https://chorley.gov.uk/

Chorley Council often run free training courses to local businesses as part of their “Grow Chorley’ initiative.  This is a great idea and local businesses can really learn a lot, grow their understanding and potentially improve their business.

We felt that we could offer some great training courses in topics that weren’t being covered in the local area.  These topics were SEO, Google Adwords and Learning WordPress. Whilst there are courses you can do online that cover all these areas, sometimes a classroom-style environment, with a speaker or trainer in front of you is a much better option.

We contacted Chorley Council to offer some training sessions and thankfully we were met with a warm reception and cooperative council members highly committed to improving business & businesses in the Chorley area who were willing to listen and help us develop these training sessions.

Our strategy involved formalising our training.  Our previous training experience was centered around training individual people or companies on their bespoke website, so we had to change the focus to be more general, covering the essentails that would effect each person.  Bespoke questions could be answered in a one-to-one environment at the ed of the session, or possibly at a follow up meeting.

Getting an audience to the event would be the next task.  Having a council by your side makes it easier as they have a list of business contacts in the area that have expressed an interest in training courses, but there is also scope to reach more business and individuals through our own contacts ans social media profiles.

Using social media would also be a great idea for showing the event to as many people as possible. By using local-focused hashtags and relative terminology, we can maximise the potential attendants in the local area who see the posts. The business owners should also be able to phone in and ask any questions they have, which is why including a phone number was important in the ad.

First, we had to propose a training plan for the session, which involved asking Chorley Council to host a meeting for businesses to attend. We decided to do separate training sessions, each with a key factor in digital marketing. The training courses would be PPC, SEO, and WordPress. This would ensure businesses could get a much better grasp on these important methods of digital marketing.

Using social media promotions, we made sure the training course could be seen by as many people in the local area as possible – across different platforms for maximum visibility and attendees. Instagram, Twitter and Facebook are the most used, with Eventbrite showcasing the actual event information (date, place, time, etc).

The training sessions greatly benefitted local business owners to help optimise their website with new digital marketing techniques.