Quentin Aisbett is the founder of Australian-based digital agency OnQ Marketing and marketing reporting tool Pocket Insights.
Looking back what was your hardest struggle when it came to delivering results?
It took me some time to realise it but the hardest struggle in delivering results is clearly communicating expectations.
If you don’t get that right, then you’re always going to struggle to deliver the results you would like.
We have a lot of readers who are bent on becoming freelancers, aside from freelancing how else can someone earn online, and what is your advice?
I understand the appeal to becoming a freelancer. At least you put a little more of your future in your own hands.
But it’s not all sunshines and rainbows. You’ll be swapping the one boss in favour of a handful of less influential bosses.
And personally, I believe you should approach freelancing as a means to an end.
Use it to start earning enough money to invest in another ‘side hustle’ where you’re not trading your time for money.
People are always looking to develop themselves and find products to make their lives simpler.
If you can find your niche doing either of those, they can scale.
If you were given the chance to build your career all over again what would you do differently so that you will achieve your dreams faster?
There’s a few things I’d change, I’ll tell you that. Firstly, I would lift the agency’s hourly rates up sooner.
And from a personal perspective, I would have started building SaaS products much earlier.
Can you tell us about a time where you had to put in significant effort up front and then wait a long time for success?
I spend a big part of my week doing SEO – Upfront work for long-term success is a big part of what I do.
If we think about it – All the best results take time and often involve not only an upfront but ongoing commitment.
What recently-developed marketing strategy, technique or tool interests you the most right now?
Technological advances are all around us and while I hate being cliche, I’m going to start by saying it’s Artificial Intelligence that interests me the most.
But let me be more specific and say that it’s the role it will play in content marketing that has really piqued my interest.
From allowing us to adapt our online content based on what the individual user is searching for to automating the creation of content – The landscape is going to change dramatically in coming years.
What do you do to stay up to date with new marketing techniques?
I can see this being a huge problem for many marketers because we consume so much information but much of it can be subjective.
So all that time can be misguided.
I’ve spent the last decade refining who I listen to and where I get my information from. I spend a lot of time keeping up to date with SEO and for that I love Marie Haynes’ newsletter and read the latest from Kevin Indig, Brian Dean and Glenn Gabe. I’m also a huge fan of SiegeMedia’s video series and anything ConversionXL produces.
What advice would you share with other Marketer’s who want to become more productive?
Invest in tools and software solutions to take the ‘mechanical’ tasks out of your day so you can concentrate on more productive jobs.
Use Toggl to track your time so you know where your opportunities lie. Go crazy with Zapier and start automating tasks to save you time.
Manage your inbox with Unroll.me. The opportunities are out there.