Hey, wonderful you! If you run a business – especially a service-based one – you know your landing page is a critical piece of your marketing and sales system. Is it doing its job?

The key to a great landing page for a service-based business is not a long list of accomplishments, a splashy design, or slick copy. It’s not about SEO or beautiful photography. It’s not about being the smartest, most successful, or most in-demand person in your industry.

I mean, all these things are awesome to have. But they’re not the key!

The key is to a magnetic landing page is showing that you understand your audience and what they need. It’s about meeting people where they are.

This is truly the ticket to grabbing people’s attention and stoking their curiosity about what you can offer.

So whether you’re DIY-ing your website or hiring a designer, knowing these basic principles will help you create a landing page that leaves people wanting more.

Resilience as a New Entrepreneur

Hello, wonderful you! Ashley here, coming at you analog-style.

That’s right – I’m writing this post with a good old fashioned pen, on good old-fashioned paper, using my good old-fashioned hand. (Okay, it has to be typed up at some point, but this draft is totally old school).

Why am I writing this blog post by hand? Well, just moments ago, I was settling in at my desk to write my weekly-ish blog post. I’ve worked over the past few months to maintain a regular blogging habit, and it was time to reinforce it.

But just as I pulled open a new document, the power went out.

Yep – no flickering, no off, then on, then back off. Just out, FOREVER.

Okay, not forever. It will come back on eventually I’m sure (unless this is the end of the world, in which case this day is going very differently from what I expected).

I’ll be honest – for a split-second I thought, “Oh well! Too bad! The universe doesn’t want me to blog, I guess. After all, my blog post ideas are in a Word doc I obviously can’t access right now.”

My "Popcorn" Blogging Method

This post is all about quickly creating blog copy that feels fresh, alive, and authentic to your personality. And because I’m hungry and waiting for dinner to finish in the slow cooker, I’m using a food analogy.

Picture this: You’re about to make popcorn. With gusto, you unfurl the crinkly tri-fold of popcorn and Frisbee-throw it into the microwave. Beep-beep-beep, you enter the time indicated on the box, and hit “START.” Then your delicate dance with fate begins.

The popping slowly begins, crescendos to a popping mania, and lo, it dwindles back down to slow popping again.

You spring into action and hit the “STOP” button. With trepidation, you open the microwave and delicately drag the popcorn bag out of the microwave. It smells buttery and fresh. Unburnt… or so you hope.

You delicately open the bag, shake it a bit, and….