If you are involved in the digital marketing world then chances are you've heard the word ClickFunnels thrown around quite a bit in the past few years. The SAAS company has taken the online marketing world by storm offering a handful of competitive features in an easy to use and reliable platform. In the remainder of this article, we will do our best to answer the question: what is ClickFunnels?
What Is ClickFunnels?
At its core, ClickFunnels is a SAAS (software as a service) company that functions as an online sales funnel builder. This allows marketers and businesses the ability to market, sell and deliver their goods or services digitally without the complicated configuration or necessary coding.
Unlike competitors like Leadpages, ClickFunnels isn't just a landing page software although it can be used for that. ClickFunnels has helped create the now thriving market for online sales funnels and handles everything all under one service including:
- Web hosting
- Landing page or funnel design (with dozens of great templates)
- Email integrations and autoresponder
- Performance metrics & analytics
- Payment systems and integrations (Paypal, Stripe, etc.)
- Affiliate management
- Training materials
- Online support
What Is A Sales Funnel?
Sales funnels (also known as purchasing funnels) are not a new concept in marketing and the original idea dates all the way back to 1898. The strategy in its simplest form is the desired pathway for your website visitors to ultimately purchase your product or service.
A good sales funnel will intrigue your potential customers, woo them through your funnel's copy and ultimately convince them that your business can help them in some way or another thus convincing them to give you their money in return.
Thanks to the innovation of the Internet, digital sales funnels are as easy to design, implement and test as ever with services like ClickFunnels removing the need for advanced programming or design skills.
A proper sales funnel will be high converting even with “cold” traffic and cater directly to your audience's desires or needs. While most people focus on a sales funnel for selling products or services, there are other forms of conversion funnels including ones that simply capture leads or initiation new subscriptions to your email list to then sell to at a later date.
Who is Russell Brunson?
If you are just learning about ClickFunnels for the first time, you likely have never heard of Russell Brunson. However, he is one of the most influential figures in digital marketing and also the creator of ClickFunnels.
Russell started his online marketing journey back in 2003 selling a marketing software as an affiliate and ultimately created his own product for the first time in 2005 on “How To Create A Potato Gun”.
He quickly learned that while the instructional course sold well, he really could make a lot more money by creating a sales funnel with an upsell for selling customers a full kit with all the necessary pieces to create a potato gun alongside the instructions.
This epiphany led Russell to then jumping deep into the world of Internet Marketing, earning his first million within a year of graduating college. He sold everything from supplements to books, network marketing, t-shirts, services, coaching, software and more.
Given that his Internet marketing success was largely attributed to his use of a proper sales funnel strategy, he was running into the dilemma that the technology for building such a funnel just wasn't readily available to the masses.
Russell and his partner Todd Dickerson then launched ClickFunnels back in October of 2014 which brought the idea of creating sales funnels for all sorts of businesses without the burden of running into technology bottlenecks. Since then the company has grown to over $100M in sales and over 95,800 customers active members.
Russell's story is really interesting and inspiring, but it's a lot longer than we can fit in this type of article. If you want the full, in-depth story of Russell's journey and an introduction into sales funnel theory then you can pick up his free DotComSecrets and Expert Secrets books.
How Can ClickFunnels Help Your Business?
When you think of ClickFunnels usage given that it's in the Internet marketing space, then you may think it can only be used for online businesses. While ClickFunnels is a great platform for driving traffic and conversions for all sorts of online businesses and services, the potential is still present for growing an offline or traditional brick-n-mortar business.
Depending on the type of business that you own or are hired to promote, ClickFunnels likely has a way to help promote and drive leads or conversions for that particular business. Here are some of the different offline markets that ClickFunnels is using to develop successful sales funnels for:
- Doctors, chiropractors & dentists
- Real Estate & realtors
- Lawyers & attorneys
- Contractors & remodeling
- Photographers
- Maintenance services
- Car dealerships & auto repair
- HVAC companies
- Life coaches
- Lawncare and landscaping
- Gyms and fitness coaches
Who Are Some Notable Marketers Using ClickFunnels?
Now there is a lot of hype around ClickFunnels from the budding community of users, but if its really working then some of the most famous marketers would be using it as well, right? Well, this is actually the case in several instances. Here are some of the people who are currently relying on ClickFunnels for their own businesses:
- Tony Robbins – arguably the most well-known motivational speaker of all time, Tony's marketing team uses ClickFunnels to sell his coaching and educational products.
- Grant Cardone – Grant's marketing team also uses ClickFunnels to sell his sales courses and digital products. Russell Brunson has spoken at the past two “10X” Conferences run by Grant.
- Dean Graziosi – the infomercial and real estate expert, Dean and his team have used ClickFunnels on recent product launches to capture leads and convert cold traffic into sales.
- Lewis Howes – an author, LinkedIn expert and host of one of the best podcasts “School of Greatness”, the personal site of Lewis Howes is built using ClickFunnels.
- Garrett J. White – the “master, coach, mentor” Garret J. White is a former banker and real estate investor who lost everything during the recession and rebuilt his life into a coaching program for men called “Wake Up Warrior” which is one of the most successful mentorships around.
