A COMPANY working to help smaller firms increase their online presence is ready to bolster its own market standing by creating jobs, its boss has told The Northern Echo.

Derek Oliver has hailed Infoserve’s potential to expand as partnerships with Google, Bing and Yahoo augment relationships with more than 1,000 businesses.

The company, which employs about 30 staff on Darlington’s Morton Palms Business Park, creates and manages marketing campaigns for small and medium-sized operators looking to strengthen their reach over the internet.

Offering a pay-per-click service to help firms get found on search engines, it also oversees web design and uses its experience to get businesses spotted in local listings, with clients able to use technology to track their campaigns.

Mr Oliver, founder and chief executive, said the operations are proving increasingly popular as the world becomes more digitised, revealing he expects annual revenues to be significantly higher than 12 months ago.

He also confirmed such successes mean the business is finding greater opportunity to expand, though he said any growth would be controlled, rather than a mass influx, to retain a sense of continuity among its workforce and services.

He told the Echo: “We are actively looking to move the head count up.

“It’s not just a latent requirement and we are looking to create jobs in Darlington.

“If we were to double what we have here in six months, I would not be fazed.

“Darlington was specifically chosen.

“It has a talent pool, there are people here who are very good communicators and because we have scale and the reach in the business, the likes of Google and Microsoft find us very appealing.

“We have a vast amount of experience in the team and a low churn in people.

“There is a nice tight-knit team here and they all know their strengths and weaknesses.

“There is a shared ethos about how we are going to help small businesses too.

“This is not a call centre and I don’t want it to become one; it is a specialised sales office.”

Mr Oliver also reiterated how Infoserve’s relationships with major players in the online search engine sector are helping its progress.

The business says it is the only company in the UK to be a Google premier partner, a Bing Ads elite partner and a Yahoo local partner, which Mr Oliver says carries great credence.

He added: “The partnerships are driving growth and giving great exposure and the trusted advisor element is so important for us.

“Customers call in and ask us, ‘what do you think of this?’ “But we also get insights from our partners about technology and the markets and about what is coming. We can take that back to the smaller businesses and say ‘you really need to focus on this’.”