends?

I think the biggest thing is to know your customer. Get the database, study what customers are doing, study the trends and the economic conditions that are current in the country. Make pivots on the digital platform or brick and mortar in terms of pricing, promotion, what products people are buying, what they bought in the past. So in my opinion, if you understand your customer base, a 360 view of how they purchase, what they purchase, why they purchase will help a retailer understand what they need to do to meet the needs of their customer base. It's not necessarily selling more but it's about understanding your customer meet their need.

Is there something that you would like to specifically highlight within the article?

I manage the paid digital channels so I have to be very careful about how we run these efficiently, especially Google search or paid search. We want to drive top line but at the same time we need to be careful on the bottom line. So there's a balance there of what can we do to make sure we're driving top line, but we're not giving away the farm in the case of farm and fleet.