Are you currently trying to sell things online?
I’m sure you will agree that converting your visitors into revenue is hard.
And getting yourself profitable? That’s even tougher.
There’s a simple secret to raising the value of every customer you sell to:
Sales funnels. Clickfunnels For Physical Products
By producing a well-designed sales funnel, you can dramatically increase your earnings and provide more value for your clients.
In this article, I will present you to ClickFunnels, the application I am using to build sales funnels for my business.
You don’t need any technical know-how to use it, and it will really change how 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 is ClickFunnels?
ClickFunnels was made back in 2014 by Russell Brunson and his team. Since that time, Russell has turned ClickFunnels into a $100 million a year company and they just crossed over 65,000 active members as of August 2018.
In its core, ClickFunnels is an application for constructing sales funnels. With a bunch of added bells and whistles.
You can use it to construct:
– Landing pages
– Squeeze pages
– Webinars
– Membership sites
– Every type 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 have the ability to start your own affiliate program (Backpack) and replace your email service with (Actionetics MD).
Essentially, you’re getting all you need to advertise and promote your products online, without having to employ expensive programmers.
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 using ClickFunnels.
That’s remarkable.Clickfunnels For Physical Products
What are the best features of ClickFunnels?
Best Feature #1: Funnel template blueprints
In case you have never created a sales funnel before then ClickFunnels has you covered.
Russell has identified 22 distinct types of funnels that he has used successfully in his own business.
The funnel forms 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 such as the Squeeze Page Funnel which collects a visitor’s email address and then sends them to a Thank you page when registering.
Or to more complex sales funnels such as the 2-Step TripWire Funnel which sells a very 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.
Moreover, each funnel type has its own set of free templates and paid templates. So even if you don’t have any design skills, your funnel pages will all have a consistent, professional design.
Here’s a high-level overview 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 For Physical Products
Best Feature #2: Good Visual Drag and Drop Editor
While ClickFunnels gives you a wonderful 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 with sections that can have any number of rows and columns. You can then use your mouse to drag elements around and put them where you need them.
While not as flexible as Instapage’s landing page editor, it is still very nice and it may be utilized to achieve just about any design you desire.
What I like is that the editor is very intuitive to use.
Selecting elements on the page and moving them where you want is quite seamless.
Text elements can be edited inline, and changing any element’s properties could be done via the fly-out sidebar.
And unlike other editors out there, everything is organized in a logical way. You’re not spending a lot of time searching for what you want to do.
The important thing is that no programming is required. So you do not have to spend time learning HTML or CSS or any technical things like that.
Best Feature #3: Nice Selection of Page Elements
Elements (or widgets) are essential for providing you the flexibility to design the exact pages you woud like and ClickFunnels provides you a large array of them to use.
Fundamental elements comprise of Headline, Image, Text, Button, Input types and Video widgets. These are the fundamental building blocks for any landing page you construct in the software.
ClickFunnels also includes several advanced elements 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 in the editor sidebar. With majority of elements, you can alter common properties like background colors, margins, fonts, and orientation.
Then there are element specific properties 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 is no 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 own dream car as soon as you reach 100 active referrals.
In addition to that, they offer 5%, 2-tier commissions for referring people to the ClickFunnels affiliate program itself.
You also get 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 that your referrals buy as they go through their specific funnels too.
But that’s not all:
ClickFunnels also has another excellent feature for affiliates known as share funnels.
Inside the Settings tab of any of your funnels, you can grab your Share Funnel URL.
Whenever someone visits this URL, they’ll be able to add this funnel directly into their accounts if they’re an existing ClickFunnels member. If they are not a member yet, they can register for the ClickFunnels 14-day free trial then get your funnel added to their account.
What’s really amazing is that this share URL also acts as your affiliate link, and you’ll 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 picking your funnel type and template, it needs to get added to your account.
For some reason, this procedure appears to take approximately 8-10 seconds every time.
