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One of the best ways to gain exposure online for your vending & micro-market business is being listed on Google’s business directory – Google My Business. It is a free and effective platform to connect with your customers, improve your search engine rankings and eventually get more clients for your business online. From digital agencies to vending companies and wedding planning businesses, all have benefited from being listed on Google My Business, and so can you!
Watch our video below to learn more about what Google My Business listing is and why it is important for business owners to claim it.
How Karmic Management Influences Our Business
At VendCentral, we believe in Karmic Management. If you’ve never heard of it, Karmic Management is the title of a book, but also a business philosophy based on the idea that good service leads to good karma. While it may sound more spiritual than business-like, it really is a universal concept that extends through our everyday life, from personal interactions to work ethics.
What goes around, comes around
M&M Sales Company, Lafayette LA
At the core of our business philosophy is the idea that everyone prefers to deal with honest and ethical people. We recognize their humility and the good things they do for others. In business too, customers and stakeholders prefer to work with companies who are open and stand for something more than just making money. You can see this in your own business. When you provide excellent service and sell high quality products, you are doing good to others and receive good karma in return. This manifests in repeat customers and growing revenues. If you exceed expectations, you will receive good karma multiplied and attract more positive business associations.
Focused on purpose and people
Another part of our philosophy is having purpose. Live with purpose. Do business with purpose. This will help you be happier in life. Translated to business, this means having a company mission. Ours is to use computer and online marketing skills to help vending operators grow. We look at what we do as more than building websites or creating content. All our vending operator customers have employees. The better the vending operation does, the more secure those employees’ jobs become. If that success can be partially attributed to our services of creating successful online webpages and marketing dedicated to driving up sales for each company, it means we are helping people in communities across the United States. Our service means good Karma.
Charley Nelms, President of Texas vending association & Neil Swindale, at their annual meeting
While you can have both good service and strong purpose, it may not matter without a positive attitude. Outwardly, an optimistic attitude conveys your good intentions and shows the performance of good deeds. Internally, the attitude creates a culture of productivity and creativity, not to mention a great place to work with loyal employees who love their job.
Karmic Management is our goal at VendCentral. We build relationships with vending operators that focus on open and honest communication. We strive for great service, a strong purpose, and positive attitude that will attract good fortune and grow our customers’ businesses. We believe it’s the best way to live, and work.
LinkedIn is by far the most powerful and arguably the most overlooked platform in the vending and office coffee industry. It is an important network that allows you to build relationships, establish thought leadership, generate leads and gain insights, thus making it one of the most influential platforms in business to business networking.
Watch our video below for a quick tip on how you can use LinkedIn to grow your vending and office coffee business.
Remember the proverb “keep your friends close and your enemies closer?” This is even more true online. Search vending or office coffee service with your city and who comes up? These are your competitors. Analyze their websites and social media feeds. Create Google Alerts that notify you when they are mentioned online. Armed with this information, you are better able to create a digital marketing strategy that will keep your SEO ranking above theirs and become the name customers know and trust for workplace refreshment solutions.
While vending and office coffee operators are your main competitors, they aren’t the only ones. Convenience stores, fast or quick serve restaurants, even grocery stores are all vying for the daytime quick-meal business. Check out what contests, promotions, and give-aways they are offering. How active is their social media channel? Can you imitate any of their marketing ideas and benefit from being even more conveniently located in the workplace?
Design a digital marketing plan to rival their efforts and then go beyond. Add more content to your site. Get longtime customers to write you positive reviews on Yelp or that can be displayed on your website. Create YouTube videos and articles that feature you as the knowledge expert on vending, micro markets, and office coffee service in your area. Respond on social media to comments, post news, snap pictures of charitable events, recognize employees, and offer customer incentives.
Keep an eye on your competitors and then beat them at their own game to stay front and center to potential customers.
Contact us for your digital marketing needs!
866- 699-8363
marketing@vendcentral.com
www.vendcentral.com
Where do facility managers go when considering a product, service, or company? They go online just like you do. That is the power of digital marketing, ensuring that customers can find what you’re offering, when they need and want it.
