Online shopping platform and expert marketing support helped to take businesses digital during lockdowns
With Covid forcing many businesses to close their doors, there was a real threat to livelihoods and high streets across the region. Identifying an opportunity for business owners to move their operations online, we offered a free 12-month subscription to the community led online shopping platform, ShopAppy.com.
This allowed businesses to continue trading in a Covid-secure way and become more resilient for the future should other forced closures arise. A wide range of shops and services from across the North Yorkshire region signed up to the offer including in York, Selby, Harrogate, Leyburn, Northallerton and Thirsk. During the scheme, we engaged with 200 local SMEs, as well as built stronger connections with local authorities, networks and BIDs in order to ensure that the right support was being delivered.
The scheme crucially identified that additional digital skills support was required to enable owners to take full advantage of moving their business models online. As such, we combined the ShopAppy offer with more tailored support and guidance from local marketing experts. This aimed to help retailers maximise their presence on the platform by improving their social media and digital marketing skills so they could drive as many as visitors as possible to their online shop.
Rosie Bradford from Happy in Harmony offered her singing and music lessons through ShopAppy, and has benefited from the additional marketing support. “The training has encouraged me to go to the next level with my social media,” says Rosie. “I learnt about tools to help me schedule posts, how to tag effectively and why it’s important, and some insights into how to use LinkedIn to scale my business.
“I’m collaborating with other local businesses on ShopAppy and I’ve started tagging people and organisations more consistently. I’m also sharing posts to local groups and on my personal page much more often. This has had a positive effect on my reach, engagement, and the amount of new customers and potential customers who are benefiting from my services.
“The encouragement and advice I received has been really helpful. I now feel very confident sharing stories on social media, my blog, and enewsletter, and inspiring more people to come on a happy musical journey with me.”
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Events
29th November 2022FREE
York & Harrogate Business Support Programme : Tourism Business Booster Marketing Planning 2023
With multiple dates in York and Harrogate, these fully funded workshops will help businesses involved in the tourism sector to plan for 2023, with Martin Evans of The Tourism Business. Benefit from dedicated group coaching with this fully funded tourism business booster for hospitality businesses in York & Harrogate.
29th November 20222:00 pm - 4:00 pmFREE
29 November - Ian Walker - Importance of Good Numbers
In this session, Ian Walker of Ian Walker & Co. Chartered Accountants will consider why having a tight grasp on your numbers and trading performance is important. Not only historic results but also on projection and budgets. He will detail how to compile such figures and how to interpret them, and also touch upon how good financials (numbers) leads to better decision making.
30th November 2022FREE
York Business Festival : November 2022
The Growth Hub is proud to be amongst the organisers of this year's expanded York Business Festival, with a week of events as part of a wider programme of activity throughout November. Read on to learn what will be available through the Growth Hub and other organisations.
Resources
2022 Seminar Recordings
We have recently hosted a programme of in-person seminars and other events, some of which were professionally recorded and can now be viewed on our website.
Seminar Recording : Access to finance: Funding growth
This workshop will provide guidance on cost based pricing, calculating your costs before deciding an appropriate margin, as well as covering market based pricing asking questions such as: What value do you add? What are you worth? How do you position yourself?
Seminar Recording : Access to finance: Funding growth
Getting into the right habits early on in your business journey will make life easier as the business grows and you find yourself under more time pressure. This workshop with business coach Gareth Allen will pose some useful questions to ask yourself, and give you some ideas to get the basics right.
