Introduction:
ClickFunnels is surely one of the best sales funnel-building software programs to use. Built by the God of Marketing, i.e., Russell Brunson, this software has loads and loads of features to take your online marketing or digital business to the next level.
However, a lot of entrepreneurs, individuals, and online business owners still don’t know what ClickFunnels is or how to use it. With that in mind, I have created this blog post for those who would like to learn more about ClickFunnels, its features, how to use it, and what ClickFunnels is all about.
What are sales funnels?
Sales funnels represent a customer’s journey, which starts from the decision to purchase to the final action of buying the product. As the shape of a funnel, the sales funnel has varied levels with different functions.
The sales funnel is also known as the customer funnel, purchase funnel, and conversion funnel. As the shape of the funnel keeps on decreasing from top to bottom, similarly, the final number of customers making a purchase is fairly less than the initially interested customers. Here, the buyers go through various hierarchical stages until they finally buy the product.
Let us know about the stages of the sales funnel.
1. Awareness: Here, an owner promotes their product in the market so that interested buyers get to know about the specialties of the product.
2. Interest: On this level, the purchasers keep on searching for products that suit their interests. This goes on until they finally take a keen interest in your product and think of buying it.
3. Desire: Once the customer has made an interest, he or she has a desire to buy it. Also, they evaluate the services and qualities of the product.
4. Action: Finally, the last stage of the funnel. Here, the customer is fully satisfied with the product and makes a purchase.
Importance of sales funnels in marketing
By now, we have understood the meaning of sales funnels and their various stages. It is a precise representation of a potential customer looking for a service and finally choosing and buying it.
The sales funnel is multi-functional, as it not only benefits the customer but also the organization. So let us learn about the various uses and importance of the sales funnel.
1. Understanding buyers’ behavior:
As we already know, sales funnels, which focus on customers and their motives and interests while making a purchase, easily aid the company in interpreting customer behavior. Hence, sales funnels enable a company to comprehend their buyers behavior and actions. This automatically benefits the organizers in strategizing their moves and tactics.
2. Developing marketing strategy:
All companies aim to make the utmost profit; this is only possible through an efficient marketing strategy.
As we discussed above, an organization can make out consumer behavior, which directly equips them with the means to develop their marketing scheme. By getting to know their customers, a company can easily plan the best idea to attract its potential purchasers.
3. Targeting potential customers:
A business owner can easily understand its purchasers’ behavior and then plan tactics for the same. Through this method, only the sales funnel allows the company to focus its attention on the desired buyers.
Yes, it is necessary to attract the masses, but only a few are the ones who actually make the move. Hence, it is equally necessary for a company to concentrate on those key buyers.
4. Retaining the customers:
By now, a company has understood the customers, strategized the marketing scheme, and also targeted the important leads. Once the purchase is done, it is also necessary to retain the customers. This not only maintains the sale but also develops goodwill in the market. The best marketing is through the praise of buyers. Hence, the sales funnel also empowers the company to retain its buyers.
5. Enhancing business results:
The sales funnels not only allow particular strategy-making but also enhance the overall benefit of the company. A company ends up earning a lot of help and ensuring a long life in the market.
In-depth introduction to ClickFunnels
ClickFunnels is a one-stop shop for all your online business needs. It is a simple and easy-to-use tool for building websites, maintaining blogs, and most importantly, creating highly converting sales funnels. Besides, you can also use ClickFunnels for promoting your online products, selling, generating and converting leads, selling courses, and everything in between.
You can also use this tool for email marketing to increase the conversion rate and sales of your business. Currently, this tool can be leveraged by small, medium, and large business owners from various categories and across different industry sectors.
In fact, bloggers, online marketers, affiliate marketers, content creators, YouTubers, and digital nomads can also use ClickFunnels and make more money online.
Russell Brunson’s vision for ClickFunnels and Story
If you are wondering who the founder of ClickFunnels is, then it is none other than Russell Brunson. Russell is considered the god of marketing, and is he truly a genius when it comes to sales and marketing? His selling methods and marketing techniques are widely appreciated by top entrepreneurs, creators, and marketers in the world.
Russell Brunson is not only a marketing genius but also an award-winning writer and best-selling author who has sold millions of copies of his books online.
