Are you wondering what Clickfunnels is all about? How does it work and if you need it?

If you are somewhat new to digital marketing you might have heard people talking about Clickfunnels, sales funnels, conversions, and many other terms you don’t understand yet.

Even worse, the last time I checked on google for an answer it gave me quite a few different results which I am sure would leave anyone even more confused about what Clickfunnels actually is.

This is why, as a Clickfunnels user of more than 6 year, I’ll explain in this article what Clickfunnels truly is and why is such a big deal.

What is Clickfunnels?

To put it simply, Clickfunnels is a software that facilitates the building of high-converting sales ‘funnels’ for people with no prior design or programming knowledge.

Clickfunnels is intended to be a ‘website-in-a-box’ solution that gathers all the pieces necessary to create an online business, in one place.

It offers a variety of templates and a simple drag-and-drop builder that makes it easy for anyone of any tech skill level to create sales funnels, websites, landing pages, membership sites, and webinars, among other things.

What are sales funnels?

A sales funnel is one of the core concepts in the digital marketing industry.  It refers to the series of steps that a customer follows since they first come in contact with your offer until their first purchase and becoming loyal customers.

Sales funnels exist in every purchase process whether they have been consciously design or not.

For example, the journey from the first time you see an ad to you going on the product’s website and finally buying it, it’s a sales funnel.

Or you going through a McDonalds with the intention of buying a burger but ending up buying also fries, soda, and ice cream, is also a sales funnel.

The premise of sales funnels is that most customers don’t buy a product or service the first time they come in contact with it but instead, go through a series of steps mentally until they make a purchase decision.

This is why a purposely design sales funnel ‘guides’ them with a series of strategies to facilitate their journey and promote them moving forward towards their first purchase and from there, to bigger ones.

Furthermore, similarly to how you are offered to upgrade your order at McDonald’s, sales funnels use what are called ‘upsells’ and ‘downsells’ to increase the order value and take advantage of the shopping mindset the customer is already in.

From the software standpoint, funnels require a lot of pieces like landing pages, checkout tools, and email software to work together making it complicated for the average marketer or entrepreneur.

In this scenario, Clickfunnels facilities the process by putting all these tools together in its software making it possible for anyone to launch a sale funnel in hours.

Make sure to check out this article later for an in-depth review of how exactly sales funnels work in every stage.

What Clickfunnels IS vs. what IT IS NOT

There seems to be a lot of confusion and misinformation about what Clickfunnels actually is and what it can do for you so let’s take a look at what is truth and what is false.

Clickfunnels IS:

1. Clickfunnels is a software

In its most basic definition, Clickfunnels is a software or more accurately it is a “SAAS” which means “software as a service”. A SAAS means it is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. It is sometimes referred to as “on-demand software”.

Put simply, we could say it as software that your rent on a monthly basis and it is hosted in a remote server. So, not one that you pay a one-time fee for and download or install on your own computer.

2. Clickfunnels is a marketing concept

On another level Clickfunnels is not only the funnel building software but also proposes a complete marketing strategy based on the concept of sales funnels.

Rusell Brunson created the Clickfunnels strategy as a variation of the traditional sales funnels model that considers the stages of Awareness, Interest, Decision, and Action.

While in the traditional model the prospect goes through these stages without taking part, the Clickfunnels model involves them engaging actively through every step of the funnel.

You build rapport and trust in your customers by starting with small purchases and providing increased value as you present to them increasingly higher-priced offers.

3. Clickfunnels is an Affiliate Marketing Program

Clickfunnels also has a very popular and successful affiliate program were people can join to promote the software in exchange for a commission.

I see a lot of confusion around ‘making money with Clickfunnels’ and I think it stems from affiliates talking about how much they make with Clickfunnels.

This can be confusing from the outside since are not explicit if there are making money by using the software for increasing sales of their business or if they are making money as Clickfunnels’ affiliates.

If you want to learn more about the Clickfunnels Affiliate Program, make sure to check out this article later.

