Sales Funnels: What They Are and How They Work

Sales funnels are a powerful tool for businesses of all sizes and industries. They can help businesses convert more leads into paying customers, increase sales and revenue, and improve customer satisfaction. In this blog post, we will explain what sales funnels are and how they work.

What is a Sales Funnel?

A sales funnel is a visual representation of the steps that a potential customer goes through before making a purchase. The funnel metaphor refers to the fact that the number of potential customers at the top of the funnel is much larger than the number of customers that actually make it to the bottom.

The basic structure of a sales funnel includes four stages:

  1. Awareness: The potential customer becomes aware of your business or product.
  2. Interest: The potential customer expresses interest in your business or product.
  3. Decision: The potential customer decides to make a purchase.
  4. Action: The potential customer completes the purchase.

Sales funnels can be further broken down into sub-stages, depending on the specifics of the business or industry. For example, an e-commerce sales funnel might include sub-stages such as adding items to a shopping cart, entering payment information, and confirming the order.

How Do Sales Funnels Work?

Sales funnels are designed to guide potential customers through each stage of the buying process, ultimately leading them to make a purchase. This is accomplished through a series of carefully crafted marketing and sales tactics.

Here is a general overview of how each stage of the funnel works:

  1. Awareness: At this stage, the potential customer becomes aware of your business or product. This can be accomplished through various marketing channels, such as social media, email marketing, and advertising. The goal is to generate interest and curiosity in your business or product.
  2. Interest: Once the potential customer is aware of your business or product, the next step is to generate interest. This can be accomplished through providing valuable content, such as blog posts, videos, or webinars. The goal is to establish your business as an authority in your industry and build trust with potential customers.
  3. Decision: At this stage, the potential customer is ready to make a decision. This is where you need to convince them that your business or product is the best choice. This can be accomplished through providing social proof, such as customer reviews or testimonials, and highlighting the unique value proposition of your business or product.
  4. Action: Finally, the potential customer takes action and completes the purchase. This can be facilitated through providing a seamless and user-friendly purchasing experience, such as clear calls-to-action and easy checkout processes.

Why are Sales Funnels Important?

Sales funnels are important for several reasons:

  1. More Efficient Sales Process: By guiding potential customers through each stage of the buying process, sales funnels can help businesses streamline their sales process and reduce the amount of time and resources required to convert leads into customers.
  2. Better Customer Experience: Sales funnels can help businesses provide a more personalized and tailored experience for potential customers, increasing their satisfaction and likelihood of making a purchase.
  3. Increased Sales and Revenue: By optimizing each stage of the sales funnel, businesses can increase the number of leads that ultimately convert into paying customers, leading to increased sales and revenue.

In conclusion, sales funnels are a powerful tool for businesses to improve their sales process, increase customer satisfaction, and boost sales and revenue. By understanding the stages of the sales funnel and implementing effective marketing and sales tactics, businesses can maximize their chances of converting leads into paying customers.

New Clickfunnels Add Ons Available Now!

Clickfunnels add ons now available for paypal sales tax and currency conversion

[I’m on a boat!]

It’s been a while since we posted here, so I wanted to check in and let you know about all the cool stuff we’ve been working on that’s coming soon to a blog post (or sales funnel..) near you.

First, a quick story…

Recently I spent a week on a sailing boat through the Sicilian Islands with my family.

Climbing volcanoes and building sales funnels with Clickfunnels. Funnel Fix It

We climbed volcanoes (2 of them!). We swam in sulfur “baths” in the sea (think a bubble bath in the ocean!), and we ate (a lot of…) fantastic Italian food. Yum!

Now, while I still had a bunch of client work to do, the “Italian Time” forced me to slow down and take some space.

The internet stability may have factored a little too 😉

You know what that means? More free stuff for you guys!

Here’s a bunch of cool stuff we’ve been putting together for Funnel Fix It clients over the last few months that we’ll be perfecting for mass use and posting about on our blog and fb page shortly.

If you use Clickfunnels, then you’ve probably been waiting for these…

  1. Sales tax. #AllStates! Nuff said.
  2. Dynamic shipping. International. States. Calculated pricing! Boom.
  3. PayPal. Failure proof (now shown as the legit workaround in the CF help docs)
  4. PayPal Pro + CF Promo Code Pro working together? Yup. We can get it working with any CF Pro Tools script now 🙂
  5. Affiliate tracking for optins, stored (and reportable!) For backpack, failure proof affiliate tracking
  6. Dynamic price conversion tracking for any 3rd party tool (Google analytics, Has Offers etc), ideal for cart mode and Multiple OTOs and Downsells. Yes, you can track your $ales!
  7. Custom slider bars that can produce a calculation for bundles, sizes, amounts, and select products
  8. Bundle Building Cart. Let your users choose from a number of products and quantities and build their own cart bundle… that automatically loads those into the checkout (order form)
  9. Currency based order form. Drop down to select which currency customers want to pay in. Oh yeah!
  10. Currency Selector with dynamic pricing. Just like Shopify! (Still charges base rate, but up to date pricing in visitors currency)

We ain’t stopping anytime soon! CF rules!!

Don’t Want To Wait? We can do each of these on our PRO or X Plans for you today! Come join 100’s of CF’ers, 2CC Award Winners, (and even a couple 10X’ers) and get all your funnel tech tasks DONE for you >> FunnelFixIt.com

-Nathan

GDPR – How to add a checkbox on your optin forms

GDPR Additions to your funnels?

So, you want to be GDPR compliant on your Clickfunnels optin pages?

Well, we certainly can’t guarantee what actually constitutes “compliant” but we have read a whole bunch of articles and one of the things that you CAN do on your Clickfunnels pages is add a CLEAR CHECKBOX that will

DISCLAIMER: Please talk to an expensive ambulance-chasing lawyer and waste a bunch of money and don’t listen to us as we have no idea what we’re talking about cos apparently the internet being run by nerds is too scary for the government so they are taking the reigns back and making it suck again like the 90’s. You have been warned.

Now, in Clickfunnels, there is no way to add a checkbox onto your pages.

