At the beginning of October, connective3 turned one year old. In the last year we have worked with over 40 clients, hired more than 30 people, and delivered growth in-line with our ambitious plans: all of this despite going through one of the most challenging trading periods I’ve ever encountered in my career.

We started connective3 as a group of digital specialists across SEO, paid media, social, content marketing, CRO and data analytics. We held a collective belief that huge results could be achieved when skills, data and creativity were connected across the different specialisms. As a specialist, you can deliver good results for the businesses you work with, but when those people are genuinely connected, you can deliver unprecedented performance.

We got off to a great start, but 5 months in, we got hit with a global crisis no one could have seen coming. We experienced the same challenges as every other business, with fees being paused and media plans cancelled – a horrible position for a 5-month old business to be in. It would have been easy at this point to scale everything back, push clients to keep spending, and pause non-essential activities. However, we went down a different route and I firmly believe the decisions we made in this period are responsible for the success we have seen to date.

Firstly, we decided to double down on our marketing activity, increasing our thought leadership output, revamping the website and going hard on social channels.

Instead of harassing clients to continue spending money, we were flexible, even offering free work where we could, to help over the difficult period. Whilst this could have been considered not commercially sensible, those people and businesses we supported will now be our clients for life.

We continued to be positive, as we believed in our connective proposition and carried on business as usual, delivering results for our clients. This approach and attitude allowed us to grow 250% since April and hire amazing new talent across the business.

Ultimately our success comes down to our people and the culture we are trying to build. We believe as a team that growth brings opportunity, whether that be promotions, working on exciting new projects or expanding our knowledge and skills. We also know that growth isn’t possible if we aren’t working together to deliver. We have been lucky to attract and retain brilliant people, who are not only excellent in their areas of specialism, but also understand the value of connected ways of working.

We’re excited for the next 12 months and are forecasting double digit growth both in revenue and headcount. We’ve invested heavily across the business and made key hires to strengthen our social and CRO capabilities. We have plans to grow our London team and investigate global opportunities as we look to service clients in the US and across Europe.

It’s been a stellar year and it couldn’t have been achieved without the commitment of amazing people and the support of our growing client base.