While I don’t understand what is really going on behind the scenes, it doesn’t make sense to me why this could take so long. It’s a bit annoying, although just a minor inconvenience.
Bad Part #2: Limits on funnels you can create and visitors
ClickFunnels limits you to 20 funnels, 100 pages, and 20,000 visitors on their lowest plan. I am not a fan of software products which restrict you in this way.
If you’re just building sales funnels for yourself, these limits are most likely okay.
But you can get more annoyed at such limitations if you’re doing client work, creating funnels for multiple customers or promoting ClickFunnels as an affiliate with share funnels.
You’ll want to upgrade to the Etison Suite plan if you want to build infinite funnels.
Bad Part #3: Fairly High learning curve
The scope of what ClickFunnels could do is pretty huge, and it can certainly be intimidating to some.
That’s why ClickFunnels put so much work into the onboarding process to help ease you into the program. The ClickFunnels interface is pretty well designed for the most part and when you’ve built a couple funnels yourself, the whole procedure does get easier over time.
ClickFunnels Pricing
Over time, ClickFunnels has evolved their pricing plans. In the beginning, they had 3 different pricing tiers, however they have now been consolidated into 2 separate plans.
So how much is ClickFunnels now?
At the moment, the lowest priced ClickFunnels plan is $97 a month. On this plan, you get access to all of the funnel creation tools, but you are limited to creating 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 lets you make your own affiliate program.
To get access to that, you’ll need to go with 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 aren’t any ClickFunnels coupon codes available. However, you can buy Funnel Hacks for $997 which gives you 6 months of Etison Suite for free plus some additional 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’s not constrained 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 present budget, there’s also a semi-secret, unadvertised Share Funnel plan which you can also have access to for only $19 a month. You can only create 3 funnels and 10 pages with this plan, but it is a great way to test 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, even though they can be a little slow in responding. They utilize Intercom, so you may directly ask questions in the live chat box. Support requests are usually answered within a few hours and I found the staff to fairly helpful to all my queries.
Do I need my own domain? Clickfunnels For Physical Products
You do not necessarily need your own domain name to launch a funnel, but I would advise it. If you do not have one then your funnel URL will look something like http://username.clickfunnels.com.
One nice bonus that I did not know about is that ClickFunnels will get you your first domain name for free and even set up 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 enormous community. There is the official group on FB with over 100k members as well as the ClickFunnels Avengers FB group (for affiliates) that has over 30k members.
Both groups are very active and it is an excellent place to get feedback on your own sales funnels and answer any questions you may have.
Additionally, there are several other FB groups run by ClickFunnels affiliates that are also quite active. The main one I recommend 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 the best email marketing software out there.
For payment gateways, ClickFunnels integrates with Stripe, Paypal, Clickbank, Infusionsoft, Authorize.net, and a couple of others. The one constraint 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 suggest going with Stripe if you can.
What’s the Funnel Hacks system?
If you are looking to get the $297/mo. Etison Suite plan, then it’s definitely well worth it to sign up with Funnel Hacks instead to save some additional money. For $997, you are going to receive six months of the Etison Suite plan which is $1,782 in value.
You’ll also get a bunch of additional bonuses and training 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 because of all of the affiliates that are trying to market it.
However, no, ClickFunnels isn’t 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 is a great software with an amazing affiliate opportunity. So many men and women are using ClickFunnels to build 6 and 7 figure companies.
When people ask, “How do I create a sales funnel”, ClickFunnels is the #1 answer hands down. There’s no other software that can do everything that ClickFunnels does at the moment.
What else is ClickFunnels used for?
Besides building standard sales funnels, there are many ways marketers are using ClickFunnels at the moment in their business.
It is terrific for creating opt-in funnels to help you generate more leads and build your email list.
You can create webinar funnels that will help you develop your brand and promote your products and services.
And you can use it to build membership sites where you can gate your premium content so that it is available only to subscribers.
