“Just sign up to Clickfunnels and you’ll grown your business and make money. And if not you will go out of business”
That’s the marketing message Clickfunnels portrays. No, they don’t come out and say it, but their marketing content is filled with big claims of success backed up by vague testimonials.
I recall several years ago, in the early days of Clickfunnels being intrigued by it, but still not understanding what Clickfunnels is, does, or how to use it.
The home page has a little bit more insight these days, but the sentiment is clearly still prevalent has there is a daily post in the Clickfunnel FB Group with something to the effect of…
“I signed up for Clickfunnels, but nothing has happened yet, wtf do I do.”
There’s no shortage of those posts in there clearly indicating people signed up without understanding what Clickfunnels is.
Then there are the people in Facebook Group for Contractors that know I use Clickfunnels, get lulled in by the Clickfunnels marketing, sign up, and then reach out to me to saying “WTF do you do with this thing”.
I don’t know if I would call it a problem, but there certainly needs to be some clarity.
To really understand it we need to understand…
What a funnel is.
A funnel is simply a series of pages that takes users from a traffic source through a series of pages guide to an action.
The traffic source is important… without a traffic source a funnel is useless.
On top of that a funnel generally needs a utilizes a paid traffic source.
Organic traffic is something you have no control over. You can’t control who you’re going to reach or how long it will take to get any traffic.
If you want to have success with funnels, you need a traffic source like a spigot, you can turn it on, you can increase the flow, and you can turn it off.
Let me be real for a second, if you’re thinking of ‘organic traffic’ to your funnel, or not spending money on ads, funnel building and clickfunnels is not for you.
Funnel Examples
To better understand what clickfunnels let me show you some visual funnel maps.
The first one is the simple funnel I used to earn a 2 Comma Club award. Simply put I used it to generate estimate request leads for my local home service company.
In this funnel, I ran paid ads to a traffic source. From the traffic source they went to an estimate request page, filled out substantial details including property address, then went to a thank you which drove them to authority positioning content.
This next funnel example gets a little more technical.
In this case you would run paid ads to your traffic source, to buy a lead tripwire (basically a small digital product typically less than $50). After they purchase, the buyer would go on to another page with an upsell offer. Offers are often made to be ‘painless’, as you’ve already gotten the buyers credit card information in the prior step so all the user has to do is click a button.
In either case…
the funnel is reliant on a paid traffic source. I can’t stress that enough, because many people sign up to Clickfunnels thinking they will just ‘organically build a funnel’ and there practically is no such thing.
At the Core, Clickfunnels is a landing page builder.
When you look at the diagrams above and see the pages, Clickfunnels is a the tool that allow you to easily create those pages, collect payments on them and organize them into sequence.
It is not a magic wand that will get you money from the internet.
The Features of Clickfunnels That Make it Worthwhile
While Clickfunnels isn’t a revolutionary software there are a few features that I like — that keep me paying the monthly fee.
Easy Payment System
It is incredibly simple to accept payments using stripe via Clickfunnels.
You do either one time payments or recurring subscription based options.
This is opposed to WordPress page builders that have similar page building features but require another paid plugin to process payments.
One Click Upsells & Order Bump
It’s easier to sell more when you take away ‘the pain of paying’. In other words, people are more like to buy if all they have to do is click a button and not have to input their whole credit card number again.
Clickfunnels makes pulling this off incredibly easy.
Beyond the example illustrated above there is also an ‘order bump’ feature which a simple little check mark the user would text next to the buy now.
Intuitive Funnel Organization
If you’ve tried building funnels you know where I am going with this.
Even if you use an EXCELLENT page builder; on the backend your funnel pages are just WordPress pages, mixed in with all your other pages. It makes me cringe when I have log into WordPress and start sorting them out or finding where I left off.
Clickfunnels stays organized by keeping all your pages contained within the ‘funnel’ and then allowing you to organize your funnels by groups.
Although you can organize your pages in order, I rarely use this feature as I might be trying all kinds of things and creating pages outside of the ‘funnel’ that promote the same product / service.
Native Page Speed Optimization
Slow pages lose conversion events.
When building pages in WordPress it can be easy to add elements that cause page bloat or otherwise overload low budget servers.
Clickfunnels does a pretty good job of keeping the page speed up no matter what elements you use.
Can Clickfunnels be used for a website?
It depends….
If you don’t plan on publishing much content and relying solely on paid direct response marketing, or branded search, then clickfunnels could make your website.
If you plan on publishing content, like a blog or podcast, you’re going to need WordPress and then use Clickfunnels for pages that push your products / services.
The Bottom Line On Clickfunnels.
I hope in reading this, you understand what Clickfunnels really; a simple landing page builder / payment collector.
Remember, it’s not a magic trick that will make your business work.
To actually see profit from it, you need 2 things…
#1 an audience source… and unless you have that existing you will need to pay for it.
#2 and something to sell that audience (that they want).