Are you trying to sell things online?
I’m sure you will agree that converting your visitors into sales is hard.
And getting yourself profitable? That’s even tougher.
There is a simple secret to raising the value of every customer you market to:
Sales funnels. Clickfunnels And Activecampaign
By producing a well-designed sales funnel, you can dramatically increase your sales and provide more value to your clients.
In this article, I’m going to present you to ClickFunnels, the software I am using to create sales funnels for my business.
You don’t need any technical know-how to utilize this, and it is going to really change the way you run your business.
Plus:
If you’re ready to throw yourself into the ClickFunnels world, it’s one of the best affiliate programs out there. I’ll be talking about that too later on.
What’s ClickFunnels?
ClickFunnels was created back in 2014 by Russell Brunson and his group. Since that time, Russell has turned ClickFunnels into a $100 million a year business and they just crossed over 65,000 active members as of August 2018.
At its core, ClickFunnels is a software for building sales funnels. With a lot of added bells and whistles.
You can use it to build:
– Landing pages
– Squeeze pages
– Webinars
– Membership websites
– Every kind of sales funnel you can think of, complete with order bumps, upsells and downsells
Additionally, with the highest end Etison Suite package you will even be able to start your own affiliate program (Backpack) and replace your email service with (Actionetics MD).
Essentially, you’re getting everything you need to market and sell your products online, without needing to hire expensive developers.
And individuals are using ClickFunnels with great success.
If you check out their 2 Comma Club website, you can see that nearly 300 entrepreneurs have already created 1 million dollar funnels utilizing ClickFunnels.
That’s remarkable.Clickfunnels And Activecampaign
What are the best parts of ClickFunnels?
Best Feature #1: Funnel template blueprints
If you’ve never created a sales funnel before then ClickFunnels has you covered.
Russell has identified 22 distinct forms of funnels that he has used successfully in his own business.
The funnel types fall into 3 main categories: Lead Capture Funnels, Sales Page Funnels, and Event Funnels. But there are a few additional special funnels like Membership funnels you can make too.
They include simple funnels like the Squeeze Page Funnel which gathers a visitor’s email address and then sends them into a Thank you page when registering.
Or to more complex sales funnels like the 2-Step TripWire Funnel which sells a low ticket front-end product (your tripwire) and then upsells them to a more expensive products with Order Form bumps, and One Click upsells or Downsells.
In addition, each funnel type has its own group of free templates and paid templates. So even in the event that you don’t have any design skills, your funnel pages will have a consistent, professional design.
Here’s a high-level summary of how to create your first sales funnel:
- Choose a funnel type.
- Select a template.
- Customize each page to fit your business.
- Add your products and ensure all your email and payment integrations are set up.
- Set a domain name for your new funnel.
- Save your funnel.
Your sales funnel is now live and you can start sending traffic to it. Clickfunnels And Activecampaign
Best Feature #2: Good Visual Drag and Drop Editor
While ClickFunnels provides you a great starting point with its funnel and webpage templates, the ClickFunnels editor is the place you can actually make each page in your funnel your own.
Pages in ClickFunnels are laid out using sections that can have any number of columns and rows. You can then use your mouse to drag elements around and place them where you want them.
While not as flexible as Instapage’s landing page editor, it’s still very nice and it may be used to achieve just about any design you desire.
What I like is that the editor is quite intuitive to use.
Selecting elements on the page and moving them where you want is very seamless.
Text elements can be edited inline, and changing any element’s properties can be done through the fly-out sidebar.
And contrary to other editors on the market, everything is organized in a logical manner. You are not spending a lot of time hunting for what you want to do.
The important thing is that no programming is needed. So you do not need to spend time learning HTML or CSS or some other technical things like that.
Best Feature #3: Nice Selection of Page Elements
Elements (or widgets) are all essential for providing you the flexibility to design the specific pages you want and ClickFunnels gives you a wide array of them to use.
Fundamental elements comprise of Headline, Photo, Text, Button, Input forms and Video widgets. These are the fundamental building blocks for any landing page that you build in the software.