Even in FunnelU there isn’t an option to add the CF-Checkbox onto anything other than an order form.

So, what we did was modify the SMS Optin code and hide the SUBMIT button for your optin forms

Here’s a link to a .PDF with the code.

To install it,

You will need to edit all the “text content” inside, look here:

update the wording on the script to match what you want on your buttons and terms

Have fun.

Stop getting distracted by silly “changes”.

Get back to work.

#FunnelOn!!

-Nathan

4 Things to Remember When Switching to an Online Store

switching to an Online Store

You’ve heard about the power of e-commerce and you want to take your business to the next level. Before you can get started, there are a few important differences between the physical and online stores that you should know about.

E-commerce is essentially selling goods and services through a website, in such a way that you don’t need a physical store to enable the transaction.

Imagine classic brands such as Amazon or boohoo.com – they don’t bother with anything more physical than a warehouse for their products. Accounting software like Xero offers their services purely online.

E-commerce is booming, and now is a good time to jump on the bandwagon and get your business into the fastest moving new sales space.

Prepare for some culture shock, though!

Website-based stores obviously have a very different setup and method of ongoing maintenance than the physical stores you may be used to, so it’s important to be clear on your expectations going in.

We’ve prepared a helpful list of some of the biggest things to watch out for.

deliver the product

1. Delivering the Product

In a physical store, an inventory management system is an absolute necessity. Indeed, you often have to be tracking inventory in real-time which usually requires software that’s just too expensive.

Moreover, in a physical store, it’s almost impossible to keep all of your items where they’re supposed to be – unaware customers always seem to move something, don’t they?

An online store is completely different. For one thing, your customers can’t touch any of your stock, and so don’t interfere with your systems of arrangement.

Additionally, and quite vitally, the nature of e-commerce means that every step of the ordering and delivery process gets logged into a computer so that your inventory tracking happens automatically!

And, if you’re worried about the inventory process, why not get into dropshipping?

Dropshipping is essentially getting consumers to buy a product from you, which you then buy from a third-party and deliver to your customer.

With both dropshipping and more traditional e-commerce, the big consideration is delivery: you’ll need to investigate how you can cost-effectively delivery the product to your customer. This is more complex in the case of a physical product, rather than a service, but even then it’s about what system you’ll use to deliver the content.

Related article: How to Make Money from a Productized Service

2. Security

A physical store is obvious enough in terms of security: thieves might break in and steal from the cashbox or from the shelves. If you’re truly unlucky, they’ll get the store computer and, with it, your accounting records.

Unfortunately, the risks are actually a lot bigger online. It’s much harder for thieves to get your ‘cashbox,’ short of hacking your bank account, true. It’s also harder for them to steal your product unless they’re creating false accounts or reselling your product.

However, remember that stored on your website is all of your customer data. Your clients’ names, addresses, contact information and credit card details are all hackable if the wrong person comes along.

It’s important that you take care to ensure that your customers can trust you with this information about them, and the best way is to investigate some software you can install to help protect your website.

Thankfully these are usually cheaper than most measures needed to protect a physical store.

It’s a good idea to work with your website provider to see what their recommended security measures are.

If your customers have doubts about whether you care enough to protect them, they won’t come back. It’s as simple as that.

3. Genuine Human Engagement

In a physical store, you have the chance to charm your customers off their feet and then sell and support them as their needs entail. In an online store, you’re simply not there to offer this.

So, how can you still keep the experience warm and friendly?

One big thing is your landing page: think of this as your business’s handshake.

You don’t want to be so aggressive in your sales that the customer feels threatened. If they don’t get the sense that you’re offering them a product, however, they just won’t bother trying to sell themselves on your brand.

human engagement

Make sure that the tone you set in your landing page is consistent with the rest of your website and that your text throughout feels like a human wrote it.

Consider also using carefully designed chatbots – they can help troubleshoot issues on-the-go and also answer a lot of basic questions that consumers may have. Some companies have found great success with these, so whether they’re easily integrable into your website idea is completely up to you.

We can help you build and integrate a chatbot into your business today. You can find out more about it here: https://funnelfixit.com/dfy-bots

Another idea, depending on your resources, is to encourage consumers to contact you with their concern and feedback over social media. Your team should include a marketing manager whose role also includes your social media presence.

If this person can respond to messages within 1-2 hours, not only does Facebook note it and let your customers know, but it reminds the consumer that there’s a real human listening to them.

4. Integrating the Back- and Front-End

Just like in a normal physical store, there are two distinct sides to your business.

There is the front-end, which your customers see and is your consumer interface. Think of this as the shopfront where everything is appealing and welcoming.

Then, there’s the back-end which is primarily purposed towards your organisational and maintenance needs. Think of this as the storeroom at the back where all of your spare materials and general “clutter” are kept.

Just like a physical store, you need to work out how you can slip to and from each area and how to make sure there’s no overlap.

This largely comes down to how closely you’re working with your website developer: often developers are skilled in either front- or back-end work. If you end up taking on two developers – one for each side – it will be worth getting them to sit down together to ensure that they’re able to seamlessly integrate the work they’ve each done.

Alternatively, when you advertise the position on various sites, you can ask for “a full stack of skills” which in tech parlance means qualifications on both sides.

Be warned though, the more qualifications you ask for, the dearer the cost of set-up.

Other options are to look into website builders which often have processes already in place to integrate these.

Related article: Growth Hacking and Growth Marketing: How to Optimize Your Startup’s Growth

 

online store

Ready to Go

So, now you know the key differences between setting up a physical and online store. All that’s left is to get cracking.

Open up your doors to the endless possibilities that an online store can offer you – it’s a great way to boost your business.

To find out more about ecommerce systems and dropshipping, we’ve put together some more information here including the exact tools we use in our fully automated selling systems.

We’ve also partnered with some experienced Shopify sellers to create FunnelFixIfy – Funnel Fix It for Shopify! Find out more here: funnelfixify.com

We’ve helped countless #FunnelHackers overcome broken links, invalid redirects, missing Pixels, the wrong videos in webinars–the list goes on…

But, all of these issues can be avoided by following our Ultimate Launch Checklist. Grab it for free now!

