Vending Business Marketing

Vending machines have almost become a part of our lives. We can hardly imagine a day without vending machines. This has encouraged more number of operators to take up this business as our dependency on vending machine is only increasing day by day.

How to market this business? This is most crucial question to be answered. First of all operators need to develop a thorough market plan by listing details about the products and customers liking. Are they new and branded machines? You also need to target a particular segment of the market as this is a business-to-customer (B2C) sale. Do you have any set preferences?
For all this to happen, you need to do conduct basic research on existing vending machine businesses in your area. Based on the results of your research, you can arrive at prospective customers and decide on the kind of advertising/ marketing you believe would reach potential customers. All this needs to be done keeping in mind your financial constraints. All this can be done in the following way:

• Maintain pictures of your stock of vending machines or get pictures of the products you intend to sell from the manufacturers.

• Hire a layout designer to develop a brochure that describes and publicize your business. A web designer also helps in setting up a website to promote your business.

• Use business cards with graphic designs to promote your business when you seek for a vending location.

• Make use of advertisements by placing ads targeting specific customers. Attend vending machine business networking events. Pass out your business cards and brochures. It could be possible you can get any vending account from there.

• Make a press release relating to your vending business so that it will catch the attention of prospective customers.

• Gather information related to customers and their preferences.
The above mentioned aspects help in effectively marketing your business. For more tips on running your vending business successfully, you can contact sales staff from Planet Antares.

Customer’s Mind-Set towards Vended Products

Technological advancements and increase in the variety of products and services offered has given better scope for merchandising industry in the eyes of consuming public. Although operators are happy with this progress, they would still like to see more improved vending industry reputation. For this to happen, operators need to instil confidence in public by providing better value for their money. Once this is achieved, operators can later hike the prices and thus be in a position to offer highest level of service.

Few operators still find that customer do not understand them. This needs to be improved. Customers have an altogether different set of expectations from vending machines and its products. More than half of the customers still perceive that retail prices are low in convenience stores when compared to vending machines. This of course is not true.

Another issue that needs proper attention is that consumers have low regard for vended products. They consider mobile catering to be far superior to vended foods. This is one of the toughest challenges to the vending industry as a whole.

Automatic merchandising is not experienced in image building and has never utilized public relations as an instrument for bringing about change. Vending operators have always equipped themselves with information and questions on how to deal with potentially difficult issues such as food contamination and many more.

With changing times, people also need to change their thinking. Retail prices are in no way less when compared to snacks vending through vending machines. Moreover, it is always the other way round. If you purchase snacks from a vending machine, you will find it cheaper than the convenience store.

Consumers always look for high quality services and for this to happen, they are even willing to pay some extra bucks. This means that it is up to the vending operator to ensure quality services through their machines for which they are already known for.

Expanding Vending Business

If you have taken up vending as a full time business, you would definitely look at expanding it as soon as you start making some reasonably good profits. Although expansion is not a very easy thing to do, it can be made easier by following a perfect plan.

Most operators take up vending as a small home based business because operators usually start with only one or two machines. As in most cases the machine is operated from the residence without hiring huge offices spaces, it requires low investment in the beginning. This is what makes vending a great business opportunity.

Expanding vending would mean shifting your business from home to another premises or adding more machines to the existing ones. Your business needs to be financially stable before you go for an expansion. The reason being, you need to put in a lot of investment for adding new machines or hiring a new premise.

You have quite a good number of options available for the purpose of expanding your business. Few of them have been discussed below:

• Adding new machines: This is most common practise followed by operators who go for business expansion. Once you have purchased new machines of reputed companies, you need to identify new locations for installing them. This would not be a tough task since you already have acquaintance to the market and customer needs. Tasking guidance from Planet Antares staff can be a good idea while expanding your business to different locations

• Purchasing existing or established routes: Generally people who like to get out of this business, sell their existing routes. Purchasing an established route is a faster way of growing your business. This is because you need not worry about going out in search of new and prospective locations or suppliers. To put it in simple words, you would be starting from a point where the previous operator has left.

• Expanding new horizons: Rather than expanding and offering the same product, you can also try other vending businesses like bulk vending and special products vending. Being successful in one product will keep you prepared for all other kinds of vending businesses.

You should look at expansion option only if you have sufficient capital on hand because once you take up expansion, you should only continue to earn huge profits but not losses.

Good Vending Services

It is the prime responsibility of a vending operator to see to it that his machine functions smoothly without any hindrances. This can help in providing uninterrupted services to customers and thus generate regular income. But how is it possible? The answer is very simple-regular servicing of machine.

Due to various reasons, operators do not service their machines regularly. Most of them get their machines serviced only after they get depleted by 30% or run out of stock. This is not at appropriate to wait till your machine becomes empty. You can also provide good service even without making frequent visits to vending machines. Few strategies that can make such efficiency possible are:

• Stock your machines with fast moving products. Try to offer two or three such products at a time in your machine.
• Track your sales for at least a few weeks. This will help you know those products that have least demand. You can replace them with fast moving products.
• Try to schedule your vending machine for 40-50% depletion level.

In case you are using a mechanical vending machine or a machine that does now have latest technology for tracking sales, you can take the help of route drivers. These drivers can provide you with required data. Using this data, you can find out how often your vending machine becomes empty, best selling products, number of columns allocated to each product and number of products that has been sold out.

In case you are using a manual route scheduling, it can be automated with the help of technology and software. This will enable you to derive higher efficiency and result in more accurate results. The two important vending route scheduling technologies are dynamic scheduling and remote monitoring. Dynamic scheduling allows you to automate the delivery schedule on a daily basis. Using dynamic schedule, you can save companies resources, driver’s time and fuel costs. Remote monitoring on the other hand enables monitoring of real time sales data.. This method also helps in servicing machines that are located in remote areas.

So, the ball is now in your court and you can decide on which method to adopt. To get more insight into the vending business strategies contact Planet Antares staff.

How To Gain Customer Confidence In Vending Business

The recent past has witnessed tremendous increase of vending operators. This has given scope for scepticism among clients. To overcome this situation, National Automatic Merchandising Association (NAMA) has laid down few guidelines that help you in building confidence in the minds of customers.

To begin with, update your clients with various financial aspects of your business operations. Explain them in detail the various costs associated with operating this business. In case you get to know that your competitors are paying higher commissions, advice your account to figure out how your competitor is able to pay such high commissions. Perhaps, your competitor has some other aspects which are not disclosed by him.

One important thing which an operator needs to bear in mind is never hide anything from your client. Try to maintain transparency in all your transactions. This will install confidence in the minds of customers. An unethical operator will not be able to substantiate how he is able to pay huge commissions and would always like to maintain some kind of ambiguity in his operations.

Every vending operator should properly maintain books of accounts, share his financial information with his clients and also inform them that an unwilling to participate in an audit should never be trusted. Proper books of accounts will not only make audit simple and easy but also help in gaining customer confidence.

NAMA has been established exclusively for serving vending operators. So, make sure you share all the information relating to best vending practises with your clients. This helps to enlighten any underreporting in sales. Another way of gaining customer confidence is by explaining to them the technology used in your vending machine. Make them aware of operators who are unwilling to involve their client’s participation.

An honest vending operator will always maintain transparency in all his dealings related to vending business.