Congrats, you’re ready to launch your business!

…But, you’re literally just at the beginning. 

For most business owners, getting clients from the get-go is a top priority. Many of my website clients are entering health and wellness coaching and they do not have a lot of start up money. If you’re in a position where you can’t afford a full website build right now – don’t worry! You can get started with a simple landing page so that you can start to collect emails from your future clients.

Your first two priorities are hustling at in-person networking events and other opportunities to get clients and creating an opt-in gift for your landing page so that…

1. You can refer people you meet ‘in real life’ back to your website to get your free resource so that they end up on your mailing list
2. Anyone who finds you via organic traffic or social media will provide their email address

I go further into the importance of gathering emails for business in this post.

What is a landing page?

A landing page is essentially a single page website that drives one action – in this case, signing up for an email list. You might also build out landing pages to sell individual products and services down the line, but for now your goal is to lead people to your email list.

How do you set one up?

There are software solutions for creating a landing page without a website, but since you are going to build a website for your business down the line, your best option is to go with a website set up. This way, you’ll get your landing page now and you’ll have started the process of setting up your website so that all you’ll need to do is add pages and change formatting (or hire someone to do this for you) when you’re ready.

If you’re interested in learning more about what it looks like to work with a website designer, you can read about that in this post.

Starting Your SquareSpace Account

Head to SquareSpace and sign up for an account. When you hit ‘Get Started’, SquareSpace will ask a few questions to figure out which website template is best for you. Answer the questions to the best of your ability and go ahead and pick a template, but don’t get too precious about it. You actually won’t be using it yet (and it can be changed later).

Creating Your Cover Page

Once you get to the website, click on Pages on the lefthand side. 

Once there, add a new page by clicking the “+” sign next to where it says ‘Main Navigation’. You can choose to use a blank page or a template depending on your skill level.

For SEO purposes and Google search results, its best to name this page with your name or business name.

Now you can style this page any way that you want, but the simpler the better. A good opt-in landing page requires no scrolling so add your text, a bit about what’s coming, and then add in a Newsletter block.

Finally, you’ll need to add in this little bit of code using the code injection feature to remove the header and footer from your landing page.

This is the code you’ll add in: 

<style>.header, #footer-sections {display:none!important}</style>

This way you don’t need to worry about styling those portions of your website yet!

Setting Up Your MailChimp Account & Lead Magnet Delivery

In your free MailChimp account you will have one Audience, and this is your email list. To make sure that everyone who lands on your list receives your free gift, you will need to create an automation.

First, hover over Automate at the top and select Email.

Then, select “Welcome Email” and follow the steps to fill out the subject. When you get to the email design, you can edit the logo and body text. You should also be sure to update the social media links with your own URLs!

To connect your lead magnet, you will need to add a button, and then configure the button to deliver a file. This is all pretty straightforward, but if you need extra guidance, you can watch my YouTube video on this here:

Once you have uploaded the file to the button you can publish your automation and set it to start delivering!

Connecting Your MailChimp Account

Next, you’ll need to connect your MailChimp account by going back to the landing page in SquareSpace. Go back into the page by hitting Edit at the top left, and then select the Newsletter block to edit it.

1. Go to Storage – here you will usually see that it’s connected to SquareSpace campaigns.
2. Hit the little “x” by SquareSpace Campaigns to delete it
3. Select the connect another account option instead. You will see MailChimp listed there – select that.
4. You will be prompted to login to your MailChimp account
5. Once logged in, you will see a lists option appear in the Newsletter settings – select your list or “audience” name there.
6. Hit save!

Now MailChimp is connected to your sign up form in SquareSpace.

Making It Live

Important! Before you publish your website, you should make sure to set your landing page as the homepage. Next, you can go ahead and hit publish to at the bottom to make your website live.

You will need the Basic Business plan to enable MailChimp, so you can go ahead and select that. Once you pay, you will need to connect your domain name.

Oila! Now you have a landing page set up to capture emails and grow your list. 

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Pssst… Have Skillshare? I have all about this. Check that out here.

Ready for a landing page but don’t want to do it yourself? I’ve got you covered. Get in touch to learn about pricing for simple pages like this.