In Conversation with Optus Digital

12 November 2019

As part of our ‘In Conversation’ series, we grabbed five minutes with Ben Barker, Head of Digital at Optus Digital, for a natter about boosting sales, industry insight and staying up north.

Tell us about Optus Digital…

Optus Digital is a specialist digital marketing agency - we offer SEO & paid media services to a range of clients across a wide variety of industries

So, what does a typical day look like for your team?

A typical day would usually involve me getting in the office first around 8am (our actual working hours are 10 - 5 here at Optus). Then I would work through emails whilst enjoying a coffee and have a general read of twitter & industry sites to see what’s going on in the world of digital marketing.

The rest of the team would get in around 10 or get online around then (we also have a perk where the team can work from home 3 days per week if they choose to).

Once the team are in, we would usually have a quick catch up about their client progress & tasks for the day then we would pick up tools and crack on.

The actual work on a day to day basis can vary massively, for myself in particular I could be spending the day with my head buried in Google Analytics or Google Ads one minute and putting together proposals for new business the next.

Your headquarters are in London, what attracted you to Manchester for your second site?

Manchester is actually now our “main” site as we now have more staff up here than we do down there, which is no surprise really because Manchester is way better than London.

Jokes aside, London is still our head office and we do frequently travel down there for client meetings.

We have also found when recruiting that it’s actually much easier to attract talent in our northern office so that’s also a huge bonus!

Why does coworking work for you?

Coworking is ideal for us as the very nature of our industry means that we are all fairly social people so it’s good to have the interaction with other people / companies within the coworking space.

You also allow dogs on-site which is definitely a bonus!

Have you made any business connections – or bff’s – from working in Colony?

I wouldn’t say we’ve made any business connections specifically, but it’s been great for meeting new people and talking shop over a few beers on a Friday.

What’s on the horizon for Optus Digital?

Optus has big plans over the next few years for further growth. I can’t say too much on this at the moment but we as an agency are constantly re-evaluating our offering and how we can do things better!

We are also actually hiring for a PPC executive if anyone is interested?!

Ben is hosting a Q&A session at Colony Piccadilly over social brunch on Thursday 14th November. Come armed with questions - or your CV.