Build Landing Pages, Not Business Plans

We had a lightbulb moment the other day in the office that we think is our new way forward for any internal project or client request. Rather than doing the things we have the most (proposals, business plans, forecasting, etc) – why don’t we skip it and go straight to the bit we are best at: driving traffic to websites.

Now that intro might not be the best but we are too excited to stop and rewrite it. So to keep it simple we will outline our exact thought process and action plan below for you and anyone you share this link with. 

How to Test An Idea Without a Business Plan

1. A human being comes to you with a crazy idea – “Hey why don’t we offer a blog intro paragraph service where we come up with the idea, the headline and first paragraph for people not that great at opening paragraphs.”
2. You go to Google Ads (or any other keyword tool) and start picking out the relevant keywords (“blog content inspiration”, “blogging as a service”, “content idea app”) and either write the copy by hand or use one of those new, fancy GTP3 services.
3. Rather than designing a landing page from scratch, go to DesignModo(affiliate link) and signup to their StartUp app which is a visual drag and drop website builder. Use Unsplash for your visual assets to save time as well. Remember the key things about your landing page – an attention grabbing headline, a unique proposition, something that will add value, a call to action with some kind of urgency.
4. Export your html files and put it anywhere on the Internet that allows you to upload plain HTML pages (we use Netlify) and follow their instructions on setting up forms as well.
5. Back to Google now and create a really quick and simple Google Ads campaign, without too many keywords, just the most important one. The trick here is to give yourself a crazy big daily budget so you can get the most exposure in the shortest amount of time (don’t forget to turn it off though – we always set a reminder).
6. Here is the genius part – you don’t really care about the clicks or conversions too much initially (if you get them that is a bonus), what you are interested in is the impressions at first (hence why we set a crazy large daily budget) to prove there is a market demand for your service. If you don’t get good traction here, go back and tweak your ad copy and keywords to see if that helps.
7. If you got good impressions, then consider your click thru rate and your Google Analytics data to see what parts they are clicking on and what resonates.
8. If you are fortunate enough to get conversions, stop everything and allocate some time to seeing if you can get those people to actually hand over some cold hard cash.

We have tried this method on a couple of ideas and proposals and not only has it been a more fun way to test out ideas, it really allowed us to flex our muscles and improve our skills with this unique set of requirements.

If you want us to take this through further with you, feel free to contact usthrough our webform!