February 2002

Case Study
Patricia Fripp, CSP, CPAE

NOTE FROM TOM: Patricia is very complimentary to me in this snapshot of her business and I appreciate that, but she is an example someone who doesn't sit around and do nothing just because she's pretty comfortable. I wish all Butt Camp attendees were like her.

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 e-zines FrippNews and 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 two e-zines, FrippNews and SpeakerFrippNews, to http://www.postmastergeneral.com/?affiliate=antion  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.executivespeechcoach.com . 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.executivespeechcoach.com  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/frippclips.html 

* Two free content-rich e-zines: FrippNews at http://www.fripp.com/business_newsletter.html , and SpeakerFrippNews at http://www.fripp.com/speaking_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, http://www.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 on-line 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 with 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!"

                                                    #   #  #

Patricia Fripp CSP, CPAE is a San Francisco-based executive speech coach, sales trainer, and professional speaker on sales, marketing, leadership, change, customer service, team building and presentation skills.. She is the author of "Get What You Want!" and "Make it So You Don't Have to Fake it!" She is a Past-President of the National Speakers Association. named Fripp "one of the country's most electrifying speakers!" She can be reached at 
mailto:PFripp@fripp.com , 1-800-634-3035 or visit
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 mailto:aylene@rhiger.com 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Upcoming case studies