I have been passionate about digital marketing since 2017 and was blogging those days in my old blog. Now, I am living my passion for the past 2 years (starting 2020), and it has been a great journey where I enhanced my skills, worked on multiple projects for clients globally.
Why am I sharing this? Because I want to be a lifelong learner and have started learning affiliate marketing as well (part of digital marketing) to earn some passive income. Affiliate marketing has become a boom these days where anyone can earn passive income without prior experience.
We live in a world with many uncertainties, a great example of that being COVID-19, which has changed the way we live, and one should plan to have a passive income to overcome these uncertainties.
With that said, it wasn’t easy for me to get started. I was in a dilemma on how to start as an affiliate marketer. There are so many products all over, I didn’t know which one to choose that could help me as an affiliate marketer and help my digital marketing journey as well.
Then I came across ClickFunnels, a software that helps build funnels for any business and generate more sales. It was a great way to start for me as an affiliate marketer. It might not be easy to understand for people who are completely new to funnel building. I was also in the same shoes as you are currently.
Hence, in this review article, I want to help you understand how a clickfunnels can make your life easier in building your sales funnels. It can also help you to build funnels for others. I will also cover how clickfunnels is better than any other funnel out there in the market. So, let’s get started.
What is a Funnel?
A Funnel is the steps that a customer takes from visiting your website to finally taking action. The action can be anything that might include purchase, filling out a form for subscription, or a sign-up. When they take action that you intend them to take is called a conversion.
The main goal is to help you optimize your marketing efforts based on which stage your user is in. There can be different types of funnels for various objectives, such as:
- To sell a product
- To nurture leads
- To Upsell
- To take membership
Let’s take an example to understand funnels in a better way:
Assume that you want to sell your e-book online. Following will be the step to build your funnel:
- Visitors come to your site
- He searches for e-books (prospect)
- He signs up to read sample chapters (lead magnet)
- He finally buys the complete book (conversion)
When you keep track of all these steps, you will understand from which funnel you are gaining customers and where you are losing. Some people will sign up and read the sample, but not all will purchase, but they might come back in the future. So, you can nurture them through automation and convert them into buyers.
Building a sales funnel involves a lot of work, and that is why most marketers prefer using advanced tools that can handle the sales funnel end to end.
Now, let’s understand what clickfunnels (sales funnel builder) all is about.
What is a ClickFunnels?
ClickFunnels is a tool that helps online marketers to create their own sales funnels with high-quality templates. They have a very simple user interface that facilitates end to end automation and gives complete control to online marketers. Its plug and play feature make editing and creating content easy, making it ideal for all kinds of online businesses.
Why should one choose ClickFunnels over other funnel builders?
One of the biggest strengths of clickfunnels is its sales funnels that help to convert visitors into paid customers. Everything such as page builder, shopping cart, and CRM is already connected, and you have to plug and play around to get started.
Let’s understand its features in more detail for your better understanding:
Create Any Landing Page
ClickFunnels can create any landing page. There are no limits when it comes to the creative aspect of this software. They also have 100+ templates to create lead capture pages as well. You can use these pages for affiliate marketing efforts.
Membership Area
The membership area provides a steady stream of revenue for the people offering it and provides regular content updates for its members. ClickFunnels offers a membership site, but it does not offer many customization options.
Sales and Checkout Features
Sales and checkout should be smoother for a high conversion rate. ClickFunnels integrates well with PayPal and Stripe. Also, its shopping cart feature makes it easier to create checkout pages.
Email Marketing Automation
Email marketing continues to be an important tool for every digital marketer. ClickFunnels integrates with many apps, including Mail Chimp and Zapier, to provide an integral email marketing automation. It allows you to build an email list, turn visitors into email subscribers, offer beautiful templates for emails, create email sequences and much more.
Customer Support and Community
Customer support is an important aspect of every platform. ClickFunnels offers high-quality customer service, from onboarding to troubleshooting any issues. You can reach them through email or phone to quick answers to your queries. They have extensive documentation about the communication as well.
Affiliate Program
ClickFunnels affiliates get a great motivation to be successful where the top affiliates get the chance to win their dream cars, and in fact, click funnels claim that 181 of their affiliates have already won their dream cars.
It pays 40% of commission on all monthly recurring and front-end orders. Initially, it is 20% and based on performance, and affiliate partners become eligible to move to 30% and 40% commissions.
