Building Landing Pages & Video Content

Adrian 0:05
scramble founders. Hi, everybody. My name is Adrian from Clean voice and our mash from Sparrow. What we want to do is we want to set ourselves some goals for the next two weeks. And I know about you mash, but I'm into video content right now I never upload it, I think for my company, a YouTube video or any kind of video. And I guess you actually do that on a daily basis actually mash is that right?

Mash 0:35
Yeah, so I mean, not on YouTube, but I do whenever I have a chance, go on Instagram and share my daily life on there as much as I can. So if that counts as video content, then I'm probably one of your top content creators in Canada. So

my goal for the next two weeks is to record several videos for Clean voice, more specifically, onboarding videos on how the tool works. And just in general, more use more tutorials on how my software works. And yeah, I've got myself some Lightning Lightning, not lightning, sorry, lights. Got myself a green screen. And yeah, I'll just start recording and set my goal to edit out quickly as possible launch it and not procrastinate on it because like, I don't like it maybe could have better because one is like, you know, you Instagram I guess like that's like stories. What are you referring to? Or what were you referring to mash?

Yeah, Instagram Stories. That's where I'm usually active. I'm also on Twitter. So I'm trying my best to keep the folks entertained. But when it comes to Instagram, I'm more actively engaged. And I try to make videos of what happens in my everyday life, whether that's me dropping an ice cream on the floor, or just me walking into an office wearing a suit, whatever I can I try to, I try to keep things interesting.

Adrian 1:56
So what's your goal for the next two weeks or next week.

Mash 2:01
So what's been happening with Sparrow is recently we changed up the business model, we are moving away from founder mentorship calls, to more structured startup coaching, where we're bringing on fractional CMOS, growth coaching sessions, grow training sessions and agency services. And we are packaging all of this together as being a growth partner for startups. And so it's good to plan these things out in the back end. But in order to see how the viewers and the audience will react to your offerings, you need to put that on the landing page and communicate these services over to people, we need to get the word out. And so my goal for the next week, Adrian is to update our landing page, so that it clearly defines the new offerings that we're bringing over to Sparrow. That's number one. And it's going to be a challenge, because it's not just the landing page, there's going to be sub landing pages as well when people click links on the page. So that's going to take me a few hours to do which I'm looking forward to. Secondly, I am supposed to be having user interview sessions. So in order to again, boil down the service offerings for Sparrow, it's advisable to be talking to startup founders in advance asking them how they look at growth, what are their growth challenges, etc. And so over the next week, I'll be booking at least two to three sessions with startup founders to understand how they're growing. What are their challenges? What could make their growth journey much, much easier? And how exactly would they want someone like Sparrow to help them grow? So these are the two challenges number one being the landing page edit, and number two, having user interview sessions over the next week? What do you think, Adrian? Do you think I can, I can hit my goals bow.

Adrian 3:43
So I can tell you a little secret about Clean voice website. Most of the content, it's actually like the landing page itself is mostly AI generated. So like all the copies see there is like mainly AI, what I've used except the header on my landing page, but like most content is that and when I say con, they mean like the landing page text. So if you want to take some shortcuts, definitely you could try one of those AI tools, because they're like quite good nowadays, when it comes to short form text, something which is not more than 300 words. So maybe that could help you speed up the process in case you're uncreative. But yeah, you still need to define your like, if you already know your structure, okay, this is my landing main landing pages of my sub landing pages. And I know what you want to communicate, then yeah, you could quickly turn that out. The question is then, okay, you can get the copy down. But how about design? Are you comfortable with that part of the process?

Mash 4:41
Yeah, I have a very good eye for design, so I'm not really too worried. Plus, I've also looked at dif several startup landing pages for SAS usually, and I'm aware of the different components that go into a landing page the header sub header, social proof CTA and then feature one feature two CTA feature three feature for CTA it's usually the same template for high converting pages, I find what I'm mostly worried about, or what I'm least worried about as a design, what I'm more worried about is using the right keywords and appealing to the right problems that my target persona has. And so that'll be interesting because it's a lot of, I can talk a lot, I can write a lot, but it's about being concise and using keywords that vibe with your target audience. So that's what I'm worried for.

Adrian 5:25
So your issue is actually not writing the landing page, your issue is to do the keyword research necessary for the landing pages because like, okay, the main landing page has, I guess, your main topics, but then after the sub landing pages have to cover the other ones where you don't you still have to research on that, right?

Mash 5:42
Yeah, correct. And yeah, if you have an href subscription agent, hook me up,

Adrian 5:47
I don't buy you some years for keyword research on legit so I can give you my account on keywords anywhere, everywhere. Or it's like, oh, I, I pay like $10 once and I use like a credit based and I got like shit ton of credits and the it's like cheap and you could do for me, it was quite useful. But in there's also another one called Low fruits.io. Which basically shows like like longtail words.

