Matt: Okay, back. Who knows for how long?

Lauren: Well, we better get started then.

Matt: I guess.

[Podcast Intro]

[0:40] - Intro

Lauren: Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Publish & Prosper. Today we're going to be talking about how to sell your book by building just a simple landing page for it. You don't always have to build out a whole big, robust website. Whether that's just not aligning with your brand or just not something that you're ready to do yet. So we're going to talk through some ideas for how you can do that, why you would want to. Some tools you can use to help you out with that. And hopefully my voice won't give out on us halfway through the episode. It's that time of year.

Matt: Is it that time of the year? Or have you just had quite a few things over the last couple of months where you've just nonstop been… I mean, you've been at Disney several times in the last few months. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: You just finished speaking at a conference.

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: I don't know if it's that time of the year. I think it's more...

Lauren: I mean, realistically – 

Matt: I think Lauren’s just been – 

Lauren: I've just been – 

Matt: – on a tear lately.

Lauren: Well, there's definitely that. But also, I was also at a concert Saturday night, so I did. Yeah, you're right. I came back from Momentum and then went to Disney and then went to St. Louis, went to a concert, and now we're here. Also realistically, like once a quarter, I go through a window of time where it sounds like I'm just gargling salt water and whiskey every night, so.

Matt: Ugh.

Lauren: Here we are. 

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Bear with me everyone, we’ll make it through.

Matt: Sorry to anybody who's actually listening, or watching.

Lauren: Hey, it's not that bad. 

Matt: Alright. 

Lauren: Could be worse. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: I promise to lean away from the microphone if I start coughing.

Matt: Please lean away from me and your microphone –

Lauren: I will do that.

Matt: – if you start coughing. 

Lauren: I will do that too. I know you don't like that. 

Matt: That would be awesome. 

Lauren: It’s okay.

Matt: Alright, I will jump in.

Lauren: Go ahead.

Matt: We'll try to preserve your vocal cords as best as possible.

Lauren: Thanks, I appreciate it.

Matt: We don't need any more of that millennial vocal fry going on.

Lauren: It's unavoidable. Part of who I am. 

[2:21] - Why and When Would You Choose a Landing Page Over a Website

Matt: Landing page. This is, I think, becoming more common for people who are selling their books. I think it was something that really jumped off several years ago from creators who were getting into publishing for the first time, and probably didn't think they had more than one book in them. Probably nonfiction, they probably didn't count on doing a series or a bunch of books, and so the idea that you'd build an entire website just for a book is kind of silly. And maybe they already had a website and they didn't want to convert it into this place that's just for their book. So landing pages, I think, really kicked off in 2021-ish. Businesses have been using them, we've been using them, brands have been using them for a long time. But the idea of using it to sell your book or a book, I think, is somewhat of a newer phenomenon. But it's really smart for a lot of reasons. You mentioned at the top of the episode in the intro, but this idea that maybe you don't want to build a website. And yes, that is a reason why you would just do a landing page. But at the end of the day, building a landing page is not much different than building a website, to a degree. So I'd say it's more for people who either don't have a website or have a website that they don't want to really do a bunch of alterations to, because maybe they've got it right where they want it. A landing page is perfect, because you can spin it up and tear it down just as fast as you want to. They don't have to stay permanent. It's not meant to be something like…that just stays there forever, so. They have a lot of uses. And the fact that you can tailor it specifically to your book, I think is extremely helpful. Whereas a website, yes, there are a lot of things you need to share space on a website with. So I think it's important to understand why you would do a landing page versus a website, or both. The most obvious, like I said, if this is your first book or you're not really sure you're going to do another book, you don't need a whole website necessarily, or you don't need to alter your existing website. You can spin up a landing page and that acts as your sales funnel. And it's great because again, everything on that page is geared towards getting somebody to purchase your book – 

Lauren: Yup. 

Matt: – and give you that information.

Lauren: Which, we'll get into all of that specifically with your goals, your landing page and your design and stuff like that. But I think that Matt's point that it's – this is a temporary page that you can spin up, customize for a specific short term campaign, or something, is a really great thing to remember, and it's a really great way to use something like this. We will use landing pages a lot, not necessarily for selling books, but if we're going to specific events and we want to have a landing page that we can direct people from that event and we will customize the page for that event. 

Matt: That's right. 

Lauren: And we're not creating brand new pages from scratch every single time. Sometimes we do, but we can spin something up that say, okay, we already have this domain name, we already have this landing page. We're going to just tweak it a little bit to fit this audience.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: To speak to this specific event. So if you're doing something, whether it's a preorder campaign for your book or just like a one off book, maybe you're doing a limited print run of a book where you're saying, I'm only selling a thousand copies of this, and once that's out, the book doesn't exist anymore. Or a holiday campaign or a crowdfunding campaign or something like that. This is a great solution for that.

Matt: Yeah. Again, landing pages are great for a solo book project. Something that’s short term not long term. It's great because you can templatize it like Lauren referred to; we don't – we don't always create our landing pages from scratch. A lot of times this is just a template that we have developed where depending on the audience or the event or who we're talking to, we can update those things accordingly. So again, landing pages are great because you don't have to go in and make adjustments to an existing website that maybe you feel like you've got it kind of perfectly dialed in. You can have this dedicated page. It acts as a sales funnel. You can still plug in your newsletter collection if you want, so that you're getting email addresses for that. Although if you're getting people to buy the book, you're capturing email addresses that way anyways, so. It has a lot of uses. I don't think they necessarily take the place of a website, for other reasons. They're great to use in conjunction with a website, but if you don't have a website right now, and you're not invested in building one right now, it is a great alternative in the meantime, if you've got a book that you're trying to sell or really any product, but obviously we're focusing on books here, so. 

