MBA922 Creating An Effective Pre-Launch Page + Free Ride Friday!

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All right, let's jump into today's episode. Hey O. Welcome to the $100 MBA show, the business podcast that squeezes out business goodness in every minute of our 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar M, a complete business training and community online. And in today's episode you will learn how to create an effective pre launch page before you launch your product. Whether it's an ebook, an online course, a software, a coaching program, you're going to want to have a pre launch page for its website. This is a simple page to generate interest, to create buzz, to get people wanting your product as well as help you create a better product. Pre launch pages are so important and in today's episode I'm going to give you the critical elements you need to have on your pre launch page. What should be on this page so you can create interest, so you can get people to subscribe to your newsletter so they can get on the list, so they can buy when the door is open, how to get them engaged and what are some of the easy to use tools to create this page. We get into all that in today's episode, so let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Creating a pre launch page so important. A lot of people skip this step when they launch a new product, but they're missing out on a huge opportunity. Let's begin with the purpose of a pre launch page. Your whole goal with a pre launch page is to create genuine interest for your new product you're about to launch. Keyword here is genuine. You want people to really want what you're about to offer, so keep that in mind. Make sure you understand that's the goal here on this page. Another thing to note is that this is a page. This is not a full out website with tons. This is a single page. It doesn't have to be a long page and in fact many pre launch pages have very minimal scrolling. Now I want to focus on this episode on the page itself. On Tuesday we're going to focus and have a detailed episode on how to create a great version one of your product. And this pre launch page is going to play a big role. So we want to make sure we nail this. Now the first thing is that when should you actually publish this pre launch page? How far out should you actually have this page up? I would put this page up as soon as possible. I've seen some great products that had Pre launch pages 18 months before their launch. I know it seems like a long time, a year and a half, but I just wanted to give you that example. You know you don't have to wait 18 months to launch your product, but you certainly shouldn't have your pre launch page a month before your product launches. I would say a minimum of two to three months depending on the size of the actual product and how much time you need. But full disclosure, I'm actually going to be releasing a prelaunch page very soon. I can't talk about it yet, but I will announce it in the podcast in a future episode because by the time this publishes, that pre launch page won't Be up. But we're releasing a whole new product and this pre launch page is really important because it's gonna give us some time to gather information and create buzz for our product. Now let's go back to that goal. Genuine interest. Now, the reason why I put that qualifier genuine is because when somebody's really interested in what you have, they wanna learn more, be in the know. And that means giving up their email address, giving you access to their inbox so they can learn more and be updated when this product releases. So how do you create that kind of interest where people are like, hey, here's my email address, I want to learn more. Let me know when this is out so I can buy. And how do you do that in a simple way? Well, there are a couple options here. The first option is probably the most straightforward way and that's with a video. You can have a simple landing page on the website of this product. It doesn't have to have any kind of navigation or anything like that. It could just have literally the logo up top and a video below it. And this video could be two to three minutes explaining what your product is, what problem it solves, and why they should want it. See, with video you can convey a lot in a short amount of time. You can have visuals, you can have audio, you can have music, you can show actual screenshots of what you're building, or even mockups. Now that's option number one. Option number two is text and images. Now you can use text and images to do the same thing to describe the product, what problem it solves and why they should want it. But obviously your page is going to be longer because you're going to be using a lot of space for, you know, writing all that copy and putting up those images. So just keep that in mind. That's not necessarily a bad thing. And of course, you can use a combination of both. Now, regardless of what option you choose, video or images and text, you want to be concise, you want to make sure that you convey your message and hit all those touch points quickly. You don't have to sell them on the product itself for a sale yet. They're not making a purchase right now, but you want to pique their interest. So you really need to focus on the problem you're solving. So have a post it note, have somewhere where you can see it right in front of your face when you're creating this page, what problem does my product solve? You have to answer that question on that page, on that video with those images and Text. Because as soon as you do that, they're gonna be like, oh, this is useful. Okay, this is how I can use this. I can see why I would want this. You have to go into nitty gritty details, the specific features or integrations or what it includes, or if you're selling a course, how many modules, all that stuff. You don't have to go into all those details. What will they get out of this product? That's really what you're doing here. Focus on that. Now, you have to have some sort of call to action on this page. And a nice simple one is provide your email address so you can be updated on the release. And you can incentivize them by saying, hey, if you're on the waiting list, you're going to get a certain discount or a certain bonus when the actual launch happens. Or you can actually incentivize them by saying, hey, the first 500 people that buy will get so and so. So you want to be on this list so you can be notified and be one of those 500. The point here is, is that you got to tell them what to do next so they can learn more, meaning that they're going to get emails from you from now until the actual release updates. And maybe some images, maybe another video, as well as, you know, an email saying, hey, the doors are open. Now, there's another key element of why we want their email addresses, because obviously we want to be able to market to them later, but we also want to email them in the meantime because we might have some questions about how to create a better product. And we're going to talk about that on Tuesday's episode. But the point here is, it's just a little hint. We have their email address. We can email them and say, hey, I got some questions for you. We're creating this product. We're actually putting the final touches or we're fine tuning it. Would you rather have this or this? Or would you like to hop on a video call so we can get your feedback? And those who give you feedback, you can give them maybe free access to your product as a beta user. And beta users are for content, products as well. Courses, coaching, books, all that stuff. The point here is, is that this is great information to have contact information. You want to engage with these people because they're really interested in the concept of what you're trying to deliver here. All right, so how do you create a page like this? Well, there's tons of tools out there that you can use. This is a new Product from Product Hunt. It's actually their first product, but it's exactly what you need to create a pre launch page. A simple page where you can embed some information, collect some email addresses and even communicate with your audience via chat or messaging, which is pretty cool. Now a note about ship it is not cheap. It's $79 a month if you go month to month. And that goes down to around $59 a month if you buy an annual plan. That's for the pro level which is basically what you need. But there's also a super pro level that's at $200 a month. So it's not cheap. But if your pre launch page is only going to exist for a few months, it may be worth it because you're also exposed to their audience. You're going to get a lot of feedback from the product community. It's kind of a built in audience so it might help you in that regard. Now I haven't used it myself, I'm interested in using in the future. Maybe I'll. I'm actually looking into it. But it's one of those things that is perfect for pre launch pages. You can check it out@producthunt.com ship. Now you can do the same thing with a landing page software like LeadPages or ClickFunnels or using a WordPress plugin like OptimizePress or ThriveThemes and you can create these simple pages yourself. It's a little bit more time and it doesn't have the built in audience. You're gonna have to build your own audience. But these tools are all very drag and drop easy and depending on your budget you have a few choices on price. Remember, if you are using a WordPress plugin you're going to need hosting on its own plus the WordPress plugin cost. But hey, you can then later on use that for your site. Remember, the Product Hunt ship product is not a full on site. You can't create a site. This is just for that page. But if you go WordPress plus one of these plugins like OptimizePress or Thrive Themes, you can later on use that for your full site and it ends up being cheaper than going with something like LeadPages or click Funnels. Now this doesn't discount those other options like LeadPages or Click Funnels. But I want to give options depending on your budget. Obviously drag and drop, landing page builders, all that stuff are a lot easier than doing your own WordPress install. But it's kind of a once and done Once you do it, once it's over. If you're looking for really good WordPress hosting, we recommend WP Engineering and then you can find OptimizePress or Thrive Themes for your plugin. So these drag and drop builders, Whether you're using WordPress, LeadPages, ClickFunnels, they all are pretty simple. They have pages that you can customize and you can create the elements I just described in today's episode. These are just tools. Really. What you put on the page matters. Another idea that some people do is include some FAQs on the page. This might be a good idea if you're using video and you have some space on the page, especially if you have a pretty novel idea and you want to cover some big questions.