ClickFunnels also includes a number of advanced components such as:
– SMS Signup
– Surveys
– Pricing Tables
– Progress Bars
– Facebook Comments
– FAQ Blocks
– Countdown Timers
– Custom HTML
Additionally, there are specialized elements like Membership elements for your membership pages and order and shipping form elements for your order pages.
Each element can be easily customized from the editor sidebar. With majority of elements, you can change common properties like background colors, margins, fonts, and alignment.
Then there are element specific attributes like the image URL for the Image element or the Button text of your button.
Best Feature #4: The ClickFunnels Affiliate program is awesome
There’s little doubt in my mind that ClickFunnels has the very best, legitimate affiliate marketing program that you can be a part of.
First the Fundamentals:
The ClickFunnels affiliate program pays 40% recurring commissions for every referral you make and you can win cool prizes like $500 towards your very own dream car once you hit 100 active referrals.
On top of that, they offer 5%, 2-tier commissions for referring people to the ClickFunnels affiliate program itself.
You also earn 40% commissions by promoting any product in the ClickFunnel’s ecosystem such as DotCom Secrets, Expert Secrets or even the Software Secrets books.
And thanks to the ClickFunnel’s sticky cookie, you will also earn commissions on any upsells your referrals purchase as they go through their specific funnels too.
But that is not all:
ClickFunnels also has another excellent feature for affiliates called share funnels.
Within the Settings tab of any of your funnels, you can grab your Share Funnel URL.
When someone visits this URL, they will be able to add this funnel directly into their account if they’re an existing ClickFunnels member. If they are not a member yet, they can register for the ClickFunnels 14-day free trial and then get your funnel added to their accounts.
What’s really amazing is that this share URL also functions as your affiliate link, and you will get a recurring commission when this new user ends up staying on.
What I don’t like about ClickFunnels?
Bad Part #1: Why is adding a funnel so slow?
After choosing your funnel type and template, it needs to get added to your account.
For some reason, this procedure seems to take around 8-10 seconds every time.
While I don’t understand what is going on behind the scenes, it doesn’t make sense to me why this would take so long. It’s somewhat annoying, although only a minor annoyance.
Bad Part #2: Limits on funnels you can create and visitors
ClickFunnels limits you to 20 funnels, 100 pages, and 20,000 visitors in their lowest plan. I’m really not a fan of software products that limit you in this manner.
If you are just building sales funnels for yourself, these limitations are most likely okay.
But you may get more annoyed at such constraints if you are doing client work, building funnels for multiple customers or promoting ClickFunnels as an affiliate with share funnels.
You will need to upgrade to the Etison Suite plan if you want to develop infinite funnels.
Bad Part #3: Fairly High learning curve
The range of what ClickFunnels can do is pretty huge, and it can certainly be intimidating to some.
That is why ClickFunnels put a lot of work into the onboarding process to help ease you into the software. The ClickFunnels interface is pretty well made for the most part and when you’ve assembled a few funnels yourself, the whole procedure does get easier over time.
ClickFunnels Pricing
Over time, ClickFunnels has evolved their pricing plans. Initially, they had 3 different pricing tiers, but they’ve now been consolidated into 2 separate plans.
So how much is ClickFunnels now?
Currently, the cheapest ClickFunnels plan is $97 a month. On this plan, you get access to all of the funnel production tools, but you are limited to generating 20 funnels, 100 pages, and 20,000 visitors. You also don’t get access to Actionetics, their built-in email service provider and Backpack, which allows you to make your own affiliate program.
To get access to that, you’ll need to go for the Etison Suite plan. It includes everything, and you get unlimited funnels, pages, and visitors. However, this will run you $297 a month.
As far as I can tell, there are no ClickFunnels coupon codes available. However, you can buy Funnel Hacks for $997 which gives you 6 months of Etison Suite for free plus some extra bonuses. This brings the cost down to $166.16 a month.
ClickFunnels does make it easy for you to demo their service with their free, 14-day free trial. It is not limited whatsoever which lets you give the software a complete test before you fully commit.