Lauren: Yeah, actually I think that's a good point too, is that it's something that can be just separate from your website. We're not only saying that this applies to people that don't have a website yet, or don't intend on having one at all. You might just want to say, like, I want an independent page. I don't want people to get distracted. I want to drive somebody directly to this page because I want them to buy my book. And if I send them to a sub page on my main website, they can very easily click away from that page and go do something else –

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: – and get distracted by… And then, you know, yeah, they're still on your website, they're still in your ecosystem, but they've gotten distracted from the main objective of buying your book. Or maybe you just want to do some really cool custom branding and you want your book landing page to be designed to look like your book aesthetic. And that might be slightly different than your overall brand aesthetic. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Not too different hopefully, but slightly different. So it's, it's fun to just have that like, separate little standalone space.

Matt: Yeah I agree. And then lastly landing pages are really good for preorders. 

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: So you know, again if you've got an existing website or you haven't built one yet, the idea of making updates to your existing page to accommodate preorders can be a little daunting. So, you know, having a landing page that’s just for preorders. Again, something that's temporary, I think is often a really good play. It's also, I think, safe to say that most of the tools you would use to build a landing page these days, they're pretty inexpensive and really easy to use. You know, as long as you have a domain already that you want to use. If you don't, you can purchase one pretty easily. But they’re so easy to use it's almost criminal.

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: So I would definitely consider that if you are about to launch a book or put something up for preorders. Or even if you just want to play around with the idea of landing pages and offering something else prior to launching a book. But again, this is nothing against having a website. That's obviously the ultimate, because you need a place where you are driving most of the traffic to find out about you, to sign up for our newsletter, to buy your courses or your books or things like that. But landing pages are just, I think, that extra piece where again, being able to keep the traffic there, as you said, keep them from getting distracted by other things, and really make sure that they are focusing on buying the book. So. 

Lauren: Yeah, I think also a great use of a landing page that I don't think that we've mentioned, and I'm sorry if I'm repeating myself now, if you are driving people to your website in a situation where you are saying the URL out loud. Instead of like, sharing it in an email newsletter or sharing it in your social bio. If you are a speaker, if you're on a podcast, if you're doing some kind of thing where you're… Even like, pre-roll ad, if you're doing something where it's not going to immediately have a clickable link to people, you can create like a nice short and sweet custom landing page that is probably going to stick in people's memory better than if you have to say to people, go to lulu.com/podcast/book to find our book. That's a step more complicated than just saying like, go to podcastbook.com.

Matt: I listen to a podcast every morning, I'm not going to say what it is, but it's a news one. Mostly marketing news and then financial news. Anyways, they have a different sponsor every month, and then for the whole month they read that sponsor’s ad – 

Lauren: Yup. 

Matt: – and whatever CTA is there for. This particular sponsor for the month was Fidelity, and I don't mind calling them out. And I guess the marketing copy that Fidelity gave the podcasters, it ends with the podcasters saying, hey, if you want to take advantage of this deal, go to… They literally had to read out – 

Lauren: Oh no. 

Matt: And every morning I'm hearing them read this out. It's fidelity dot com forward slash offer forward slash podcast forward slash the name of this podcast forward slash get twenty – I mean it was, it just went on… it had like five forward slash in it.

Lauren: Yup. 

Matt: And I kept thinking of myself like, surely like – how did somebody not… everybody's listening to this podcast by the way, typically in their car on the commute, who is writing down this URL? That has six – 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: – forward slashes in it and random things between every – like it was such a terrible fail. So yeah, please don't do that. And if you work for Fidelity in their marketing department, you guys really need to tighten up. That was probably one of the most ridiculous things I've heard lately from a large organization, but whatever.

Lauren: Yeah, that's a great point, though, honestly. Like if you're doing any kind of video, audio, whatever, keep that in mind. I always laugh, I always think about – we talked about this recently, about how both of us, our gateway drug into podcasting, was –

Matt: Oh, true crime.

Lauren: – a true crime podcast.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Mine, very stereotypical as a millennial white woman, was My Favorite Murder. Because a lot of advertisers when they advertise would make a short URL for whatever podcast, and would so often default to it just being murder, which is kind of really funny when you take it out of context. To the point where it kind of became a running bit of promo code: murder. Like they had merch that said promo code: murder on it. Out of context you’re like, heh, murder. That is something to think about when you're thinking about your overall branding for stuff like this. So if you have a landing page that you can direct people to a URL that's going to take them straight to your book, that is straightforward, short and sweet, going to take them right there without all the distracting forward slash whatever things…

Matt: Yeah. Cause again – 

Lauren: Take it. 

Matt: Remember the landing page serves one purpose. That's it. And it's to…whatever that CTA is. So for, in the instance of a book, it has one purpose, and that's to sell your book. 

Lauren: Yup. 

Matt: Whereas a website has – it's multi-purpose. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: So with a landing page, make it as easy as possible. Remove all elements of friction for somebody finding it and then actually doing what you want them to do.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: So. 

[11:57] - What You Need to Prepare Before Building Your Landing Page

Lauren: So let's talk a little bit about actually what you would need to think about in order to do this. Because we've said it a little bit already about this. Part of the point of all of this is that there should be one goal and only one goal. That's the whole point, is that you are narrowing focus down to just one CTA.

Matt: That's right. 

