Enterprise Ireland Build Capability Grant for Digital Marketing Training

Build Digital Marketing Capability with Enterprise Ireland Funding

If you’re an Enterprise Ireland client looking for funding to build digital marketing capability within your team, the Build Capability grant is now the route to take. It provides up to €70,000 for non-routine, strategic training for management and staff across four productivity drivers. Digital marketing sits under one of them: Market Development. The grant covers external trainer costs, your team’s training time, course costs, and materials, at rates of up to 70% depending on company size.

This guide covers what the grant is, what happened to the old Digital Marketing Capability grant, who qualifies, what it pays for, and how to apply. All figures are taken from Enterprise Ireland’s Build Capability pages.

What the Build Capability grant is

Build Capability is an Enterprise Ireland training grant. The stated aim is to incentivise companies to invest in leadership and staff training that builds the capability to compete internationally.

The headline numbers:

• Grant of up to €70,000 per project, minimum €5,000
• Maximum eligible expenditure of €100,000
• One claim per grant

The word that matters most in the scheme documents is “non-routine”. EI is not funding training you would run anyway. It funds a deliberate step up in capability: the kind of project that changes what your business can do, not the kind that keeps the lights on.

Training is supported under four productivity drivers:

1. Operations: process improvement and technology adoption, including Lean and digital, AI and automation systems
2. Leadership and Organisational Development: leadership and functional skills across strategy, finance, sales, marketing, HR and talent
3. Market Development: strategic digital marketing capabilities
4. Product and Service Innovation: innovation management, portfolio management and R&D techniques

For a B2B company trying to grow in export markets with a marketing function that isn’t there yet, the relevant driver is Market Development. More on that below.

What happened to the Digital Marketing Capability grant

The Digital Marketing Capability grant has been discontinued. Enterprise Ireland’s guidance is direct on this: Build Capability should be used instead.

If you had been planning an application under the old scheme, or you’re mid-conversation with your Client Advisor about digital marketing funding, the practical position is this:

• New applications go through Build Capability, under the Market Development driver.
• The application process is different: it now involves a Training Specialist and a training workbook (covered in the application section below).
• The funding logic has changed, too. The old scheme had its own rates. Build Capability rates are set by company size, and for small companies, they are more generous: up to 70% of eligible costs.

If your Advisor conversation started under the old scheme name, raise it at your next strategic discussion. The need you identified hasn’t changed. The route to funding it has.

Where digital marketing sits: the Market Development driver

Enterprise Ireland’s own description of the Market Development driver is worth quoting closely, because it defines what a fundable digital marketing project looks like. The driver covers training in strategic digital marketing capabilities, including:

• Customer needs identification
• Competitor analysis
• Target market content development
• Search engine optimisation
• Social media
• Localisation
• User targeting
• Campaign management

Read that list as a founder, not a marketer, and one thing stands out. It describes a capability, not a channel. It starts with understanding customers and competitors, moves through positioning and content for target markets, and ends with running campaigns. That is a marketing function, built end-to-end.

The localisation and user targeting items are the tell. This driver exists to support companies selling into international markets, which is exactly the situation most EI clients are in when marketing becomes the constraint.

Who is eligible

The eligibility rules, per EI:

• You must be a client of Enterprise Ireland or Údarás na Gaeltachta.
• You must employ 10 or more full-time staff at the time of application.
• The 10-staff threshold can drop to 5 or more in certain cases, such as for EI high-potential startup (HPSU) clients.
• HPSU clients become eligible three years after the EI investment date.

There is also a specific provision for domestically traded services companies in residential construction under the ‘Built to Innovate’ action, but that applies to a narrow set of project options and won’t be relevant to most companies reading this.

The practical filter is simple. If you’re an established EI client with 10 or more staff, you’re in scope. If you’re an HPSU, check the investment date and staff count with your Client Advisor before proceeding.

How much funding do you get?

Grant rates depend on company size:

• Small businesses: Up to 70% funding, capped at €70,000.
• Medium-sized businesses: Up to 60% funding, capped at €60,000.
• Large businesses: Up to 50% funding, capped at €50,000.

Maximum eligible expenditure is €100,000. Minimum grant aid is €5,000.

Two things to note. First, these are maximum rates. The actual grant EI approves takes into account the impact on the business and the economic return to the State. A well-scoped project with a clear link to export growth is not just easier to deliver; it’s easier to fund.

Second, “small” and “medium” follow the standard EU company size definitions, which factor in turnover, balance sheet, and headcount. Most Irish B2B tech companies in the 10 to 50 staff range will fall into the small category, but confirm your classification with your Client Advisor rather than assuming.

