Advertising & Getting yourself known
Advertising
Word of Mouth: the best source of leads. Do a good job and valuable leads will come from recommendations.
Unfortunately word of mouth alone isn’t sufficient and if you’re just starting out you won’t have the customers to initially pass on the recommendation!
So where to begin?
Again you have to have your target market in mind. Where are they likely to look?
Parish magazines – Good cheap way of targeting a local area.
Yellow Pages – while this used to be the main source of advertising for marquee hire companies it’s been overtaken by online advertising. A free one-line entry in your local copy is essential. Some companies still spend a lot on large adverts but an increasing number are diverting that money online.
Thomson Local – again good to have a one-line entry but anything more is better spent elsewhere.
Online:
A website is essential. Whether you make it yourself or have it made for you it’s better to have a small website that looks good rather than a large website that looks thrown together and is difficult to navigate.
There are THOUSANDS of places to advertise online. All I can recommend is search on google for what you think people will type in to get a marquee company near you (“marquee hire Bristol” for example) and check the results.
Google pay per click is very good as long as you target the right phrases.
Tip: Unless you want to be a large nationwide company I’d suggest that getting to the top of google for “marquee” or “marquees” is an expensive and pointless exercise.
Getting yourself known
This is the bread & butter of marquee hire companies.
When organising an event some people won’t go to the marquee company first. They might go to the caterer, the florist, the DJ. Everyone’s different. Getting in with these people is a MUST.
Fill your pockets with business cards and leaflets, put your best charm hat on and if possible go and meet people face to face.
You should have a list of local caterers etc from inviting other marquee hire companies over for site visits (see Part 1 below) but also visit as many other local caterers and florists you can find in yellow pages/online.
You need to explain:
- How easy to work with you are (you want to work with these people)
- How reliable you are (you want them to recommend you)
- How new and well maintained your equipment is
Some people work on commission for recommendations. Personally I always avoided paying any commission and relied on a ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’ approach, however I think I’m in the minority and if you get regular business from such arrangements losing 10% of it is manageable.
It’s worth visiting any local national trust properties or anywhere you’ve seen marquees up as they can be a good reliable source of leads.
As a final note some people will actually contact other local marquee hire companies to get on good terms with them. That way if you or they need to cross-hire anything you have communications in place. Try to make sure they don’t recognise you from the site visit though 
Next time I’ll write about site visits.
Spencer
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Having had to retire after 10 years of running a marquee hire company due to a serious back injury I now supply commercial marquees and linings for marquee hire companies at Marquees for Sale from DIY Marquees.
In the future I will be writing on what to expect from your marquee hire company which will be expanding on the articles I wrote for confetti.
