Conscious of the high number of jobless people living in rural areas, PRIME, the national organisation supporting 50+ self-employment and enterprise, launched a rural enterprise awareness project in 2004 with support from East Midlands Development Agency and Government Office East Midlands.

Funding for the project was targeted to help people over 45, of which there are nearly 400,000 living in rural areas, and around 35% of these are not working, although still of working age.

Other initiatives had been piloted to try to help those needing assistance to take the ‘enterprise’ route, and the learning from these helped shape the PRIME project.

PRIME partnered with over 50 national and locally based organisations to run a series of 11 events in market towns across the region, and attracted nearly 400 potential entrepreneurs, the majority of whom had little awareness of the range of support and information freely available to someone interested in starting a business.

The success of the project was largely down to input from supporting organisations, a broad spread of publicity channels, and use of locally recognised, non-business venues, such as church halls and community centres

There’s a summary report on the project on the PRIME website at: http://www.primeinitiative.org.uk/whatsnew/t_news_info.php?refnum=9

Key Learning from the Project

The project was successful in:

• Engaging in excess of the targeted number of clients
• Engaging hard-to-reach clients
• Engaging clients with who have not previously accessed mainstream business support
• Stimulating interest in enterprise
• Engaging 52 organisations as delivery partners

Publicity included:

Paid-for advertising in local press, postal mailings and email to PRIME client database, professional network contacts and via partners PR achieving local and community newspaper and radio coverage 35,000 leaflets and 900 posters distributed via a variety of publicity channels including local libraries, community centres, churches, doctors & dentists practices, Jobcentres, local councils, post offices, supermarkets and pubs (1140 in total)

Key lessons for client engagement through this type of project are:

• to work at local/grass-roots level and with community-based organisations in order to engage clients who would not traditionally approach mainstream support (eg Business Links) for assistance
• choose neutral, non-threatening locations, and include a ‘meet & greet’ service
• plan contingencies for weather, drop-out by delivery partners, and avoid relying on a narrow selection of publicity channels
• offer something (eg help for work & training) in addition to the enterprise support, otherwise there is a danger potential clients will ‘self-deselect’ • don’t underestimate the travel times and distances when working in rural areas
• have packs of information available on arrival

Key lessons for choice of venue are:

• choose venues that are well-known locally and supported by the community
• speak to local organisations (especially Jobcentre staff) about which venues work and those that don’t
• ensure car parking is available (very few visitors used public transport, 75% came by car)
• offer refreshments and a relaxed seating area for visitors to browse information before speaking with exhibitors

Key lessons for publicity are:

• use paid-for local press advertising as the main tool (generated 62% of visitors)
• include leaflets to reach those who don’t read the local press (generated 10% of visitors)
• when designing publicity, recognise the power of ‘word of mouth’ (referrals generated 12% of visitors)
• put an A-board outside the venue with an open invitation to ‘drop-in’ • where relevant, use well-planned internal and external signage to assist clients in finding the room
• use non technical vocabulary – avoid word like ‘entrepreneur’ and ‘enterprise’