Mash 6:20
Yeah, low hanging fruit. That's, that's an interesting name. That's interesting. We should be sponsored by them for mentioning their names on our podcast.

Adrian 6:26
I think he's a butcher founder as well. So I'm not sure if that's on the budget. Okay, but a free shout out, you know, free tools, which I've so Keywords Everywhere is basically almost free. And the low fruits like those to give you somewhat decent, you know, keyword tool, of course, you cannot compare with H refs. And unfortunately, they removed trial, but no $7 for seven days. So yeah, that's kind of unfortunate. But, and the user interviews, I guess, you already got them booked?

Mash 6:56
No, I don't have them booked. But I know, it's really not tough to get these interviews with indie founders. Because more or less every indie founder loves to talk, I also run a community of founders. So it's really easy for me to reach out and ask for 2030 minutes of someone's time I've already done it. The problem is the kind of people I want to reach, they're making over a million in annual revenue. So those kinds of interviews would be a bit harder to book, but my mentor who I have a call within three hours, tells me that mash right now it's for you, you should focus less on trying to get calls with the best of the best and just keep getting to the cadence get into the frequency and the habit of booking five calls a week. And then you'll slowly start going up the ladder, but for now, try to initiate the habit of having these user interviews and this guy's built like million dollar businesses. So I think he knows what he's talking about. So yeah, something for me to work on, not worried about booking the calls, it's just about knowing who I want to talk to. That's the problem.

Adrian 7:56
One week has passed, and now we're back. So mash, tell me how they went with your website,

Mash 8:02
home. And let me get you started. So I originally thought that building on the landing page should be a very fast item, maybe six hours of me sitting in front of a computer. But the main problem that I realized was, there is a quick way to build web pages for sure, however, to really make the content vibe with your audience, and make it convincing enough for them to learn more about you to have 20 minutes to talk with you. It takes time. And it takes a lot of your creativity. And so I could sit down for six hours in front of a computer, but my creative side will not function for six hours straight. So I had to take a lot of breaks, I had to look back at my data and what the customers usually do on my website, etc. And then so far, Agent landing pages built out 50%, five, zero, the other 50% would be to complete the primary landing page. But then also complete the sub landing pages when someone clicks to learn more. And so, you know, an example would be one of the things we're offering is a fractional CMO. But then the landing page only has three sentences about it, because I don't want to overwhelm the user. But when they click learn more, it takes them to another page that's specifically designed for startups who would want a CMO. So I have to consider their funding levels, their revenue levels, what goals they're looking for, what are the roadblocks that they have when they don't want to buy suite cmo services? Right, so a lot of things to consider. That's why it's taking a while so far. One thing Adrian that I think some of our audiences would really benefit from is the template for landing pages. I have spent way too many hours trying to find the right hack the right template the right way to build a landing page. The one single source of truth I found was somebody who helped build hundreds of landing pages across several of the biggest companies of our time. And the template for his landing page is extremely simple. And he says, Look guys, this template works Do not deviate from this template unless you have extremely good reason to. And the way it works is number one is your navigation bar at the top, you know, pretty straightforward. Number two is your hero, the hero is where you put your header and your sub header. Right after that you put in your social proof, if you have some, so people who have used your tube for free or they paid for it, there are beta users doesn't matter where you are, put up some social proof. So header, sub header, social proof, call to action. And the call to action has to be very specific. It can be Oh, learn more, it can be very generic, it has to be hella specific, so that the user knows exactly what they're getting or not getting. For me. It's something like click here to know how advisor can actually help you something along those lines, very specific headline, social proof, CTA, then you go back to the features on your SAS. So feature one, feature two, you hit them again with the CTA. And I think you'll repeat that again and hit them with another CTA. But the whole point is get the idea across in the first half, put in some proof so that the user feels less of a roadblock to participate with you tell them exactly what they're getting. When they click the button. Remind them again, what features you have put in a few social proof if you want looks very beautiful. And then again, you hit him with another CTA, which stands for call to action so that they know exactly what they will be getting next, right. So that's the template that I'm sticking to easy to talk about very difficult to build, although I am using a no code platform. But it's a lot of psychological thinking that I have to do to convince the audience members. But now 50% on landing page, that's the update.

Adrian 11:35
Just want to add that during the show notes, we're going to add a link to that template, I think I use the same template format, which you are using. Just want to say one more thing about landing pages, I basically just copied that say the structure of va.io. And they're basically like a video editing tool. In essence, what they do is okay, sure landing pages, similar structure, as you mentioned, manage. But when it was interesting is how they do the sub landing pages. And what they did is that they basically created for every single feature, which they offer in their SAS, literally every feature with the right keyword in in the slug. And yeah, they just created like lot of landing pages for every feature where they're describing the value. They also have like loads of related keywords. So like, let's say, video editing, then they have like short video, like how to edit videos. So like all related cluster topics are done in that particular term page itself. And I guess in your case, your goal is to drive bookings, right people to hop on a call with you, like that's your main call to action. So I guess, for you is like how do you balance like, okay, clustering topics like reaching out of keywords from let's say, fractional CMO? That will be like the main keyword, which you're gonna rank for. We have to balance out also how building those keywords related to the cluster of topics in order to rank also for those on Google.