Clickfunnels IS NOT:

1. Clickfunnels is not a traffic source

I hear a lot of people thinking that by building the their sales funnels on Clickfunnels, somehow it will take care of bringing people to it so wanted to clarify it.

Clickfunnels is not a traffic source, it will not generate more traffic than a traditional website. Or even less, some website can received organic traffic from google search if they have done a good search engine optimization (SEO).

If you want to use SEO to bring people into your site, you are better using other platforms since it is not one of Clickfunnels’ strength.

On the other hand, if you build your sales funnels with Clickfunnels you can use any other traffic source to bring people in like social media, ads, forums, etc.

2. Clickfunnels is not an MLM

Another common misconception that I see going around is that Clickfunnels is a ‘scam’ or a ‘pyramid scheme’.

I believe this might come from the fact that Clickfunnels does have an affiliate program as mentioned above and some of the affiliates might have been promoting in in the wrong way or without understanding it clearly.

The way MLM or pyramid schemes work is that once you are in you can get people to join and they’ll be ‘under’ you meaning you’ll make money for recruiting them and for the money they make.

This is not even the case with Clickfunnels. It’s affiliate program doesn’t allow for levels and you don’t make money for recruiting other affiliates.

However some affiliates used to promote it without really understanding what the software could do or was it for so they would just tried to sell the trainings to other affiliates as a way to make money.

This is obviously the wrong direction for affiliates and for Clickfunnels so in 2020 they changed the rules of its affiliate program. It now requires a mandatory training to ensure affiliates are educated and can teach about Clickfunnels to people that really need it.

3. Clickfunnels is not a get-rich-quick solution

Similar to the misunderstanding about Clickfunnels being an MLM, people seem to also think Clickfunnels is a ‘get-rich-quick’ sort of offer.

While yes, you can definitely make a lot of money using Clickfunnels, you still need to put in the work and time.

Clickfunnels can help you set up an online offer much faster, increase your margins significantly and help you create long term success BUT you still need to know your audience, create the right offer and drive the right traffic to it and that will take some time.

What is the difference between Clickfunnels and a regular website?

In this web-driven world, everyone knows you need a website for your business. But you might be thinking, “Why would I need something other than a website?”

Traditional websites often confuse visitors, allowing them to get lost in all the options and leave. They also require you to have a separate:

• Content management system (ex. WordPress, Joomla)
• Web host (ex. SiteGround, Bluehost)
• Page builder (ex. Elementor, Beaver)
• Email autoresponder (ex. MailChimp, Aweber, GetResponse)
• Order form
• Shopping cart
• Web analytics
• Other marketing tools

ClickFunnels is everything these tools are, so you can create marketing and sales funnels from the ground up in a unified dashboard.

A funnel is faster and easier to build and can replace and outer-perform a traditional website. It also guides each visitor through the sales process, qualifying leads at each step, allowing you to reach up to 10 times more conversions.

If you are still confused, check out this video explaining Clickfunnels vs. a traditional website.

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What are Clickfunnels Benefits?

Now that you hopefully have a clear idea of what Clickfunnels is, let’s take a look are what are some of its many benefits it that users rave about:

1. Clickfunnels is easy to use

One of Clickfunnels’ goals is to facilitate anybody without any prior experience in technology, design, or programming to be able to design sales funnels easily and quickly, and they have definitely achieved this.

The interface and drag-and-drop builder are very intuitive and easy to use regardless of the skill level of the user.

Furthermore, they have tutorials and educational material for every single thing you want to create so if you have any doubts you’ll be able to resolve them right away.

2. Clickfunnels integrates with many apps

While Clickfunnels gathers most of the tools you need to run an online business, there are still other apps and programs you might want to integrate to customize it depending on your business and needs.

Because Clickfunnels is such a big company with more than 6 years in the market, it can be easily integrated with many apps like dropshipping automation, third-party email software, payment processors, and web analytics among many others with just a few clicks.

Other landing page or sales funnel builders are constantly trying to compete with Clickfunnels but this is one of the many benefits that is hard to match.

3. Clickfunnels saves you time and money

If you’d attempt to create a sales funnels from scratch, you’d need to pay an expensive programmer to code all the pieces together. Even if you were happy with the result, it’d have taken a lot more time and you’d need to keep paying monthly fee of many apps.

