Just Ship It Challenge

Day 12: Landing Page, Email List, Buzz

This content is for Fizzle members only.

It’s “Just Ship It” time again! Today is Day 12 of 30. You have 18 days left until launch. In this installment, we’re going to start building buzz and gathering interest for your product.

Resources Mentioned in Today’s Lesson

MailChimp: Send Better Email — we highly recommend MailChimp for building and running email lists. You can sign up for free, and MailChimp is both powerful and easy to use. We use it for every list we run at Fizzle.

Landing page examples

Notice that these pages are both simple and direct. The point is to clearly communicate what your product is about, and to direct people to sign up to be notified when it comes out.

Your landing page should have:

  • A clear, compelling headline
  • A description of the major benefits of your product
  • The launch date
  • A list of any relevant or interesting special features, contributors or bonuses
  • An email form for people to sign up for updates
  • (optional) An representation of the product’s packaging, like a book graphic, video screenshot, etc.
  • (optional) A smiling photo of yourself

For in-depth instructions on how to develop the copywriting for your landing page, check out Nathan Barry’s Step-by-step Landing Page Copywriting article »

Building the Landing Page and Embedding Your Email Form

Check out our sign-up page for the Just Ship It challenge »

No graphics, no fancy design. Just a basic white page with text and an email signup box.

This example is incredibly simple, and yet it has a 64% conversion rate.

The important thing is to make sure what you write on the page appeals to your potential customers. Create a compelling headline, story and list of benefits and people will sign up.

There is landing page building software out there, but you honestly don’t need it right now.

Simply create a page with your blog software and start typing.

Then, embed your email sign-up form at the end of the page. Here are instructions for MailChimp or AWeber.

Getting the Word Out

If you have a blog, write a blog post pre-announcing your product. Give people some background and direct them to the landing page. Here’s an example of how we did this for the Just Ship It challenge »

If you don’t have a blog (hint, hint), it’s not too late to start. You can start blogging about your product now, and post along the way as you create your product, sharing some of the valuable information that will be in the final package.

No Blog Yet?

If you’re taking this challenge but don’t have a blog yet, you’ll need a place to publish your landing page. For this we recommend a self-hosted WordPress site.

The people at Bluehost are offering an incredible deal to Fizzle members and people taking the Just Ship It challenge. You can get your WordPress site set up for just $3.95 a month, including a free domain name.

Bluehost has a 1-click WordPress install, and you can be up and running in 10 minutes.

Action Items for Today

  • Set up a new email list to capture pre-launch interest (use MailChimp if you don’t have an email list)
  • Create a landing page for your product and embed your email form (set up WordPress with Bluehost if you don’t have a blog already)
  • Write a blog post pre-announcing your product, and direct people to your landing page
  • Continue building your product, keeping an eye on your development schedule to stay on track
  • When your product landing page is ready, please leave a comment at the end of this post with a link to the page. We’d love to see what you’ve developed!