It was wonderful to get together for our 2023 Kick-Off Meetings last week. Like everyone working so hard at AMP, I can sometimes get tunnel vision — in the form of “today vision” or “this week vision” — and so it is an incredible process once a year to step away from the always-on immediacy of the work right in front of me to look back on a full year of strong performance, and then to look forward to plan out the year ahead of us. We are coming into a period when our opportunities together truly fit the Open Road theme of our meeting. I said from the front of the room that 2023 stands to be the best year ever at AMP. That’s a big prediction to make after 25 years in business, but its true based on the great results we are driving for our customers, the incredible talent, work ethic, and spirit of the people in that room, and on the basis of a confluence of business and economic factors that are uniquely in our favor right now.
I’m very proud of this team. We grew every single month in 2022 — we’re now at 29 months in a row of year-over-year sales increases, with most of them in 2022 double digit and a growing number of them at or near 20%. We invested heavily in product development and program enhancements and it shows. Our delivery of service to customers was exceptional. We can take a measure of that internally for ourselves over the past 12 months with the best speed-of-fulfillment and client engagement metrics we’ve ever achieved. Moreover, we can measure the foundational value of our services to our clients by looking at the millions of metered calls, direction requests, website visits, and video plays we delivered, and the billions of imagery views and listing views provided. There’s no such thing as a small customer at AMP, and there’s no such thing as a small advertising investment for the owner of a family-owned business when the objective is becoming more visible, attractive, and credible. It feels great to be driving hugely positive results to our customers and to look back on a year of promotions and personal growth across the AMP team.
As 2023 starts, we find ourselves in the middle of uniquely favorable business conditions. We look out on a giant addressable market — one that is under-served and that acutely needs our help. Nearly every business is a potential, prospective AMP customer. Our development work, sales efforts, and client service orientation is wisely focused on the foundationally important basics, where the real value is to small business owners. That straightforward approach is a game-changer for them. Our products fully cover what a small business owner really needs to have: a solid local online presence — professional, attractive onsite imagery; strong and visible listings; an immediately updatable website; assistance with reviews and reputation management; and development of a solid social media and online video presence. These basic services are the essentials, and we are built to be uniquely effective for our customers in this space. We’re delivering these programs on a full service basis. That’s possible at the lowest full service rates in our industry because the work is backed-up by an elegant, proprietary tech stack that we own outright, and that tech stack is built specifically to serve small businesses at the scale of the company many times our size that we WILL become. That’s a powerful confluence of business facts. We’re primed for the largest year of growth and dynamic individual opportunity that we’ve ever had at AMP. It’s great to get the year started with you. Let’s go!