How to Create a Sales Funnel Website for Your Podcast

How to Create a Sales Funnel Website for Your Podcast

Discover how a sales funnel website can help you grow your podcast audience and even improve your profits.

Podcasting is hugely popular right now, as more people than ever are listening to their favourite shows.

We recently wrote about building Websites using Sales Funnels and this is one of several funnel specific sites you can build depending on your business.

Approximately 20% of adults in America between the ages of 18 and 49 listen to podcasts once a month, according to a recent study.

This podcasting boom is largely spurred by better accessibility through mobile devices along with a torrent of compelling content available today.

All this is happening for very good reasons: podcasts are a great platform for not only increasing brand awareness but also building a better and more personal relationship with your target audience.

In the following post, you will learn the best strategy you can use to tap into a massive podcast audience and build a sustainable business.

Related: Podcasts are Becoming More Popular Among Listeners and Advertisers

The Challenge: How do You Attract an Audience to Your Podcast?

You have done your job well: researched your audience and prepared an exciting podcast about a timely, relatable topic.

Without an audience, however, all your work will have been in vain.

With so many new shows, it can be challenging to gain maximum exposure and traction if you don’t have a solid plan in place.

audience

The Solution: Create a Sales Funnel Website for Your Podcast.

A sales funnel is an amazing concept that can take your podcast from a virtually unknown and non-existent creation to a highly saturated and popular piece.

Pairing your podcast with a sales funnel has the potential of not only bringing in a huge audience, but it could also improve your bottom line.

As a podcast creator, you are giving away valuable content regularly for free and keeping your audience entertained.

You can use the power of a sales funnel (a multiple-step, relationship-building process that moves interested browsers into buyers) to help your podcast efforts by creating awareness and interest and by ultimately growing your audience.

As you continue gaining the trust of your audience, you can even capitalize on that credibility and build an efficient online business.

Related: Growth Hacking and Growth Marketing – How to Optimize Your Startup’s Growth

Key Components of a Sales Funnel

1. Prospecting–This is the lead generation phase where you identify the right opportunities and clients.

2. Cultivating–Uncovering your client’s needs by building deeper relationships, specifically through the email follow-up sequence.

3. Positioning–Demonstrate your value; make sure to include the good and the bad and throw in a few testimonials as well.

4. Closing–This is the final step where you present your solution after nurturing your leads in the above steps.

Benefits of a Sales Funnel for Podcast Creators

  • An email list, for example, will allow you to capture more information about your target audience.
  • You can then use the email list to grow your connection further and increase interest.
  • They may even want to buy products from you and help you create a sustainable business.
  • If you successfully implement the sales funnel and grow your audience you can be viewed as an expert voice in that particular niche, which comes with the benefits of increased revenue.

Related: How to Earn More Sales with ClickFunnels Sales Funnels

How to Build a Sales Funnel Website for Your Podcast

We recommend affirming to your audience your promise to deliver value at every stage of your sales funnel to minimize drop-offs.

Start with the End-Goal in Mind.

goal

An important point when creating a sales funnel is to know and understand what you’re selling as it’s practically impossible to move your audience towards a vague, undefined goal.

“But, what if I am not selling a specific product or service with my podcasts?”

Regardless of your podcast topic, you are most likely trying to convince your audience to take a certain action.

There’s a reason you want them to listen. There’s a reason your audience members will keep listening.

Whether it’s saving the whales, getting out to vote or just doing the Macarena, the most valuable podcasts are the ones with content that achieves something.

Once you define your niche and the desired action you want your listeners to take, only then can you start designing a sales funnel that will help you achieve that end goal.

Set up Your Sales Funnel Website.

You will need to create a website first where your audience will be accessing your content.

The best software you can use to conveniently create a sales funnels website is ClickFunnels.

It is super easy to build a podcast sales funnel with ClickFunnels, simply choose from the available templates and you can customize it really fast.

Ideally, your first homepage in your sales funnel should be as clutter-free as possible, showing the title and podcast with a brief description of the episode.

Email Opt-In Page

The next page in your podcast’s sales funnel website should be the opt-in page where you capture the email addresses of your audience.

Here, you can offer a free product in line with what you are discussing in the podcast that will help give your audience added value, say an Ebook or an online course.

Once a subscriber signs up, you can automatically initiate a follow-up email sequence to stay continually engaged with your business and building credibility.

Also, ensure to mention HOW and WHY your products add more value to your audience and the kind of results they can expect.

You can send them weekly updates or notifications when a new podcast is ready on the website. You can even discuss with them any problems or further topics they’d like you to address in your next episode.

Sales Landing Page

If you consistently upload new episodes and nurture your audience, you will succeed in gaining their trust and so they’ll be more likely to purchase from you at this point in the funnel.

Once you have gained a real connection to your buyer, you can now direct them to your sales page where you will have created a clear call-to-action.

 

Related: How to Build ClickFunnels Landing Pages for Monstrous Growth

Benefits of Using Podcasts in Your Overall Business Sales Funnel

use podcast in your sales funnel

You can use podcasting as a way of fueling your sales funnel and in so doing earn the following critical benefits:

  • Podcasts open up your business to new audiences that might benefit from your product or service but haven’t discovered it on other platforms.
  • Creating podcasts is much easier and cheaper than investing in video marketing since it only involves recording audio files.
  • Podcasts are a great way of building up a strong library of valuable content that you can easily convert, repurpose and share on various other mediums.
  • You also make it more convenient for your audience to hear you since all they’re required to have are headphones, which also means they can listen on-the-go.

Tips for Creating Great Podcasts

  • Choose topics you are passionate about.
  • Structure your content and follow the outline to avoid rambling or going off-topic.
  • Use stories to add a personal touch to your podcasts.
  • Secure relevant and interesting interviews regularly to keep your audience engaged.
  • Ensure the audio is clear and sounds professional.
  • Include a CTA at the end of each episode.

Related: 10 Tips on How to Create a Remarkable Podcast

Ultimately, pairing your podcast with a sales funnel website from ClickFunnels is a very good investment that will ensure you actually reach and grow your audience.