What costs are eligible

The scope of eligible costs is broader than most founders expect. Per EI:

• Internal staff training time, based on actual pay rates, is subject to a salary cap of €150,000. Your team’s training time is itself an eligible cost.
• External trainer costs, capped at €900 per day, including expenses. EI notes that actual market rates may be higher or lower; the cap applies to what’s eligible for grant purposes.
• Internal trainer costs, where training is delivered by your own staff, on the same basis as staff time in training.
• External training advisory services, also capped at €900 per day including expenses, covering guidance on training programme implementation and appraisals, including benchmarking, diagnostics, coaching and mentoring.
• Course costs for approved external courses that support the project objective.
• Travel and subsistence for international travel only, where reasonable and required to attend approved training. Standard EI rates apply.
• Materials costs for items that aren’t readily available: specific workbooks, non-routine training materials, and licence costs for digital content (e-learning, benchmarking, VR/AR) for the project period.

The staff time item deserves attention. In a training project where your team learns by doing real work in your real market, the hours they put in count as eligible expenditure. That changes the economics of a serious capability project compared with paying for it entirely as an external cost.

What isn’t eligible

Just as important is what the grant will not fund:

• Training required solely to comply with mandatory national standards (health and safety, first aid, manual handling)
• Routine training: inductions, market overviews, briefing sessions, basic internal systems training. Anything you’d do anyway in the normal running of the business
• Conferences, including travel to them
• General stationery
• Learning Management Systems and other administrative platforms
• Development of training content
• Any expenditure incurred before the application is submitted

That last one is the rule that catches companies out. If you have already initiated the training project before submitting your application, EI will not accept the application or the associated expenditure. Not reduced. Not partially allowed. Not accepted. Get the application in before anything starts.

The routine-training exclusion isn’t box-ticking either. It’s the State Aid incentive-effect test: public money must fund activity that is additional to what the company would do anyway. Which is why the strongest applications describe a step change in capability, not a continuation of business as usual.

How to apply

The application process runs through your existing EI relationship:

1. Identify the training need through a strategic discussion with your Client Advisor or a Training Specialist.
2. Work with the Training Specialist. Your Client Advisor assigns one to you and supports you in developing the training plan. This includes completing a training workbook provided by the Training Specialist.
3. Submit the application online once the training plan is agreed upon and the workbook is complete. The workbook must be submitted at the same time as the online application, by email to EI’s building capability address.

Spotlight on Skills, EI’s capability gap assessment programme, is optional but available if you want a structured way to identify gaps before scoping the training.

After approval, you’ll receive a Letter of Offer confirming the grant amount, the approved expenditure types, and the final claim date. Remember: one claim only. All expenditure must be incurred and the claim submitted by the final claim date.

For the full step-by-step, including the workbook and timeline from the first Advisor conversation to project start, see “How to Apply for the Build Capability Grant.”

What a strategic digital marketing training project looks like in practice

The scheme language gives you the test: non-routine, strategic, a significant step up in capability, aimed at international markets. Here’s what that looks like when it’s done well.

A weak project buys courses. Someone completes an SEO certification, someone else attends a social media workshop, and six months later, nothing has changed about how the company finds and wins customers. That kind of project struggles on the incentive-effect test, and it should.

A strong project builds a function. It starts with the commercial questions: who is the international buyer, what do they need, and who else is competing for them. It develops the positioning and content for a named target market. It puts measurement in place so marketing activity connects to the pipeline. And critically, your own team does the work, guided by someone who has built this before, so the capability stays in the business when the project ends.

That’s the difference the Market Development driver’s own capability list points to. Customer needs identification and competitor analysis come before SEO and campaign management for a reason. The strategy work is what makes the execution training worth funding.

In our work with Enterprise Ireland clients on digital marketing for international growth, the companies that get the most from funded training projects are the ones that treat the grant as a way to build something they’ll own, not as discounted marketing services. Scope the project around what your team will be able to do at the end that they can’t do today. Everything else follows from that.

If you want a second opinion on how to scope a digital marketing training project that meets EI’s criteria and actually drives business change, book a scoping call. We’ll tell you straight, even if the answer is that you’re not ready yet.

Frequently asked questions

Is the Digital Marketing Capability grant gone?

Yes. Enterprise Ireland has discontinued the Digital Marketing Capability grant and Lean Plus. Digital marketing training is now funded through the Build Capability grant, under the Market Development productivity driver.

Can I still apply under the old scheme?

No. New applications for digital marketing training go through Build Capability. If you were in conversation with your Client Advisor under the old scheme name, the need transfers; the application route changes.

What grant rate does a 30-person company get?

A 30-person company will usually be classified as small under the EU company size definitions, which means a rate of up to 70% of eligible costs, capped at €70,000. Classification also factors in turnover and balance sheet, so confirm with your Client Advisor.

Can I start the training before approval?

No. If a training project has been initiated before the application is submitted, EI will not accept the application or the expenditure. Submit first, start after approval.

How many claims can I make?

One. A maximum of one claim can be made against the grant, and all expenditure must be incurred and claimed by the final claim date in your Letter of Offer.

Does Spotlight on Skills apply?

It’s optional. Spotlight on Skills isn’t mandatory for a Build Capability application, but EI offers it as a structured way to assess your organisation’s capability gaps before scoping the training plan.