What is ClickFunnels? If you’re an online business owner, you probably have that question after reading countless articles that mention the popular marketing software ClickFunnels.
I remember starting this blog and consuming as much as I possibly could about all of the tools and software I needed to run my business. ClickFunnels was one I came across on a pretty regular basis.
Here’s why: ClickFunnels makes it easy to run advanced marketing systems through a series of sales funnels, landing pages, and email sequences. You don’t need coding skills or marketing experience to use it.
It simplifies the selling process.
To explain what all of that means, let’s dive in. I’m going to explain what ClickFunnels is, its features, how much it costs, and answer some FAQs.
What is ClickFunnels & How it Can Help Your Business
Quick Links
- What is ClickFunnels?
- What is a sales funnel?
- ClickFunnels helps you create web pages for each part of your sales funnel.
- ClickFunnels features to help business owners
- Funnel builder
- Email autoresponders
- Payment gateways
- Funnel Hackers Cookbook
- ClickFunnels Actionetics/Follow-Ups
- ClickFunnels Backpack
- How much is ClickFunnels?
- Why do I need ClickFunnels?
- What is ClickFunnels? The final word
- FAQs
What is ClickFunnels?
Clickfunnels is a software you can use to build sales funnels that drive sales for your business. It’s a tool you can use to collect leads and guide potential customers through the buying process.
One of the most popular aspects of ClickFunnels is that you have access to templates for complete and customizable sales funnels for nearly any kind of selling event. For example, if you wanted to sell an ebook, you could use a template that includes:
- A squeeze page where you can capture email addresses
- Sales page where your customer learns more about the book
- Order form for them to purchase your ebook
- Order confirmation page that tells them the payment was processed
- Thank you page
Without ClickFunnels, you’d have to create and organize each of those pages.
With ClickFunnels, you have a simplified marketing strategy.
And what many people is that you can create funnels without any technological know-how. You don’t need coding experience to use ClickFunnels, and you don’t need to pay a web developer to create the webpages for you.
What is a sales funnel?
I want to back up a little and go over some basics because if you’re new to selling online or wondering why you might need ClickFunnels in the first place, understanding what a sales funnel is will help clarify some things.
Sales funnels are used to guide prospective customers down the path to becoming paying ones.
Sales funnels have three stages:
- Stage 1 – Awareness: This is the largest part of the funnel where you’re casting a wide net. This is mainly about introducing your business to prospective customers rather than getting them to commit to anything.
- Stage 2 – Engagement: This is the middle part of the funnel where your leads are warming up to you. This stage often involves offering a lead magnet (mini-course, free webinar, digital download, etc.) in trade for email addresses.
- Stage 3 – Conversion: At the bottom of the funnel your leads are expressing real interest in your products. They are close to buying.
Here are a few examples of the kinds of business that could benefit from a sales funnel:
- You’re a freelance writer and you’ve written an ebook that teaches others how to start a freelance writing business.
- You’re a blogger who’s ready to launch their first online course.
- You run an online coaching business and you’re about to create a membership-based site.
Sales funnels allow you to build relationships with potential customers, something that can be hard to do in the online sphere with no face-to-face contact. You can create content for each part of the funnel that warms your leads up to the idea of buying from you.
ClickFunnels helps you create web pages for each part of your sales funnel.
Each page you create will have its own offer and action. Depending on what potential customers do with those actions, ClickFunnels takes that info and triggers an email sequence so you work them further down the funnel or retarget them with a downsale (a smaller, more affordable offer).
If you’re new to any of this, it might sound overwhelming. But that’s what ClickFunnels is for: to uncomplicate sales funnels and the marketing process.
ClickFunnels features to help business owners
Now let’s talk about the features that let you build those sales funnels and guide prospective customers through the buying process.
Funnel builder
There are all kinds of different funnels you can build with Clickfunnels, but some of the most popular ones are for generating leads, generating sales, or getting webinar signups.
You end up with sales pages for any of the funnels you create, and each page comes with:
- Custom domain hosting
- A/B split testing so you can optimize your pages – you can test two different sales pages against one another to see which performs best
- Email integrations
Now, to actually create the funnels, you can use one of ClickFunnels’ premade templates. There’s an example of one below, and you can edit the templates by clicking on any of the components, like title, subtitle, video, call-to-action (CTA), etc.
There are about 40 different templates, including sales letters, product launches, 2-step tripwire funnels, membership funnels, invisible funnel, squeeze funnel, homepage, bridge funnel, lead magnet funnel, and a survey funnel.
The templates save a ton of time and make sure you have all the components of a good sales page. There’s also a drag-and-drop editor to make it easy to pull in CTA buttons, pictures, videos, text blocks, and so on.
All of the funnel pages you create with ClickFunnels can be customized with your business’s branding, logo, and colors.
Email autoresponders
Autoresponders are a series of emails that go out at predetermined intervals. The process starts when someone signs up for your email list, which they might do on one of your funnel pages. Depending on the page and action they sign up under, a certain sequence of emails is triggered.
