14
UWI TODAY
– SUNDAY 21ST FEBRUARY, 2016
“I went home on maternity leave
and when I came back
in 1998, the Internet had exploded,” said Sarah Carroll, her
face still showing some of the surprise of that life change.
Carroll had been working on brand and marketing
evaluations and while learning to be a first-time mother at
home, had spent some of that time building her first website.
A trilingual specialist in marketing, she had been
doing work on international accounts and quickly realised
that raising her son and travelling the world would be
incompatible.
By 2005 she was doing website evaluations for
companies and five years ago founded
GrowGlobal
, a
company dedicated to refocusing companies of all sizes
on the marketing and communications possibilities of the
Internet through effective websites.
Carroll arrived in T&T at the end of January as a guest
of The UWI through its Centre for Language Learning.
The centre launched its Language and Competitiveness
website that week and the Internet engagement coach was
also committed to a series of lectures with University staff,
secondary school students,
ExporTT
and anyone wanting
some coaching on using their website to compete effectively
on the web.
“We have a roadmap for how it’s done,” Carroll said,
“it’s not a quick fix, but in six months to a year, the process
can completely transform a business.”
GrowGlobal
has done 600 evaluations of websites over
the last ten years and coached 3,000 people in workshops
conducted around the world.
The company has worked closely with the UK
government to develop not only state web communications,
but also to enable a series of interventions for small and
medium-sized businesses, teaching them to participate
more fully in Britain’s thriving e-commerce marketplace.
“It’s a big win for a government,” Carroll said, “small
companies do this programme and they increase their sales
a hundred per cent, they grow, they employ more people.
Governments see more revenue, they receive more in taxes.”
An important component in web evaluations for the
Brighton based company is the internationalisation of
websites, being able to deliver information in multiple
languages and currencies and e-commerce.
“You can’t do business in theUKwithout an e-commerce
component, there’s just no point.”
The UK does have a stable banking infrastructure and
a commitment to participating in international trade, not
just as an importer but as a significant exporter of both
goods and services.
GrowGlobal
operates with just five full-time employees
but engages amuch larger roster of specialist freelancers and
contractors to fulfill its projects.
Coaching companies to present themselves
internationally through their website presences with a
focus on export and increasing sales is at the core of the
company’s business.
For the UK Government, Carroll works on projects
to coach selected companies and identify their markets
through subsidised training and a full website audit.
“There’s no point having the website saying one thing
and the company’s doing something else,” Carroll said.
“It’s often necessary to walk things back to first
principles to get the right kind of alignment between the
company’s mission and its execution online.”
“We did a project with a British cable manufacturing
company, really the last business manufacturing what is now
a commodity product in all of Europe, who had gone niche
and specialist with their product but had a website that made
them look like they made generic cable.”
“First we refocused their website on what they were
actually doing and they are now planning to move into
direct sales via the new website.”
Travelwrap, another client, is dropping visits to
exhibitions and in-person sales pitches in order to put more
money and energy into new web-based approaches.
This article was reprinted from the website
with the kind consent of Mark Lyndersay.
NEW PERSPECTIVES
Sarah Carroll, CEO of
GrowGlobal
.
PHOTO BY MARK LYNDERSAY
Marketing
The UWI online
