56: Leadpages CEO Clay Collins: How to Build a Minimum Viable Audience

Clay Collins is Co-Founder and CEO of Leadpages, a powerful and easy-to-use software tool that allows marketers to build customized landing pages and opt-in forms to capture email addresses. Leadpages also lets you collect emails through email links and text messages. Clay shares the incredible story of how his lifestyle blog eventually turned into Leadpages, which has become a fast-growing, multi-million-dollar business with 46,000 customers and $38 million in venture financing. In our conversation, Clay explains why you should focus on first building what he calls a "Minimum Viable Audience" before you start to build a "Minimum Viable Product." He also shares practical strategies you can use for building your email list. These are the same strategies his marketing team at Leadpages uses to build their massive email list. Clay also gives us a peek behind the doors of Leadpages, and he talks about how he runs one of the fastest-growing marketing software businesses around. Clay explains why Leadpages recently acquired Drip, another easy-to-use software tool that gives small businesses the chance to affordably use powerful marketing automation tools that were once only available to large companies with big marketing budgets. If you're a writer or blogger trying to build your audience (and what writer doesn't want to do that?), you'll get a lot out of this conversation. If you're an entrepreneur thinking of building a software product that customers will love and want to pay you money for, you'll also get some great tips from Clay. I'd also encourage you to check out the excellent email marketing course that Leadpages offers completely for free.   It's a 9-video course that takes you from start to finish through an email marketing campaign. Find out more about Clay, Leadpages, and Drip at writewithimpact.com/episode56.