The team at Statuo, a Bolton-based digital agency, have plenty to celebrate this summer, having seen their business grow sharply, while launching numerous websites for their clients.

Statuo is a true kitchen counter start-up, which was launched in 2015 by Rick Hope, who left a secure job in digital marketing to set up the business. Rick’s initial aspiration was simply to work from home on a freelance basis, building up a nice portfolio of clients. However, thanks to word of mouth recommendations from his early clients, Rick’s business soon grew and he realised that he would need to recruit a team to meet the growing demand for his services.

These days, Statuo operates out of a stylish Bolton-based office with a team of eight, having gone from employing just one member of staff to eight in just 18 months. In the first month of business (September 2015) Statuo had a turnover of just £658 for the month. This figure had more than tripled by the following month and by July 2017, the turnover for the month was £32,2932.

Following this rapid rate of growth, Rick plans to employ a team of 15 people within the next year. He has seen his company’s client base grow from 10 clients in 2015 to 80 clients in May 2017 and as Statuo continues to grow, Rick’s planning to move to a bigger office with room for further expansion over the coming months.

Adam Pillington, an account manager at Statuo, said it was an exciting time to be working at the firm, explaining that Statuo’s status as a Google Premier Partner was one of the secrets of their success. He added: “The benefits of being a Google Premier Partner are huge. It allows us to stand out from the crowd and justifies our claims to new prospective customers, because you can only become one if you deliver great results.

“We have advantages over other agencies, as Google provides us with new BETA testing updates for our account before they’re released to everyone else. They provide us with an account manager and account developer who give us key insights, to help us improve our current clients’ accounts.”

Google Premier Partners are hand-picked (Google doesn’t release a step-by-step guide of how to become one). Therefore, only three per cent of agencies attain this status. Statuo has a new Premier Google Partner Badge, which recognises partners “who manage a substantial portfolio of Google advertising campaigns and deliver great results for their customers.”

The Statuo team are experts in SEO, web design, branding, paid search and email marketing and have recently designed the Strong Woman website (which offers a monthly subscription service to assist users in reaching their fitness goals). They are also in the final stages of work on a website for Chandlery (an e-commerce site).

In between all the hard work and business growth, the Statuo team made time for a fun team photoshoot this summer, and are well known for their friendly and informal office culture. The team play darts and also ensure that they have regular team lunches and activities in the diary to keep the mood light no matter how busy the office becomes.

Rick aims to employ a team of 15 within the next 12 months, and as his company continues to grow, it seems that his work hard, play hard ethos is paying off in spades.