AP 0451: Should I Set Up a Pre-Launch Landing Page?

AskPat 451 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: What up, everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 451 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. We've a great question today from my good friend Ethan Pariseau, who is very active on my Periscopes, and I'm so happy to be answering his question here today.

So look forward to that, but before we get to Ethan's question, I do want to thank today's sponsor, which is FreshBooks.com, an amazing … amazing company that makes it so easy for you to manage your business finances. They are serving over 3 million business owners including myself and make it … they just make it so easy for us. They take away all the headaches and stress with organizing finances, everything from income to expenses and especially invoicing. If you do any invoicing for clients, or maybe you do coaching calls or things like that, it just makes it incredibly easy for you to professionally send an invoice over, so that you can get paid more quickly and then get back to work and do the things you need to do to help grow your business. If you wanna check it out for free, for 30 days, you can get a 30 day free trial by going to GetFreshBooks.com and by entering “Ask Pat” in the “How did you hear about us?” section, again that's GetFreshBooks.com, enter “Ask Pat.”

All right, here's today's question from Ethan.

Ethan Pariseau: Hey, Pat. My name's Ethan Pariseau. I'm working on building website at WhyDidntYouAsk.com, and the website's gonna help new and aspiring entrepreneurs find us who've been around for awhile, kind of like yourself that know the ins and outs, have a lot of great advice, information out there, help the new and aspiring ones to find people like you and the information that you've put out. What I was wanting to ask is, do you think it'd be a good idea to set up a landing page while website's being built, drive traffic to that landing page, and then along the way while it's being built send updates, information to those who've entered emails? And then when the website is actually ready to go live, send out kind of, email to the whole list and tell them that the site is launched, and having built to it and start driving traffic to the website at that point? Love everything that you do, I've read your books like… oh…your eBooks the Smart Way, have been following you on Twitter, Periscope, things like that, so keep up the good work. I know you always do! Thanks!

Pat Flynn: Ethan, what's up, man? Thank you so much for the question today, and first of all, I just want to thank you publicly for all the support that you've had for me over the last number of months. I've gotten to know Ethan pretty well just simply through following him on Twitter and following him on Periscope, and just seeing him in the comments and adding value to the communities. And everywhere I've been, he's been great and very supportive, and I thank him for that. Thank you, Ethan, I appreciate you. And I hope this is a good example of how somebody, no matter who you are, you can become a friend to somebody or you can get onto somebody's radar by simply just being consistent with going in there and adding value. And Ethan has reached out to me, he's talked to me, he's asked questions, but he's also provided advise and honest feedback to me as well, and I appreciate him for that. And here I am giving him a shout at him, and I recommend you to follow him on twitter @ethanpariseau that's E T H A N P A R I S E A U. Ethan Pariseau. Thank you, man. I appreciate it.Now to get your question, should you have a landing page before you build your website? Absolutely! Yes! 100% yes, especially you, because you're going out there, you're building relationship already, people are getting to know who you are. And you need a place to drive traffic to you, you need a place to start to collect email addresses for people who are connecting with you, at all the places you at. And for those of you who are listening, Ethan like I said is doing a great job of putting himself out there, getting known in the community, a lot of people who follow me in periscope also know who Ethan is and have followed him on periscope as well, and you know Ethan is starting to build the name for himself which is great. I did the same thing when I started my LEED exam website. I was