Even more, if you were to require any changes, the same situation would repeat.

With all the pre-built sales funnels, landing page templates, and integrations available, ClickFunnels enables you to cut down on your most important resources and allow you to focus on your offer and your audience.

4. Clickfunnels has a loyal community

Besides all the cool marketing and technology benefits, my favorite part about Clickfunnels is that there is a sense of community among its users and affiliates.

I attribute it to the strong presence Russell Brunson and his team have among the community. They are constantly communicating with their audience and creating exciting trainings, events and recognitions that keep everybody engaged.

Russell is a self-made millionaire who created the company from scratch so I believe that helps him understand his audience and at the same time, help the users relate and be inspired by him.

Its Facebook group with over 630,000 members is one of the most active I’ve seen and you’ll be able to interact with like-minded people who will be happy to support you.

ClickFunnels Features

ClickFunnels has literally hundreds of features. Take a look at some top ones:

1. Prebuilt Sales Funnel Templates

ClickFunnels library of marketing and sales funnel templates will do the heavy lifting for your business. Whether you need a funnel for a product launch or a membership site, you get access to a lot of proven and tested sales funnels.

The templates are categorized under lead capture funnels, sales page funnels, event funnels, and membership funnels. Some popular funnel templates include sales letter funnel, product launch funnel, 2-step tripwire funnel, invisible funnel, homepage, squeeze page funnel, lead magnet funnel, bridge funnel, survey funnel, and more.

All funnel templates include pre-designed landing page templates — both free and paid — that you can tweak to meet your needs.

2. Drag and Drop Editor

If you want a unique landing page, its intuitive editor allows you to create your own funnel from scratch.

No coding skills required. About 40 free templates are available to customize. If you can use Facebook, you can use Clickfunnels.

3. Share Funnel

The Share Funnel feature allows you to generate and share a link to your funnel. Why should you care?

The ClickFunnels affiliate program allows you to earn some extra cash while selling or promoting a product or service. Others use ClickFunnels to build and share landing pages with clients. With share funnel URLs, you can get up to 40% recurring commission if the visitor joins ClickFunnels using your link. If you ask me, this is one of my favorite features.

4. A/B (Split) Testing

Split testing prevents you from wasting your time and ad budget on poor performing elements or a landing page in general.

After creating a landing page for a product or service, you want to test multiple variations of its elements. You can keep doing this as much as you want and keep improving your conversions

5. Payment Gateways

ClickFunnels allows you to accept payments at the end of your funnel without sending your buyers to a third party. It supports various payment system integrations with PayPal, Stripe, Apple Pay, Android Pay, and more, as well as affiliate programs like ClickBank and JV Zoo.

6. SSL Certification

Have you seen that ‘not secure’ message at the top when browsing through a website? You probably wouldn’t make a purchase there and neither do your visitors. This is why ClickFunnels has made security its top priority ever since.

ClickFunnels makes sure all websites or pages created through it are encrypted to keep both buyers and sellers safe from phishing, identify theft, and other malicious attacks.

The easiest way to tell if a website is safe is through the SSL certificate (URLs that start with HTTPS). All ClickFunnels websites and pages have SSL certificates.

7. Email Automation

ClickFunnels has its own autoresponder on the premium plan, but it also integrates with third-party email service providers for good measure. This makes ClickFunnels a perfect lead generation and email marketing tool. It supports MailChimp, Zapier, Drip, ConvertKit, Aweber, and more.

8. Tracking

ClickFunnels comes with its own analytics tool to track your funnel’s performance, including click-throughs, conversion, opt-ins, and visitors, among others. It also shows you an overview of your audience’s activity right on your dashboard.

9. Multiple Domains

Multiple domains and sub-domains can be connected with ClickFunnels. Whether you want to run a sales offer or host a webinar right off your website, without spending a single dime on premium plugins or themes.

10. Actionetics and Backpack Tool

Available only in ClickFunnels’ premium plan, Actionetics and Backpack are two amazing features of the software.