Looking to launch a new product or service funnel soon?

We’ve helped countless #FunnelHackers overcome broken links, invalid redirects, missing Pixels, the wrong videos on webinars–the list goes on…

Get our unlimited-ninjas to build an entire podcast funnel for you now.

Get to Hacking with these 8 Powerful Kick-Ass Clickfunnels Funnel Hacks

Clickfunnels funnel hacks

Have you ever wondered what’s behind the hull that makes your competitor’s landing page so successful? What would you give for a peek inside? Well, you don’t have to do that much at all – and we’re going to show you some of the tricks how to.

1. Spot the Right Target

Before you even begin funnel hacking, you have to find the proper competitor – otherwise, you’re just wasting your time and resources.

So, pick a competitor whose page is compelling, whose marketing is attractive, and is a competitor you know rakes in the big bucks.

The tougher your competition, the tougher you’ll become!

Looking for someone using Clickfunnels already? Try this Google Hack for your niche:

site:”*.clickfunnels.com” niche

Replace “niche” with your keywords, for example:

site:”*.clickfunnels.com” bitcoin

Will show you everyone using Clickfunnels and talking about bitcoin.

 

2. Take All The Screenshots You Can

Now, when you’ve got your eyes on the prize, you can start funnel hacking.

What do you do?

We’re essentially starting from scratch, so there’s really not much to find from the outside looking in. If you’ve picked the right target, they’re probably doing their best to keep their winning formula hidden from prying eyes.

But, what you can do is try to spot the tiny and seemingly inconspicuous details from that outer layer of your competitor’s front.

To do this properly, you’ll have to obtain the best tools out there. These will help you by allowing you to screenshot everything you see, top to bottom. Greenshot (software) or Awesome Screenshot (browser extension) will be perfectly suitable.

Organize and save them – we’ll need them for a detailed analysis of the page’s layout and initial push notifications, offers, etc.

3. Create Your Funnel Hacking Bible

Set out your paper and your pen (or, your Word document), and take note of absolutely everything you see.

Write down all the eye candy – all of the mechanisms that attract customers and new leads. Take those notes and formalize strategies.

What’s the type of copywriting? Colours? Buttons? Any videos? Offers? Pop-ups? Are there two or three steps to making a sale, or just one? What are the prices shown at first, if any?

create your funnel hacking bible

Everything counts. Everything can be used.

The more info you get, the richer your Funnel Hacking bible is going to be.

Related: 5 Ways You Can Use A Sales Funnel To Build Your Network Marketing Business

4. Deconstruct the Technology

At this point, you’ve done pretty much everything you can with the visual aspect of the site.

Now, for the real stuff. We’re going in, and we’re going in deep.

There are two aspects to a successful website: a) driving traffic and b) converting those successfully driven.

Both of these aspects rely on heavy machinery to function – that is all the underlying software that you can’t see… Yet.

Time for you to get a few tools as well.

We’re talking Ghostery and BuiltWith Technology Profiler here.

Ghostery is a neat little extension that can disrupt the trackers from your activity, but also display all the tracking software, pixels, beacons, web bugs, and data collectors, which is the function that’ll help you more.

BuiltWith Technology Profiler will be your third eye with which you’ll be able to penetrate deep into the structure of the landing page, and see what… Well, what it’s BuiltWith!

Surprised with how many hidden devices you’ve tracked? Continue filling that Funnel Hacking Bible with info!

5. More Tools of the Trade

The site’s an open book for you now. But, there’s more to be accomplished here.

We need thаt funnel: the secrets of the flow of traffic.

To get to that, we need more specialized software.

AdBeat/WhatRunsWhere: See the advertising strategies of your competitor: Check how many days they’ve run a particular advertisement, the path of their traffic from the landing and creative pages to their destination, and many other quirky and useful things. Although they don’t come for free, they pack a big punch, and either of these will set an irreplaceable tool at your disposal.

SEMRush: This tool gathers paid and organic SEO insights on your competitors. From displaying, search positions & changes, and ad copy to video advertising, backlinks, estimated traffic expenditure, and keyword research. And much more.

SimilarWeb: Another fantastic traffic insight tool – and you can see the top referring sites and top destination sites as people flow-in and -out of target website. Also, you get information like a breakdown of social traffic, banner ads, similar websites and more.

Follow: A free (but you can opt for a paid program) and great tool for following the origins of media implemented into the rival website. Another great intelligence survey tool.

tools of the trade

A full kit to reveal the most of a website. With these, nothing can pass by you undetected for too long.

Related: Hacks to Becoming the Fastest Funnel Builder in the World

6. Rebuild the Funnel

So, now we have the equipment that we need and it is high time you tunneled through that funnel.

How do you do that?

Through the front door.

You’ll need some money from your rainy-days cache because you’re going to buy the product they’re offering.

It is the most effective way of penetrating the system, as all the customer retaining and management systems spring into life in front of your eyes.

Think of it as an investment of sorts, instead of giving money to your competition.

During this phase of the funnel hacking process, you’ll want to take as many different variations of the funnel as possible. Take all the upsells, downsells, cross-sells…everything!

This is a vital step in funnel hacking since you can practically see everything on which the sales of your competitor are founded.

If you’re entering the market for the first time, completely cold, it’s all the more important. You’ll get all the experience with zero time wasted in trial-and-error.

Related: The Ultimate List Of ClickFunnels Share Funnels (Updated Regularly)

7. Create Your Own

This is it. Your funnel hacking bible is packed with info you can’t wait to put to use.

Clickfunnels allows you to build upon a template, but if you really wish to use your competitor’s site as inspiration, Clickfunnels can help you as well.

The screenshots from earlier come in handy here. The Front End is the foundation of your website, so that would be the first thing you’ll implement:

  • Videos, fonts, title animations
  • Copywriting style
  • Images, graphics
  • The first tracking software

The Back End is the core of your sales. First, you have to look into email mechanics. Note down what the site has sent you, in which order, and in how much time.

Again, screenshot everything: some offers may have a specific time sequence after which they are no longer available.

Notice what affiliate programs your competition is running. It can show you a world of info regarding the promotion of their product. ClickFunnel can help you here also – just run the scan and you’re good to go.