At the age of 12, Russell used to watch TV commercials and listen to radio advertisements. At that time, kids of his age preferred watching cartoons or kids’ shows, but Russell loved watching commercials because that was real entertainment to him. This was the time when he realized that his true calling was entrepreneurship and marketing.
At a very young age, Russell would venture into different businesses and try to study the audience response. He also loved collecting junk mail, which later on helped him in his marketing career. He also learned some valuable lessons from wrestling and became a state-champion wrestler during his college days.
He got his first kickstart in business by selling ZipBrander software that helps site owners increase website traffic and make money online. More success was coming to him by selling potato gun kits and upselling other products related to potato guns. After graduating from college, he sold his first million dollars for these products.
Later on, he started many businesses and made loads of money. In 2014, he met Todd Dickerson, started ClickFunnes, and made over $100 million in the first three years of business. To date, ClickFunnels is Russell’s most successful business idea, with more than 100,000 active customers.
ClickFunnels Features and Benefits
Now that you might have understood what ClickFunnels is, who is the founder and CEO of ClickFunnels? It is now important to understand some features and benefits of ClickFunnels and how you can use its full potential.
1. Sales funnel builder
One of the ultimate benefits and top-rated features of ClickFunnels is its ability to create stunning and highly converting sales pages and sales funnels. In fact, it is the world’s best sales funnel builder software.
With ClickFunnels sales funnel builder, you can attract more customers, get more leads, drive them closer to the bottom of the funnel, and make more money.
It gives you complete freedom to attract and convert your dream customers via Google, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and many other sites. You can effortlessly drive traffic to your funnel and get more highly paying customers. The tool is very easy to use, and it comes with a simple drag-and-drop editor, allowing you to make the desired sales page as you want.
You can also select from pre-created templates and quickly create a sales page without wasting time. You can also maximize your profits and sales by driving customers closer to the sales funnel.
Every sales funnel that you make with ClickFunnels has an analytics tool attached to it. This will help you track your conversion rate, visitors, clicks, sales, profits, order count, and a lot more.
2. Website Builder
If you want to create your own website from scratch, then ClickFunnels website builder has got your back covered. It will help you create a customizable website within minutes. Even if you don’t have any technical knowledge, there is no need to worry. The drag-and-drop editor by ClickFunnels will make your life easier when creating a highly converted website. You can add images, logos, videos, design elements, colors, fonts, and more to effectively represent your brand.
The game-changing feature of the ClickFunnels website builder tool is its blogging platform, which will allow you to bring more organic traffic to your website and rank it on Google searches. Plus, you can also directly sell your products, services, and solutions directly from your website to as many people as possible.
If you don’t want to waste too much time creating a website, then you can use any of their pre-made templates or themes and directly launch your site within minutes. However, you get 100% freedom in editing a theme and customizing everything from scratch.
What’s more?
All ClickFunnels website themes are mobile-optimized, which means that your website will look great on smaller screens right out of the box. Making mobile changes is easy; all you have to do is toggle over to the mobile page editor, make any change you want, and do it.
3. Create online courses.
If you want to scale your business to a new level, the easiest way to do that is by creating and selling online courses. People love learning new things and upskilling their knowledge in every domain.
With ClickFunnels, you can quickly and easily build courses from the beginning. You also get access to loads of pre-made templates and themes to choose from, making your course creation process easy. Not only do you get pre-made templates, but you can also sell them to others by creating your own course template with ClickFunnels.
Inside your course management dashboard, you’ll have advanced analytics tools and access to data that will allow you to make better decisions. You can also manage course enrollment easily from the dashboard and modify access to courses. Plus, the ClickFunnels analytics will help you track the student’s progress, individual student course progress, and more.
Moreover, all ownership of your courses and content will remain solely with you. So, you don’t have to worry about any copyright or trademark issues.
4. Email marketing tool
Now here comes my personal favorite feature of ClickFunnels, which is its email marketing tool.
Email marketing is one of the most highly rewarding online marketing techniques that has an awesome conversion rate as compared to other forms of online marketing. With email marketing, you can send personalized emails, offer new products and services to your customers, or build better customer relationships with ease.
The ClickFunnels email marketing tool is one of the easiest to use, with a plethora of features to offer.
