Every business wants a quick and simple way of getting customers. Even though this is possible, you might not be able to retain these customers without the use of a marketing sales funnel.
When people usually buy a product, they go through a multi-layered process from introduction to conversion. This is a process where people will learn about you, trusts your business, and finally converts by purchasing your product.
You cannot expect people to buy your product when they are not ready.
So what is a marketing funnel?
Marketing Funnel
A marketing sales funnel is a process your customers need to go through before they finally convert and purchase your products.
Here, you guide your visitors step-by-step through the entire sales process, so they don’t get confused, lost, or leave your website.
Let’s take the example of Amazon’s sales funnel. There are a few steps that visitors have to go through before they could purchase a product.
- They have to visit Amazon’s website
- They have to view a product
- They have to add that product to the cart
- They have to purchase the product
There may be some additional steps that they take in between each of these steps. Like, a user may visit the About Page or even the Contact Page. But they do not matter in the purchase funnel, because these aren’t necessary steps.
This process is called a funnel because it reassembles the shape of a funnel. As the process goes, the volume of people that pass through it reduces.
If you are worried about your low conversion rates, you could build a professional sales funnel without the help of any professional teams. You could simply use ClickFunnels.
ClickFunnels
ClickFunnels is the fastest and easiest way to create sales funnels. They provide you the tools and strategies that you need in one spot.
It is an automated tool that provides you with all the resources that you need to conquer your market. With their assistance, you could make various complicated web processes simple, so that people will start loving your website.
They provide you all the guidance you need to market, sell, and deliver your products online. They offer simple drag and drop web page editor that you could use to create a stunning landing page.
You could quickly build a marketing funnel with the help of ClickFunnels, which could boost your sales. A well-designed website integrated with ClickFunnels could dramatically increase your sales with ease.
History of ClickFunnels
ClickFunnels was started in 2014, when Russel and Tod got together for a week and mapped out their dream software, asking questions like, “Well, what if it could do this?”
If a question made sense, they wrote it down and made it actionable. After the week, they went their separate ways and got to work. Todd built ClickFunnels in the months to follow, and Russell sold. The rest is history.
ClickFunnels is the fastest growing tech startup in the world, growing from 0 to 100 million dollars in just three years!
They made a simple fantastic system that is so easy to use, that it’s hard to fail.
Features that Make ClickFunnels an Important Selling Tool
Let’s see all the features that are available in ClickFunnels that set them apart from the rest of the competition.
Completely Hosted Platform
Hosting your landing page or sales funnel is now simple and straightforward, thanks to the fact that ClickFunnels includes a hosting service along with the plan you choose.
So you don’t have to pay for an external hosting provider. You cannot host your funnel-related pages, other than through ClickFunnels, and they, in turn, ensure that your pages will stay live and secure.
The great news is that:
- You don’t have to pay a third party hosting provider on an annual basis (which saves you a lot of money)
- You don’t have to handle any technical aspect of it. You just need to connect your domain name.
Pre-defined, Proven Sales Funnels for Various Niches
Without the help of any professionals, ClickFunnels makes it simple for everyone to build their own marketing sales funnels in a matter of hours.
If you have never created a sales funnel before then, ClickFunnels has your back. They have built over 22 different types of funnels that they have used successfully in their own business (they have processed more than $4.2 Billion till now).
All the funnel types fall into three major categories: Lead Capture, Sales Page, and Event Funnels. But there are some other distinctive funnels like Membership funnels that you can create as well.
They provide some simple funnels like the Squeeze Page Funnels, which uses curiosity to generate leads. It helps you to create a two-step funnel that collects visitor’s email addresses and then sends them to a Thank You Page after signing up.
Moreover, they provide more advanced sales funnels like the 2-step TripWire Funnel, which sells a low ticket product (a tripwire) first and then upsells them to your more expensive products.
Fully featured landing page builder with high-converting templates.
ClickFunnels is the only service that provides a fully-featured landing page builder along with marketing funnels.
Their in-built editor is one of the easiest ways to build and edit web pages out there; that convert your visitors into your customers with ease.
ClickFunnels provides you with six different template categories, ranging from Opt-in Pages to Membership Sites.
Using their pre-built templates, you can create stunning web pages. Moreover, you can modify them according to your needs.
Drag and Drop Page Builder for Easy Customization
You don’t need to have any coding skills to create a web page that gives your website a sleek design.
Web pages in ClickFunnels are laid with the help of sections that can have any number of rows and columns. You can play around with the elements and place them wherever you want.
Selecting elements on the page and moving them around is a seamless process, and you could build some amazing pages within hours.
Unlike most online editors, everything is organized here, so you won’t have to spend a lot of time deciding what you want to do.
Ability to sell digital and physical products
If you have some products that you wish to sell, then you should definitely use ClickFunnels. They provide 12 different types of strategies that you could use to boost your sales.