If $97 or $297 a month seems like too big a commitment for your current budget, there’s also a semi-secret, unadvertised Share Funnel plan that you can also get access to for just $19 a month. You can only produce 3 funnels and 10 pages with this plan, but it is a great way to try out ClickFunnels on a budget.
Everything else you need to know about ClickFunnels
How is their support?
ClickFunnels support is fairly good in my experience, although they can be a little slow in responding. They use Intercom, so you can immediately ask questions in the live chat box. Support requests are usually answered within a few hours and I found the team to pretty helpful to all my queries.
Do I need my own domain? Clickfunnels And Activecampaign
You do not necessarily need your own domain name to launch a funnel, although I would advise it. If you do not have one then your funnel URL will look something similar to http://username.clickfunnels.com.
One nice bonus that I didn’t know about is that ClickFunnels will buy you your first domain name for free and even install SSL on it for you. You can learn how to do this from the first game in the onboarding training.
Do they have an active community?
ClickFunnels has an massive community. There is the official group on FB with over 100k members and the ClickFunnels Avengers FB group (for affiliates) that has over 30k members.
Both groups are very active and it’s a great place to get feedback on your own sales funnels and answer any questions you may have.
There are also other FB groups run by ClickFunnels affiliates which are also quite active. The main one I suggest joining is Automation Nation. It is run by Spencer Mecham who is ClickFunnel’s top affiliate.
What integrations do they provide?
Even though ClickFunnels has its own email service provider via Actionetics, it also integrates directly with all the best email marketing software on the market.
For payment gateways, ClickFunnels integrates with Stripe, Paypal, Clickbank, Infusionsoft, Authorize.net, and a couple of others. The one limitation with using Paypal though is that it does not support One Click Upsells or One Time Offers. That’s the reason why I would highly recommend going with Stripe if you’re able to.
What’s the Funnel Hacks system?
If you are looking to get the $297/mo. Etison Suite plan, then it is definitely well worth it to join with Funnel Hacks instead to save some additional money. For $997, you’ll receive six months of the Etison Suite plan which is $1,782 in value.
You’ll also get a lot of additional training and bonuses that include:
– 6 Week Funnel Hacks Master Class ($2,997 value)
– Instant Traffic Hacks ($1,997 value)
– Inception Secrets ($1,997 value)
– SOAP & Seinfeld Email Sequences ($997 value)
Is ClickFunnels a scam?
I believe ClickFunnels has some negative buzz around it due to all of the affiliates who are trying to market it.
However, no, ClickFunnels is not a scam. It is certainly the real deal.
It’s a great software with an amazing affiliate opportunity. So many people are using ClickFunnels to build 6 and 7 figure businesses.
It’s a software with an amazing affiliate opportunity. So many men and women are using ClickFunnels to construct 6 and 7 figure businesses.
When folks ask, “How do I create a sales funnel”, ClickFunnels is the #1 answer hands down. There is no other software that can do every thing that ClickFunnels does at the moment.
What else is ClickFunnels used for?
Besides creating standard sales funnels, there are plenty of ways marketers are using ClickFunnels at the moment in their business.
It’s terrific for creating opt-in funnels that will help you generate more leads and build your email list.
You are able to create webinar funnels to help you grow your brand and sell your products and services.
And you can use it to create membership sites where you’re able to gate your premium content so that it is accessible only to subscribers.
How can you make ClickFunnels work for you? Clickfunnels And Activecampaign
First of all, you need to have a product or service to market. If you don’t have something to market, then don’t even bother looking into ClickFunnels before you do. Unless you just want to market it as an affiliate.
Next, you have to be ready to invest time and money into creating your value ladder and building out your entire sales funnel.
That means at least creating a lead magnet or low-cost tripwire product to get customers or clients into your funnel. And coming up with appropriate upsells, order bumps and other OTOs that match or improve your principal product offering.
If you are unclear how to being, I would have a look at Russell’s very own multi-million dollar sales funnels to give you inspiration. Read his book DotComSecrets where he explains precisely the why and how of building sales funnels and how to tell stories to marketing your services and products.
And as you go through his own sales funnels you can see the way he goes from low-cost tripwire (DotComSecrets) into selling his flagship product (ClickFunnels).
