Celebrating Advance Online’s 9th year: How we’ve grown and what’s to come.
- 14 April 2026
- General
- 10 minute read time
It’s 2017. Harry and Meghan have announced their engagement, fidget spinners are a global obsession, and for most people, TikTok is still just the sound a clock makes.
Meanwhile, in Surrey, a dream has turned into reality – Advance Online has its first client.
In this, our ninth year, we reflect on how we’ve grown, what we’re proud of and what we’ve learnt – and look ahead at everything to come in year 10 and beyond.
2017: Why we started Advance Online
Working in advertising for various national directories, we heard the same story from local businesses time and time again:
- “Templated websites delivered by large companies don’t do our business justice”
- “We’ve been stung by unreliable marketing agencies in the past, so we’re afraid to commit”
- “We want to partner with someone who understands the area and our industry”
- “We just want our online presence to generate more leads – Is that too much to ask?”
Drawing on our combined decades of experience, we created a new offering for local businesses: Advance Online.
An agency that offers reliable, straight-talking marketing services and is truly focused on knowing each customer personally and trying our absolute best to deliver outstanding customer success.
From then until now: a story of our growth
Our biggest achievements in numbers
In addition to receiving recognition with awards, we’re proud of reaching numerous milestones and of the overall health of the business.
- From 1 to 600+ clients in just 9 years (that’s on average one new client per week!)
- Architects, pest control, roofers, funeral directors, we’ve served over 30 different local industries
- A retention rate that remains consistently over 94%
- 64% of our customers have been with us for more than 4 years
- 135,000 calls in the last 12 months generated for our customers, recorded and catalogued through call tracking metrics
- 25 new colleagues since 2017, and only 3 leavers in that time (all to start their own businesses)
Our biggest lessons
- Every business has its own story and marketing language
- In the world of digital marketing, trust must be earned
- When it comes to communicating marketing strategies, simple always wins
2026: The brand refresh and a new slogan
It’s safe to say we know our business better now than we did nine years ago.
That’s why we thought it was about time for a brand refresh.
Gone are the eye-catching, multi-coloured fades and technical copy. Now we’re clean cut, blues with clear, straightforward messaging.
We’ve updated our slogan, too. While we loved the layered meanings of ‘Putting Your Business First’, we want to make our proposition clearer.
That’s why we’re now offering ‘More calls. Less stress.’
With this, we get straight to the crux of what we do best. That is, we get your phone ringing without the stress typically associated with digital marketing (and digital marketing agencies).
To reach this point, we’ve undergone extensive self-reflection and spoken to numerous customers about what differentiates us – what works and what doesn’t. It wasn’t easy, and we’ve made tonnes of micro-decisions along the way. But we’re thrilled with where we landed.
Want to learn more about our brand refresh journey? We’ll be posting more about it soon.
What’s next for Advance Online?
With the fast-paced nature of the industry, it’s difficult to say what digital marketing will look like in six months, never mind six years.
That said, we’ve always got our eye on new opportunities, while consistently consolidating and improving what we already do. With that in mind, we envision the following in Advance Online’s future.
Building upon our clients’ digital presence
When we’ve achieved a customer’s objectives, the follow-up question is usually: ‘What’s next?’
Whether it’s branching out into new services, delivering broader local content silos, or integrating social media and PPC, we always want to help our customers grow their business.
And we’ll continue doing just that.
Cutting-edge, AI-powered customer service tools
Sometimes, AI can do itself a disservice, at least when it comes to gimmicks like composing sea shanties and generating cat-video ‘slop’. But it also offers plenty in the digital marketing space.
We’ve been investigating several AI customer service tools, including cold-lead reactivation and automated review solicitation.
We’re pleased to say, these tools work. How do we know? We’ve proved it.
Watch this space!
More data simplified
With great data comes great responsibility – to speak clearly.
As data becomes ever more granular and sophisticated, we see it as our duty to make the best use of it for our customers. But that doesn’t mean churning out complex charts and more three-letter acronyms.
So while we’ll always be looking for the next conversion-tracking fix, we’ll continue to consider the questions: ‘How do we best communicate this?’ – and before that, ‘Does it actually help?’
Growing our expertise
From game-changing algorithm updates to the increasing influence of AI search, digital marketing changes on a weekly basis.
As an agency, we need to keep up. That means empowering our team with the skills they require to succeed. Through continued training and knowledge sharing, we’re confident our self-motivated specialists will rise to the challenge.
A word from Malcolm
What started as a mission to provide reliable, straight-talking marketing for local businesses, combined with leading customer service, has grown into a community of over 600 clients across 30 different industries. It means the world to me that our very first client, Ledlite Glass, is still with us today, and that our retention rate has consistently stayed above 90%.
Building a team of 25+ dedicated professional colleagues across the UK and Europe is perhaps our greatest achievement, and bringing everyone together at the end of January 2026 was an amazing experience.
Seeing us generate 135,000 calls for our customers in the last 12 months alone just shows how we go above and beyond – ‘More calls. Less stress.’ isn’t just a slogan; it is the reality of the work we are doing as we head into 2026 and beyond.”
Want to find out more?
Then we’d love to hear from you.
Book a call with one of our team to understand how we can help your business get more calls for less stress.
Featured Articles