One of the nicest things about the ClickFunnels email marketing tool is that it has in-house SMTP, which means you can cancel all your third-party email marketing tools and just stick to ClickFunnels. They offer end-to-end service, from creating your first email marketing campaign to launching drip email marketing and everything in between.
ClickFunnels also offers added support with email deliverability through education and training to help your emails land in your customers’ inbox more!
You will also get an easy-to-use email editor that will allow you to create and send emails in a hassle-free manner. You can also create custom emails from the beginning, or if you want to make things more simple for you, then select any template and get started with your email marketing campaign. There are a wide range of templates to select from across various categories, including business, eCommerce, marketing, automotive, finance, and more.
5. Landing page builder
Landing pages are one of the most important aspects of every online business because they help capture more leads and convert them into high-paying customers. ClickFunnels landing pages focus on grabbing customers’ attention within a few seconds.
You can create unlimited landing pages with this software and build specific campaigns for different sets of customers. You can also do the AB testing and try out which landing page works best for you and gives the average results.
You can also add a call-to-action button and drive customers directly towards your product or service offering. You can send traffic and entice them to take specific action as per your business goal.
Besides, you can also generate leads much faster with highly converted pages that will help you grow your email list at a fast speed.
You can also create customizable lead magnets by selecting any theme or pre-made template. There is also a drag-and-drop editor, allowing you to edit each section of your lead magnet, opt-in form, lead capture, sales page, or landing page.
Apart from landing pages, you can also create checkout pages, consultation pages, event pages, free resource or download pages, lead capture pages, sales pages, thank-you pages, and confirmation pages.
6. Analytics
If you want to track the performance of your online business, then ClickFunnels Analytics is here to help you out. You already know that data is king. Without it, you cannot create a marketing strategy that aligns with your business goals. With ClickFunnels analytics, you track each and every piece of data on your website, blog, landing page, sales orders, traffic, and much more.
The tool works like instant reporting software that will give you real-time data and help you make sound decisions with regard to your marketing campaign. In fact, you can also review the performance of your funnels and online ads that you are running across various digital channels.
You get a wide range of advanced integration options with Google, Facebook, Instagram, and other modern-age marketing portals.
The ClickFunnels analytics track data like sales conversions, page views, open rates, click-through rates, subscription rates, cart values, order values, and a lot more. Based on these data, you can diagnose and make changes in your marketing strategy and get to know which funnels need some improvement.
7. Blog Creator
Blogging is one of my favorite features of ClickFunnels. That’s because I am a blogger myself with 4+ years of experience in the field. There are several reasons why you should start a blog on ClickFunnels, but the most important one is its CMS.
Blogging on ClickFunnels will help you to drive more traffic, get your main website ranked on Google, establish your authority, and make money online as well. The blog creator is pretty simple and easy to use. You can start by writing a title, a summary, and then your blog paragraph, following relevant heading tags.
You can also add media, images, and relevant links. You can also directly share your blog on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and more with a single click.
8. ClickFunnels Editor
If you are wondering what ClickFunnels editor is, then it is something that I love the most. This is one of the best features that ClickFunnels has ever had. With this drag-and-drop editor, you can edit almost anything on a ClickFunnels blog, website, landing page, marketing funnel, and a lot more.
The tool has some awesome editing options that will allow you to edit everything in real time. You also get the option to edit the next in different formats, increase the size of fonts, change layout, change color, and customize almost everything from scratch.
You also don’t need to have coding experience to use the drag-and-drop editor. You can easily change every element of your blog or funnel with the mouse cursor and a few clicks here and there.
Apart from its easy-to-use interface, this drag-and-drop editor is also mobile-friendly, and you can edit each and every element of your website, blog, or marketing funnel from a cell phone as well.
9. Membership sites with ClickFunnels
Do you want to create a community of like-minded people? Are you interested in building a forum website that helps you connect with like-minded people and make money? If yes, then you can leverage the ClickFunnels membership site creation feature that starts a stunning membership site.
For those who don’t know, a membership site is something similar to a Facebook group or Slack channel where people with similar interests connect with one another for a common goal: to help each other, gain knowledge, ask their doubts and queries on a particular topic, and do a lot more stuff than you could think of.
