What Is ClickFunnels?

Have you found yourself asking, what is ClickFunnels?

The short answer is that ClickFunnels is a marketing platform. It’s designed to help you create online sales funnels that automate the process for generating leads and closing sales. 

Using ClickFunnels, you gain the advantage of controlling all stages that buyers move through as they become aware of your brand, express interest as subscribers and finally purchase your product. 

You can gain the ability to build websites, opt-in pages, sales pages, membership sites, thank you pages and webinars when using ClickFunnels. 

What Is ClickFunnels?

ClickFunnels

The fact that you can operate your entire business inside an all-in-one marketing platform is probably the most interesting aspect of Clickfunnels. 

Consider how many tools and software you typically need to run an online business:

  • Website host
  • Content management system
  • Email service provider
  • Landing page builder
  • Shopping cart
  • Analytic tools
  • Order forms

If you decide that ClickFunnels is for you, then you’ll discover that this marketing platform can replace all those separate pieces of software for you. 

Why Do You Need a Sales Funnel?

A well-functioning sales funnel guides prospects from the awareness marketing stage into feeling comfortable becoming your customer. 

The more you can automate this process so that you don’t have to personally invest time converting sales, the faster you can scale your business into higher profits. 

You might hear other names when people talk about building sales funnels:

  • Customer acquisition funnel
  • Marketing funnel
  • Sales process
  • Revenu funnel
  • Purchasing funnel

No matter how many names there are for it, a sales funnel has three stages to it:

  1. Top (lead generation)
  2. Middle (nurturing prospects)
  3. Bottom (closing sales)

What makes ClickFunnels a quality solution for building out sales funnels?

Traditionally, it requires using all the platforms and software programs I listed above to piece your funnels together. 

It can get confusing for both you and your prospects. As well, the chain of landing pages, optin pages, sales pages and shopping carts can become broken. 

What is ClickFunnels? It’s a way to create sales funnels that have one simple page, one simple offer and one easy way for customers to take action. 

Let’s now look at the features of ClickFunnels.

clickfunnels features

Sales Funnel Templates

A ClickFunnels account comes with many different types of prebuilt funnel templates so you don’t have to wonder which kind of designs, copy or customer flow work best to convert into sales. 

All the templates are placed into easy-to-find categories such as membership funnels, event funnels, sales page funnels and lead capture funnels. 

Here are some of the popular sales funnel templates you’ll discover that are available for immediate use:

  • Product launch funnel
  • Sales letter funnel
  • Invisible funnel
  • 2-step tripwire funnel
  • Lead magnet funnel
  • Squeeze page funnel
  • Homepage
  • Survey funnel
  • Bridge funnel

Each funnel template comes with pre-built landing page templates so that you can connect each piece of the funnel together without needing to be a professional designer or copywriter. 

Drag & Drop Editor

The landing page editor lets you customize any page with your relevant business information and sales offer. 

Again, you don’t need to have any coding skills to use ClickFunnels. There are approximately 49 different templates available for free use. 

You also have the freedom to build any landing page from scratch. 

No matter how you build your pages, whether from the templates or from scratch, everything is drag & drop for the greatest ease of use. 

Share Funnel Feature

This is an excellent feature to use if you’re a consultant building websites for clients, for example. It’s also useful if you’re interested in promoting ClickFunnels as an affiliate or if you’re a network marketer. 

As a consultant, you could share your pre-built funnels with clients who want to use the same type of sales funnel inside the website you’re building for them. 

However, they need to have a ClickFunnels account in order to use your shared funnel. This means you can earn money selling them the funnel, plus the affiliate commissions you would earn as each of them buys ClickFunnels through your affiliate link. 

You could do the same thing as a network marketer. Build an automated webinar sales funnel to replace the traditional hotel meeting and then share that funnel with your entire downline to use. 

A/B Testing

It’s always a good idea to test one landing page’s results against another one and discover which one performs best for you. 

With ClickFunnels, you can even split test entire sales funnels so that you start to understand where a funnel might be breaking down in terms of overall performance. 

