Category: Marketing

Hi there.  I hope you are having a great day.

Over the past few months, and more recently the last 2 weeks, I have been working through the hierarchy or domain names that I have, their purpose and relationship to one another.

As part of this strategy session, the outcome was to use this website/domain purely to provide information about myself – Andrew Froude –  and move the value I offer and what I do to another domain, which I am yet to decide which one to use.

Once this happens I plan on placing links on this site to ensure you can still get to that content.

Have a great day.

Andrew

Hi there.  This post has been a long time coming and I have been putting it off in fear of an adverse reaction which may impact me personally, but I feel I need to put it out there.

All my life I have been driven; driven to be a better person and to do the more that I have always known I can.

Well, this has taken a real toll on me over the past few years.  Having put myself out there doing things I have felt uncomfortable doing including doing and trying new things to better myself.  As I have a tendency to be a perfectionist I am always very hard on myself and never seem to live up to my own standards, which in most cases are much higher than others have on me.

Due to jobs that didn’t work out as I had envisaged and never seem to be able to find the perfect role where I can add value in a supported and exciting environment, I have found myself in a place where my mood drops and I feel extremely down and out, so much so that I could be walking down the street and all of a sudden I just start crying for no apparent reason.

At its worst this feeling can linger for months and getting out of bed and facing people is a real challenge.  On the surface and to most people I seem fine but underneath I have been hurting and hurting big time.

The only things that keep me going are the support of gorgeous wife and my children, and my best friend Sue who seems to know me better than I know myself.

Now is one of those times and has been for nearly 4 months.  Some days are better than others.  I drag myself out of bed each day and try everything I can to keep myself buoyant including meeting with people, listening to audio books, putting myself through training courses, keeping active and reminding myself I am better off than a lot of others and that it will get better.  The truth is most of the time I can’t see it getting better but I keep going anyway.

To my friends and colleagues, I apologise to you if I have been short with you in the past or have seemed absent although I am right in front of you.

To my supporters, THANK YOU I couldn’t keep going without your love and support.

 

 

Good morning and Happy New Year.

After 3 weeks away from income producing (work and business) activities and basically disconnecting from the wider world I am back today, feeling rejuvenated with a fresh outlook for the year ahead.

During my theoretic break (always lots to do around my house and with family) I took the opportunity to consider ‘where to from here?’ and have after much sole seeking reconfirmed that I get great pleasure out of helping others achieve their goals and that settling for mediocre is just not me.

So with a clear head and this knowledge I am now planning my year ahead to continue to build on the learning and time and energy put into date to help others build the lifestyle they have always wanted and I look forward to 2018 being bigger and brighter than the past.

 

 

 

Today I was reminded of the 3 [high-level] incoming producing activities when building an online business?

1. Build a list – using lead generation
2. Build a relationship – through things such as social media, content, broadcast marketing…
3. Monetise the list – using available processes and tools

 

 

Today I got a timely reminder that even once you have been marketing for some time you need to:

• Consider every change carefully before you make it
• Test everything
• Then test it again

I have been running Google AdWords paid advertising for some time now and as part of my continued improvement to allow me to analyse the effectiveness of the adverts, the landing page and thank you page I made a change to the WordPress ‘slug’ on a page while creating a secondary version.

What I forgot was that one or more of my AdWords ad’s were pointing at that page. Luckily AdWords identified this error and stopped that ad, but only after a few days.

So the lesson here is don’t make a change without thinking it through and then testing everything from end to end to ensure it works as you designed and expected.

Have a great day!

An experience I had today makes me ask the question: Should you follow your gut instinct?

Over my years in sales & marketing, I have met and worked with numerous people and have gone against my gut instinct a handful of times.  One of these gut instincts that I went against occurred recently when I appointed a Distributor for a product through a consulting engagement I am currently running, who when I first met him I had a feeling he was not the right fit.  Then he showed his real colours for the first time which led me to let him know he was no longer welcome at a meeting I was holding with a customer, which I put down to poor communication on my behalf.

