Free Government Aid To Help Your Business Grow

Intertrade Ireland has a great programme called Emerge designed to help micro businesses and SME’s to adjust to the current challenges and grow their online business.

What you get

Are You Eligible?

You can apply for free digital marketing mentoring support with Brightspark Consulting through the Emerge Project if:

• You have an SME with less than 250 staff and £40million turnover, priority will be given to companies employing less than 100 or those with turnover of less than £10m / or euro equivalent.
• You are an indigenous business registered in Ireland or Northern Ireland (Companies from Ireland must hold a  valid Tax Clearance Certificate)
• Active in either the manufacturing or tradeable services sectors. By tradeable services, InterTradeIreland requires the business service to be delivered in the cross border market, and not just to attract customers from the cross border market to their service business in the home market. (See list below of ineligible sectors)
• Have an established trading history and have a proven track record in their home market. (ie. minimum 12-18months trading history)
• Have an established trading record in cross border trade (ie. selling products/ services in the cross border market) or have identified a potential opportunity for future cross border trade.
• Have increasing cross border trade as the primary focus of the project.
• Be able to complete the E-Merge project within 4 – 6 weeks of approval. 

More on eligibility:

• E-Merge does not support start-ups or early stage businesses, so if a business does not have an established trading history in the home market then they will not be eligible.
• E-Merge does not support businesses in wholesale, distribution or retail  unless a business is making some or all of its products or has a service that is not contingent or exclusive to the sale of one of the distributed products.
• E-Merge does not support businesses in Professional services, (eg. legal, accountancy, business consultancy) or personal services (eg. salons, treatments, etc ). There is a caveat, if a business operating in one of these sectors has developed an innovative system, product or service e.g. new industry software, that itself becomes a product which can be marketed, the business, though it is a professional service, may be eligible for support for this innovation, but not for its core professional/ personal service activity. Other ineligible sectors include: hospitality, tourism, transport.

Brightspark Consulting is the longest established digital marketing agency in Ireland. What this means for you is that we have all the experience across multiple sectors and every type of business, so we are well placed to mentor you whatever your digital requirement. We are listed in the top 1% for Social Media by LinkedIn and consistently ranked in the Top 50 Irish Marketers

Do You Need Any Of The Following?

Some Recent Mentoring Client Success Stories Where We Really Enjoyed Adding Value

• Trailblazer manufacturing business pivoting into PPE equipment needed landing pages, strategy, LinkedIn, and advertising advice.
• Water2Buy wanted to focus on Influencer Marketing, which also included social media strategy. SEO audit. 
• Wordsworth Learning. Social media strategy. Sales funnel mapping. Instagram deep dive. Email communication. Ads strategy for this business focused on dyslexia in the EdTech market. 
• HR Locker.  Website review. Adwords review. LinkedIn ads review. Account based marketing introduction for this scaling technology start up.
• Fergusons Hearing Aids. When your target audience is aged 79+, the advice had to be about bypassing Instagram and Facebook and introducing WhatsApp Marketing.