Last chance for West Sussex business owners to claim free support

The programme, Grow Digital, is now beginning its final series and businesses are encouraged to take advantage before it ends. The programme has already propelled 500 businesses and is highly rated with an average customer satisfaction score of 83% across the previous three series.

Grow Digital teaches businesses how to adopt digital tools and increase their efficiency through this technology. Four sets of one day workshops tour the county, with a new set of topics and expert speakers each series. So far, 500 businesses have attended the events and over 100 of those are also receiving one-to-one mentoring. Organisers have been recording attendee feedback in line with Net Promoter Scoring, which measures customer satisfaction; the average score so far sits at an ‘excellent’ rating of 83%.

Expert trainer, Mo Kanjilal, founded Sussex-based Watch This Sp_ce, a multi award-winning diversity and inclusion company and was a speaker on the first series. “As a founder myself, I fully understand the support that independent businesses often need and how tough it is to find time to improve brand visibility.”

Funded by the West Sussex County and District Councils, workshop speakers have covered topics including digital sales management, AI, social media and digital productivity. Mentoring is available for eight hours of individual support in line with a particular digital challenge or learning need. Grow Digital series three starts on 19th March and the last few spaces are available to book on Eventbrite. Upcoming workshop topics include LinkedIn and paid digital advertising.

Helen Vane founded her recruitment company, GoGecko, in 2016. She said that the support she received has been “game changing” and that she feels more confident when assessing new digital tools - being able to ask the right questions like “what will this do for the business and will it add value?” This has allowed Helen to think more critically, saving both time and money and Grow Digital equipped her to do that.