Lauren: And so in this case, assuming the goal is to buy your book. 

Matt: Yeah 

Lauren: There may be other things. We may be wanting to collect the data from email addresses and from your customer data and stuff like that, but that comes after the fact. That's a secondary goal, because your primary goal is for them to buy your book. You can get your customer data after they buy the book. 

Matt: Right. Yeah. 

Lauren: Whatever your goal for this landing page is, it's one thing. It's buy the book or sign up for your mailing list or register for a course or service or whatever. But whatever it is, make sure you know what that one goal is, because everything else that you do on this page is to serve that one goal.

Matt: Yeah. And again, these are meant to be funnels. And so think of a funnel, the obvious shape and the beginning of your landing page, you're talking about your book. What it can do for people. Or if it's a fiction book, you know,whatever your pitch is there, whatever your selling point. And just think as you go down that page, you're also going down the funnel. And ultimately what you're trying to do is get them to a point where they're ready to buy. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: So think of it in that way. And again, there's lots of secondary, tertiary goals, of course, but the primary goal is to get them to buy the book. That's the first goal. If you're selling direct, if you're using a landing page, you probably are selling direct, you're going to get some of that other stuff after the transaction. So. 

Lauren: Oh yeah, actually, we probably should make that point. We probably should have made that point ten minutes ago. The whole value in doing this is because you want all the benefits from selling direct. 

Matt: Yes. 

Lauren: Otherwise you could just send people to the Lulu Bookstore page where your book is, or wherever. Like. 

Matt: So we've seen people create landing pages, go through the trouble to create a landing page – 

Lauren: No. 

Matt: – and then send them to Amazon to buy the book. 

Lauren: No. 

Matt: Again, maybe it's just because I'm feeling spicy today. That is dumb. Don't do that. If you work to get traffic to your site, to your landing page, whatever it is, don't then just redirect them to Amazon. 

Lauren: Please.

Matt: It makes no sense whatsoever. Use Amazon for its own internal discovery purposes. Great. Whatever. But if you're spending that money or that time, or doing that effort that it takes to get people to come to your website or landing page, don't then redirect them over to Amazon. It makes no sense. Please stop doing this.

Lauren: Yes, absolutely. 

Matt: Okay, rant over. 

Lauren: Absolutely, for sure. 

Matt: Speaking of which, driving traffic to a landing page is no different than driving traffic to a website, literally. So again, because these pages serve a singular purpose, it allows you to really customize them to particular audiences or verticals. And that's the beauty of a landing page, too. Oftentimes a website is really aimed at, kind of everybody, you know? You're just trying to attract everybody, to a degree. But landing pages, you can really sort of dig in at a per audience or per vertical level. So acquiring traffic is still going to be the same, but you get to really go a couple clicks deeper into that niche area that you're hoping to attract people from.

Lauren: You can niche down –  

Matt: That's right. 

Lauren: – into that.

Matt: You can't niche down, but you can niche down.

Lauren: Unfortunately, you are right about that.

Matt: I know, but.

Lauren: You know, I asked I polled the room at Momentum.

Matt: Of course you did.

Lauren: And the most upsetting part of the response was that I did not get a like…I said, how, like, raise your hand if you say niche, raise your hand if you say niche. And then there were still people left in the room that hadn't raised their hand for either.

Matt: No opinion? 

Lauren: And I was like 

Matt: Or afraid to speak? 

Lauren: I don't know if it was afraid to speak, no opinion or a worse third option. 

Matt: Oh. 

Lauren: And then I just ran away. After that I was like, okay, never mind. I don't actually want to know. Like no follow up questions. Let's go to lunch. Because I just, I was like, I can no longer…

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Because if I find out that there's a worse third option for pronouncing it then I'm gonna have to leave.

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: And I'd rather go to The Polite Pig, which is what we did. But yeah, if anyone's listening from Momentum and you are one of the people that did not raise your hand for either another option. 

Matt: Booooo. 

Lauren: Why? Why, what's the third option?

Matt: Landing pages are great for running paid ads with –

Lauren. Yes. 

Matt: – because again, you can be very specific about the URL. You can get really crafty with your UTM tags. It's a really great way to again, instead of driving people to your kind of catch-all website or something like that, really be able to take advantage of some analytical tools and things that are out there to help you really understand your spend and just how effective it might be. So driving traffic to a landing page is no different at all. I think where things will differ will be kind of your skill levels and your budget. If I'm building a Shopify store, which I built several, there's a different attention to detail that is needed, because again, you're building something more permanent. In many cases, you're building something where you're trying to appeal to several different audiences. Not always, but in many cases you are. Especially with ecommerce, it just benefits you to capture as many as you can. And so, you know, there is a different skill level needed, or I should say, a deeper level of patience, skill and attention to detail to build a full website.

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: Or a Shopify storefront, versus a landing page that's really designed to accomplish one thing, and that's just to get people to buy your book.

Lauren: Yeah, well, there's probably also…a website is a lot more robust in terms of what you need from it. Including like, like certain functionality that you might want on it. You might need it to do multiple different things at one time. A landing page is pretty straightforward, especially if you're sticking to you're only putting one goal – 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: – into this landing page. There's a lot less pressure on it to be unique or memorable in any way. It is something that can be. It's okay to like, lean into a template or just have like, a nice sleek design that, you know, you're not distracting too much, other than obviously you want the branding and certain copy elements and stuff like that. But it's okay to keep it a more like, simple esthetic, straightforward page as opposed to a website that you might want something that is really designed intentionally.

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: So. 

