Busylizzy, a mother and baby exercise and fitness franchise started by two women at their kitchen table, has received a huge digital boost courtesy of ex Dragon and retail entrepreneur, Theo Paphitis.
Busylizzy, which was founded in 2011 and franchised in 2014 by old school friends Julie Clabby and Sarah Batterbury, offers a huge range of exercise and educational classes to mums and babies up to the age of four, delivered by 20+ franchise owners across the UK.
The business recently received an enormous twitter boost when ex Dragon, Theo Paphitis, chose them as one of his six winners of #SBS ‘Small Business Sunday’.
The weekly initiative, set up by Theo in 2010, now has over 2200 #SBS winners and supports small businesses in the UK. Businesses tweet to Theo about their business every Sunday between 5 PM and 7.30 PM and include the hashtag #SBS. Six lucky businesses are subsequently re‐tweeted on Monday at 8 PM, to his almost 500,000 followers.
Victoria Richardson, social media manager for Busylizzy said,
‘I saw #SBS being talked about on Twitter years ago and have been entering Busylizzy regularly ever since. I must have tweeted Theo over 50 times telling him about the business, so if I have learnt nothing else during this exercise it is to never give up!’
Describing the moment she found out they had been selected Victoria said,
‘The first I knew we had been retweeted was when our twitter account went mad. In the first 12 hours we had over 100 new followers and 150 RT’s from businesses and previous SBS winners and our Twitter profile was visited over 1,000 times in the following week. For any small business like us, this is an enormous boost and has raised our brand profile considerably.
We are also now listed on the #SBS website in the directory of winners, which is of course fantastic news and great from an SEO point of view.’
Victoria concluded,
‘We are genuinely proud to be part of the SBS winners ‘family’ and have loved receiving messages from many of the previous winners and we’re looking forward to meeting them all at the ‘Winners’ Event’ in February next year.’
Joint founder Julie Clabby said,
‘Everyone at Busylizzy is thrilled to have been chosen as one of six winners of Small Business Sunday. Digital marketing is at the forefront of our marketing mix so this is perfectly in line with our digital strategy and reaching our target audience. We know our customers are digitally savvy, use social media, smartphones, apps and are ‘time’ rather than ‘financially’ poor, so snappy, fresh online marketing keeps us ahead of the curve and ensures our messaging gets out to the young families ahead of our competitors. Winning SBS Sunday fits perfectly into our digital marketing strategy and we would like to thank Theo for catapulting us into the spotlight with #SBS.’
Small business champion and Ryman Stationery, Robert Dyas and Boux Avenue Chairman, Theo Paphitis, said,
‘We are thrilled to welcome new #SBS members every week and highlight just how important it is to support our small businesses here in the UK. My vision is that everyone who has ever won an #SBS re-tweet from me, becomes part of a friendly club; like-minded individuals who can share successes and learnings.’