ClickFunnels has built-in autoresponders that you can set up, or you can integrate a third-party email service like Convertkit.
Payment gateways
When someone gets to the bottom of your funnel, the payment gateway is where their payment is accepted. Payments happen through ClickFunnels instead of a third party. But you can also add integrations for PayPal, Stripe, Apple Pay, Android Pay, and more.
Funnel Hackers Cookbook
This is a really helpful resource that teaches you how to use all of ClickFunnels features using step-by-step instructions. The cookbook breaks down 22 different sales funnels so you can learn how to use them for your online business.
ClickFunnels Actionetics/Follow-Ups
Actionetics is ClickFunnels native email system that gives you tools to create and manage your email marketing strategy. Basically, Actionetics helps you track leads as they enter your funnel so you can create more targeted emails.
You’ll get to know your leads’ behavior and needs, and that allows you to segment your list and send more specific follow-up emails.
Actionetics and the next feature are only available in the more expensive ClickFunnels plan.
ClickFunnels Backpack
If you think you’ll want to create an affiliate program around your product or service, you’ll want Backpack. Backpack lets you set up and manage your own commission plans, and you can run analytics on your affiliates.
How much is ClickFunnels?
ClickFunnels has two options: Basic $97/month and Platinum $297/month. Here’s how the features break down at each level.
Basic
- Build up to 20 funnels
- Create up to 100 pages
- 1 user
- 3 payment gateways
- 3 domains
- 0 follow-up funnels
- Chat support
Platinum
- Build unlimited funnels
- Unlimited pages
- Up to 3 users
- 9 payment gateways
- 9 domains
- Unlimited follow-up funnels
- Priority support
- Weekly peer review hackathons (build funnels as a coach guides you through the process)
There’s a 14-day free trial for both of those levels.
Both plans let you share funnels you create with others. You also get access to the Funnel Hacker Forum, where you can connect with other people who are building sales funnels to learn what does and doesn’t work.
Basic and Platinum also come with Funnel Fix – online courses and training – but Platinum has additional training hours and advanced courses.
There’s a third plan called the Two Comma Club, but most side hustlers aren’t going to need it, especially when they’re starting out. It comes with even more users, payment gateways, and domain names. There’s also phone support. As you might expect, it comes with a hefty price tag: $2,497/month.
What is ClickFunnels? The final word
If you’re selling something online, then you need some kind of marketing strategy. But for high-value products, as I’ve already said, you can’t just rely on Facebook ads or pitching your existing audience. You need a more advanced strategy.
It gives you an edge and can ultimately increase your sales.
Whether you go with Clickfunnels, another all-in-one option, or if you decide to piece tools together, you need something.
As someone who’s done a 6-figure course launch, I know I couldn’t have done that without some kind of marketing system.
Since then, I’ve learned a lot about automations (one of the benefits of paying attention to how the funnels work) and could maybe do it on my own, but I still rely on software to do it for me because it saves me time. That means I get to spend more time on aspects of my business that I really enjoy while knowing that I’m able to keep selling courses. It’s a win-win.
FAQs
No, you don’t need a website to use Clickfunnels. You can use the software to build webpages for your sales funnel and sell directly through those pages.
If you do have a website or blog, you can connect your domain to ClickFunnels. There’s also a plugin specifically for WordPress blogs. Using that allows you to add pages directly from ClickFunnels to your WordPress domain.
You actually won’t need to add a custom domain in ClickFunnels if you add pages to your WordPress blog, and the benefit is that you’re not using up one of your custom domains.
Yes. ClickFunnels has a built-in email system, but there are more advanced autoresponder features if you upgrade to Platinum plan.
One of the benefits of using ClickFunnels is that you don’t need to pay for an additional email automation tool. But if you do have software you like using, you can keep using it and integrate it with the rest of your software.
ClickFunnels support a ton of third-party applications from autoresponders like Active Campaign, AWeber, ConvertKit, Hubspot, MailChimp, and more. There are also third-party payment integrations for Authorize.Net, ClickBank, JVZoo, Warrior Plus, and more.
There are dozens of more options using Zapier.
Listen, you don’t need ClickFunnels. You can build a website on your own or pay a web developer to set one up for you, pay for web hosting, pay for an email service provider, and pay for a shopping cart integration.
Or, you can pay for something like ClickFunnels.
ClickFunnels simplifies the process of selling products online because it has all of those tools built-in.
Selling high dollar products (online courses, membership groups, coaching, consulting, etc.) can be tough if you aren’t using some kind of marketing strategy. The vast majority of people aren’t going to drop a few hundred dollars on a course without being warmed up to the idea. That’s what sales funnels do.
People spend years learning how to create successful funnels and email automations, and that knowledge is baked in with ClickFunnels.
Now, there is other software like ClickFunnels. Leadpages is probably the biggest competitor. You can learn more about Leadpages here, and see how the two stack up in ClickFunnels vs. Leadpages.