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: I mean, again, the goal of a landing page is you've got one thing you're trying to accomplish. You're just trying to get them to buy the books, so you don't want to to riddle it with a bunch of cool different functionality and features that you might do with a website or something like that. 

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: So I agree 100%. That being said, this isn't to dissuade people from altering their website to serve as the primary place where you're selling your book. Landing pages are just easier, and it doesn't require that you have to update your website. If you want to update your website and make that the primary place where you're selling, have at it. A lot of these rules will still apply, or things that we're talking about, but, you know, it is a different level of skill. It is a different level of attention to detail. And in some cases it might require you, you know, hiring somebody to help you.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Depending on how intricate your website already is or what platform it's built off of, whether it's WordPress or something like that. So, yeah, all things to consider. But in general, a landing page should be a very simplified, singular, purpose-driven page. And there's a number of tools and other things out there that just make it super easy, almost one or two clicks and kind of done for you. So.

Lauren: Yeah, and we'll get to those don't worry. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Just a couple other things that you want to kind of have prepared and ready to go before you start building out that landing page, whether you're doing it on your own or using some of the tools that we're going to recommend. The more of your actual assets for the page itself that you have ready to go, the easier and more streamlined the process is going to be. So you're definitely going to want to make sure you have whatever visuals you want to include on that page, whether that's your book cover, your author photo, your specific branding, logo, anything like that. There might be some elements that you want to include. Think about…the cover art for Publish & Prosper is the square cover art with the logo on it, and then art skull heads.

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: But I have all of those individual elements on that cover as separate graphics. In addition to that cover art. 

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: I have the logo, I have our individual skulls. Those are elements that I might use pieces of those, not the whole cover art altogether. So if you have your book cover, if you had a designer design it for you, maybe you could have asked for some isolated elements from it. If not, maybe you have those things that you can kind of use Canva or whatever to create them now. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: So that you have those assets available to you. Again, you don't need the page to be reinventing the wheel, but it is, you know, this is a nice opportunity to have some cool design branding elements that you're not worried about…oh, the book cover doesn't exactly align with my color palette for my brand. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Like you can – we've shown it before and I will link it in the show notes again. Justin Moore built out an awesome landing page for Sponsor Magnet. It does align, like, his color palette and everything, the branding for the book does align with Creator Wizard, so it's not like it's too distinct. But his landing page for his book is very specifically branded to match – 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: – the book – 

Matt: And he used a – 

Lauren: – and very intentionally. 

Matt: – custom URL, so the URL is the name of the book, Sponsor Magnet. Yeah, that's a great example. There are a lot of great examples there. 

Lauren: Yeah, of course. 

Matt: And again we'll get to some of the tools you can use. Now Justin I believe actually had a little help with his. But nonetheless it's a great, you know, model if you want to look at his. And there again several others out there and you everybody's probably already come across one or two – 

Lauren: Sure. 

Matt: – that they've seen that they like. Just follow that model. I mean, it's not, it's not meant to be rocket science or landing pages, meant to be quick and easy. Aside from the visuals, you're going to want to have copy, which again, you should have all this stuff already for your other marketing efforts with your book, but access to copy. So your book description, you know, some of the other, USPs or value props that you would use to drive somebody to purchase your book. Reviews, testimonials, any of those types of things that you have. If you don't have those, this is a good time to go and find them, from people or solicit them from people, beta readers or others that you've, that you know have read your book. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: You're going to want to use that copy to drive people down that funnel to hit that purchase button.

Lauren: Yeah, I definitely want to be clear about that, that when we're saying don't distract from the one main goal of the page we're not talking about, you should create a landing page that is literally just a picture of your book, and then a button that says, buy my book. This is still a marketing tool. Like this is not – yes, you've driven people here some way, shape or form, like you've gotten people to this page so they have some idea of who you are, what you do, why they might be interested in this book. 

Matt: Buy book now. 

Lauren: Not even – Just buy now. Just how many? Buy? Just buy. 

Matt: Just a picture of your book and buy now. 

Lauren: Just, you know, if, if that works for you, let us know. But this is your opportunity to really seal the deal with people. This is your opportunity to reiterate and reinforce what your book is about, what problem your book will help them solve, what you're about. And like, why they should trust you. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: So this is still an opportunity for marketing trust building and authority building.

Matt: Another thing you're going to need to make sure you have on that page is the buy button – 

Lauren: Yes. 

– or what is commonly referred to as a CTA or a call to action, so. And yes, please don't just throw a picture of your book up there and a button that says buy this now. There's a whole science around CTA language, by the way. So I would google some of that, or even ChatGPT it. ChatGPT is actually pretty good at coming up with CTA language. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: But nonetheless, you need to have at least one if not multiples there.

Lauren: Yeah. Also a good point. Don't mistake the instruction to not distract from the one goal to mean that you can only have one CTA on the page. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: You can repeat it. Like you're not going to want to have – 

Matt: Well, you should. 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: Because not everyone is going to need the full funnel of information, like there may be people coming to that landing page that they already know they want the book. Give them the button right away to buy it. 

Lauren: Yup. 

Matt: There may be some that need a little bit of convincing, so having a CTA for that first set of info, great. There may be some people that need a little more convincing, so having a second CTA after the next set of value props or information. And then there may be some people that have to get all the way down to the bottom of that funnel before they click that button. So you should have, of course, another one down there. So that's a great point. You don't have to just have one at the bottom of the page or the bottom of your funnel, like people are coming to that page in different stages of readiness to purchase. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: And again, some are ready immediately and some are going to take some convincing, so you're right. Having those CTAs scattered throughout the page is the best way to do that strategically, not just randomly. Just having one, you're probably doing yourself a disservice. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: What else do we need on this page?

