Archive for the ‘websites’ Category

Marquee Market & Merry Xmas

Monday, December 19th, 2011

A marquee related website that could prove useful is marquee market, in their own words:

Marquee Market is a new website that aims to bring under one roof a range of functions to provide a ‘one stop shop’ for information/resources aimed directly at marquee companies and other event industry providers.  The website, which has been built by a team experienced in growing an established marquee hire business is still very much evolving and currently has facilities for;

  • advertising marquees for sale and other event equipment for sale (free adverts before end Jan 2012)
  • a platform for advertising marquee hire jobs (free adverts before end Jan 2012)
  • a manufacturers special offers page
  • a marquee cross hire listing

The aim is to build an informative website that offers up to date, relevant information which encourages communication within the industry. The Marquee Market team have many new ideas that will be introduced in the coming months – so do keep in touch! www.marquee-market.co.uk

If the website takes off then it could be a really useful addition to the marquee hire industry.

There won’t be a blog next week, frankly with a substantial and alcoholic Christmas planned it’s probably for the best. So I’d like to wish all of you a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, thank you for all of your business in 2011 and here’s to a busy and successful 2012 :)

We are closing at lunchtime on Friday 23rd December and opening again on Tuesday 3rd January 2012

Thanks for reading

Spencer

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The first steps to marquee hire

Monday, June 20th, 2011

This is a conversation I have regularly, you’re interested in starting a marquee hire business and don’t know where to start. This is what I suggest:

Research
Find out who your local competitors are, what marquees they offer and how much they charge for the sort of marquees you’re likely to offer.
If there are hardly any competitors or the local companies all offer much larger marquees then this is a good thing. There’s space in the market for you to exploit.
If there are a lot of companies in your local area that offer similar size marquees to ours/yours then you might need to think twice about starting up. It’s not impossible but it is much harder to get going in a saturated market.

Stock:
The most popular marquees for hiring are 6x12m, 6x6m and 4x8m. If you’re based in a city then it’s more likely to be the smaller, 4m wide marquees that are popular.

What marquees should I buy?
I would recommend starting on a smaller scale initially. All of our marquees are designed along a similar, easy to erect style. If you’ve put one up then you won’t have a problem erecting a different size without practice.
Because of the large stock we carry and swift delivery you can just buy more marquees when you have the bookings for them – to me that makes good business sense, you only buy further marquees when you know you’re getting a return on your investment.

Insurance and misc
If you’re hiring out marquees then you should be covered for public liability insurance. When you buy a DIY Marquee we pass on 3 companies details who specialise in marquee hire cover. We also pass on a copy of the terms and conditions of hire we used to use as a hire company and we can provide some photos to get your website and advertising started.

We always enjoy helping people start up their own marquee hire businesses and will happily chat through any ideas you may have. The above is just a collection of ideas to start you off.

Thanks for reading

Spencer

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What area do you cover?

Tuesday, February 15th, 2011

I find myself spending a lot of time looking at different marquee hire websites. It might be looking for people who would find the marquee forum useful or just keeping up with what’s going on in the industry. But the biggest thing that hits me on most of the websites is you can’t see what area people cover.

Take this luxury toilet hire website (yes I am biased). You can clearly see the area they cover there on the front page. Instantly people will arrive and know they’re not wasting their time -don’t underestimate that.

If I search for blue striped widgets and open several interesting results in different tabs the one I’m going to spend my time on is one that on the first page says -we supply blue striped widgets. No searching through the site. No ‘we supply a variety of widgets’ where you have to mail them to find out if they do blue striped ones.

If I want a marquee in Dorking and google marquee hire the resulting websites that are going to grab me are ones that in words or maps say ‘we supply marquees to Dorking’. I’ll probably still be interested in one that says ‘we supply marquees to Surrey’ and I may stay on one that says ‘South-East’. I’m not going to linger on one that doesn’t say the area and I have to email to find out. What’s the point when others obviously do?

Apologies for the 24hr delay in posting, I was off yesterday shopping for blue striped widgets :)

Thanks for reading

Spencer

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Google alerts

Monday, February 7th, 2011

Wouldn’t it be nice if -like Voldemort in Harry Potter you would know if someone ever mentioned your name. Well, now with google alerts you can (at least anything that appears  online).

Just set up a google alert for your business name and google will tell you whenever it finds a match, this informs you what people are saying about your company.

But it’s more powerful than that:

  • It lets you know if a competitor is using your name in any marketing (this has happened to us in the past)
  • You can set up alerts for your competitors names to see what people are saying about them or even what they’re saying about themselves
  • You can set up alerts for your keyword phrases – so if anyone mentioned ‘marquee hire surrey’ (for eg) on a blog then you can make a comment with a link back to your site (very good for the rankings)

All in all very useful and strongly recommended.