How can you make ClickFunnels work for you? Clickfunnels For Physical Products
First of all, you need to have a product or service to market. If you do not have something to market, then don’t even bother looking into ClickFunnels until you do. Unless you only want to market it as an affiliate.
Next, you need to be ready to invest money and time into creating your value ladder and constructing your entire sales funnel.
That means creating a lead magnet or low-cost tripwire product to get clients or customers into your funnel. And coming up with appropriate upsells, order bumps and other OTOs that match or enhance your main product offering.
If you’re unclear how to being, I would take a look at Russell’s own multi-million dollar sales funnels to provide you with inspiration. Read his book DotComSecrets where he explains precisely the why and how of building sales funnels and how to tell stories to sell your products and services.
And as you go through his own sales funnels yourself you can observe the way he goes from low-cost tripwire (DotComSecrets) into promoting his flagship product (ClickFunnels).
By building his very own community of raving fans he can then upsell his various different products and events like Funnel Scripts, Funnel Hackers Live, and more.
As soon as you’ve gone through his funnels, then you can take the parts that apply to your own company and create a strategy for your sales funnel. As soon as you have that in place, you will be prepared to begin making money with ClickFunnels.
ClickFunnels versus the competition
There are a few ClickFunnels alternatives out there that share some of the same capabilities as ClickFunnels. Two that I use myself are LeadPages and SamCart.
ClickFunnels vs LeadPages
Today, LeadPages is one of the market leaders in the landing page builder space and it’s a really popular tool in its own right.
It also recently introduced the capability to sell products directly on their pages with its new Checkout widget
Each product comes with a huge selection of fine looking templates. Both have drag and drop editors which make it effortless for you to build the designs you want. And both integrate with the popular email service providers.
However, Leadpages is more limited in scope compared to ClickFunnels. You use it to create landing pages that can help you collect leads. This isn’t a bad thing since LeadPages really shines for creating landing pages quickly.
Right now, among the best strategies for developing your email list is using content upgrades. By producing targeted lead magnets into your most popular articles you can get opt-in conversion rates that far exceed your standard pop-up.
LeadPages is the best service for implementing this approach with its LeadBoxes, 2 step opt-ins, and automatic lead magnet delivery which is why they are the most popular popup you will see now.
So 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 service or product, then ClickFunnels is the better alternative . While it comes with a higher learning curve than Leadpages, once you master the instrument, it’s possible to definitely explode your earnings as soon as you begin generating sales funnels for all your products.
ClickFunnels vs SamCart
SamCart is a product which allows users to create amazing, high converting checkout pages. Which gives it a lot in common with ClickFunnels.
SamCart is targeted towards getting setup and selling fast. It supports both Stripe and Paypal and it comes with 17 distinct checkout page templates that you can customize.
Concerning flexibility, there’s absolutely not any 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 about. SamCart only allows for some basic customizations to its pre-made templates.
SamCart does allow you to add order bumps, upsells and downsells such as ClickFunnels does. You can also easily create coupons for your products which is just another great way to raise conversions.
But where Samcart is lacking, is the ability 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 compared to 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
– Beautiful looking templates for each kind of funnel
– Great on-boarding process for learning the program
– Software continues to get better after every update
– Readily share any funnels you build and automatically earn affiliate commissions
– 2-tier affiliate program
– Free domain name with SSL set up
– 14-day free trial
ClickFunnels Cons
– Limitations on the number of funnels, pages, and visitors with the standard plan
– Lots of things to understand, a steep learning curve
– Split testing is pretty basic
Final Thoughts Clickfunnels For Physical Products
Which application you go with depends on your needs and the amount 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 necessary to create 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 with alternative services.
But if increasing the average lifetime value of your clients is important to you, then I truly suggest giving ClickFunnels a try.
Not just to get access to the software but also because the coaching that you get will be both inspiring and enlightening.
Make the most of the ClickFunnels 14-day free trial, and see if you can use it to grow your business now.