Now to get your question, should you have a landing page before you build your website? Absolutely! Yes! 100% yes, especially you, because you're going out there, you're building relationships already, people are getting to know who you are. And you need a place to drive traffic to you, you need a place to start to collect email addresses for people who are connecting with you, at all the places you at. And for those of you who are listening, Ethan, like I said is doing a great job of putting himself out there, getting known in the community. A lot of people who follow me in periscope also know who Ethan is and have followed him on Periscope as well. And you know, Ethan is starting to build a name for himself, which is great. I did the same thing when I started my LEED exam website. I was in a forum and I was very active; I was responding to questions on certain threads where I knew the answer, providing as much value as I could, and just naturally people wanted to know who I was and what else I had to offer. They were like, “Oh, who's this person coming in sharing all this great advice? I want to learn more from him.” And that's how my website—one of the ways that a lot of traffic came to my website back in the day when I first started at greenexamacademy.com.Now Ethan's doing the same thing, and so yes, Ethan, yes luckily you have social media platform for people can follow you but, you want to collect people's email addresses, start to develop buzz for this website that you're coming out with. I think it's a great idea and if you have a landing page with even more information to get people more excited by the time launch day comes around, you're not gonna be like most people who launch to just their mom and their roommates you're gonna lunch to hundreds of people already. And that's something that I did actually myself on FoodTruckr.com. So with FoodTruckr.com, it was up for a couple months with a landing page simply to collect email addresses to build buzz for it and I would reach out to people individually talked to people joined community forums and things like that, mentioned what I was doing with the website and what I had to offer, actuallycollecting a lot of information from other food truck owners as well, and a lot of them were just naturally interested in this website that was coming up to help them. And so they signed up. And so I had about 250 people on the email list on day one of launch. And that might not sound like a lot especially when you start

Now Ethan's doing the same thing, and so yes, Ethan, yes, luckily, you have a social media platform where people can follow you, but you want to collect people's email addresses, start to develop buzz for this website that you're coming out with. I think it's a great idea, and if you have a landing page with even more information to get people more excited by the time launch day comes around, you're not gonna be like most people who launch to just their mom and their roommates; you're gonna lunch to hundreds of people already. And that's something that I did actually myself on FoodTruckr.com. So with FoodTruckr.com, it was up for a couple months with a landing page simply to collect email addresses to build buzz for it, and I would reach out to people individually, talked to people, joined community forums and things like that, mentioned what I was doing with the website and what I had to offer, actually collecting a lot of information from other food truck owners as well, and a lot of them were just naturally interested in this website that was coming up to help them. And so they signed up. And so I had about 250 people on the email list on day 1 of launch. And that might not sound like a lot, especially when you start to hear numbers like, “Oh I have 50,000 email subscribers or 150,000 emails subscribers,” but 250 people, imagine a room full of 250 people.So Ethan, even if you get 50 people, that's still a lot of people and I'm sure there are 50 people in the audience who would subscribe to your list already. And, that's a lot of people, those are actually of people in a room of 50 people, that's a huge accomplishment when you're speaking in front of that many people. And when you are building a website and you have an email list, you're essentially doing that same thing, you're speaking to those people, you're building a relationship with them. And when you're early on, that's your opportunity to actually reach out and collect information from them, about what you can do to better serve them down the road.

So that's kind of your data mining opportunity. So not only are you there building buzz for your website, but you're actually getting information from these early adopters to what it is you're gonna have to offer, to get that information that you're gonna then you use to create more blog posts, more podcast episodes, or whatever Periscope topic you wanna talk about or what your courses might eventually be. You're actually surveying those people before you even have a website and asking them what it is they want, what are their biggest struggles, and understanding what language they use so that you can include that in your sales copy, in your headlines, in your subjects for your emails and all those sort of things.uper high value to have a list even before you start, that way on day one you're not just launching to no nobody but you have a list already, you have people who are there to share, you might wanna give something back to them in return, not just providing value through your content but maybe some sort of contest or doing something for them in return or sharing their websites or you know whatever it is that you can think of, be creative, you can totally do that, to thank them for being early adopters and making sure that you know they will take the action that you want them to take on day one which is, visit the site, you get that traffic but also the opportunities to share so on so forth and, yeah…so Ethan I wish you the best of luck, I'm really excited to see what you'd come up with, and again everybody should follow Ethan @ethanpariseau P A R I S E A U. Ethan you rock, can't wait to send you an Ask Pat T-shirt and see you a picture of you rocking it. I appreciate you and also this is a part from your daughter's as well I remember she did a little craft thing for me for one of my [inaudible 00:07:26] one time which is really awesome so, thank you for what you do and being an awesome dad and I appreciate all the support. We're gonna send you that in a couple of weeks, you'll hear from my assistant, Jessica, to collect your information so that we can send that to you free of charge and for everybody else out there listening, if you've a question you'd like potentially featured here in the show, just head on to askpat.com you could ask right there on the page just hit record, ask question, doesn't matter what kind of mic you have as long as we could hear your voice, that's all we need. It's my