By creating a membership site, you can also discover ways to make money. You can add knowledge or experience that only paying members can access on the site. However, you need to keep adding more value to the site, which will also encourage your members to stay with you for longer. This might require some investment, time, and loads of effort.
Another way in which you can use ClickFunnels membership site creation is by creating a content mill.
You can create loads of training videos, lectures, and courses around the topics that you like the most and use them as bait to grow your membership site. Later, you also promote your own products or services in the community, provided that loads of members are added to the group.
10. AB testing with ClickFunnels
How would you come to know whether a particular landing page or a sales funnel is performing well or not? This is where AB testing comes into play. AB testing is done in order to test two different strategies and come to a conclusion by deciding which strategy will work the best in the long term.
With the ClickFunnels AB testing feature, you test two or more variations to see which one performs the best. You can test a funnel, sales page, landing page, or even a workflow and optimize your campaigns in real time by taking decisions on which performs the best.
You can also test email campaigns with each other. Check the subject line to improve the open rate and conversion rate; test the email message to see which one gives more engagement; and check the design of the body to improve the overall CTR.
11. Workflows with ClickFunnels
If you are confused about what ClickFunnels is, don’t worry. This is the feature that will help your sales and marketing team streamline their work and focus more on the productive tasks of the business. Even if you are a solopreneur, you can still leverage this feature.
Workflows are something that will help you manage your leads and sales and get your conversions happening on autopilot. Workflows are a great way to automate your entire sales and marketing process so that you can relax and enjoy your profits.
ClickFunnels customer support:
Customer support is the backbone of any online tool or software. Good and reliable customer support can make things easier for you if you are using the tool for the first time.
ClickFunnels customer support is surely one of the best in the world. They offer email and live chat support to their customers. For email queries, you can expect a response within 24 hours, and for live charts, you can expect an immediate reply from their team.
All their customer support tasks are managed by their in-house team of experts, who go the extra mile to serve all your needs.
ClickFunnels knowledge base:
ClickFunnels Knowledge Academy is surely one of the best things to get started with. They have a bunch of resources, guides, video lectures, and courses to help you get familiar not only with ClickFunnels but also help you get more success in your business.
Here’s what comes with the Clickfunnels knowledge base: “
1. Academy: This is the place for beginners where they can learn more about what ClickFunnels is, how to use it to its full extent, how to integrate ClickFunnels with other tools, and how to skyrocket business growth. There are loads of courses and live recordings in this academy section.
2. Product Documentation: The next is the ClickFunnels documentation dashboard, which is a compilation of all the articles and blog posts about what ClickFunnels is and how to use it. It contains each and every post about the tool.
3. Live training: As the name says it all, live training is done by some of the experts in the industry. The live training will help you learn more about marketing.
ClickFunnels pros and cons
ClickFunnels Pros:
User-Friendly Interface: Its drag-and-drop functionality makes it accessible for non-tech users.
Efficient Funnel Creation: Simplifies the process of building sales funnels, landing pages, and automating email marketing.
Templates and Integrations: Offers a variety of templates and integrations to streamline marketing campaigns.
ClickFunnels Cons:
High Cost: Relatively expensive compared to some alternatives.
Limited Customization: Provides less flexibility for highly customized designs.
Page Loading Times: Some users report slower loading times, potentially affecting the user experience.
ClickFunnels FAQs
ClickFunnels is an online marketing and sales funnel builder designed to help businesses create and optimize their sales funnels, landing pages, and marketing campaigns.
ClickFunnels provides a user-friendly interface where you can design and customize sales funnels using a drag-and-drop builder. You can add various elements like forms, videos, and payment gateways to guide visitors through your sales process.
Sales funnels are a series of steps that potential customers go through before making a purchase. They’re crucial for businesses because they help convert leads into paying customers by guiding them through the buying journey.
ClickFunnels supports various funnel types, including lead generation funnels, sales funnels, webinar funnels, and more, tailored to your specific business goals.
Yes, ClickFunnels offers integration options with popular email marketing services, payment processors, and other third-party tools to enhance your marketing capabilities.
Yes, ClickFunnels is designed to be user-friendly and doesn’t require advanced technical knowledge. The drag-and-drop builder makes it accessible to beginners.
ClickFunnels offers various pricing tiers, including a basic plan and an upgraded plan with more features. The pricing varies depending on your business needs.