Wait...What Is a Landing Page? And How Is It Useful for Entrepreneurs?
Dec 14, 2021
A landing page is a standalone web page that potential customers "land on" after they click one of your ads.
It is a simple page with no navigation bar and only one "Call To Action" button that visitors can click.
The goal of the landing page is usually to capture the visitor's email address and thereby converting the visitor into a lead (a potential customer).
In a Nutshell a Landing Page Is a Simple Web Page That Has:
- Minimal distractions on the page (no navigation menu)
- Customized messaging and design matched precisely to a campaign or ad
- One clear objective = Call To Action (CTA)
- A valuable free offer that visitors can if they share their email address (a Lead Magnet)
- Multiple versions of the page to run experiments (A/B tests) to improve the conversion rate (% of visitors who convert to leads)
It Used to Be Complicated to Build Landing Pages...But Today It's Easy!
With the use of landing page creators such as Unbounce, Leadpages, Wix, and Kajabi, students don't need to write any code, so they can quickly get their pages live on the web and start learning from customers.
We love helping students and first-time founders launch their first landing pages! So please let us know if you'd like us to run a workshop for your students :)
How do you launch a landing page in under 2 hours?
This past month we partnered with .COM to run a series of LAUNCH YOUR LANDING PAGE workshops at top universities across the country (Princeton, Cornell, UC Berkeley, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, Dartmouth, University of Richmond, Hult International Business School, ASU, Thunderbird and Harvey Mudd) and here's what happened...
Step 1: Partner with .COM
This allowed us to offer the workshop at a highly discounted rate to hundreds of students.
Step 2: Invite Students
We created registration pages on Eventbrite and worked with a lot of amazing people at the schools’ entrepreneurship centers to invite students to the workshop.
Step 3: Get a Landing Page Creation Tool
We purchased a pro license to Unbounce ($120/ month) which allowed our students to each get a free account and create an unlimited number of landing pages for their startups.
Step 4: Study Landing Page Design and Growth Marketing
We talked to expert marketers and read books, blog posts, and articles on the topic. We also ran a series of landing page experiments ourselves to test the theory in practice.
Check out some of the resources we consulted below:
Books
- This is Marketing by Seth Godin
- The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss
- One Million Followers by Brendan Kane
- Expert Secrets: The Underground Playbook for Converting Your Online Visitors into Lifelong Customers by Russell Brunson
- Traffic Secrets: The Underground Playbook for Filling Your Websites and Funnels with Your Dream Customers by Russell Brunson
- 1000 True Fans by Jongo Longhurst
Blog Posts:
- https://www.qualtrics.com/au/media/seth-godin-10-lessons/
- https://www.semrush.com/blog/4-characteristics-high-converting-landing-pages-have-in-common/
- https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/call-to-action-examples
- https://unbounce.com/landing-page-examples/best-landing-page-design-examples/
- https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/landing-page-examples-list
Step 5: TIME TO LAUNCH!
We finally got to meet our amazing students in the virtual classroom and get to work. In the workshop we covered a wide range of topics including: The LEAN Startup Method, Growth Hacking, Landing Page Creators, Copywriting, Lead Magnets, and Domain Registration. The students all got access to Unbounce and created the most amazing landing pages.
Step 6: Get Feedback
We LOVE feedback and fortunately our students were more than happy to share their thoughts on the workshop. Here is some of the feedback we received...
"I finally learned how to run effective A/B tests"
- James, Colgate University"Extremely helpful to learn how to best orient our website copy towards our customers"
- Nate, Dartmouth College"The immediate feedback on students' landing pages was awesome!"
- Terry, Johns Hopkins University"I feel like I went through an entire accelerator program in just two hours"
- Ben, Cornell University
Step 7: Keep Hustling
We’re staying in touch with many of our students and we are always happy to jump on a call to provide guidance and ideas on how to take their startup ideas to the next level.
Step 8: More Workshops in 2022
We hope to run many more landing page workshops in the new year so if you’re interested in bringing this workshop to your students please let us know!