You could even use their Ask Campaign Funnel to decide what your customers actually want before you create it for them.
Ability to create complex funnels with ease
You could use any of their funnels, to create a great strategy within less than an hour. All their funnel strategies are provided with in-built templates.
You only have to choose any “one” of their models to start your process. That’s it. No technical knowledge is required to create a funnel that could skyrocket your sales.
After choosing your template, click on the “edit” button to customize the template according to your need. Their page builder makes this process simple and straightforward.
Ability to connect with CRMs and shipping providers
Image:crm.png
In a matter of minutes and without a single line of code, Zapier allows you to send information between ClickFunnels and your CRM automatically. With the help of Zapier, you could connect your funnel to more than ten different services.
Some of your services may require the physical shipping of a product or an add-on to a product.
Again ClickFunnels is a one-stop-shop for every service you need. They allow you to connect your service with ShipStation so that you could get your products to the customers without any trouble.
Multiple Payment Gateways
ClickFunnels provides 11 different payment gateways that you could integrate with them. So you won’t face any problems regarding this section, as you could choose any among them according to their availability in your country.
Here is the list of payment gateways that you can use to process your payments inside your funnels and accept for your membership site subscriptions:
- ClickBank
- InfusionSoft
- JVZoo
- Stripe
- WarriorPlus
- Blue Snap
- Easy Pay Direct
- NMI
- PayPal
- Recurly
They also provide Avalara, which will automatically calculate the sales tax costs on your funnel.
Membership websites
As I mentioned earlier, you could create a membership site with the help of ClickFunnels. Just select any of their pre-built templates and customize it according to your needs.
ClickFunnels membership sites provide every single feature that you need to use to make a great membership program.
Everything you need for your membership sites, such as your sales page, the sequence of pages, design up-sell, and down-sell pages, can be easily done using ClickFunnels.
Email Integration
You could connect various third party email services to your ClickFunnels account with ease. With this feature, you could send emails through the Follow-Up Funnels or Funnel Automation.
You could easily integrate with most of the top email service providers like Aweber, ConvertKit, MailChimp, and many more by just entering your API Key.
A/B Testing
A/B testing or split testing is a marketing technique that determines which web design gets the best conversion rates.
The most common page to test is the landing page. It works by creating two different types of landing pages, one slightly different from the other. They then allow you to check the conversion rates between the two pages.
The design that has a less bounce rate and a high conversion rate is then applied as your homepage design.
Thanks to the split testing tools you have access, it’s easy to do an A/B testing in ClickFunnels. You just have to click on the “Create Variation Tab” top the right of your page.
Backpack – The Killer Feature That Can Multiply Your Sales Manyfold
The Backpack is the easiest way to create your affiliate program and scale your business without any extra effort.
With the Backpack affiliate management system, you will have the full functionality of setting up an affiliate program for business.
You could create commission plans for your affiliate partners, integrate your affiliate program with your sales funnels, review commissions, and manage affiliate payments.
So unlike traditional advertising, with an affiliate program, you don’t have to pay anything until a sale is made.
Before Backpack, it was a nightmare to create an affiliate program. Let’s look at some of the features that they provide for you to build your affiliate program that could multiply your sales.
Sticky Cookies
ClickFunnels Backpack uses sticky cookies. That means, that if someone buys your product using an affiliate link, and later buys a different product without the use of any affiliate links, the initial affiliate will earn the commission for both the sales.
This is the same rule that applies to ClickFunnels affiliate marketers. This will make everyone love your affiliate program and eventually results in increased sales.
Create a Two-Tier Affiliate Program
How would you like your current affiliates to recruit other people to promote your products?
ClickFunnels Backpack allows you to have not just one, but two tiers of affiliate commission!
For example, if your affiliate brings you a new customer, and you pay them 30 percent of sales commission (Tier 1).
If a new customer that he bought, promotes your program under their affiliate link and generates sales, the original affiliate can receive a Tier 2 commission as well, like an extra 5 percent or something like that.
The extra commission tier will motivate your affiliates to encourage others to become an affiliate, which will result in a higher amount of sales and traffic!
Add Commission for Each Affiliate types
It is relatively easy to set up customized commission rates for your different affiliate types. For every new affiliate type that you create, simply enter the designated commission amount that you want to payout.
Backpack tracks all the math for the different commission levels, once you save your commission settings for each affiliate type.
Analytics
With the help of your Affiliate Dashboard, you can get a quick view of your affiliate stats.
Your affiliate dashboard will track and report:
- What your affiliates are promoting
- Who is making you money
- Your Affiliate sales and income
Their built-in Affiliate Tracking and Reporting system automatically generate all the key statistics for you on your dashboard.
Manage Payments
How do you pay commission to your affiliates? This is one of the most crucial features of an affiliate program. But ClickFunnels makes this process easy as it gets.
