How
to Drive More Traffic to Your Website
Case
History of Patricia Fripp's Electronic Marketing
This
case study first appeared in Great Internet Marketing
February 2002
What
should you do if your calendar is jam-packed, you have bookings
years in advance, and your business is running perfectly?
Patricia Fripp knows the answer: "MAKE the time to expand
your electronic marketing."
Fripp
was quick to see that her website, originally created as a
now-ubiquitous "brochure site," was as an opportunity to reach
new clients, sell more product, and save time and money on
hard-copy materials and administration. Driven by an enthusiasm
for both marketing and technology, Fripp has expanded and
refined http://www.fripp.com
into a client-getting, labor-saving, money-making success!
British-born
Fripp is all about firsts. A professional speaker, she has
won every award and designation given by the National Speakers
Association including the CSP and CPAE. She is also the NSA's
first woman president (1984-85). An admitted "shameless self-promoter,"
Fripp was among the first speakers to market herself with
a speaker press kit (1978), to develop a speaker demo video
(1985), and to market her products and services effectively
online with her website and her ezine SpeakerFrippNews.
Fripp
admits she is not a natural "techie." Even so, as a full time
and in-demand speaker, executive speech coach, sales trainer,
and author, Fripp still finds time to work one-on-one with
her webmaster, Aylene Rhiger, orchestrating an ongoing campaign
to update and improve content, functionality, visitor traffic,
and bottom-line results.
So how
does Fripp remain so "hands-on" with her website? After all,
her expertise lies in leadership, customer service, marketing,
sales, presentation skills, and employee motivation. But she
is able to collaborate with her webmaster because she stays
up-to-date on the latest in electronic marketing. Fripp's
most recent and best resource for this was attending Tom Antion's
seminar, "Electronic Marketing Butt Camp."
During
her website's first few years, growth of traffic was respectable
for the time. Always eager to try new marketing strategy,
Fripp worked with her webmaster to increase website traffic.
Visits jumped by 80% in twelve months. That was great, but
the Fripp team knew that an even higher level of success was
possible. Their goals were more traffic, more online sales,
and more inquiries about Fripp's speech coaching and sales
training services.
Searching
for solutions, Fripp and her webmaster both attended Tom Antion's
Electronic Marketing Butt Camp. Amazingly, after implementing
just a few of Antion's simple solutions, they were able to
boost website traffic an additional 30% in just three months--and
the success continues today.
Here
are some improvements the Fripp team made after attending
Tom Antion's Electronic Butt Camp:
* Improved
strategic placement of keywords on pages. For example, text-link
navigation was expanded to include more essential keywords.
* Expanded
number of outbound links on site. For example: http://www.fripp.com/links.html
* Established
additional reciprocal link relationships with other websites.
* Stepped
up publication of Fripp articles on other websites, linking
back to Fripp.com.
* Created
hallway pages. For example: http://www.fripp.com/forspeakerhelp.html
* Tailored
pages to better match specific search-engine criteria.
* Moved
Fripp's ezines to PostmasterGeneral,
a Butt Camp recommended system. The subscriber base has doubled,
because of an easier subscription process and each issue directs
subscribers back to the website.
* Improved
site indexing: http://www.fripp.com/frippmap.html
and http://www.fripp.com/alphasiteindex.html
* Expanded
"feeder" sites, additional small Websites which draw traffic
into Fripp.com. Existing feeder sites were: http://www.robertfrippunplugged.com
http://www.fripp.com/speechcoach/.
Feeder sites recently added include: http://www.aboutemployeemotivation.com
http://www.advancedpresentationskills.com.
In 2000,
Fripp produced an audio program for her brother, legendary
guitarist and celebrity Robert Fripp, and has marketed this
through the feeder site http://www.robertfrippunplugged.com.
which attracted far more celebrity-seeking visitors than Fripp's
primary business sites. Search engine positioning eventually
paid off, and, using the many techniques learned at Butt Camp,
the Fripp team was able to push traffic up to all Fripp sites.
Currently, http://www.fripp.com/speechcoach/
now receives the highest number visitors of all the Fripp
sites.