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As you can see, a pre launch page is pretty simple, but you want to get it out there as soon as possible so you can start creating some buzz and some genuine interest, right? If you feel like, oh, I got to create a video, it's a lot of production quality. I need to get into a studio. Don't worry about it. If you don't have a setup or you're not doing a screencast with your computer, which is probably the easiest way to do it, using Screenflow or Camtasia or something like that. Or even Apple's QuickTime allows you to do screencasting, then use text and images, get it out there, get people to opt in so they can get more information later on. And this allows you to build your email list and get a pool of people that want to buy what you have to offer very soon. Guys, this is kind of like part one of the equation. Part two is using this page in creating a great version one of your product. And we talk about that on Tuesday's episode. So make sure you hit subscribe so you don't miss that episode. You might be thinking, what about Monday? Well, Monday we have a guest teacher episode. Sean d' Souza is going to be teaching you how to create really effective headlines, or how he likes to put it, intensely curious headlines. I like it. Don't miss that episode or Tuesday's episode. Thank you so much for listening. But today's episode's not over because it's Free Ride Friday. I got to give away a free ride to EZ course. Let's see who won this week's Free Ride. And the winner is. Danny Got Faith. Danny says the $100 ba is invaluable. Five stars. Love this podcast. Great info, great host, love all the insights and the short bursts of value I can sink my teeth in. Thank you so much, Danny, for that review. Really appreciate it. And congratulations, you won this week's Free Ride. Just email me over at omar100mba.net and we'll hook you up with that free free lifetime membership to EZ Corsa $500 value. Guys, you can win too. Just leave us an itunes rating and review and you can win next week's weekly random draw on Freeride Friday. All right, that's it for me today, guys. But before I go, I want to leave you with this. A lot of people don't want to have a pre launch page because they're afraid somebody's going to steal their idea. Do not worry about that. You need to get your idea out there so people know you're launching, so you can sell this to people and so you can validate the idea as well as make sure you're creating the right product for these people. Remember we talked about communicating with them? We'll talk about that on Tuesday as well. Creating a great version one of your product. But push that fear aside. Personally, I wouldn't drop everything I'm doing so I can start a whole new business off an idea I just heard. Especially if I don't know how to implement it. And the implementation is what matters. So move forward, get your page out there and all the success in the world to you when you launch. All right, I'll check you in. Monday's episode guest teacher Shonda Souza coming at you. All right, I'll see you then. Take care.

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