Lauren: Maybe the most important thing of all, which is the domain.

Matt: Oh, I thought the book was the most important thing of all. But the domain is very important too. 

Lauren: If you don’t have the book on the page. I don't know what to tell you. 

Matt: Yes, have a picture of your book, but it helps if you have a really cool domain. 

Lauren: Yeah. Yeah. 

Matt: If you don't have one specific to your book, that's okay. But again, try not to do the Fidelity thing and have Lauren Vassallo dot com forward slash new book forward slash fiction forward slash tropes forward slash Disney forward slash Taylor Swift forward slash emo forward slash elder forward slash Italian.

Matt: That's just not a good idea.

Lauren: Somebody go to that website right now and tell me what you find.

Matt: A big fat nothing.

Lauren: Either that or Matt's already bought that domain. And this is just a way of telling us.

Matt: I should. I should. Make it easy. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Remove the friction. The amount of times you'll probably verbally send somebody there or even, you know, just having a digital link. It really is beneficial to have a shorter URL.

Lauren: Yeah. And you know, I will say… I'm assuming that most of the people that are at this point have already gotten past this and they don't need to do this step of it. But I was using ChatGPT for this recently, and it was actually incredibly helpful. I was brainstorming title ideas for a project that I'm working on, and I wanted it to run a complete check of is this, is the domain name available? Is this user name available on certain social media channels? 

Matt: Right. 

Lauren: Are there other brands that have this name or content channels that have a similar name or something like that? What's the availability of this? Am I going to be competing with other people? And it gave me very, very thorough responses and then even gave me like if there was one, that it was like, you know, this actually is already taken, here are some suggested alternatives. Here are different ways… So I think that a lot of people listening to this are already kind of past that point. But if you're not, if you are in a stage where you're still trying to figure out what you're calling all this stuff before you secure a domain, this is a great way to use ChatGPT.

Matt: Yeah. I mean, we we talk about this all the time that AI, generative AI, it is great for these types of things, these these arbitrary tasks where if you didn't have it, then it's you sitting there for ten minutes, thirty minutes, an hour or two hours, whatever it is, however long it takes you being able to get that time back in your day to use for more meaningful things by letting this tool do it for you, I'm all for. I think that's the right thing to do. I don't think either of us are at the point where we condone using AI for creative purposes these days, other than short form content like subject lines or things like that, but letting it do these types of administrative tasks wherever possible, we're going to say, yeah, use it. And double check your results, but it's going to save you time regardless. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: That's a great use of it, I like that.

Lauren: Yeah, absolutely.

[27:03] - Tools and Platforms to Help Build Your Landing Page

Matt: Alright, so. We alluded to the idea that there's tools out there that will help you create landing pages. There's certainly tools and platforms that you can use where, you know, a lot of it is very hands on and manual. And if you're good with that kind of stuff, great, you can use something like Unbounce or some of these other platforms that are specifically for creating landing pages. You can create landing pages through certain email providers, they offer that. I think the more popular route these days are there are actual platforms that are popping up being built, I should say, for the specific purpose of giving people space to sell, whether it's books or something else. But it's essentially a landing page service where you're just going to put in some information, give it some instructions, and the page gets built for you and there's templates there. One of our favorite newer ones, fairly newer ones, is platform called Books dot by, B-Y. So Books By. And that's what they're geared towards is essentially books, obviously, based on the URL. But it's marketed towards authors and it's essentially kind of like an easier stripped down way to create your own Shopify storefront specifically for authors, with print-on-demand plugged in and everything already. So it really makes things easy for you if you just kind of want to say, like, here's my stuff, let me just pick from, you know, one of these, this is a really cool page, everything's done and I'm ready to go.

Lauren: Yeah, it's a really great like, plug and play option. They have a very straightforward just like, step-by-step walkthrough building out your landing page for you. It is designed with authors and self-published authors in mind. So it is designed to be like, we're highlighting the books here, we're helping you build out a landing page specifically to help you sell more books.

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: So definitely check that out. We will link – everything that we recommend from here on out will be linked in the show notes. So make sure you do that. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: And it does integrate with Lulu. So if that's something that you're like, well I still want it to be like my Lulu books that are getting printed and shipped. Absolutely no problem.

Matt: Yeah. I don't know what other integrations they have. I hadn't looked into all of the integrations itself, but again, it's just a really easy tool to use, really well built. And I think it's perfect for not only first time authors or book writers, but authors who have multiple titles. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: It's just a really clean and easy way to sell. So take a look at Books By.

Lauren: Yeah, and try to not fall into the trap that I have where I've just been pronouncing it Booksby in my head the whole time. I know it's not. I know it's – like I can – it's very, it's actually a very like, clear and clever title, Books By. But unfortunately my brain is just: booksby.

Matt: I think your brain is other things too. But booksby it is. Another one that we have come across, more recently, and so far we're fans of it. It's a platform called Stack. However, the URL probably wouldn't have been my first choice. Clever, but maybe not for all the right reasons, but it's S-T-C-K dot me.

Lauren: I didn't know the brand name was Stack until you just said it.

Matt: Oh well you see, that’s the point – Yeah

Lauren: So that’s like – proof positive. I literally didn't know what the name, I was going to let you say it because I didn't know what the name of this brand was.

