🧲 3 contrarian lead gen moves

To sell, you need leads—and that means a landing page.

Most landing pages are either boring or overly focused on personal branding

But how can we stay away from these common pitfalls?

I studied the landing pages of Justin Welsh, Codie Sanchez, and Jay Clouse.

Here are three tactics from their landing pages to boost your conversions—no personal branding required.

Hide yourself: Justin Welsh’s ninja move

Justin Welsh has a personal brand empire. Last year, his one-person business crossed $7.5M.

Saying he’s well-known online among creators is an understatement.

On his landing page, he could put a large photo of himself with the unspoken message:

“Hey, it’s me. You’ve seen me around. Trust me. Give me your email.”

And that’s exactly what many big-name creators do:

Instead, when you land on his website, Justin is nowhere to be seen. Above the fold, he's only mentioned on the menu (just so you won’t feel lost).

The copy is all about ‘You’ and ‘Us’:

• What you can achieve (with your skills)

• Why it would be cool for you to join us

In a previous version, he was using a big picture of himself.

I think he switched to this new landing page to make it clear that you’re not there for him. He is there for you.

That’s a powerful way to generate trust and goodwill in new leads.

Put a number on how simple it is, like Jay Clouse

Selling educational products to creators is tough.

Everybody wants to do it. Standing out is not just hard. It’s a continuous battle.

So how does Jay Clouse generate new leads? He tells you:

• Growing can be predictable (“down to a science”)

• You can measure how simple it’ll be

Important caveat: making big goals seem easy to achieve is effective only if you can deliver on your bold promise.

Make sexy what’s unsexy, like Codie Sanchez

On her landing page, she has a clear CTA:

You immediately know that you’re in the right place if you:

• Don’t care about SaaS, Crypto, AI, and all the other trending business models

• Want to buy a (boring) business

The boring part is not clearly stated in the copy. However, it is present in all her content, leading to the landing page.

Plus, the background image features the text “We do the work.” This message goes against the four-hour workweek ethos and the desire to automate and delegate, which remain strong among digital entrepreneurs.

Like Justin Welsh and Jay Clouse, she targets people who want to profit from their businesses. But she offers a different path to success.

She turned something everybody was trashing into something valuable and exciting.

If you can offer a different solution to a common problem, leads will flock to you.

Ah, and don’t be afraid to embrace your uniqueness. For a long time, Codie’s landing page mentioned some variation of “Free your mind. Build your bank account.”

“Buy a business” is way punchier and more consistent with her message.

That’s it for now, everyone! We’ll meet again next week to discuss some more of this!

Feel free to reply to this email. It goes directly to me.

Cheers,

Yannick