Mash 13:09
Yeah, yeah. You just gave me a few ideas. Yep, you definitely got me got me thinking about some more ideas for my landing pages. One last thing I want to add is something I learned Canva does really good at is when you go on canva.com. They have so many things they offer, but they also have personas for the things they offer. So I think if I'm not mistaken, they'll have canva.com/something Something slash business cards, then they'll have something something business cards, or like a persona business card slash designers business class slash company owners business classes, right? So they have personas, and they have products. So they it's almost like you're multiplying the personas by the number of features or products that Canva has, and all of a sudden you have 200 pages out there that are that have exactly the quantity of content that people are looking for. Right. So I think that's called programmatic SEO, I'm not sure. But it really, really drives people more and more excited because they're like, Wait a second. It's not just business cards, business cards built for me, I'm the persona I better use these cards. Yeah, so thanks, man. Great, great insight over there. Thank you.

Adrian 14:12
So for myself, and I've recorded my first video, however I have in it edited completely. In essence, the video is just a How To Use clean voice. And now since I've forever made that more complicated by adding more features, and there are more steps now. I found I feel like they need to really explain those steps to people since if you have multi steps in your app, then you need to make some onboarding content for that. That's the main focus. The way I did is that I first put a green screen behind me I got What a shitty lighting lighting which is very unfortunate since it looks horrible, mainly because of the lighting right? And I just wrote a script like one minute script of I would like to say, practice it, practice it, practice it, and then start recording the video. Furthermore, I've used this like an external microphone to record what I'm trying to say. And that microphone is put like under me, but not visible in the camera, but close enough so it can get some audio from my voice. And that went, Okay, like, I repeated myself, I stopped myself, let's say several times, but the whole process didn't took so long. So in half an hour, I had the start until and clean recording. Problem was, is that once I recorded, I looked at the footage, and I became, for the first time really insecure in myself. So I don't care too much higher look so much. But now, like I saw, at least in that particular angle, which I recorded, I had a double chin, very, like strong looking double chin is like, Oh, my God, that's horrible. And yeah, it was very interesting to see like the psychological effect, like I would just doubt myself all day about myself, and very interesting how my mind affected myself just because of that one thing. Nevertheless, for the video, I use also a particular structure. So I wrote, I wrote the script, but I also drew a storyboard. Yeah, and that's what the storyboard is, is that you draw like every scene, what you would have to have in your video. And the way I approached it is that I did a similar way as h refs does it. So what they're doing is that they record a video with the text, only with the speaker on the camera. And that's it. Now, that's very boring, right? Just the person talking one minute in front of cameras boring. So what I did is that is there any visual things we can add like P cards or animations in order to make the content more engaging, and evil to make the points more obvious, but also, you have only 10 seconds to keep the person engaged on YouTube. So you have to add some nice cards here and there. So it doesn't get monotone. And in the storyboard, you could describe these things. So I described like, okay, when I describe step two, I will have, let's say, an animation, which will describe certain aspects of keen voice. And yeah, currently, I am at the stage of not putting during those animations. So using some vector graphic animation tools to make those animations. And yeah, that takes a bit of time. Once I've gone done that, I will have done my video. I also recorded like the audio, I also did some post processing with the voice. That especially if you offer a product really targeted to podcasters, then you expect that the videos which I create should be also high quality, at least from the audio perspective senses like dude, like, what is this shitty audio man, it's like you selling me this product about podcasting, but you can even record decent audio from yourself. Then I've been nerding with like the audio, trying to make it sound perfect. And like I just like gave up because I wasn't happy with what I wanted, like my standards. But yeah, I will just accept that it will be just good enough. And hopefully customers don't look too much deeply on that. I hope they just don't care. Like what I would assume it would happen. And yeah, that's my week so far. Mash. Yeah.

Mash 18:37
Yeah, no, no, that's really interesting. I was just thinking through some of the things that you mentioned. Yeah, I find that find the podcast. Really funny. But I think I think it's interesting. And I will be very keen to see how the first video turns out after you have done all the editing and everything. Because someone like me, who is tech savvy can come with you with a perspective and then what other people who might not be as tech savvy or as familiar with your tool might have a completely different set of questions, right. Or it's confusions or not some of their fantasies, but like you get it so it'd be interesting. I can't wait to see that or like that'd be that'd be really cool.

Adrian 19:13
Yeah, tomorrow I will continue editing so since it's not only the video I also improved my app a bit and yeah, there will be when the new app comes out. Also the new video go well together. Okay. So mash. Thank you for coming today to our first Yeah, thank you for listening to scrambled podcasts no sorry scrambled founders. But definitely scrambled podcasts yours as well. Yeah, definitely. Scramble founders.