Superb Digital: A Pivotal Year

Superb Digital has been around for seven years now and it can often feel as if every year is a pivotal year for the business. But 2021 has felt particularly important for us, for several reasons — not least the fact that it was the year that we felt the time was right to enter the UK Search Awards.

But before we get to that, let’s put things in context and go back a bit. 

Where We’ve Come From

It was in 2019, five years after starting the business in 2014, that Superb Digital founder and director, Paul Morris, brought content marketer and long-time collaborator, Joe Cox, into the business. With a new director and a new sense of direction, Superb Digital began the journey towards the strong position it finds itself in today. It’s a journey that has, in some inevitable ways, been shaped by the pandemic, but more so by the need to remain nimble whilst establishing the processes and the people to grow. 

And grow we have done — with revenue up by 130% and profits up 160% between 2018 and 2021.

And this growth continues, partly due to our consistent investment in our own marketing and business development, but also because we’re constantly refining and improving our already great offering. Perhaps most of all though, we put the last three years of success down to just being really good at what we do, and being able to repeat it for any client we work with. 

Two client campaigns that have exemplified this success have been Hopewell and Bitcade, both of which we were nominated for in last year’s UK Search Awards. 

The Nominations

Bristol lettings agent, Hopewell, saw their revenue rise from £2m to £3m from 2019/20 to 2021 after we started their campaign in late 2018. The company that once relied solely on Airbnb’s platform now gets 22% of their total revenue from direct bookings, which can be attributed to vastly improved SEO generating a massive 219% increase in organic users and upping their conversion rate by 66%. 

It’s a testament to how local SEO can really transform not just revenue, but also the profitability of local companies.

The Hopewell campaign was nominated for Best Local Campaign (SEO), Best Use of Search – B2C (SEO) and Best Use of Search – Real Estate & Property.

A startup, manufacturing arcade machines complete with thousands of pre-loaded games, was always going to seem like a niche product but it was clear that Bitcade also had a really fantastic product. 

And it proved so once we’d established their search presence. From a relatively modest turnover of £265k in 2019/20 we’ve helped Bitcade grow this to an impressive £889k in 2020/21, with profit for 2021/22 projected well over £1.2m. All this has come off the back of a 60% uplift in organic traffic, which has seen their eCommerce conversion rate go through the roof with 166% growth and offline up 296%.

The Bitcade campaign was nominated for Best Use of Search – Retail / eCommerce (SEO), Best Use of Search – Gaming and Best Integrated Campaign.

A Bright Future

Despite not picking up any awards, as a small and relatively young agency, we’re still brimming with pride to have been nominated for six awards, across just two campaigns. Our team was absolutely chuffed, seeing how all their hard work pays off. Suffice to say, both Hopewell and Bitcade were also over the moon. 

As with all years in business thus far, 2022 is looking to be a very pivotal year for us at Superb Digital. We are now in the process of niching our business to focus on the manufacturing sector, are growing our in-house team and investing heavily in the operational side of the business, bringing in new powerful SEO tools, automations and process development. All this alongside our continuing commitment to reinvesting significant profit in our marketing and BD. 

Perhaps 2022 will prove to be our most pivotal yet. Certainly a UK Search Award would be the cherry on the cake. 

Here’s hoping.