Clickfunnels – everything you need to know
If you need a quick and easy way to make a sales funnel, try Clickfunnels. This tool lets you plan how customers will make their way to your products and services. After a few hours, you’ll have a sales funnel up and running! Clickfunnels also provides various funnel presets, so you can easily drag and drop the parts you need.
Tools like this are necessary because companies are trying to achieve digital transformation. To stay ahead of the competition, you need to “go digital” as fast as you can. Your customers expect you to do the same. Clickfunnels is an all-in-one solution that lets you jumpstart that marketing campaign.
Sales funnels are at the heart of Clickfunnels, so I will get readers up to speed by explaining what they are. After that, I’ll talk about the features of Clickfunnels, such as its drag-and-drop sales funnel builder. Then, I’ll explore the pros and cons of using Clickfunnels and share details about its pricing plans. These should help you decide if Clickfunnels is right for you.
What is a sales funnel?
People usually follow a certain process, sometimes called the “buyer’s journey,” when people buy stuff. Nowadays, businesses want to attract customers every step of the way.
That’s why they’ve specified each part of this process and called it a sales funnel. Each segment is related to certain consumer actions known as leads.
Let’s use a bit of online shopping as an example. When you click on a product, that counts as a lead because it shows that you were drawn into a certain item.
When you click Add to Cart, that’s another lead because it shows your interest in purchasing the product. Finalize your order, which counts as a lead for the brand’s other products.
Businesses have differences, so each one will have a sales funnel just for them. Though most of them include similar parts, such as:
- Awareness – People know what your brand offers, but they’re not interested yet.
- Interest – People are curious about your brand, but they’re not yet willing to buy.
- Decision – People are thinking about whether or not they should pay for your products and services.
- Action – People have bought your product and have paid for your services. They could tell you what products or services you should promote to these people, so they’re likely to buy from you again. As I said, the purchases may serve as leads for your other offerings.
Moreover, each of these parts has certain types of leads, and they’re referred to as qualified leads. See which type corresponds to which stage of the sales funnels:
- Information qualified leads (IQL) – Awareness stage
- Marketing qualified leads (MQL) – Interest stage
- Sales qualified leads (SQL) – Decision stage
- Product/Service qualified leads – Action stage
Why would I need Clickfunnels?
I had to talk about sales funnels because Clickfunnels is a sales funnel builder. As I mentioned, it’s an all-in-one solution that lets you create one quickly and easily.
Russel Brunson, a well-known author, co-founded it. He’s been featured in famous magazines such as Forbes, and he earned the title “Entrepreneur of the Year” in 2018.
It may seem simple based on the previous section, but it takes a lot more time and effort in real life. Here are some of the parts and the materials each one needs:
- Email marketing – You will have to send messages to drive outbound marketing. You will have to make those emails engaging for readers, and you’ll have to make different ones based on various factors, such as your target audience.
- Landing pages – Your brand will need to have a homepage with multiple web pages for each product and service it has. This is your inbound marketing arm, so it should encourage people to buy from you. Making websites isn’t easy, especially if you don’t know how to write code.
- Automation – It’s a waste of time and money to execute a digital marketing campaign manually. Instead, you will need tools to send the right materials to the right customers at the right time.
- Mobile optimization – Nowadays, most people look at websites through smartphones and tablets, so yours should look good on these devices. For example, make sure your homepage will resize based on the viewer’s device.
- Analytics – You need to monitor how well your marketing campaign is doing. This means you’ll need a tool to create reports on certain metrics, such as bounce rate.
- Project management tool – You will need a hub where you can access all these parts. Otherwise, it will be hard to keep track of everything.
You’ll have to plan all these before you implement them so that you might look for a tool for each part. That can take a lot of time due to the numerous options.
On the other hand, you could get Clickfunnels, so you have all you need for a sales funnel in one tool. This might be a good choice for startups and small businesses.
Read More: How To Get More Customers Online
What are the features of Clickfunnels?
What’s great about this all-in-one marketing solution is that it facilitates building sales funnels by providing funnel templates. Here are some of the options from Clickfunnels:
- Tripwire funnels start by selling a low-cost product to increase the chances that the buyer will get a more expensive one.
- Product launch funnels are intended to get people comfortable purchasing your higher ticket items.
- VSL (Video Sales Letter) funnels place videos on the sales page. This is because websites with videos tend to get more sales than those with only text and images.