Thanks for reading

Spencer

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New Marquee Hire Websites and stock photos

Monday, August 2nd, 2010

When you first start up a marquee hire business something you always struggle with is photographs for your website. Obviously we supply a few to get you started but really you want a wide selection showing a variety of marquees and effects for customers to see but until you’ve done a marquee like that you haven’t got any photos of it.

One solution is to buy some ‘stock photos’ (I can’t recommend one particular site so just google it to see what I mean).

If you’ve been in business for a while and suddenly a new business pops up who look as if they’ve already done wedding marquees similar to the Beckhams then this is probably the answer, they just bought some stock photos.

Saying this, you do have to be a little careful here.

  • The photos look good. That’s why you bought them after all but..
  • Chances are the photos aren’t of your style of marquee. What if someone comes along as says – I want one of those!

You also have to be careful of misleading customers (even Burger King are at it). My personal view is by all means use them but be very very selective on the photos you buy. Choose ones that show people having a good time at a wedding/party for example rather than one that shows an unknown marquee in detail.

Thanks for reading

Spencer

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Starting out – get a website set up pronto

Monday, March 15th, 2010

Setting up in marquee hire? Get a website up as soon as you can.

  • websites take a while to appear in google, hence the need to get something online swiftly
  • don’t underestimate the effect search engine optimisation (SEO) can have on your website, getting it on the first page for ‘marquee hire your local area’ will add a LOT of business
  • when people come to a marquee hire website they want photos showing what they’re looking to hire. To help we can supply some sample photographs for you to use until you’ve got enough of your own
  • if you don’t want to do it yourself and don’t have a friend/relative to ask then it’s either get a professional to do it or use our marquee hire template
  • people want to be reassured that you’re reliable and do a good job, try to make sure your wording is written accordingly
  • have your contact details on every page, you want people to get in touch -make life easy for them

Thanks for reading

Spencer

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Starting a marquee hire firm: website

Monday, January 4th, 2010

It may sound surprising but a website really is one of the first things you should get organised when starting up a marquee hire firm.

Google (and other search engines) take a while to find a new website and even longer to position it anywhere near the top of the search rankings (think 3-12 months).

But this is a 2 stage process. Google finds a new website but then leaves it a month or two before having it appear anywhere in the search rankings. As someone starting up this system actually buys us some time – simply set up the website with an ‘under construction’ page so google finds it and design the marquee website at your leisure (as long as it’s done in a month or so).

Thanks for reading – I hope you had a good New Year.

Spencer

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9m wide modular marquees for sale – New for 2010!

Sunday, November 22nd, 2009

If you visited us at the Showmans Show you will know that we’re going to be supplying 9m wide modular marquees from March/April of next year.  Why is this so exciting? Why are we doing it? Why should you buy ours?

It’s exciting because it’s the culmination of a LOT of work and we’re confident it’s going to be well received.

We’re doing it because a lot of our customers are successful and expanding, at some time most expanding marquee hire companies have to offer larger structures so the sensible next step is 9m wide.

Why should you buy from us? Well we’ve worked very hard to ensure our marquees are compatible with the majority of kit already out there in the UK as well as making sure it’s the high quality and value for money people have come to expect from us.

We are taking pre-orders now for delivery in March/April 2010, if you don’t order by mid-December then we can’t guarantee availability. Prices are available by request (or look at your Showmans Show price list).

So what’s the spec of our new 9m marquees:

  • 4-channel aluminium profile with steel knuckles & apexes. The 4-channel aluminium allows greater flexibility with things like porches (see photo below) and catering areas.
  • Translucent PVC used for both walls and roofs – a lot of cheap modular marquees around the world use a ‘blackout’ layer in their roof PVC making the interior grey and gloomy (think of the light in an old canvas marquee). This might be suitable for deserts or the south of France but in the UK if it’s light outside you want it to be light inside. I think they may use the blackout layer just to increase the gsm of the fabric, certainly most of the PVC roofs already in use don’t use blackout.
  • 2.3m eaves – if you’re buying a modular marquee for use in the UK you want it to have 2.3m eaves. Why? Well nearly all the existing stock used in UK marquee hire companies uses 2.3m eaves, this means that all lining suppliers and theming companies have stock based on a 2.3m eave -so you can only use them if you’ve got the correct kit. Using 2.3m eaves also means the resale value of the marquee will be higher and you’re not tied to us if you want to buy more framework in the future.
  • choice of windows: georgian, arched or panoramic
  • choice of zips or dutch lacing (dutch lacing is by far the most popular choice)

Included with any marquee purchase we’re also offering:

  • A training session – when your marquee’s ready we’ll be arranging several training sessions for you to come along to so we can pass on all of our knowledge and tips (surprisingly that’s quite a lot!). We put these marquees up for 10 years and there’s lots of things to make your life easier.
  • A free single page website optimised for whatever keyphrase you want. A lot of companies have these single page satellites designed to get up the search rankings that link through to your main site. They can take a while to get there but we’re quite good at it and we’ll design one for you.

