Update May 2021. I wrote this post in early 2019 and since that time, I have changed my mind about Click Funnels. The funnel theory in this post is absolutely sound! However, my platform of choice is now BuilderAll and not CF any more. I wrote an in depth post about why I’m changing to BuilderAll here.

In my free PDF report “The Ten Mistakes Most People Make When Starting An Online Business” (which you can get by clicking here, if you haven’t already got it), mistake No.5 is not using Sales Funnels to build your business.

Funnels and Inside Click Funnels

I’ve recorded a quick video to shown you what a basic marketing funnel looks like and a quick look inside Click Funnels itself. You can watch it below…

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The 10 Mistakes Of Online Marketing

In the “10 Mistakes” report, I state that an online sales funnel is where you put cold leads in at the top and sales fall out at the bottom. This is so true. But, the idea of sales funnels have been around a long time. When I was working in industry and recruitment as a sales person, the book “The Leaky Sales Funnel” was staple reading. Everyone in the sales team had to read it. So the idea of a sales funnel is not new.

In this post, I’ll go in to a little more detail about funnels.

Value Ladder

Before you can have a funnel you really should build yourself a value ladder. I guess this is slightly more advanced given the example I’ve shown you is just a two stage funnel. The image here is taken from Russell Brunson’s superb book Dot Com Secrets, you can read my full review of Dot Com Secrets by clicking here. This is a MUST read for every aspiring marketer and was where I started out.

However, the more steps you have in your value ladder, the more likely you are to make money quickly. Each step in a value ladder needs to be a progessively more expensive product offering.

Ladder To Funnel

You can do this via your own products, or, if you are just starting out, but marketing other people’s products (affiliate marketing).

Once you have this value ladder you then need to convert it in to a funnel. Paul O’Mahony always says the funnel is an upside down value ladder. Russell Brunson talks about “from ladder to funnel”.

Essentially, the ladder is your “product journey” mapped out. So, the increasing value of products you want to take your cusomers on a journey to buy from you. The funnel is how you make that happen.

Why Build Sales Funnels

Building effective funnels is the absolute key to a successful online marketing business.

The funnel:-

• Captures your leads (customers)
• Allows you to take them on a sales journey
• When coupled with an effective autoresponder to segment your list into buying levels and deliver them the correct sales messages
• Provides you with traffic YOU own

Structure Of A Funnel

Owning Traffic

This point of traffic you own is also key. If you are paying for traffic (Facebook ads, Google ads, Solo ads etc), you do not own that traffic. If you do not collect email addresses you will always be paying for your traffic. Given that it is very difficult to make a profit on that initial sale, the list and subsequent marketing is where the money is made online.

Of course, you should always deliver value to your list members as well. You won’t get far if you just sell, sell, sell! But the fact remains, you simply must build your email list and then market to them using funnels.

Types of Online Sales Funnel

Funnels can be as complex or as simple as you like.

In the video, I show you an example of my simplest funnel. A two stage sign up funnel that promotes a back end product in order to liquidate my ad costs. If you haven’t been through it, sign up for the “10 Mistakes” report and you will see the simple funnel in action. You can do that by clicking here.

This is the example of a self-liquidating funnel from Dot Com Secrets by Russell Brunson.

Again, I highly recommend you get this book if you are serious about building an online marketing business. I am mentored by and in Paul O’Mahony’s Mastermind Group and he will NOT accept anyone in to his group unless they have read Dot Com Secrets. Why? Because it lays the right foundations for building a strong and profitable business.

However, as I said, funnels can be more complex. They can also be tailored to the method of selling.

Webinar Selling Funnels

It has been proven that selling via Webinar is one of the most efficient ways of maximising sales. So, the funnel needs to be different if you want to sell via Webinars.

Here’s Russell’s Webinar Funnel taken from his Funnel Hacks product. As you can see the funnel allows for different steps which are dependent on what the customer does initially. However, as you can see, everything is based around promoting the webinar. I guess the point I am making here is that funnels can be as flexible as you need them to be.

You can, essentially, do whatever it is you want with your funnel depending on what you are selling and how.

Click Funnels

You have the ultimate flexibility, particularly if you are building with Click Funnels.

As I showed you in the video Click Funnels is point and click, drag and drop easy. If you can pint and click a mouse you can build funnels and indeed, websites in Click Funnels. One of my new friends from The Paul Mastermind group has built a business from building websites and funnels in Click Funnels. He’s already turning over $5k/month and only started two months ago.

What I also like is that Click Funnels is built by marketers for marketers. Russell Brunson has made well over $100 million online. He knows what it takes to make a successful funnel. After all, he is the accepted funnel expert. What he doesn’t know about building online sales funnels, probably isn’t worth knowing. Given his experience, the fact that he actually builds the platform gives me great confidence it’s the best of breed.

Yes, there are others trying to break in to the market, but, in my humble opinion, Click Funnels has a clear lead and it is the best platform.

No Hosting Or Domains

I also like the fact that you don’t need to buy your own domain and have your own hosting with all the hassle that brings. I’ve been building websites since 2006, and believe me all the hosting and technical stuff that hangs around it is a pain in the proverbial backside. Especially when things go wrong.

If something goes wrong in Click Funnels they have amazing support and they fix is very quickly.

It really is a no brainer!

Resources Mentioned In This Article