- Squeeze page funnels start by encouraging people to share their email addresses. Then, it sends messages that link to landing pages to generate high-quality leads.
Drag-and-drop editor
At ClickFunnels, our greatest marketing strength would be how much we test… 🤓
And we highly recommend doing the same thing for your business 🔥
P.S You can A/B test any sales funnel using ClickFunnels 😉 pic.twitter.com/TlljisXCsE
— ClickFunnels (@clickfunnels) December 20, 2021
Once you’ve picked a type of sales funnel, Clickfunnels makes it easier to build the landing pages using the drag-and-drop editor. Here are some of the parts available:
- 2-step order forms
- Pricing tables
- Registrations for webinars
- Exclusive content for members
- Mobile optimization
- Smart shopping carts
Affiliate marketing
Next, you can supercharge your campaign with the help of affiliate marketing when you pay regular folks to promote your products using whatever online methods they can use.
It involves sharing a link to their followers to lead these people to your brand. The affiliate marketer may include it in their social media, videos, or other means available.
Clickfunnels makes this easier by helping you build each part of the program. If you need to learn more, you might want to check out LeadAdvisors Affiliate Program as a great example.
Funnel hacking
Funnel Hacker is a new breed of entrepreneur.. they’re smarter, leaner, faster, and free 🔥
They believe that their business is a calling 📣 and has full control of their destiny..#FunnelHackers create their own luck, build their own empires, and CHANGE THE WORLD! 🌎 pic.twitter.com/JWiVtvg9Jk
— ClickFunnels (@clickfunnels) March 13, 2020
What’s fun about online marketing is that you can learn about the sales funnels from other brands, then include parts of those for your own.
Of course, you have to test the new one before letting it loose in the market. Clickfunnels helps by letting you perform split testing between your old and new models.
It involves implementing both of them simultaneously, so you can see which one does better. However, they must look similar. If people notice the difference, it could ruin the test.
Clickfunnels makes this a lot faster by making the new model easier. Then, it will report how your old and new funnels are performing, so you can see if the latter is effective or not.
Pros of Clickfunnels
What’s working? What’s not working? What could be better?
Keep asking yourself these questions, analyzing data, and making adjustments accordingly.
Never stop optimizing! 🤩
— ClickFunnels (@clickfunnels) November 5, 2021
By now, you’ve probably noticed that the biggest perk of this marketing tool is that it provides all the features you need to make a sales funnel.
Instead of using different tools for each funnel section, you could just get Clickfunnels. Even better, you don’t need coding skills to use it.
Without Clickfunnels, you will have to build the landing pages yourself. That means you’ll need a few HTML skills to build the basic website and some CSS to make it more appealing.
With Clickfunnels, you just choose a basic template then start adding the parts. Instead of writing several lines of code, it just involves clicking a few buttons.
What’s more, this marketing tool provides a sales dashboard which serves as the hub I mentioned earlier. This lets users track sales funnel performance in real-time.
As I said, startups and small businesses may see this as a good choice. Both may have little to no idea how to start a digital marketing campaign.
Clickfunnels could make the process much simpler and perhaps cheaper. As a result, they are more likely to implement a digital transformation for their brand.
Cons of Clickfunnels
Did you notice that I don’t have a solid recommendation for this online marketing solution? That’s because every business has different needs, even the small ones.
This means there is no real solution that will fit every business out there. While Clickfunnels aims to be a jack-of-all-trades, some businesses prefer multiple masters-of-one.
In other words, they may want a tool that does a specific sales funnel section well instead of one that does a so-so job for all of them. All-in-one solutions still come with a few drawbacks.
The biggest one is that you may find that customization is limited for Clickfunnels. Also, you may have to constantly update the pages yourself due to changes in Google and other websites.
What’s more, g2 reviews often note the price is too high. The basic plan is $97 a month, but it only lets you make 20 sales funnels and 100 pages. You’ll have to pay $297 a month if you want to get rid of the limits.
Final thoughts
It’s up to you whether you’ll use Clickfunnels or not. However, you should plan your digital marketing first before deciding, so you can confirm that it suits your needs.
You will need it as most businesses are heading towards a digital transformation. It might be long and hard, but you have to start this transition soon.
On the other hand, LeadAdvisors can make it so much easier. This digital marketing agency can handle all the parts of your campaign to focus on business. Click here to learn more.
