A Stourbridge firm which trains staff at companies across the UK to become safer drivers is celebrating after using the world wide web to accelerate the growth of the business.

Defensive Driving Training was set up in 1989 by Paul Beresford and Fraser Dryburgh, who met while working at the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents.

The company has worked with a number of blue chip clients including the Royal Bank of Scotland, the Highways Agency and Direct Line insurance.

More than 100,000 drivers at around 1,000 companies in the UK have been trained by one of the firm's 45 instructors.

However, in late 2004 several major clients suspended their training programmes as their own businesses were restructured.

The firm took immediate action and was forced to make its sales manager redundant and halve the number of head office staff.

Paul Beresford said: "Our advertising budget of s24,000 a year was slashed to nothing and, along with the cost of a sales manager, we managed to take s64,000 off the sales and marketing budget.

"Although we have since won the business back at the time it did mean we had to tighten our belts and opened our eyes to the power of e-marketing."

It was a chance meeting with a web developer which made Paul aware of the power of using the search engine Google more effectively using AdWords.

Companies can sponsor adverts which appear when specific search terms are entered and are charged on a "Pay Per Click" basis.

Within three months the level of enquiries for driver training had doubled and the conversion rate had trebled.

Shortly afterwards Paul attended an event at Worcester University about website improvement where James Pennington from the National B2B Centre got local business people to scrutinise their own websites.

"Very quickly I became aware of the power of e-marketing and the bonus was that we attracted companies who had already decided to go ahead with training," Paul said.

"Previously there was a long gestation period with customers - in the past we've had clients who have taken 12 years to make the final decision to go ahead."

"The annual sales and marketing spend used to be around s60,000, but this is now down to s12,000.

Martin King-Turner, from the National B2B Centre, said: "Defensive Driver Training have tapped into the power of e-marketing and it has obviously worked very effectively.

"Used properly, pay per click advertising can work for most types of business, because so many people use search engines to find goods and services today.

"We see this success very often and the results, particularly to the bottom line, speak for themselves."

The National B2B Centre is part of WMG at the University of Warwick and funded by the European Regional Development Fund and Advantage West Midlands.