This. Have done this for my own and in some cases friends' potential startups: a fake door landing page and a couple hours of posting to discussion groups (don't spam, do it where communities allow) or a small Google ads advertising budget.

There's been a couple cases where that simple amount of initiative plus about a half day of work, the resulting feedback was enough of a push to overcome hesitations my friends' had in starting a company.

You’ll also need some kind of SEO to drive traffic to the page.

And if your project is in a niche area, then it probably not help at all.

I setup a landing page and in the last 6 months I’ve had less that 100 visits and no interactions with any of the call to actions; even with paid advertisements on linked in and google.

I thought about doing that, but it felt like false advertising and I didn't want to (a) piss people off, (b) underwhelm them, or (c) commit to getting the project ready for use by any specific date. Am I overthinking it?

I’d also recommend putting a Kickstarter together for your idea even if it’s unrealistic to launch one.