Below are lots of photos of 9m marquees that your marquee will look like:

Thanks for reading

Spencer

9m x 18m Marquee

Ivory pleated lining (with extra curtains over the walls)

9m x 18m roof only marquee

9m x 9m marquee with 3m porch

Two 9m marquees with panoramic windows (later ones have dutch lacing)

Two 9m marquees with panoramic windows (later ones have dutch lacing)

9m x 6m framework mid-assembly

9m x 6m framework mid-assembly

Aluminium profile (steel knuckle at the top of eaves)

Aluminium profile (steel knuckle at the top of eaves)

Gable uprights bolt securely on

Gable uprights bolt securely on

9m wide marquee with pleated lining & green swag

9m wide marquee with pleated lining & green swag

9m marquee with a walkway used as an entrance porch

9m marquee with a walkway used as an entrance porch

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Every marquee hirer should be using google

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

Most marquee hirer’s will let someone else look after their website, our speciality is putting up marquees not web design after all. But whoever you are you should still be using google and making it work for you.

By using google I don’t mean using their search engine, I mean using their extra tools. You have to register and set it up but it doesn’t take long.

What tools are available?

Google’s local business center: when it looks like you’re searching for a local business, the first few results appear on a map – these are results from google’s local business center. Registering for this is a MUST.

Webmaster tools: This helps you find out if there’s any problems with your marquee website. If the person who looks after your website is on the ball you don’t need this. For those of us who look after our own websites it’s very handy.

Adwords: You know the ads that appear on the right hand side (and sometimes above) the normal search results? They’re paid-for ads, that’s how google makes money. In my experience they’re very useful and well worth the small amount of money required, -note when you first start out have a good search round as often there’s vouchers out there for free £20/£30 for adwords.

Google analytics: With adwords comes another incredibly useful program called analytics, by installing a small piece of code on to your website you can keep track of number of visitors, where they go, what they searched for to find your site and 101 other things. If you’re technically minded and/or do your own website this is incredibly useful.

Google alerts: you put a search term in and every time google finds something new with that search term it’ll email you (once a day,week or month). How is this of use? Well if you put your name in here you can keep track of anyone online anywhere who mentions you. If you put “marquee hire” and your local area then you’ll keep track of who else is around you. This is not to be underestimated, it’s very very useful.

There’s other tools on there but these are the main ones that I think most people would be interested in who run marquee hire businesses.

Sorry for the delayed entry this week, my daughters birthday yesterday meant I was at the Zoo :)

Thanks for reading.

Spencer.

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Marquee hire success

Monday, July 27th, 2009

When we ran a marquee hire company most of our business came from the fact that people trusted us. At the end of the day people are booking a marquee with you based on their experience of meeting you, speaking on the phone, looking at your website and any literature/research/recommendations available. Throughout each of these steps you need to come across well and as an outfit that’s not going to let them down.

A fundamental part of this is do what you say you’re going to do. If not then how can you be trusted to put a marquee up even though you say you will?

If you make an appointment for 10am on Tuesday make sure you’re there at 10am on Tuesday (I’d always aim to be sat round the corner 10mins before in case of traffic). If you’re going to be late for the appointment then phone with a realistic ETA.

If you say you’ll get a quote out today, get that quote sent out today!

You get the idea.

This is all fresh in my mind as we sold a marquee and some equipment to a customer this week who was only buying one because he’d been let down by his local marquee hire firm.

He phoned up asking for an appointment and was told as he’s only round the corner the marquee man would pop in on Friday evening. Didn’t happen. Customer phoned, was told definately the following Friday. Didn’t happen. You get the picture.

Once this had happened a few times the customer had understandably lost all faith in the local marquee man doing what he’d said he would and turned to us instead (which is extreme, normally they’d phone round for another marquee company)

So please remember your business is judged on the image of your business, people aren’t coming along to buy a product from you, they’re buying a service. You don’t just need to provide a good, reliable and value for money service you need to be SEEN to be providing these things.  Your website, attitude on the phone and manner when in a meeting must be that you’re there not only to help, advise and serve but that you’re capable of doing so.

Thanks for reading, I hope the marquee season’s going well for everyone :)

Spencer

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