8. Make a Phone Call

To squeeze the extra juice from your research, make a phone call and go through their sales strategy. Ask about everything and take each offer for more details. Heck, you can even go through it entirely and buy the product.

And, take notes. The super-effective sales strategy can be a gold mine for you when you set up your own sales.

sales strategy

That’s it. You’ve successfully funnel hacked your competition and caught a glimpse into their enterprise.

Did it meet your expectations? Regardless of the answer, the knowledge is there. Implement the good parts. Adapt them to your own strategy. And, beat them.

Or, be just as successful, at the very least.

 

Looking to launch a new product or service funnel soon?

We’ve helped countless #FunnelHackers overcome broken links, invalid redirects, missing Pixels, wrong videos on webinars–the list goes on…

We’ve been asked over and over – “Do You Do Builds?” – so we listened and now offer these on our site using our amazing service as a one-off design, build, and launch.

Creating Websites with ClickFunnels

Creating Websites with ClickFunnels

Discover how ClickFunnels can help you implement a sales funnel into your business, allowing you to focus on sharpening your sales process and increase your conversion rate.

Customer acquisition and retention are some of the most vital campaigns that any business has as part of their overall success.

It is not just enough to have a great product or service; you need to find the best way to attract potential customers, nurture them, and then close the sale.

The solution is to create a customised “selling system” to efficiently generate leads that will lead to conversion. The most effective tool to do this with is Clickfunnels.

ClickFunnels are an economically efficient and highly effective marketing tool designed to take your prospective consumer and guide them from mere interest in your product to making a purchase and even becoming a repeat buyer.

By creating a website with ClickFunnels, you can better quantify how many prospects there are at every stage of your buying process, and subsequently, convert more interested individuals into buyers.

sales funnel

Why are people fussing about ClickFunnels?

Online entrepreneurs often have to spend lots of money on a wide range of tools to effectively run their businesses.

This includes tools like email automation, shopping carts, affiliate programs, and site hosting, among many others.

A Clickfunnels website can replace most of the essential online business tools you are using while helping you drive quality traffic to your site and ultimately improving sales.

Regardless of which kind of online business you are running, whether it be e-commerce to network marketing, a Clickfunnels website can help you by providing the following:

  • An easy to setup and powerful landing page creator
  • Cutting-edge marketing automation and segmenting with Actionetics
  • The ability to create and track affiliate programs for your products with Backpack

Overview of ClickFunnels

ClickFunnels is an intuitive online tool designed to help people implement a sales funnel into their business.

With an average conversion rate of roughly 3%, most online shoppers are clearly dropping off at some parts of the funnel.

A well-designed funnel clearly illustrates the path taken to reach conversion on your website, which enables you to identify and fix any blockages (or worse, leaks!).

The benefit of creating websites with ClickFunnels is that you don’t need to spend too much creating or managing your website, allowing you to focus on tightening your sales process.

A typical Clickfunnels website will incorporate an opt-in web page, an automatic email responder, and a sales page or order form – all in a single, straightforward platform.

Related: The Average Website Conversion Rate by Industry

What can you create with ClickFunnels?

The best thing about ClickFunnels is that they can be customised to suit just about any kind of online business.

You can choose from the available funnel templates or create your own based on your needs.

Here are some of the different types of websites that you can build with ClickFunnels:

1. Opt-in Funnels

An opt-in funnel allows you to take advantage of email marketing by helping you to easily and efficiently capture email addresses of your target audience.

This funnel should have an attractive landing page with a bold headline and a straightforward form that your traffic will use.

Next, be sure to have a thank you web page to show your appreciation for the interest shown and automatically send an email to the subscriber for verification.

Opt-in funnels

Benefits

  • Once the subscribers opt into your email list, you can start sending automatic emails that link to the value web pages in each broadcast. These value pages inform your audience ways in which your product helps them and thus, continues to nurture them into finally making a purchase.
  • Email marketing is consistently shown to have a better return on investment than most other marketing strategies.
  • Emails allow you to gain more insights into what your audience wants depending on how they respond to different campaigns and also through direct feedback.

Example on the Marketplace: #1 Selling Template – The Business Startup

2. Membership Sites

ClickFunnels also has membership funnels that allow you to lock and preserve certain parts of your website to members only.

You can use this funnel to deliver customised content to your clients in an exciting and unique manner.

Benefits

  • Build customer loyalty by adding more value, thus improving retention
  • Leverage your expertise, knowledge, and skills and let your clients view you as an ‘expert’ in that area
  • A paid membership area helps to give you a regular and recurring source of income provided you continue providing value to your clients.
  • ClickFunnels membership sites are easy to create and maintain over the long term with minimal hassle.

3. Webinar Funnels

Webinars are an effective method of attracting new business prospects, allowing you to personally present product related topics, build brand interest and also start building positive customer relationships.

You can use a ClickFunnels webinar template to start nurturing your leads into becoming buying clients.

Benefits

  • Webinars are perfect for marketing since they enable marketers to easily address a huge, diverse and geographically widespread audience very economically.
  • You can use webinars to build up your trust and credibility.
  • It is a great platform to show prospective clients how your product or service will help them solve specific challenges.

Example on the Marketplace: Urgency and Scarcity in the Health Niche

4. Launch Funnels

launch funnels

The worst nightmare for every online entrepreneur is creating an amazing product, like an online course, and then hearing crickets after the launch, with nearly zero sales.

Fortunately, with ClickFunnels you can now create launch funnels to create some buzz or excitement around your product even before the official launch date.

Benefits

  • Builds relationship and trust with the incoming traffic
  • Creates value and desire through educating your audience
  • The launch funnel helps you develop demand for your product while positioning yourself as an expert in that field

Example on the Marketplace: Store Front Launch Funnel

5. Sales Funnels

ClickFunnels are almost synonymous with the term sales funnels, which are customised routes through which you sell, upsell and downsell your products.

