Point Cook’s Loren Bartley is the founder, chief executive and digital marketing strategist of Impactiv8. She chats with Alesha Capone.
What do you enjoy most about running your business?
I love creating, whether it’s creating a social media post, course or team that drives or helps scale the business. Every day is different and I’m creating every day.
How has your business grown since you started out in 2011?
Last year we ran a conference which saw 200 people come to the city of Melbourne. To go from teaching eight people (how to use Facebook for their businesses) in the Point Cook Library, to over 200 people in the NAB building, was quite exciting. We work with a lot of small businesses – in accounting and personal trainers – it’s wide and varied. Our clients are not only in Australia but in the USA.
Has COVID-19 impacted on your business, either negatively or positively?
It’s definitely been a mix of both. We have lost some clients in the wedding and entertainment industry but gained some new ones – for example, a professional home organiser. We were also selected to mentor businesses as part of Wyndham council’s efforts to help businesses in pandemic recovery efforts, as part of the WYNLocal Economic Support Package. We’ve been delivering mentoring sessions to small business in Wyndham since April and May, it’s been good to be able to help other businesses. One thing this mentoring program has demonstrated to us is how valuable our expertise, support and guidance is, especially right now, when businesses need to be marketing themselves online if they wish to survive.
How did you feel when your business was announced as a Preferred Facebook Marketing Partner earlier this year?
I’m incredibly excited because we’ve been doing Facebook ads since 2011 and in that time, to get that recognition from Facebook, is great. They looked back through our accounts and looked at performance – not necessarily how much people spent, but the results they achieved as a result of our efforts.