Super high value to have a list even before you start, that way on day 1 you're not just launching to nobody, but you have a list already, you have people who are there to share. You might wanna give something back to them in return, not just providing value through your content, but maybe some sort of contest or doing something for them in return or sharing their websites or, you know, whatever it is that you can think of. Be creative, you can totally do that, to thank them for being early adopters and making sure that you know they will take the action that you want them to take on day one, which is visit the site. You get that traffic, but also the opportunities to share, so on, so forth and, yeah…so Ethan I wish you the best of luck, I'm really excited to see what you'd come up with, and again everybody should follow Ethan @ethanpariseau P A R I S E A U. Ethan you rock, can't wait to send you an Ask Pat T-shirt and see you a picture of you rocking it. I appreciate you and also this is a part from your daughter's as well I remember she did a little craft thing for me for one of my [inaudible 00:07:26] one time which is really awesome so, thank you for what you do and being an awesome dad and I appreciate all the support. We're gonna send you that in a couple of weeks, you'll hear from my assistant, Jessica, to collect your information so that we can send that to you free of charge and for everybody else out there listening, if you've a question you'd like potentially featured here in the show, just head on to askpat.com you could ask right there on the page just hit record, ask question, doesn't matter what kind of mic you have as long as we could hear your voice, that's all we need. It's my

So, Ethan, I wish you the best of luck. I'm really excited to see what you'd come up with, and again, everybody should follow Ethan @ethanpariseau P A R I S E A U. Ethan, you rock, can't wait to send you an AskPat T-shirt and see a picture of you rocking it. I appreciate you and also this is a part from your daughter's as well I remember she did a little craft thing for me for one of my ‘scopes one time, which is really awesome. So, thank you for what you do and being an awesome dad, and I appreciate all the support. We're gonna send you that in a couple of weeks. You'll hear from my assistant, Jessica, to collect your information so that we can send that to you free of charge.

And for everybody else out there listening, if you've a question you'd like potentially featured here in the show, just head on to AskPat.com. You could ask right there on the page: just hit record, ask question. Doesn't matter what kind of mic you have as long as we could hear your voice; that's all we need. It's my job to sound good, your job to ask the questions. And of course, this show wouldn't exist without your questions, so thank you in advance.

I also want to thank FreshBooks.com for being one of the most supportive sponsors of this show, making it super easy for me to actually, you know, to keep the production going and paying my wonderful team to help do this stuff for me as well. Thank you so much, FreshBooks. They are an amazing company. I highly recommend you to check it out. You can go and get them for 30 days for free; you can do a free trial for 30 days for Fresh Books by going to getfreshbooks.com and by entering AskPat in the “How did you hear about us?” section. I talked a little bit about them earlier. They also have an award-winning mobile app to help you keep track of your finances on the go as well. And of course, come tax season, it's just a couple clicks of a button to print out that balance sheet and that profit and loss statement, and everything you have going on that you or CPA need to get things done the right way. So go ahead and check it out, again, freshbooks.com/askpat, enter AskPat.

And to finish off as we always do, here's a quote today from Howard Schultz. He said, “Don't be threatened by people smarter than you.” I think it's very wise: “Don't be threatened by people smarter than you.” Here's another quote: “If you are the smartest person in the room, you are in the wrong room.” I don't know who said that, but I love that quote as well.

Anyway, cheers. Take care. Thanks again, Ethan. I appreciate everybody who's listened, and all of your support. If you wanna take a moment to hook me up and head on over to iTunes, you can leave a review for AskPat. It helps with the rankings; it helps other people know that this is a show that they should listen to as well. And again, I appreciate you and your support. Thanks guys. See you tomorrow. Bye.