Chuck Murphy's Email & Phone

How do you grow a business during a recession? Double down, says Charles Murphy, founder and CEO of Boston Interactive, an Internet marketing company with 22 employees in Charlestown. "We never went into survival mode like a lot of our peers," Murphy said. "We advertised more, hired people because a lot of talented people were available." Boston Interactive has enjoyed 177.19 percent growth since 2006, with $4.6 million in revenue for 2009. One big reason for the growth is the Internet itself. The recession accelerated businesses' migration to the Web as they slashed marketing budgets. "As budgets got scrutinized, marketing departments could show results a lot more effectively with Internet solutions than with traditional marketing," Murphy said. "There was definitely a big shift away from print, TV marketing to online marketing." A second factor has been Boston Interactive's own marketing strategy of retained relationships and what Murphy calls, the mall theory' of clients: a few big anchors and lots of little ones. "That way, if you lose a client, it's not so devastating," he said. Murphy started the company, then called Boston Web Design, in 1999 at the peak of the Internet bubble. He was a one-man shop working out of his home. He rode the Internet bubble all the way down and all the way back upa long time, especially when measured in "dog years." "The great thing about the Internet, it's always moving, reinventing itself," Murphy said. "It's like dog years: Every year of traditional print, TV marketing is like seven years of nontraditional marketing." Because the Internet does continue to change and evolve, he is not worried about market saturation. "Even though you have a Web site, it has to be reactive to your business needs," he said. "Things launched in '05 are well out dated now." And that all fits into Boston Interactive's long-term relationship strategy. "We're continually trying to wow clients over time. We're not coming in, proposing a solution, then out. The launch of a Web site is the beginning, not the end of the relationship. We like to work with clients over multiple phases." Currently, Boston Interactive is integrating video and peer-to-peer validation for many of its clients. Web-site personalization is another big focus. Instead of always starting from the same spot on a Web site, each visit would be an extension of the last. "If you have already signed up for a newsletter, you wouldn't see that again, but instead start at the next thing the business wants to promote to you," Murphy said. For the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), Boston Interactive designed a Web site that would take visitors either to all cat content or all dogs, depending on their preference. "They've seen an 18 percent increase in donations just by doing a little personalization," Murphy said.