If you consistently fix any part that isn’t working well, you should notice your conversion numbers improving. 

Payment Processor Gateways

ClickFunnels lets you accept payments from customers without making your prospects move away from your sales funnel ecosystem. The platform connects to many different payment processors such as Android Pay, Stripe, Apple Pay and PayPal. 

SSL Certification

It’s critical to have the proper security in place so that your customers know their personal information is safe with you. 

ClickFunnels ensures that any page your audience lands on inside your sales funnel is encrypted. The goal of this encryption is to protect people against identity theft, phishing and other types of online attacks. 

The technology for this is called SSL (Secure Sockets Layer). All ClickFunnels urls have built-in SSL certificates. 

Email Automation

You can use the autoresponder that comes built-in to ClickFunnels and stop paying for your current email service provider.

However, you can keep your current software if you like it because your ClickFunnels account will integrate with platforms like ConvertKit, MailChimp, AWeber and Drip. 

Analytics & Tracking

You’ll discover that ClickFunnels comes with an integrated analytics dashboard where you can keep track of:

  • Opt-in conversions
  • Open rates
  • Click through rates
  • Traffic
  • Video views
  • Sales conversions

Actionetics & Backpack

These are only available when using the more expensive plan inside ClickFunnels. However, they offer some incredible value and features. 

Actionetics monitors how your leads perform as they move through your funnels. The tool helps you perform marketing automation and deliver focused, relevant content to all prospects so that they convert more effectively. 

Backpack allows you to set up your own affiliate program so that you can recruit affiliates that make additional sales for you. 

You’ve been wondering, what is ClickFunnels? Now that you have a better idea of what the platform is, let’s look at a few funnel examples so that you can vision out the possibilities more effectively. 

Free Book + Shipping Funnel

Russell Brunson, the founder of ClickFunnels, uses this funnel extensively to build his own email list. 

For example, he uses this funnel to sell his three books:

  1. DotCom Secrets
  2. Expert Secrets
  3. Traffic Secrets

You might want to consider using this same funnel process inside your business. It allows you to sell a book by giving it away, but recouping your shipping costs by simply asking customers who are requesting the book to pay their own shipping costs. 

Coach/Consultant Funnel

If you’re a consultant or coach, then you know the importance of getting prospects onto a strategy call where you have the opportunity to sell them into your coaching services. 

The ClickFunnels coach/consult sales funnel has four main components:

  1. Offer something valuable, such as a free video or pdf
  2. Help prospects get a real result by what your free offer teaches them
  3. Direct them to fill out an application for the opportunity to talk with you
  4. Book the call and sell your services

Fishbowl Sales Funnel

This is designed to quickly generate sales. It offers a free resource and then uses a deal or discount to help encourage your prospects to buy immediately.

ClickFunnels Includes The Most Important Sales Funnel Elements

I mentioned above that creating sales funnels becomes complicated if you’re piecing different platforms together. 

It’s also hard to know whether you’re including elements that actually convert best. 

ClickFunnels has years of testing behind it and you can benefit from the fact that they only include what works inside the sales funnels that the platform teaches you to create. 

These include:

  • Social proof
  • Always including a call-to-action
  • Selling benefits instead of features
  • Using lead generation first
  • Keeping distracting elements to a minimum
  • Utilizing highly-converting headlines & copy

Thinking of your sales funnel as one big ecosystem that needs to get broken down into smaller steps is probably the best way to think about the process. The key is having the ability to evaluate each of these small steps so that you know where problems exist. 

Then, you simply fix those problems and watch to see if it improves results. 

The only challenge is that piecing together your own sales funnels with different types of software makes it that much more difficult to clearly see how each related part affects the overall ecosystem. 

ClickFunnels solves that problem by providing you one ecosystem to build each funnel in. 

Final Thoughts

What do you think? Do you feel better about understanding your original question, what is ClickFunnels?

If so, you can get your account started here. 

However, if you need additional information, then I encourage you to read my full ClickFunnels Review here

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