Analytics
ClickFunnels integrates with Google Analytics and helps to track the key performance metrics. You can track conversions or retarget people based on their behavioral data.
A/B Split Testing
You get the split testing feature with every clickfunnels account and with all plans. It allows you to view the full funnel stats in the funnel dashboard and see the progress in each step of the funnel. After reviewing this, you can improve the performance of your landing pages.
Though there are multiple benefits of using a clickfunnels, it comes with certain drawbacks too. It has no mobile responsiveness and lacks interaction among members. It does not support video hosting, so you will need to upload video on YouTube or third-party services to embed video into your sales funnel.
Now, you know all the features of clickfunnels software, but how do you create a sales funnel? That’s what we are discussing next.
How to create a Sales Funnel?
Analyze your audience behavior
Your sales funnel is more effective when you know your audience well. You are marketing only to people who are the right fit for what you sell.
Capture your audience’s attention
The only way your sales funnel works is when you put your content in front of your target audience. Post quality content as much as possible on all platforms to get organic traffic.
Build your landing page
Your content needs to take your prospects somewhere, and ideally, you should direct them to a landing page with an irresistible offer. A landing page should pursue visitors to the next step, for which you need to have a call to action that tells them what they exactly have to do, whether it’s downloading a free e-book or watching an instructional video.
Create an email sequence campaign
Market to your leads by providing valuable content through email. Send one or two emails per week. Nurturing them frequently will help you to convince them to buy. At the end of the campaign, make an irresistible offer that inspires your leads to act.
Keep in touch
Don’t forget your existing customers and thank them for each purchase, offer additional coupon codes and involve them in their social media sphere.
You can learn more about creating a sales funnel from OFA Challenge, a 30-day challenge taught by Russell Brunson, New York’s bestselling author. In this challenge, he teaches how to find your dream customers and create different funnels for your business.
Now, you know how to create a sales funnel, but you should also know how to use clickfunnel software, so let’s understand that.
How to Use ClickFunnels Software?
Step 1 – Choose your Sales Funnel. ClickFunnels has six build-in templates for funnels:
- Best Seller Book Funnel
- Product Launch Funnel
- Perfect Webinar Funnel
- The Real Stuff Funnel
- Fishbowl Funnel
- Network Marketing Bridge Funnel
Step 2 – Drag and Drop your message. Customize by moving elements as required.
Step 3 – Set up an action sequence for your funnel like email etc.
Step 4 – Launch your funnel
Who should use ClickFunnels Software?
- Established businesses seeking focused marketing solutions to increase conversion
- If you need additional services such as member metrics, autoresponders, drip emails other than just landing page.
- Looking to improve your monetization options
- If you want to create an actual sales funnel that can be customized easily
- Freelancers who build Funnels for various clients
- Click Funnel Affiliate Partners who can promote the product by sharing their product experience with people (this is optional and not all affiliates use the product)
Do you feel that clickfunnel can help your business grow online? If yes, then you must be thinking to buy it sooner or later.
Where can One buy ClickFunnels Software?
ClickFunnels comes with a 14-day free trial, and the basic plan starts at $97/month, which include:
- 20 Funnels
- 100 Pages
- 20k visitors/month
- Integration with shopping cart CRM and autoresponders
However, the value pack, including ‘Actionetics’ and ‘Backpack’, comes at $297/month. You can buy it from ClickFunnel Homepage.
Conclusion
No doubt, having a clickfunnels account can greatly impact the growth of your business. ClickFunnels have funnel templates that will help you create your entire sales funnel. You can create funnels like webinar registration, thank you page and so on. ClickFunnels also acts as a wonderful landing page tool, with a lot of built-in templates.
Comparison (ClickFunnel vs LeadPages)
| Comparison | ClickFunnels | Lead Pages |
| Pros | Creating a Sales Funnel is easy, and they have plenty of tutorials for beginners. | Unlimited leads with each plan allow the creation of websites, great template collections. |
| Cons | You need to shell out a lot of money to get an in-built email marketing | The template customization feels to be restricted with their drag and drop editor. Doesn’t offer email marketing service |
| Value for money | Clickfunnels might be expensive if you do not know how to leverage all the features. | If you are looking for a simple landing page builder to capture leads, then this is good. But to go beyond that might be expensive. |
| Customer support | No 24-hour support | Prompt support on weekdays from 9 am to 5 pm. Priority is given to advanced users if they have raised queries. |
| My Score | 4.5/5 | 3.5/5 |