Benefits

  • Using a well-designed sales funnel, you can easily enhance your sales revenue significantly by increasing your conversion rate.
  • A sales funnel helps to accurately predict the sales volume, which helps with planning
  • By looking at the numbers from your funnel, you can readily identify the products that are not selling well and adjust accordingly

Example on the Marketplace: Top Rated Ecommerce Funnel

Why Design your Website with ClickFunnels?

  1. Ease of use – ClickFunnels are easy to use and do not require lots of technical know-how since you only need to drag and drop to edit the templates and hosting is also provided as part of the package
  2. Convenient – By including everything from sales funnels to hosting, ClickFunnels offer a handy all-in-one website solution for online entrepreneurs
  3. Fully customisable to your needs – You can sell any product or service using the different ClickFunnels templates
  4. A broad selection of web page elements – It is highly flexible and allows you to create the exact website you want by providing a wide range of elements such as input forms, surveys, custom HTML, progress bars and pricing tables among others.
  5. Earn income through the affiliate marketing program – You can create niche sales funnels and share them with your friends or simply sell to other businesses within that market segment.
  6. Wonderful support and onboarding process – It helps you get started quickly with building your first funnel.
  7. Easy third-party integration – While there is an inbuilt Actionetics email provider, it is recommended to use Activecampaign to manage your email list. You can also leverage other integrations like PayPal to enable you to seamlessly accept payments.
  8. Track the effectiveness of your funnel – With ClickFunnels, you can do split testing for all pages within your funnel to see which campaign variation is most effective
  9. Useful pre-made templates – There are multiple templates to choose from and you can also customise them further by adding various web page elements to meet your unique needs.
  10. Save time and money – ClickFunnels are a huge time- and money-saver since they allow you to create an entire website with order forms, shopping cart, membership, hosting and all other necessary functions in one package.

Are there any disadvantages to using ClickFunnels?

1. It is slightly pricier than comparable solutions 

The basic package is $97 per month while the complete Etison Suite costs $297/month. However, there is an extensive 14-day free trial that allows you to give ClickFunnels a thorough test before you commit. It is worth investing that small amount considering the time you save in getting your product to market and the potential for higher revenues thanks to the efficient sales funnel approach.

2. Minor learning curve

It can be pretty intimidating at first to use ClickFunnels for some folks, particularly because of the massive potential that it has. Luckily, the support and onboarding process is readily available along with a straightforward interface. Once you create a few sales funnels you will realize that the whole process does become easier to use.

Conclusion

If you are an online marketer, entrepreneur, web designer, affiliate marketer or simply anyone looking to increase their sales and grow their business, then you stand to benefit from ClickFunnels.

Looking to launch a new product or service funnel soon?

We’ve helped countless #FunnelHackers overcome broken links, invalid redirects, missing pixels, wrong videos on webinar – the list goes on…

But all these issues could be avoided by joining one of our Unlimited Monthly Plans now.

How to Earn More Sales With ClickFunnels Sales Funnels

Are you getting your sales funnels off the ground but having trouble generating income?

Don’t worry; you aren’t alone.

In fact, many Clickfunnels users will admit that they aren’t anywhere near where they’d like to be as far as their sales funnels are concerned.

Clickfunnels is great, but why then is it difficult to build sales momentum?

Odds are that you aren’t using the right tools or focusing on optimizing the portions of your funnels that matter the most.

Looking to launch a new product or service funnel soon? We’ve helped countless #FunnelHackers overcome broken links, invalid redirects, missing Pixels, wrong videos on webinars, and the list goes on… But, all of these issues can be avoided by following our Ultimate Launch Checklist. Grab it for free now.

Portrait Of a Frustrated Clickfunnels Entrepreneur

Frustrated Clickfunnels Entrepreneur

We’re about to paint a vivid picture of someone who might be experiencing the same difficulties as you are with sales generation.

Jordan is a savvy digital marketer who just launched a stunning e-book that gives readers website-building tips.

The book is laid out in an organized, easily-readable manner.

What’s more is that Jordan just finished a complete sales funnel using Clickfunnels with hopes of optimizing his e-book’s sales.

Unfortunately for Jordan, however, he didn’t put much stock into his landing page or anything related to his email campaigns.

This aspect of his funnel won’t impact the entire funnel, will it?

YES, YES, YES, IT WILL!!!

Jordan made a mistake that we’ll address in the section below: he focused way too much effort on one section of his funnel and didn’t make room for any others.

Digital marketers and Clickfunnels users alike make mistakes like this all the time.

What really sets apart those who are successful from those who aren’t?

The successful individuals actually do something about their mistakes.

Right below, we’ll show you what you can do to experience this success and, more importantly, what you can do to correct mistakes that you may or may not be making as a Clickfunnels user.

What You Can Do to Generate More Sales With Clickfunnels

Tip #1: Optimize your emails.

optimize your email

This isn’t a silly adage; it’s a proven way to win new clients and turn cold leads into warm ones.

There are, however, certain things you should focus on before others.

The first way that you can use emails to boost your funnel’s sales is by emailing all recipients of your email list at a rate that keeps their attention going.

What we’re talking about specifically, here, is where you’re promoting a product or not, you need to keep the emails flowing.

Emails will keep prospective customers interested and aware of your product.

On the other hand, consistent emails will do both what we just mentioned while keeping the attention of these recipients.

Attention is valuable; why give the recipients of your email list a chance to spend their free time looking at a competitor’s product?

Additionally, it’s important to optimize your emails for mobile devices.

Tons of email users first open their emails on their phones.

If your email takes ten seconds to load, or if it’s full of images that take up space on the screen and use up the recipient’s data, odds are that the person won’t open up an email they get from you again.

Here’s a quick list of things you can do to ensure your emails are optimized for their recipients.

  1. Go easy on the images; think “clean and simple”.
  2. Make sure the template you’re using is responsive; in other words, certain templates are designed to accommodate the screen they’re being viewed on.
  3. Use words wisely. Make a few lines of text go along way; you’ve only got so much space!
  4. Use space and forget the paragraph.
  5. Buttons > Links.

Tip #2: Understand the relationship between your funnel and your product.

Clickfunnels and your product

This might seem silly, but a ton of new Clickfunnels users don’t understand that specific sales funnels sell specific products/services better than other funnels.

