Did one of your colleagues recently talk to you about ClickFunnels and you were left wondering what it was all about? Was it your manager who wanted you to start using it? Or are you an entrepreneur who is looking at improving your online business? However you heard about ClickFunnels, you are now seeking a thorough overview of how the tool can help you. If that’s the case, then you’re in the right place.

In this article, we are going to describe what ClickFunnels is, what it is not, and how the tool can help your online business.

FIRST, LET’S START WITH UNDERSTANDING “WHAT IS CLICKFUNNELS”?

ClickFunnels is a Software as a Service (SaaS) subscription tool that was designed to help businesses build sales funnels, email collection forms, landing pages, and payment collection pages without having to code. It allows you to sell your products online more quickly by helping you create pages that simplify purchases and boost conversion.

ClickFunnels has a large collection of business-oriented templates that you can select and create pages for your website to drive lead generation and sales. These templates are really appealing and can be customized based on the idea you have in mind.

Once you have selected the template, you’ll just have to drag and drop various elements on the template to get a finished product. This saves you from any coding efforts and makes the process of creating attractive Lead Gen and sales pages simpler and faster.

ClickFunnels allows you to create landing pages for all stages in your sales funnel (prospect, lead, qualified, deal closure, etc). Their templates are optimized based on the stage in the sales funnel you are creating the landing page for, such that they drive more leads, email-opt ins, and sales. By creating pages using their templates, you could build your email lists and also drive conversions.

WHAT IS CLICKFUNNELS NOT?

ClickFunnels is not an email marketing tool like MailChimp or ZohoCampaigns. Using ClickFunnels, you will be able to build an email list or grow your existing subscriber list, but this tool will not be able to run your email marketing campaigns. They do not have email templates that you could use for creating your email campaigns. So even when you purchase ClickFunnels to grow your subscriber list, you will still need an email marketing tool like MailChimp, Convertkit‎, Zoho Campaigns,‎ or AWeber to send your actual email marketing messages.

7 WAYS CLICKFUNNELS HELPS YOU PROMOTE YOUR ONLINE BUSINESS

1. FORCES YOU TO USE A BEST PRACTICES FUNNEL

While ClickFunnels is a marketing and sales tool, the greatest benefit of using ClickFunnels is that it forces business owners to think about their business through the lens of a sales funnel, which most businesses have not done even if they are seasoned enterprises.

It also introduces business owners to the concept of stepping up prospects from free or low-cost products and upselling them to more expensive products during the sales process, through funnels made up of drip email nurturing campaigns, landing pages, forms, etc. If you want to learn more about this process and the consumer psychology behind it, you’ll have the opportunity to get a great book on this at the bottom of this article.

2. BUILDS ONLINE SALES PAGES FOR YOUR BUSINESS

ClickFunnels is a landing page builder that allows you to build actual sales funnels that you could use in your online business. ClickFunnels has a whole series of templates to build these funnels based on what your business requirement is. It makes your landing page set up process seamless and quick.

For example, your business may be looking at selling an online membership. In that case, you could build a funnel where you drive people to register and then you direct them to your membership page where you have eBooks that the members could download. Or maybe you are an eCommerce store and you want to create sales funnels for driving conversion. ClickFunnels allows you to create eCommerce product pages without any unnecessary distractions to ensure higher conversion rates.

3. OPT-IN LEAD FORMS TO CAPTURE EMAIL ADDRESSES & BUILD YOUR EMAIL LIST

ClickFunnels has wonderful Squeeze Page Funnels for your business to grow your email list of subscribers and potential buyers. The squeeze page funnels by ClickFunnels has just two simple stages – squeeze page and the thank you page. The squeeze page is the typical opt-in lead form page where you are asking for email addresses of the users in return for providing some valuable like a lead magnet. The second page is where we will give the users the information we have promised in return for their email ID. Here are few amazing Squeeze Page Funnels from ClickFunnels that you could use.

4. TAKES PAYMENT FOR YOUR ONLINE STORE

By integrating ClickFunnels with payment gateways like PayPal or Stripe, your business will be able to accept payments via the ClickFunnels eCommerce landing pages you created.

So, this is an essential step if you are planning to sell products online by creating sales pages using ClickFunnels. For example, if you want to sell memberships to your portal via online landing pages, you could integrate ClickFunnels with PayPal payment gateway to accept payments from users and then take them to the membership portal.

5. BUILD OPTIMIZED LANDING PAGES FOR UPSELLING

ClickFunnels allows you to add Upsell products for various products in your line items. While creating a product page via ClickFunnels you have an option to add upsell pages/products to each of your products. This is integrated usually in the form of additional upsell download buttons as shown in the image below. These buttons would be linked to the upsell pages that are created. Alternatively, you could link existing products of higher value to the upsell button.

6. MARKETING AUTOMATION TO SEND EMAILS

ClickFunnels supports email marketing automation by integrating 3rd party email hosting services such as G Suite, Zoho and autoresponders such as Aweber, GetResponse, ActiveCampaign, and more. You could create your G Suite or Zoho email for your ClickFunnels domain and integrate it so that you can send mailers to your subscribers. Once you integrate the chosen email marketing tool, setting up a mailer is a very simple 3 step process as shown in the image below.

7. HOST A WEBINAR

ClickFunnels enables you to host webinars and build autowebinar funnels by integrating your webinar tool with the platform. You could integrate webinar tools like Zoom or GoToMeeting with ClickFunnels and host webinars for your potential customers or target audience.

Post integration, you could build webinar funnels and pages by choosing a suitable template and setting the live time and date for the webinar. All the webinars you have hosted will be available in the replay room and you could add these webinars to the landing pages built via ClickFunnels. Many times webinar recordings are used for lead generation. For example, you could ask visitors to leave their email IDs to view a webinar recording on how to use ClickFunnels.

CLICKFUNNELS PRICING

Here are the pricing details for the platform. ClickFunnels offers a couple of options- the basic plan with limited pages, templates, funnels and 20k visitors that costs $97 per month and the etison Suite version with unlimited pages, templates, funnels and visitors that costs $297 per month. Below is a table comparing the features of the two options.

HOW TO EXPERIENCE CLICKFUNNELS – ORDER THIS BOOK OR START TRIAL

There are two great ways to get a first-hand experience of ClickFunnels.

First, the one we highly recommend is to request your copy of the physical book “DotCom Secrets”. This is a physical paper book, not a download. The book is free but you will have to pay about $6 for shipping and handling and it is well worth it. DotCom Secrets is a playbook compendium of modern day digital marketing sales funnel best practices that have changed the way we run our business. When you order “DotCom Secrets” you will go through a ClickFunnels funnel, including landing page, forms and their Trip-wire upsell as a part of the sign-up process. This will give you a fair idea of the kind of experiences you could create for your business by using ClickFunnels. Clicking the banner below will get you started ordering the DotCom Secrets book.

Another way would be to start your Free 30-day Trial of ClickFunnels to build your own Funnels.

FINAL THOUGHTS

ClickFunnels is an amazing tool if you are looking at boosting your online sales for your business. The $97 entry price might be steep for a newer business but is an attractive logical progression once your marketing maturity advances beyond a simple email tool like MailChimp for an information product, membership or e-commerce business. However, you must spend the time choosing the right funnels and templates according to your business and target audience. Be sure to choose the templates based on your buyer journey stages to make this an effective part of your marketing strategies.