Matt: Well, again, case in point, I've met the founders. They're great. Again, this was built for creators by creators. They're not just author-focused, 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: They work with a lot of different creators. So musicians, authors, artists, animators, things like that. But it's the same premise. It's having a place to sell your books, your content, on a platform that's going to take care of a lot of that heavy lifting for you with a landing page-like presence for the sales of your content. Again, like Books.by and some of the others, they have different ways of integrating with print-on-demand providers and things like that, and different ways of collecting the money from your transactions and the customer data. But it's another great option, I think. This one and several others, but it's good for, you know, if you're running subscription-type content. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Or things that are potentially behind a paywall podcast, stuff like that. Stack so far is off to a really good start. Again, relatively new, but we're seeing a lot of really good things from them. It is good for people who also publish things serially or pretty regularly, monthly, things like that.

Lauren: Yeah, great for serialized content and great for maybe multimedia content. So if you're tying together like, a newsletter and a podcast. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Or blog and videos or whatever, because it supports – it's not just books that they're supporting. It's all different types of content creation and stuff like that.

Matt: Yeah. I mentioned earlier that some email or ESP providers also offer something like landing page builders or an experience where you can sell products through through there. Kit, I believe has an ecommerce function. Kit, formerly ConvertKit, primarily an email provider platform subscription service, but they do have an ecommerce functionality now, and I'm pretty sure there's an ability – I know for digital, you know, for ebooks and things. And they may already have one for print as well. Carrd I'm not familiar with, but that's something you listed as one C-A-R-R-D.

Lauren: I think that's more of a landing page builder than, email provider. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: Like – 

Matt: Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of different services out there that facilitate landing pages, so.

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: As usual, do your own homework and your own research. We've given you a few, Books By and Stack. You know, we know those founders, we know how those platforms were built. We know they're integrated with Lulu. So we've thoroughly vetted them. They're good options. But there's so many others out there. Just find what works best for you.

Lauren: Yeah. The point of including these ones in here was to remind you that if you already have a solution, you should consider, or you should look into whether or not they have some kind of landing page building tool. Like if you are using Kit as your email service provider and you didn't realize that they have a tool built in already, or the functionality built in already, that you can build a landing page for products within there now you know.

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: So definitely check that out. Depending on what your tech stack already looks like, you might already have access to a landing page tool and you just don't know it.
Matt: Yeah. Or if you're pretty set in whatever it is you're currently using. But there's not, you know, like you said, a pretty quick and easy integration or they don't offer that functionality. If you're somewhat tech savvy or into learning new things, you can use something like Zapier or Zapier, however you decide you want to say it, to bridge that API gap. So the ability to connect two sites, two platforms, whether it's a print-on-demand provider and your website or whatever that might be, that's always a good option as well. We know a few people have done some really creative things using Zapier, Zapier. There's another tool that's similar. I think it's called Make.com? It's another tool that you can use to bridge platforms together. Yeah, I don't know. There's some really cool stuff out there. I would just, I would do my research there.

Lauren: How much do you think they had to pay for that domain name?

Matt: If they hadn't already owned it and been sitting on it for a while than they paid probably a pretty decent penny. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Although I will say gone are the days where domains used to trade hands at 100,200 $300,000 apiece. It's rare, just because there's just so many different variations now. And it is, and this is for the listeners benefit to it is a lot more widely accepted these days to not have a dot com. Whereas back in the day, if you didn't have a dot com, you just weren't trusted, period. Now you can have a dot com or you can have a dot ink, I-N-K, you can have a dot B-Y, by, not booksby but Books By. You know, there are other domain types. And so yeah, I mean, keep that in mind when you're setting yours up.

Lauren: Yeah, absolutely. You can also while these tools are great and they're definitely helpful if you want to use any of them, you can also just go with the tried and true building a page on WooCommerce, Wix, Shopify storefront, whatever it is, and just design a single page. Whether it's something that, like you've already claimed your domain space, but you just haven't gotten around to building the website yet, you know you're going to eventually, but you just haven't yet. Or you just, you know, for right now, you're just going to keep it just one simple page. You can still just build a single page landing page using any of the main hosting platforms and sites.

Matt: Yeah, I mean, that's also a good point. If you know that at some point you do want to build a Shopify store, a Wix website, or whatever, you know, maybe you've got a WordPress thing started already and you want to potentially use WooCommerce to build that in. Yeah, you can do that for sure. It can take a little more time. There's a learning curve there if you don't already know how to do it. It is a lot of drag and drop, so it's kind of easy to that degree. But there's just so much more customization available.

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: And there are more things you have to consider when you're setting up the ecommerce piece yourself and not relying on somebody else to have already taken care of that. But by all means, you know, if that's the path then yeah, get a jumpstart on it, build out an essentially a one page storefront or landing page for that book, and then later you can expand that into being your full on website or home base. But yeah, this wasn't meant to dissuade people at all from –

Lauren: No, definitely not. 

Matt: – doing that. Again, landing pages are just very distinct things. And there are platforms that focus specifically on those. So we wanted to make sure that we cover all those, and give those options. But yeah, I mean, I think we'll always be in favor of people building a full blown website or, you know, a Shopify store or something like that. I don't know if that's always in the cards for everybody, at least not initially, depending on what your goals are for that book too.

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Yeah

Lauren: Again, I had this conversation at Momentum recently. I was asking some of the experts in the room if you know that you have long term goals like I want to start a single channel content channel now, but I know I eventually want to expand it, how soon is too soon to start thinking about securing an email newsletter setup, and securing a website, and securing this? And they were like, it's never too soon. 