Actionetics is a marketing automation software that monitors the statistics of your leads as they arrive in your sales funnel. If you are not new to sales and marketing, you definitely understand how crucial knowing your audience, their behavior, and their needs are. As a result, Actionetics can help you better tailor and market your products to your prospects.

Meanwhile, the Backpack tool helps you create your own affiliate program. Whether it is a product or service you are offering, this is quite a nifty tool to propel your business forward.

What can you do with Clickfunnels?

1. Collect leads and grow your email list

The easiest way to get leads for your business is by offering your potential customers something of value in exchange for their email address.

With Clickfunnels, You can do this easily by using one of their Opt-In page templates and offering your visitors and attractive ‘lead magnet’. This can be a free pdf guide, a video series, a special discount, or even a free consultation.

Once you decide on your ‘lead magnet’ you can customize the opt-in page and start collecting emails.

Getting leads of potential customers and growing your email list is an essential part of a successful business. On average, marketers, make $1-$3 a month per email subscriber so it is definitely something you want to start sooner rather than later.

For a step by step guide on how to create an opt-in page, make sure to check out this article later.

2. Sell digital products

Using Clickfunnels to see digital products is a great way to increase your average order value and your conversion rate.

Clickfunnels uses tools like ‘up-sells’ and ‘order-bumps’ to offer the customer other products during checkout. Think of it as the cashier at McDonalds offering to add fries to your orders or the display of products that are often near some stores checkout lines.

The goals is to use to take advantage of the ‘buying’ mindset the customer is. They have already decided they will buy something from you so it is much easier to have them add something to their purchase than it’d be to generate a new one.

Furthermore, by using Clickfunnels you get to capture some of your visitors emails even if they don’t purchase. This way it is much easier to follow up with them and ‘recover’ some of those sales.

All of this strategies can increase your profits exponentially or turn a losing campaign into a profitable one.

3. Sell online courses

Clickfunnels is the ideal platform to easily design a high converting funnel for your digital products such as online courses, coaching, and trainings.

The perfect structure is to create a funnel with

• Opt-in page,
• Front-end offer (low-ticket)
• Middle-end offer (upsells and downsells)
• Back-end offer (high-ticket)

This way you can get people into your funnel with more ease, nurture the leads through email and gain their trust by offering them a low-cost product with great value so they can, later on, trust you with a higher cost offer.

4. Create Membership Sites

Besides using Clickfunnels to sell your online courses, you can also use their membership feature to host your course or materials and give people exclusive access. This is one of the best ideal ways of earning money online through the monetization of your skills.

A membership site allows you to deliver content to your audience where you give access to these contents based on their purchase or relationship with your business.

Creating a membership site with Clikcfunnels is really easy. You can choose between many of the pre-built templates and most importantly, integrate it seamlessly with your sales funnel for an amazing marketing experience.

5. Automate webinars: 

Webinars are a great way to boost your lead generation process, builds rapport, and generate fast sales fast in the process.

They are the ideal environment for selling just about anything to anyone at just about any time of the day. Through webinars, you get the chance to talk to your potential customers in a setting where you have their full attention, can deliver great value, and sell products of any kind.

Witth Clickfunnels, you can create an awesome webinar funnel to increase the number of the registered viewers You can host live and automated webinar using clickfunnels and also integrate your favorite webinar platform with your funnel.

6. Sell affiliate products

If you are an affiliate marketer and you are not using Clickfunnels you are definitely leaving money on the table. If you are promoting a product by sending traffic straight to the affiliate page you are not truly building a business and could lose your income source at any moment.

By using Clickfunnels to create what is known as a bridge page between the traffic course and the affiliate website, you can collect customers’ emails, increase your conversion rates and build a highly targeted audience that will allow you to make money consistently every month.

When you send people to your bridge page an collect their emails you can follow up with those who didn’t buy the first time to continue to use other approaches to promote the offer. This way another group will end up buying and your conversion rate will increase along with your profits.

But more importantly, you can continue to promote other offers in the same niche to the people in your list for years. As mentioned before, the average income per email subscriber is $1-$3/ month so by capturing emails you are building your most valuable asset as an affiliate.