Butt
Camp further re-enforced Fripp's belief that quality free
resources would attract more visitors to her website. For
example:
* An
extensive selection of articles at http://www.fripp.com/articleslist.html
* Online
video and audio, some full-length, at http://www.fripp.com/frippclips2.html
* Free content-rich ezine: SpeakerFrippNews http://www.fripp.com/newsletter.html
Butt
Camp also re-emphasized that electronic marketing should not
only make money. It should SAVE you money. Downloadable materials
on Fripp's websites site have cut printing, shipping, and
administrative costs. "My assistant of ten years left one
year ago," Fripp explains, "and because of my website I have
not had to replace her."
Here
are some materials that Fripp provides online:
- Speaker
Video
- Complete
talks in audio and video
- Press
Kit (photos, bio, etc.)
- Program
Descriptions
- Handouts
- Agreements
- Pre-Program
Questionnaire
- Samples
of most of her audio and video programs
The
best electronic marketing strategies are constantly evolving
and improving. Here's how Fripp plans to update in 2002:
* Fripp
will continue to reposition herself online with a greater
emphasis on her executive speech coaching and sales training
services.
* The
Fripp team will leave their old Miva Merchant shopping cart
and move over to a Butt-Camp-recommended shopping cart, KickStartCart.com.
The new cart will be an improvement, offering an easy affiliate
program and follow up marketing e-mails to shoppers.
* The
ongoing effort to boost search engine rankings will continue
through expanded work with the Butt-Camp-recommended system
Web Position Gold.
* Fripp
will use the Butt Camp model of teleseminars to conduct seminars
over the phone.
* The
Fripp team will integrate online forms into her contact management
system.
Fripp's
webmaster, Aylene Rhiger, is also an Electronic Marketing
Butt Camp alumna and highly recommends the program to other
webmasters. "We were already working on our online presence,"
she says, "and Tom showed us the possibility of a higher level
of success. More importantly, he showed how to get there!"
February
2002 will mark Patricia Fripp's third time attending Tom Antion's
Electronic Marketing Butt Camp. "Whenever someone approaches
my team with an Internet marketing `solution,'" Fripp says,
"we ask ourselves, `What would Tom Antion do?' Tom Antion's
Electronic Marketing Butt Camp keeps me up with the rapidly
changing field of Internet marketing. I have no interest in
doing it myself, but I can make more results-oriented choices
with my electronic marketing and better direct my webmaster.
"As
a seminar junkie for over 26 years, I have never attended
a seminar that has more practical, immediately usable content
per minute. As long as Tom provides this seminar I will be
a repeat attendee!"
This
case study first appeared in the ezine Great Internet Marketing
February 2002 http://greatinternetmarketing.com
Tom
Antion is a professional speaker and the author of Click:
The Ultimate Guide to Electronic Marketing for Speakers
You can find out more about his Electronic Marketing Butt
Camp by visiting: http://www.antion.com/
(1,130
words)
Patricia Fripp, CSP, CPAE is a San Francisco-based executive
speech coach and professional
speaker on Change, Customer Service, Promoting Business,
and Communication Skills. She is the author of Get
What You Want!, It, So You Don't
Have to Fake It!, and Past-President of the National
Speakers Association. PFripp@Fripp.com,
(800) 634-3035, http://www.fripp.com
We offer this article on a nonexclusive basis. You may reprint
or repost this material as long as Patricia Fripp's name and
contact information is included. PFripp@Fripp.com, 1-800 634
3035, http://www.fripp.com
Aylene
Rhiger, MA, MFA is Patricia Fripp's webmaster and a web developer
specializing in websites for speakers, trainers, consultants,
and authors. Contact her by email: Aylene@Rhiger.com
Patricia
Fripp offers both one-on-one and group speech coaching for
individuals, leaders and sales teams for success through better
speaking skills: http://www.fripp.com/speechcoach/
Patricia
Fripp's great audio and videos programs can help you speak
more effectively: http://www.fripp.com/publicspeakingresources/
Find
out about Fripp's speaking school and other public dates when
Fripp is "speaking on speaking:" http://www.fripp.com/hearfripp.html
Learn
the confidence and skills you need for public speaking success!
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