Matt: Correct. 

Lauren: Even if you don't launch them now. Like, if you know you're going to build a website a year down the line, there's no reason to not secure that now and at least have something there. And if that something is a single buy button for your book until you manage to build out the rest of it. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: That's not a bad thing.

Matt: In general, for sure. I mean, the sooner you secure those things, the better. They're getting snapped up at a pretty record pace right now, but. And then there's a lot of AI fakes and scamming going on where they're also buying up URLs and domains to use, and social media handles and all those things. So yeah, if, you know, even if you have narrowed it down to three names or brand names you're going to use, go secure those. They're not expensive. And if you don't end up using them later, you can not renew them and get rid of them. But yeah, it's never too soon for those things. 

Lauren: For sure. 

Matt: Yeah. 

[37:15] - Tips to Optimize Your Landing Page

Lauren: Alright. Just a couple of tips to keep in mind when you're optimizing your landing page, whether it's as you're building it out or after you've built it and you're maintaining it. We've had several people recently make the claim that SEO is dead. Do you care to weigh in on that? Have you been one of those people?

Matt: No. And I don't think we need to go on this path. 

Lauren: We don’t. 

Matt: Because I will get on a soapbox for sure. SEO is not dead. At all. And what I would say to that also, and what a lot of people would agree with, is even if SEO is dying, which, okay, that's…there's an argument to be made there for sure, if you look at the future of how people are searching and finding information. By the way, AI is still a fraction of what people are doing with search on Google. Still, nonetheless, the ways that ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, all of these tools that we’re using, the way that they serve up results to you, the way that they go and gather that information, how it's found, right, through their LLMs and otherwise, is not completely different from how you would optimize something, a piece of content or a website or something, for traditional Google search and for Google to index you and find those things. So whether or not SEO itself, as an acronym or as a particular way of life, is dead or dying, the principles of that still apply if you're trying to get ChatGPT to pick up your content.

Lauren: Yes, and we have done an episode on this, so I will link that in the show notes. 

Matt: That’s right. 

Lauren: A beautiful new episode just bloomed in front of my eyes listening to you talk about that, though. That's excellent.

Matt: I’m a little worried about that.

Lauren: You should be. But yes. So regardless of where you fall on that and that particular debate, the point stands that optimizing your landing page, both in the colloquial term of it and in the technical term of it, is a good idea, so. 

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: I'll link that episode in the show notes, where we talk about what we know about optimizing your content or your website or whatever for discoverability and generative AI. So keep an eye out for that one in the show notes. But just some things that you're going to want to do regardless of how you feel one way or another about that. Remember, this is a landing page that has one goal in mind. Keep it simple. Do not distract from that. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Keep it straightforward. I don't care how much copy you are or are not putting on the page, I don't care how many CTAs, distinct blocks of the same CTA, cause again, remember just one, but multiple times repeated throughout the page. I don't care how many times you're doing that. Keep it clear, simple, direct, what the focus of the page is. Do not distract your potential shoppers. Do not send them somewhere else. Do not give them a reason to leave.

Matt: Yeah. Sometimes I think people will get a little tempted to… Oh, just in case they decide they don't want the book. Let me also offer these other things. 

Lauren: Nope.

Matt: That entire page should be dedicated to the book. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Or whatever product it is you're trying to sell, but we're talking about books. Don't distract them. Don't get distracted yourself and think, I need to offer these other things. If they want other things from you, they'll find them. That page needs to be dedicated to that book.

Lauren: Yes. And that goes with one of our next points about using visual storytelling. This is a great – we've said this already, this is a great opportunity for you to kind of like, push people through the funnel, sometimes quite literally, where you are telling a story as they're scrolling down the page. And there's a lot of great ways to do that. We've seen a lot of really cool ways people will be using graphics to do that. People will be using fun charts or like, flow charts and things like that. But if you are going to use visual storytelling that includes video content or something like maybe some behind the scenes or social proof or something, you have to embed that content in the landing page. Don't provide a link to watch this YouTube video to learn more about this or…

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Like, go click on this to go to my Instagram and see this Reel about this. You're sending people away. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: You're distracting from your point. So visual storytelling is a great thing to do with the landing page. But – 

Matt: Simplify. 

Lauren: Keep them on the page. 

Matt: Yeah.  

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Testimonials, social proof, those types of things. Reviews if you have them, independent reviews, whatever – you just, you're trying to build trust. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Like with anything people buy, as you referred to, stories, they don't buy products. Tell them why, you know, what's the story behind this? Why should they buy this? And that goes a hand – or in hand with just being intentional with what you say with your copy. So try not to generalize too much. Be very specific. People get hung up on SEO, or generative AI, like we – just write what you feel is specific to the book that you want them to buy. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: That's it. Don't worry about who's indexing what. If you write true and sincere copy that reflects that book and the value that it brings to a reader, whether that's for entertainment purposes or not, you're going to be fine. Don't get hung up on oh, is this going to be good for Google? Is just going to be good for ChatGPT? Or is Claude not going to? Don't worry about any of that. Just write really good, intentional, simplified copy. 

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: And be done with it.

Lauren: We actually, in addition to that discoverability in generative AI episode, we also did one fairly recently about maximizing your first impression. 

Matt: Yup.

Lauren: A whole section of that was talking about your website. But I think that everything that we talked about in that section is also applicable to a landing page. So I'll definitely link that one in the show notes too. But just that idea for sure about don't try to lie to people about what your product is. Don't try to be so clever and cute that they're not clear on what it is that you're selling them, or why they should be interested in it. This is your opportunity to be intentional. Both because it's going to help you optimize your landing page, and also because it's going to help you build trust – 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: – with the people that are on that page.