They will provide you with all the detailed analytics that you need.
Instead of spending hours pulling and compiling all the reports, everything is tracked and calculated for you by their built-in Reporting & Tracking System.
If you wish, you can verify the payment amount paid to each affiliate using their reports and then just click on the “Pay Now” button.
You will be taken to your PayPal account for secure, direct payment. You can even issue their payments via check.
Getting Started with ClickFunnels
To set up your ClickFunnels account, first, go to their website, and press on the “Start Free 14 Day Trial Now”.
Fill in all the details and then click on the “Start Building My First Funnel.”
Here you have to select your plan. You can access both the plans for free for the first 14 days; then, you have to pay $297 per month for the platinum plan and $97 per month for the regular plan. Select your plan and proceed to the next page.
Now enter all the required data along with your credit card information. You can cancel your account any time you want within the first 14 days with no additional charge.
After completing your sign up process, you will be redirected to your dashboard section. Here you can see all the shortcuts to all their services.
How to Start Your First Funnel?
To start your first funnel press on the “Build a Funnel” button.
Here you can see all the 22 different funnels that they provide. Select any program according to your need and proceed.
For example, let’s choose the Squeeze Page Funnel, which is used to generate leads for your business. After selecting the funnel, scroll down to see their already pre-built templates that you could use to build your funnel.
Press on the “Get Funnel” button and proceed.
Click on “Edit Page” to Customize your Funnel according to your need. After adding your changes, press on the “save button.”
After completing your design go their settings tab and connect your email service to customize any outgoing mails.
To integrate any email provider to your account, first, you will have to connect your domain name to the ClickFunnels account.
So, go to the Domain section and press on “Add New Domain.” Here you will have two different options to choose from; register for a new domain through ClickFunnels or add your own domain name to your account.
To purchase your new domain, simply press on choose a domain and complete the registration process. If you already have bought a domain, then select “Use an existing domain.”
To add an existing domain name, enter your domain there and press on the “Add domain” button. They will provide you further instructions to connect your domain registrar to your ClickFunnel account.
Once you have successfully connected your domain name to your account, you could integrate your email service provider to the ClickFunnels account.
Now you could integrate your email provider with ClickFunnels. After finishing your setup, you could publish your funnel and start converting your visitors into your customers.
ClickFunnels Pricing
ClickFunnels comes with two plans:
- ClickFunnels Standard Plan
- ClickFunnels Platinum Plan
Their standard plans come in $97 a month, and Platinum Plan comes in $297 a month. They offer 14 days free trial to try out both their services. You could cancel their subscription for free within the first 14 days.
The main difference between their standard and premium plan is as follows:
ClickFunnels is Expensive – Is it Worth it?
Yes, ClickFunnels is definitely worth your investment, if your business is ready to build funnels and send traffic to them.
If you are a total beginner to digital marketing and have no existing business, then it won’t be worth your time.
In the beginning, you don’t have to go for the $297 platinum package, because you can build up to 20 funnels with the standard package itself, which is sufficient for someone who is just starting out.
ClickFunnels Alternatives
Here are some of the ClickFunnels alternatives that you could try out:
- Builderall
- LeadPages
- Instapage
- Unbounce
- Thrive Themes
Benefits of Using ClickFunnels
- One-stop-shop: From hosting to funnels, ClickFunnels replaces multiple products with just one. You can save a lot of money and time, by only using ClickFunnels instead of various third-party software.
- End-to-End Solution: They don’t stop at giving you funnels; instead, they provide you all the service that you need to build your site from scratch.
- Single Price for Multiple Products: You don’t have to pay for different features as you go. They will provide you with all the features that you need under single pricing.
- All analytics in the same place: You could track all your products, commission, and everything under one dashboard.
- Proven Funnel Formulas and Templates: They provide you with 22 proven funnels with pre-built templates, so that you could improve the chance of success with ease.
- No Coding Experience Need: You could do all these without knowing a single line of code and anything about the system’s technical aspects.
- Regular Updates: As time moves on, new marketing techniques are developed; ClickFunnels provides you all the latest updates free of cost.
Reasons Why ClickFunnels Might Not be For You
It doesn’t come cheap. If you are using their standard package, it will cost you around $1164 a year. So if you are a complete beginner, then this isn’t for you.
They provide you all the features that you would ever need. So, for someone new to sales funnels, it would be quite overwhelming to see their dashboard and with all their features.
You cannot profoundly customize their features. They made their system so that anyone without any technical knowledge could use them. So, you won’t be able to customize everything deeply.
Conclusion
After a point, if you need to take your sales to the next level; you have to apply some form of funnels to your business.
Considering all the strategies and tools that ClickFunnels provide, it will definitely help you to boost your sales.
Their user-friendly design and features will save you a lot of time figuring out what to do next in your business.
If you have any doubts, feel free to ask me below in the comment section.
