You Can Start Building Your Personal Brand Business Online, Without A Website
Housekeeping: Before we dive in, please note this post is about how to generate revenue online without needing to build out a full website. This post is not about how to grow your following or build a personal brand with offline methods. Now that we’ve ironed that out… lets get started.
Contrary to popular belief, you don’t actually NEED a website to start building your personal brand and generating big revenue online. You can (and should) generate 5 or 6-figures in revenue before you need a full website.
The truth is, your website homepage actually drives less business results than you’d think. Most people don’t realize this…
Your homepage may do a great job at creating a first impression, and presenting yourself with your best foot forward… but, is that even the page people are ACTUALLY seeing first? Or are people coming to your site through your blog posts and other content / pages on your website first?
And, if your homepage actually IS the first page people are seeing… is that page doing more to drive business results than just making a good first impression?
Most people spend a lot of money on a personal brand website that is not strategically created to generate business results. It’s essentially just a really pretty digital brochure. When was the last time you made a buying decision based on a brochure (digital or not)?
Most of your sales are going to come from a marketing funnel regardless of whether or not you have a pretty website, or even have a website at all…
So, why not just start with a marketing funnel?
That’s exactly what a former personal client of ours did!
Today he’s one of the top personal brands in the Personal Development space. When he was getting started on his journey, he simply built a series of basic marketing funnels, and drove traffic to landing pages. He didn’t really even have a professional personal brand website until about 2014 or 2015!
(We’re not talking the 90’s here, this is recent!)
He didn’t have a professionally built website until well after he had already generated over $10M in revenue, and had been building his personal brand for 7+ years!
Now I’m not promising that going to get those same results, I don’t know you or your background… but what if you were able to get 1/10th, or even 1/100th of those results? That’s still a nice chunk of change.
The point being… you can start generating revenue online with just a simple marketing funnel – no website needed!
What is a marketing funnel you might ask?
Well, a marketing funnel is a series of automated touch points (usually delivered via email) that add value through education over a short period of time. After you provide helpful free content, you then provide an opportunity for people to take a step further and pay for more information or for your direct help.
The first touch point of a marketing funnel typically starts with some type of free content. That is usually a piece of online content, video, blog, podcast, or even an offline touch point like a speaking engagement. That first touch point should have a call-to-action that directs people to a related landing page. That landing page will collect your potential client’s name and email address, and automatically send them some more information to get to know you, and your products/services.
The following touch points usually consists of a series of emails that link to more free and valuable content, or video pages on your website. The content should share your expertise and help them resolve an issue they are most likely facing.
Marketing “guru’s” call this a lead magnet, and Frank Kern coined this marketing strategy as the “Results In Advance” approach to marketing, because you are helping them get results before they ever pay you a dollar.
Starting out, your “website” can be a series of single landing pages designed to capture leads and guide people through a marketing funnel (several other touch points), designed to generates interest and desire in your products & services.
The number one reason why people fail to make money online isn’t because they don’t have a great website. It’s because they fail to get a compelling offer in front of the right person at the right time.
You don’t need to have a fancy website in order to get a compelling offer in front of the right person.
All you need is a simple landing page and a basic marketing funnel.
Next Steps to Get A Landing Page Up
Your landing page should address a specific and core need, challenge, or pain point that you know your target client is experiencing. Then on that landing page, you offer access to free content that will help them take large steps towards resolving their pain. The content should be “gated” – meaning that the prospect should have to provide at least their name and email address in order to receive the free content.
Leveraging an online tool like LeadPages is the fastest way to get a simple landing page up. They have dozens of templates to choose from, and you simply add your own images and text. Here is an example of a landing page we created on LeadPages.
Then you’ll want to use a marketing automation tool like ActiveCampaign to be able to collect your customer’s email address and send out a series of value-based emails automatically.
For those pieces of content that you’re going to send out to that new potential customer, you can use LeadPages to create individual pages with a hosted video, or written content.
This post isn’t meant to be a step-by-step tutorial on all the technical implementation of building a funnel, rather, it’s meant to open up your mind to the idea that you don’t need a full-blown website in order to start making money online. There could be a better way!
You can literally do it with a handful of pages built on LeadPages, and a simple marketing automation tool like ActiveCampaign.
A few years ago, we created a digital product called “Course Accelerator” teaching people how to build a successful online course. The website for our course was just a simple one-page landing page. At the time we created the page on WordPress, but now you can create something almost identical just by choosing a LeadPages template, and adding a few extra sections with their page builder.
Don’t over think this online marketing stuff.
The only things that matter are quality content, creating the right products, and getting an irresistible offer in front of the right people.
The more you do those 3 things, the more success you will have.
If you’d like to stay up-to-date on the latest tools, strategies, and best practices for building your personal brand, be sure to join our private, Personal Brand Builders Community. It’s free… and awesome!
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