Following a face-to-face meeting and given I really like his business partner with whom I had started the engagement, I decided to give him another chance.  This was also reinforced and strongly encouraged by the CEO and a Board of Directors who were looking for something to announce to the Stock Exchange.  Even though my gut was telling me ‘he is not the right fit and he is going to be more trouble than he is worth’ I gave in to the pressure and told myself that I am being paranoid and appointed his new organisation as a Distributor.

Well, you guessed it, it turns out my gut instinct was right and he became more trouble than he is worth.  The events of today are now the third or possibly fourth time he has shown me who he really is; someone who talks a good talk but is full of ____.  This serves as yet another reminder that you should always go with your gut instinct.

I think people can change their behaviours and actions if they consciously want to, through training.  What I also believe is that the core beliefs that someone has will never stray far from their origin, or in other words, people can’t substantially change who they are under the covers.

What do you think?

Hi there.  It’s been a while since I posted anything here on this site as I have been working on developing another website to use as the target for paid advertising, based on my training within SFM.  Oh, and I have been travelling extensively overseas for my day job, which has really reinforced the reason why I need to free myself through creating another income stream to eventually substitute ‘work’.

Today I had a very good heart to heart meeting with two of my mentors, Jill and Frank, where we discussed where I am at with my personal and business development.  It became evident that although I have come a long way I still have some growing to do but I feel comforted in the fact that people like Jill and Frank are there to support me, for which I am eternally grateful.

I have been listening to a great audiobook in the past few days called “I know what to do, so why don’t I do it” by Dr. Nick Hall, and although I really struggled initially with the reading style of Dr. Hall I think he has some great advice.  If you can relate to the title because you are a lot like me then I recommend you invest in this book.  You can find it here:
I Know What to Do, So Why Don’t I Do It?: The New Science of Self-Discipline

Yes, it has been a while since I posted anything.

The truth is in the past few weeks I have been struggling with my confidence. Following a business trip overseas I found myself mentally and physically exhausted and have not had the mental stamina to get back online, in the fear that what I posted was not of value to you, my readers.

Thanks for hanging in there with me.

Having an on-line business is great but it only has value if you have site visitors who turn into customers.

I was looking back over my posts from the past few weeks and realised that I jumped straight into ‘The Steps to On-line Marketing’ without providing the required context to ‘On-line Business’.

The reality is that there are millions of internet/on-line businesses out there and I am certain the owners of each of these businesses think what they have is the best, and it may very well be.  It is however absolutely useless is no one knows about it.

I was going to use the local shop down the street as the opposite to an on-line business as it doesn’t require marketing but I will stop short as the shop down the street has a bigger problem as an on-line business.  The marketing of the shop down the street is the shop front.  You drive past it.  You ride past it.  You walk past it.  You shop next door.  You know it is there and you have an idea of the type of products they sell just because of its presence, which is a form of marketing.  Limited but it is marketing.

Imagine if the shop down the street didn’t have a sign and the windows were blacked out.  You would think it was closed and wouldn’t go in, nor would you know what it was and what it sold even if the world’s greatest product was just inside the door.

In addition, the shop down the street can only serve those that are in that area.

An on-line business is [uniquely] identified by an internet address known as a URL (Uniform Resource Locator), made up of any unique combination of letters, numbers and characters.

An on-line business doesn’t have a physical location so no one can drive past. Potential customers can’t ride past.   They can’t walk past.  They could be shopping right next door and not even have an idea you were doing so.

Unlike the physical constraints of location, the local shop has an on-line business can serve anyone on the internet regardless of where they are.  Next door, around the corner, in the next suburb, in the next state, in the country next door or completely on the other side of the planet.  In fact, you could serve an astronaut who is on his way to Mars if he can access the internet.  I know that the last point is a bit of a stretch but you get the point.

None of this possibly though if they don’t know you and/or your product exist.

How do they get to know you exist: Marketing.