By creating his own community of raving fans he can then upsell his various other products and events like Funnel Scripts, Funnel Hackers Live, and much more.
As soon as you’ve gone through his funnels, then you can take the parts that are applicable to your own business and create a strategy for your own sales funnel. As soon as you have that in place, you’ll be ready to begin making money with ClickFunnels.
ClickFunnels versus the competition
There are a few ClickFunnels alternatives out there which share a number of the same capabilities as ClickFunnels. Two that I use myself are LeadPages and SamCart.
ClickFunnels vs LeadPages
Today, LeadPages is among the market leaders in the landing page builder space and it is a really popular tool in its own right.
It also recently added the capability to sell products directly on their pages with its new Checkout widget
Each product comes with a huge selection of nice looking templates. Both have drag and drop editors which make it easy for you to create the designs you desire. And both integrate with all the popular email service providers.
But, Leadpages is significantly more limited in scope than ClickFunnels. You use it to create landing pages that will help you collect leads. This isn’t a terrible thing since LeadPages really shines for creating landing pages fast.
Right now, among the best strategies for developing your email list is using content upgrades. By producing targeted lead magnets into your most well-known articles you can acquire opt-in conversion rates that far exceed your standard pop-up.
LeadPages is the best service for implementing this strategy with its LeadBoxes, 2 step opt-ins, and automated lead magnet delivery which is why they are the most popular popup you’ll see today.
Therefore, if you are primarily concentrated on lead generation, I would definitely suggest trying out LeadPages.
However, if you are selling a product or service, then ClickFunnels is the better choice. While it comes with a higher learning curve than Leadpages, once you master the tool, you can really explode your sales once you start creating sales funnels for each of your products.
But, if you’re selling a product or service, then ClickFunnels is the better choice. While it comes with a higher learning curve than Leadpages, once you master the tool, it’s possible to really explode your sales once you start generating sales funnels for each of your products.
ClickFunnels vs SamCart
SamCart is a product that allows users to build amazing, high converting checkout pages. Which gives it a whole lot in common with ClickFunnels.
SamCart is targeted towards getting set up and selling fast. It supports both Stripe and Paypal and it comes with 17 distinct checkout page templates that you may customize.
Concerning flexibility, there’s absolutely no comparison between ClickFunnel’s drag and drop editor and SamCart’s.
ClickFunnels is infinitely more powerful in that you’ll be able to design any checkout page you can dream of. SamCart only allows for some basic customizations to its pre-made templates.
SamCart does permit you to add order bumps, upsells and downsells like ClickFunnels does. You can also quickly create coupons for your products which is another great way to raise conversions.
But where Samcart is missing, is the capability to capture leads and build complete sales funnels. The products come in at the exact same $97 per month price point, and I find ClickFunnels to be quite a bit more flexible and more powerful than Samcart.
ClickFunnels Pros
– Best software for building marketing and sales funnels
– Editor balances ease of use with flexibility
– Integrates with all major email and payment providers
– Amazing looking templates for each type of funnel
– Great on-boarding process for learning the program
– Software has been better after every update
– Easily share any funnels you build and automatically earn affiliate commissions
– 2-tier affiliate program
– Free domain name with SSL installed
– 14-day free trial
ClickFunnels Cons
– Limits on the number of funnels, pages, and visitors with the standard plan
– Plently of things to understand, a steep learning curve
– Split testing is pretty basic
Final Thoughts Clickfunnels And Activecampaign
Which application you go with depends on your requirements and the quantity of work you are willing to invest in your enterprise.
Although a lot of you are selling standalone products, are you willing to put in the effort required to make a high converting sales funnel?
Otherwise, ClickFunnels could be overkill for you. It’s possible to collect leads or sell your front end product more cheaply using alternative services.
However, if raising the average lifetime value of your customers is important to you, then I truly suggest giving ClickFunnels a try.
Not only to access the software but also because the training you receive will probably be both inspiring and enlightening.
Take advantage of the ClickFunnels 14-day free trial, and see whether you can use it to increase your business today.