What is the purpose of Clickfunnels?

As an online sales funnel builder, the main purpose of Clickfunnels is to help anyone to easily create sales funnels that improve conversions and profits.

As mentioned above, it can be used to sell any product physical or digital, generate leads, optimize affiliate marketing, create webinar funnels, etc.

Does ClickFunnels really work?

To put it simply, yes! Clickfunnels does a great job at making the proceess of creating a sales funnels easy and allowing you to track, optimize and scale your business.

BUT Clickfunnels is not responsible for a bad offer, bad traffic, or bad follow-up. That is your responsibility and no software or method can fix it.

Although with Clickfunnels analytics, you’ll also be able to see the statistics of your funnel and diagnose where you can make improvements.

Who needs Clickfunnels?

Entrepreneurs, freelancers, coaches, affiliate marketers, bloggers, youtubers, business owners, artists, trainers, realtors, dentists, chiropractors.

Basically anyone with a product or service that is looking to make money.

Can you make money with Clickfunnels?

Of course, you can use Clickfunnels to make money by getting leads for your business, selling your services or products with a better conversion that regular websites, grow your email list or increase your affiliate income.

How does Clickfunnels work?

If you want to learn exactly how Clickfunnels work make sure to check out this article.

Even better, if you want to get started with Clickfunnels and want someone to guide you step-by-step and give you all the secrets to to create your first successful funnel, I suggest you check out the One Funnel Away Challenge.

It is Clickfunnels’ signature training lead the Russell Brunson and his team and it doesn’t get any better than being trained by them who have been making money with Clickfunnels for years in all possible niches.

What can I sell with Clickfunnels?

You can literally seel anything with Clickfunnels but here is. general list of the most common things people sell with Clcikfunnels:

• Digital products
• Online Courses
• Workshops
• Ebooks
• Coaching
• Consulting
• Affiliate products
• Freelance services

Is Clickfunnels “worth it”?

I get this question a LOT and my answer is always YES. Running a website has some inevitable costs whether you decide to run it on Clickfunnels or somewhere else. If we add up all the software and services you need vs. the same services Clickfunnels gives you in one place, the difference is not significant.

But that is not the strongest reason. ClickFunnels would not have become a $360 million company if it wasn’t ‘worth it’ for its users.

ClickFunnels allows you to integrate all major sales and marketing elements to come up with a functional and effective sales funnel. Instead of having separate platforms for your CMS, web host, landing page, autoresponders, and more, ClickFunnels can handle all these for you.

They are also the industry leaders when it comes to high converting sales funnels and landing pages with a huge number of success stories to back them up.

Do you still have questions about ClickFunnels? Let us know in the comments. We reply to all of them!

What is ClickFunnels’ Pricing

Clickfunnels offers two different pricing packages, differing with the number of sales funnels that can be created along with extra features.

The Clickfunnels Startup plan costs $97 a month, while the Clickfunnels platinum plan is a lot pricier at $297 a month.

If you are only starting out, the Startup plan is already a good starting point. The Enterprise plan, on the other hand, has all the bells and whistles of ClickFunnels such as the Backpack tool and Actionetics.

Recommended: Clickfunnels Pricing 2020 | Discounts & Alternatives | Never Pay Full Price

What is an alternative to Clickfunnels?

In my opinion, there are two decent alternatives to Clickfunnels:

Kartra, if you are looking for a similar sales funnels builder with similar features. The interface is a little harder to learn and the prices are quite similar yet they vary by the number of contacts you have.

GetResponse: if you are looking for something simpler and cheaper. It doesn’t have all of Clickfunnels features but, you can create landing pages and have the email software included since their $39 plan. The downside is they charge you based your number of contacts so at some point you can end up paying more than with Clickfunnels.

How can I get Clickfunnels for free?

You can get a free 14-day trial by going to this link. You’ll need to create an account and choose between the Startup plan for $97 per month or Full Suite plan for $297 per month. You can cancel your account at any time before the trial ends and won’t be charged.

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