Matt: Yeah. You have in here another tip, which is offer incentives. I would personally say optional, and I say that because some people are good at that and some are bad at that. Not a lot of people know how to structure a well positioned incentive. You typically end up giving away your margin on the product, and especially if this is just a single book thing, if you're not, there's nothing really to go along with it, you're just offering a book. You don't have a whole lot of wiggle room there, so. I think incentives can be good. Now, that being said, I understand they don't always have to be, you know, a percentage discount based incentive, it can be something completely different, right? Buying the book directly from me will also get you a free downloadable PDF checklist of how to…whatever it is you wrote your book on, right? In my book, you get a checklist for how to build your ecommerce store from the ground up. So make sure you've done these things. So there are things you can offer as an incentive for them to buy the book directly from you on your landing page. It doesn't always have to be, oh, get 10% off if you buy a truck from me. And in fact, I would probably discourage people from doing that a lot.

Lauren: Agreed.

Matt: I would only do it maybe for certain things, or align it with something, like if there's an event coming up that you're speaking at, you know, hey, 10% off because of, you know, Momentum 2025. And special bonus, if you're going to Momentum, bring your book up to me. Not only will I sign it, but I'll give you a free…

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: – PDF checklist that only people who do this will get this, or whatever. I think those kinds of incentives are pretty cool, but it does take a little bit of thought ahead of time before you're building the landing page to have that incentive in place, that's going to make sense.

Lauren: I think another incentive is, sometimes it can just be as simple as this, is transparency. One of my favorite authors has a new book coming out in about a month, and I have not preordered it yet because it's only available to preorder on Amazon. But if she has, on her website, hey, you can preorder it directly for me and you are cutting out the Amazon, you are coming directly to me, I get all of the profit from it, and you're supporting an author that you know and love. That's incentive. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: That's incentive for me. And I know that as somebody who works in this industry, I know that that's what I'm holding out and waiting for. So I don't need her to explain it to me. But the average consumer might not know that. So if you have the opportunity on your landing page to say, hey, I know you could go buy this somewhere else, but if you buy it from me, you're supporting a small business owner, you're supporting a creator, you're supporting, you're doing whatever.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: And that's really beneficial to me.

Matt: Yeah. I agree. 

Lauren: Whatever it is. And then last but not least, we mentioned this earlier – and then I promise we'll wrap it up and get out of here. But while the main goal of your page, we are assuming, was to buy your book, and that was obviously a huge part of it. And we reiterated over and over and again, don't distract from the goal. The main goal of selling direct is that you want access to your customer data. So the whole reason that you would, in theory, want to be doing this is so that you can be collecting your customer data, so that you can continue to build a relationship with them. So do not forget to ask them for their email address.

Matt: Yeah, I mean, honestly that's just something you should put at the bottom of every page you build, is an email capture. Whether it's your website, whether you have five different landing pages because you have five different books, it doesn't matter. But its best practice, its standard practice, I would put an email capture box at the bottom of every page you build. Even a landing page where again, as you just alluded to or didn't allude to, said very explicitly, it has one purpose. Don't distract, don't give them other things to do, other things to buy, other things to download, you just want them to buy your book. Still, put an email capture at the very bottom of the page. Just in case they don't purchase right away, but they may say, well, you know, I'm going to sign up for the newsletter or whatever and see how things go with that. But yeah, I mean, if you do get them to buy, then you're going to get the email address. So, you know, again, sticking to your primary goal is not a bad thing. But I would say for consistency sake, always have an email capture box at the bottom of the page. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

[46:40] - Wrap Up

Matt: So this episode wasn't to convince people not to build websites or use websites. It really was meant to help you understand that there's a ladder when it comes to ecommerce, right? Like, the top of the ladder is having a fully fleshed out Shopify store or WordPress site where you've built in all these different ecommerce features and functionality and you're selling all your products direct and capturing all this information. But at the bottom of the ladder where you're starting, there are several rungs where you can do things a little bit at a time to continue dipping your toes into the direct sales world. And landing pages are a really easy one, especially at book launch or for pre-order stages, and for people who only have one book. Or again, just want to dip their toes into selling direct and not go full speed just yet.

Lauren: I think this is a really good middle ground for a lot of people, or a really good entry point for a lot of people. Or maybe just try it. Any of the things that we talked about, whether that was having like a short and sweet URL that you can share with people on air or in a video or something, or maybe you are going to some specific events this year that you want to be able to say, hey, scan this QR code and go to my landing page to buy my book –

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: – instead of distracting with your whole website or anything like that, this could be a fun experiment.

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Try it out, see what different things you can do and build. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: And have fun with it.

Matt: And if you have any questions, you can always email us.

Lauren: Yeah, please do, podcast@lulu.com. You can leave us comments on Lulu social media or on YouTube. I heard some feedback that despite the fact that it says our Spotify comments are on, that it wasn't overtly obvious how to actually comment on Spotify. So if anyone has tried to leave a comment and couldn't figure it out, I'm sorry. I'm giving people instructions and then not making it clear how to do it.

Lauren: I will figure that out. But in the meantime, you can always reach out to us on any other social platforms or YouTube or at our email address. 

Matt: Yeah. Cool.

Lauren: Yeah. So, thanks for listening. Thanks for building out a page with us, and we'll be back next week with another new episode. 

Matt: Yep. 

Lauren: See you later.

Matt: Later.