Xanthos Digital Marketing is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year in 2022. Back in 2002, it would have been impossible to predict how the business and the industry would have developed over 20 years.
In light of this achievement, we thought it would be worthwhile to take a walk through memory lane and explore how we got here.
Xanthos: An Origin Story
Xanthos was founded back in 2002 by Olga Travlos. Olga had chosen to set up Xanthos to help businesses increase profitability through the use of the internet – leveraging her experience as a finance director to focus on achieving measurable results for clients. Fun fact: we were also formerly known as Xanthos Internet Consultants.
By 2004, Xanthos had the SEO master certification to its name, paving the way forward for how the agency could help businesses get discovered on the internet. This is still in the early days of search engines and Google, so SEO was in its infancy. Even in 2004, businesses knew they needed to invest in digital/online/internet marketing to succeed in the future.
Come 2005, Xanthos moved into the first offices at e-space North in Littleport, near Ely, Cambridgeshire.
2005 also saw the launch of the first client ecommerce website. This would be the foundation for how the business would continue to design and develop ecommerce stores focused on helping clients sell more online.
In 2007, Xanthos flew the nest and moved to Unit 3, Clive Court in the Cambridgeshire Business Park in Ely.
In 2010, the digital marketing team was expanded with the hire of our first dedicated PPC specialist, committed to delivering profitable PPC campaigns for clients wanting to run ads on, at the time, Google AdWords.
2010 also saw the team further expanded, with the first full-time, in-house back-end developer hired to deliver web development projects for our clients.
By 2013, the Xanthos web development team had expanded further and headed to the AspDotNetStorefront conference in Oregon, USA.
Xanthos also launched a brand new website, which looks a tad dated by today’s standards…
After expanding the team further, it was time to move yet again in 2014. This time was not that far, just next door to Unit 2, Clive Court within the Cambridgeshire Business Park. But it was a bigger space and was redesigned with the brand in mind, ready for further expansion and additional staff members.
2016 saw the launch of another new website for Xanthos, to bring our own presence up-to-date.
Xanthos was also identified by Google as a top 30 UK growth agency, and put forward for exclusive business coaching, courtesy of Google.
In 2017, Xanthos became a gold certified partner of the SharpSpring marketing automation platform.
In 2018, Olga Travlos published the Managing Director’s Guide to Digital Marketing, which is still available for sale on Amazon.
We alll know what happened to the world in 2020. Unlike some industries, Xanthos was able to adopt home-working amidst the looming threat of a pandemic, ahead of the Government enforcements, with little disruption.
2020 also saw Xanthos featured on BBC Look East on how it dealt with the pandemic, and how COVID-19 affected our industry.
Thank you @BBCLookEast for coming by to interview us today! 🙌
— Xanthos Digital (@XanthosDigital) November 11, 2020
Tune in tonight to see how digital marketing and ecommerce has advanced during the pandemic on BBC Look East (West) at 6.30pm or on BBC iPlayer at 8pm. pic.twitter.com/VUkOaFFOKS
2021 took an exciting turn when Xanthos became a part of the Milbank Group family of businesses. Our founder, Olga, had decided to retire and thus, David McCormick took up the reins as Managing Director of Xanthos.
Come 2022, and our MD joined other volunteers from the Milbank Group in driving humanitarian aid to the Polish/Ukrainian border as part of Operation STORK.
Xanthos also moved to a new home in 2022 – the St John’s Innovation Centre in Cambridge. So whether you’re an existing client who wants to say hello, or you’ve never met us and want to drop by for a chat and a coffee, feel free to drop us a message and drop by!
To celebrate 20 years in business, the Xanthos team all met up in Cambridge for team building activities, archery, clay pigeon shooting, quad bike riding and karting.
Of course, none of us would be here if it wasn’t for the support of clients past and present over the past 20 years. We would like to thank everyone who has helped or supported the business over the past 2 decades.
What does the future hold for Xanthos? Our main focus is to continue providing the best possible service, deliver results and delighting our clients – whether that’s through top-drawer web designs, next-level ecommerce builds, or profitable digital marketing camapaigns.
After that? We hope to strengthen our core services, and improve what we can do for our clients. And also launch a new Xanthos website, coming soon…
