Business Northumberland.

Business Northumberland was a fully-funded programme aimed at new and growing businesses across the county of Northumberland.

As well as delivering workshops in a previous role up until February 2020, in September 2022 I started doing digital diagnostics and coaching support for businesses on the programme. This was all available at no cost to the organisations who needed it.

The project involved holding an initial scoping call with each referred business, before auditing their digital presence and creating an outline of coaching activity we would carry out up to a maximum of five hours. I worked with 42 businesses, delivering a total of 167 hours of one-to-one support. I worked with cafes, salons, photographers, coaches, manufacturers, and many other types of sectors.

One established cafe saw online reach increase by 88% in the space of 4 weeks, leading to more messages, bookings, and enquiries. And one gifting company won a 12 month contract with their first big corporate client within a few weeks of our time together working on their messaging. Other businesses were able to take on staff, bring new products to the market, or keep the doors open while competitors were closing.

As part of the project, I was also invited to speak to around 80 businesses at events in Alnwick and Horton Grange.