In other words, use a funnel that best suits your product/service.

Let’s take a commonly used funnel, the Lead Capture/Opt-in Funnel, for instance.

This funnel prompts a user to give you their email, once they visit your web page.

Once you’ve got their email, you can begin to market your product directly to their email account.

Generally speaking, the Lead Capture/Opt-in Funnel suits a wide variety of products/services and is, therefore, a good starting point for many sales funnels.

All you need is a well-designed landing page, an engaging product, and website traffic.

Success can be quick to come with a funnel such as the Lead Capture/Opt-in Funnel.

Knowing what sales funnel best suits your product/service will ensure that your company capitalizes on warm leads.

Take Peter Diamandis’s funnel for his first ebook:

ebook

He started with a catchy landing page and used it to subsequently $430,000 in book sales.

Next thing you know, you’ll have conversion rates like you never would’ve believed.

It all comes down to paying attention.

Tip #3: Utilize tools that measure marketing performance, if possible.

measure marketing performance

Building a website, business, or sales funnel without the right tools is like calling a plumber to fix your automobile–it’s pointless.

As a digital businessman/woman, it’s important to measure digital marketing performance.

Tools that measure things like email conversion, site traffic, social media presence, and advertising are critical to the success of your funnel.

That’s not to say that Clickfunnels doesn’t have the means to help you monitor the success of your funnels (Ever heard of Backpack?).

Rather, it’s important to measure your sales funnel’s performance within the big picture, rather than just through what Clickfunnels has to offer.

Doing so will help you hone in on your targeted audience, on-site SEO, social media metrics, and much more.

There are many tools that you, as a digital entrepreneur, can use to your advantage.

Some are free and some are costly.

All of them, however, are worth every cent.

What will all of these things do to your sales funnels in the long run?

They’ll help you tweak it to optimize your business’s sales.

Tip #4: Get better traffic.

Driving traffic through your funnels is more complex than using metrics to monitor their progress; several things need to be taken into consideration.

First, make sure you’re actually promoting what you say you’re promoting.

For example, if you’re promoting a 10% discount on a product then the customer, upon clicking through to your site, should get the same discount as advertised.

Another helpful tip is to get to know your audience, in as personal a manner as possible.

Analyze the ways through which your audience or desired audience can best locate you; capitalize on these ways.

If you’re constantly being searched on Google, for example, put plenty of stock into SEO.

Lastly, promote and create on social media.

Make a Facebook group for your company, promote your website’s blogs, and promote specific discounts.

Now whilst free is good, paid acquisition is faster. So take a look at pay per click advertising, such as FB ads. You can even start with $40 per month budget.

Doing so will give your company a larger presence and, inevitably, will boost your sales funnels’ conversions.

Long story short – keep your customers on the same page with accurate discounts, understand who you’re selling to as well as the marketing channels they occupy, and use social media platforms to your company’s advantage.

Generating Better Sales With Clickfunnels Sales Funnels Has Never Been Easier…

If you or your funnel seems to be in a rut, don’t hesitate to use the previously mentioned tips to your advantage.

It’s possible to turn your stale sales funnels around.

In fact, it’s important to do so if you want your business to prosper.

The first thing you can do for your sales funnel is to focus in on the email section and make sure that every component of it is in working order.

The next thing you can do, if you aren’t experiencing the sales you want, is to make sure the sales funnel template you’re using best suits the product or service that you’re selling.

It’s also important to use external tools to measure the performance of various components of your sales funnel.

Finally, focus heavily on boosting traffic to the web pages included in your sales funnel or funnels.

While this info might not guarantee your business’s success, it’ll certainly set it down the right path!

(Or, funnel.)

Looking to launch a new product or service funnel soon? We’ve helped countless #FunnelHackers overcome broken links, invalid redirects, missing Pixels, wrong videos on webinars, and the list goes on… But, all of these issues can be avoided by following our Ultimate Launch Checklist. Grab it for free now.

 

Dynamic OTO and Smart Upsell’s Using Clickfunnels

dynamic OTO from Funnelfixit

How To Create A True “Smart Cart and Checkout” Using Clickfunnels

It’s true, we love Clickfunnels.

Like, really love it.

Clickfunnels with Funnel Fix It

It’s unbeatable when it comes to landing pages and sales funnels. You can build a 7-figure business model in less than an hour, many people have..

But there are some limitations, namely when it comes to physical products and acting like a “Storefront”.

One other notable “missing piece” is the ability to determine what a customer purchased on an order form, so you can tailor an upsell just to them.

Imagine, being able to add the audiobook to your Free + Shipping Book Funnel, as an Order Form Bump offer – then if they don’t take that bump, then offer a “audiobook, workbook, and study guide kit” bundle on the OTO.

Wouldn’t make sense to offer that if they did take you up on the Order Bump huh?

Many of our clients have come to us with the infamous Dollar Beard Club #Funnelhack, wanting us to add custom codes and functionality to replicate, only to fall just shy of the goals many times, due to not being able to customise those last few upsells to the perfect offer.

Sure, you can use CF Cart Mode from Jaime over at CFProTools, the addition of which turns your funnel into an upsell monster, especially for multi-pack products, (gun oil anyone?).

But, it still comes up short on knowing how to get smart with the one time offers.

Until now.

Enter – Dynamic OTO

dynamic OTO from Funnelfixit

This has taken us months. Literally months of testing, tweaking, beg-borrow-and-stealing from all sorts of snippets we’ve come across, to cobble together a robust but easy to implement solution to this problem that has hindered many with their funnels.

We can now determine exactly what was purchased and show specific OTO products to different people.

How. Cool. Is. That?!

So, how does it work?

TLDR;

There’s a share funnel we put together to show you it in action

There’s a standalone script inside the funnel you can add to your own funnel

There’s also a walkthrough video showing exactly how to install it yourself

Grab them all here

Putting It All Together

It’s really a just 2 step process:

  1. Your ORDER Page needs to “Capture The PID” – that just means, we are storing the Product ID that is unique to each product, that the customer purchases on your Order Form Page.
  2. Then, we have a “Show Hide” function on the OTO Page that then will dynamically show specific sections, which you can put any product on, to the customer depending on which Product ID is stored.