You need more
Search Engine Optimize (SEO) and Google AdWords are among some of the best digital marketing tools. However, more and more companies are using them, which means to get ahead of your competitors, you need them and a digital marketing strategy that does more. In today’s environment continuously updated content, a strong website, and active social media are musts for digital marketing. They show the customer you are an expert, trustworthy, knowledgeable, credible, reliable, approachable, innovative, and established, as well as present your product and service solutions. Digital marketing also costs a fraction of many traditional marketing methods such as newspaper, television, and radio ads. Plus, it’s usually more targeted with relevant results and ways to measure engagement. Gain exposure and a great reputation with digital marketing – a key strategy to drive up sales!
Contact us for your digital marketing needs!
866- 699-8363
marketing@vendcentral.com
The customer lifetime value, or CLV, is one of the most important statistics in business. The CLV helps owners determine the revenue attributed to the entire relationship with a customer, present and future. It is a powerful statistic when looking at where to invest resources, especially when comparing the cost of marketing to an existing customer versus acquiring a new customer. Ultimately, it helps owners analyze marketing investments and new service offerings.
While there are many ways to arrive at the CLV, in the vending and micro-market industry, it is easiest to look at the average revenue from a location for a given time period and then multiply that number by the years the location is expected to remain a customer (based on projections or the average customer retention rate). For example, let’s say the account averages $5,000 over 4 weeks. In a year, that is $60,000. If you retain a customer on average for 7 years, that location is worth $420,000 over the lifetime of the customer.
The Role Of Quality Marketing In CLV
A key statistic to compare with the CLV is the cost to acquire a new customer, or CAC. This number can be found by first determining the money spent on advertising to and acquiring new customers, such as those associated with digital marketing, sales people, e-mail marketing, etc., over a given time period. Divide the cost by the number of leads that became customers over that time period. Although the cost per customer is often higher than marketing to existing customers, this doesn’t mean marketing to new customers isn’t worth doing.
The cost of a quality marketing services can pay for itself with just one new location. For example, say a digital marketing service costs $1,000 per month. That’s $12,000 a year and might make a bookkeeper question the expense. However, if the program adds even one new customer, it could more than quadruple sales when you calculate the CLV. Consider the following example:
Digital market campaign to attract customers Cost: $1,000 per month. For 5 years: $60,000
New account
from campaign Revenue per week Revenue per year LVC (keep for 5 years)
Micro market account $1,000 $52,000 $260,000
Office coffee account $350 $18,200 $91,000
Vending account $500 $26,000 $130,000
Total gross LVC sales across all three accounts $481,000
That one digital marketing service delivered 8 times its cost in revenue. In the end, most business owners find that by using the CLV, they can invest a little and make a lot.
Contact us for your digital marketing needs!
866- 699-8363
marketing@vendcentral.com
www.vendcentral.com
Great vending accounts only come along once every three to five years, so it’s important to put your best foot forward when these potential customers come calling. In the vending and OCS industry, a proven method for standing out amongst the competition is to create video content that demonstrates why your company is the right one for the contract.
Are you familiar with the phrase “A picture is worth a thousand words”? Well, a video is worth nearly two million words. Research suggests that it would take 1.8 million words to equal the immediate impact of one minute of video. Furthermore, studies show that viewers are 64 percent more likely to do business with a company after watching a video about their product. These people also remain on that company’s website for an average of two minutes more than those who do not watch a video.
Not only are videos more engaging to potential customers, but they are also the most effective use of your resources. Why waste your time writing millions of words when you could be creating videos that spotlight your strengths as a forward-looking, 21st century company? Instead, you can use all of that extra time on the things that already make your vending company successful.
When a new product, such as the micro market, is introduced, it’s especially important to use videos to convey the concept. Having prospective customers simply read about a new type of product can be risky, since they might get the wrong ideas in their head. Creating the correct impression is key. With a video about your micro market, you can show customers exactly what you’re offering and let them picture what one would look like installed in their office.
The micro market is the latest innovation in the world of automatic merchandising, offering more convenience and variety than a typical bank of vending machines. Rather than purchasing each item individually, the micro market customer takes any number of items from this miniature self-checkout shop and completes the transaction with a single payment at a designated kiosk. This new format allows for a larger focus on fresh, healthy foods, but everyone’s favorite snacks are usually offered, as well. Micro markets do not employ a clerk, so they’re ideal for secure, closed locations, such as the break room in an office building.
Sounds like an interesting concept, doesn’t it? Just think how appealing it would look in a video.
Check out our 3 sample videos below!
If you’re interested in getting a video made for your break room refreshment business give us a call at 866-699-8363.