How to Make Money From a Productized Service with Funnel Fix It

That’s it really. You can grab the entire pack we’ve put together in a special email for you below.

Grab your copy of this full funnel and the custom script here.

If you would like us to implement this for you, simply grab our PRO PLAN here and we will install, configure, and have this ready for launch for you in your Clickfunnels account.

Happy OTO’ing!!

How to Give Your Landing Pages A Boost For Better Sales

How to Give Your Landing Pages A Boost For Better Sales

Are you struggling to get your landing page to where it needs to be?

Are you getting lots of click-throughs and few sales?

Truth be told, a lot of people are in the same boat as you, and you know why?

They’re missing several features on their landing page or pages.

An excellent landing page is much more than just a direct line to your site.

It’s efficient, visually pleasing, and concise.

So, what could you be doing better with yours?

If you use ClickFunnels, chances are that you’re missing out on crucial landing page elements.

If you don’t hone in on the design of your landing page, you might as well send your leads to the local dumpster.

We aren’t kidding.

Looking to launch a new product or service funnel soon? We’ve helped countless #FunnelHackers overcome broken links, invalid redirects, missing Pixels, wrong videos on webinars; the list goes on… But, all these issues can be avoided by following our Ultimate Launch Checklist. Grab it for free now.

What’s the Deal With Landing Pages?

Take this scenario into account.

Barry is a digital entrepreneur who uses ClickFunnels to craft his business’s sales funnels.

Barry is new to the world of digital marketing, hears the benefits of email marketing, and wants to try it for his business’s online sales.

He creates his sales funnel through ClickFunnels but doesn’t put that much stock into his landing page.

In fact, he doesn’t know that landing pages can often be the difference in a customer’s decision to follow through with a purchase on his site.

Consequently, Barry doesn’t merit as many conversions as he could with a well-built landing page.

How can Barry improve his landing page to stifle his business’s competition?

How to Improve Your ClickFunnels Landing Pages

sales funnel

Barry is a lucky man; he doesn’t have to do much.

If you, like Barry, are having issues with converting sales through your landing page or pages, you should pay attention to the following tips.

Tip #1: Go Green

going green

We aren’t talking about buying a Toyota Prius. Rather, we’re making a reference to the importance of color psychology and landing pages.

Color is the foundation of a landing page, and it should be chosen wisely.

We’d suggest opting for the color green, a color that invokes a sense of calmness and optimism in the human mind and is widely used across the internet.

Go green, and keep in mind other colors that please visitors to your site/landing page.

Tip #2: Don’t Focus on Your Company

Instead, focus on the offer you’re funneling the customer through.

Customers click through to your landing page for a reason–they don’t want to hear about the prestige of your business.

They want to hear about the deal on that eBook you spoke about in the email.

They want to know how to get 25% off on that SEO tool.

They want to know how to get to their preferred destination, in the fastest way possible.

Tip #3: State the Benefits But Don’t Overcrowd

don't overcrowd

The term “concise” comes to mind here; it’s important to keep a prospective customer on the right track.

Limit the distractions on your landing page such as unnecessary images, text, and other promotions.

Like we just talked about in Tip #2, focus on what the customer came for in the first place.

Explain the perceived benefit/promotion/offer well but avoid being long-winded.

Tip #4: Use Strong CTAs That Are Placed Well

The importance of a CTA (Call To Action) is a no-brainer.

Placement, however, is a different parameter; your CTA needs to be in a spot that’s easily readable to whoever sets eyes on it.

Don’t make prospective customers scroll down to get to where they want to go–keep their attention.

The format of your CTA should be clear, definitive, and unique.

Instead of a button stating “Get eBook Now”, reconfigure the button to say “Get your hands on this helpful eBook immediately!”, or something similar.

Keep the CTA in an area where customers don’t have to scroll to get to it and make the CTA captivating.

Tip #5: Testimonials (When Necessary)

feedback

Customer comfort is everything in the world of sales.

Inevitably, a customer wants to know that the item you’re marketing towards them actually works or has value.

Testimonials are an excellent way to prove this validity but shouldn’t usurp the CTA and shouldn’t even be present unless relative.

You can include, for example, testimonials through your website or social media so that customers can see for themselves the success of the product/service you’re marketing.

Don’t try and float your reputation by throwing around unsubstantiated claims; how is the customer going to trust that what you’re saying is credible?

Tip #6: Mobile Optimization

mobile optimization

Let’s face it: computers are getting smaller and more portable while mobile devices are getting more advanced and larger.

Surely, we’ll soon see a merger of the devices. Not yet, though.

Email is still widely used and checked on mobile devices which shows the importance of optimizing your landing page for them.

In fact, 45% of opened emails occur on mobile devices and this number is increasing exponentially!

Thankfully, making mobile-ready optimized pages in Clickfunnels is a breeze.

Here’s a super duper article written by a friend (Julie Stoian) over on the Clickfunnels blog showing you exactly how to do this (some guest additions by yours truly)

Plan of Action

Let’s take everything we just talked about and condense it into an actionable form.

  • Use colors to your advantage and pay attention to the ones that have proven their worth.
  • Focus on the customer and not your company.
  • Let the prospective customer know your product’s worth but don’t drown them with text.
  • Keep your CTAs placed on the top half of the landing page and make sure they’re desirable to the reader.
  • Only use testimonials if they’re a) relevant and b) credible.
  • Optimize your landing page or pages for mobile devices.

Boost Your Customer Conversion Through Your ClickFunnels Landing Pages

The above tips are quick remedies to truly convert a lacking funnel into omnipotent sales tools.

ClickFunnels is an excellent tool, and with the right knowledge you can optimize your landing page or pages  and watch your sales grow.

It may not always be easy but it’s simple and you can take action on these steps today!

Looking to launch a new product or service funnel soon? We’ve helped countless #FunnelHackers overcome broken links, invalid redirects, missing Pixels, wrong videos on webinars; the list goes on… But, all these issues can be avoided by following our Ultimate Launch Checklist. Grab it for free now.