If you want to have a successful business nowadays, you’ve absolutely got to be online. More than that, you must establish an online presence in front of the right people, in the right place, at the right time. In a world with increasing competition in just about every industry and niche, what’s the best way to establish this presence, stand out, and consistently make sales?
That’s where sales funnels come into play. If you’ve never heard of this term, a sales funnel is a lead generation and customer conversion tool for online commerce. One of the most popular sales funnel applications, ClickFunnels, can even create landing pages for these funnels that help identify leads and make more online sales.
This begs the question, “Do I even need a real website if I can make sales off my ClickFunnels strategy?”
It’s a good one to ask, and one that we’re exploring below. If you’re unsure about which path to take (or if you need both), keep reading to get a clear idea of how to get the traffic you want and the results you’re dying to see.
The Importance of Online Presence
Selling online is arguably the easiest way to sell today. Without the need for a brick-and-mortar location or any in-person interaction, someone can easily make money selling products or services online with a strong digital strategy.
However, without a strategic online presence, sales are far from guaranteed. Whether that presence comes from social media, a proprietary website, or a series of ClickFunnels squeeze pages is up to you.
Before we dive into what each option brings to the table, let’s clear something up — internet traffic.
Identifying the Kind of Traffic You Need
Traffic is made up of all the people that visit your website. To further divide this category, there are two main kinds of traffic: inbound and outbound. Before we discuss whether or not you need both a website and a ClickFunnels account, you should determine which kind of traffic you’re looking to get.
Inbound/Organic
Inbound traffic gets generated when people online are actively seeking out the information that you provide on your website. This means they use a search engine like Google or Bing to search for a term that is highly relevant to your website. Through Search Engine Optimization (SEO), consistent posting, and a robust online presence, you can ramp up your inbound traffic.
This is also called organic traffic, as it comes about naturally from online users’ activities. For this purpose, websites are great. Websites are ideal if you’re looking to get a high ranking on a Search Engine Results Page (SERP). This is because search engine crawlers understand how to analyze the usefulness, quality, and relevance of content on a website.
If you only have ClickFunnels setup, you won’t be able to reel in that kind of organic, inbound traffic. For this reason, a website is a better choice for anyone looking to increase inbound traffic.
Outbound/Paid
Outbound traffic, on the other hand, is generated through paid advertising. This can include Pay Per Click (PPC) ads, or advertisements on Facebook, Google, Twitter, or Instagram.
Paid, outbound traffic is quite different from inbound traffic. First, these visitors are brought to your website from an ad they saw. These ads are strategically placed in front of people who are most likely to want what you’re offering. In this way, it can be much easier to acquire sales or conversions from this kind of traffic.
If you’re looking to leverage outbound, paid traffic, you’ll want to use ClickFunnels.
Websites: For Organic Inbound Traffic
As we covered above, websites are best if you want to create content that leads to higher search engine ranking and greater numbers of organic traffic.
If this is your main goal (or one of your goals), you’ll need a website. To build a traditional website, there’s a long list of steps to follow.
Website Building Process
While it might seem easy at first, creating a website from scratch can be quite complicated. Let’s break down all the steps just to get a website started:
- Step 1: Buy a domain. You can’t choose one that’s already taken. You’ll also need to continue paying for this domain each year, or you may lose it.
- Step 2: Pick a hosting company to build your website. There are usually monthly or annual fees associated with this. If you choose to create a free website within an application like WordPress, your customization options will be extremely limited.
- Step 3: Either build a custom website or choose a template to get started. Keep in mind that a custom website will require a moderate level of coding knowledge. This might mean paying lots of money to hire a knowledgeable web developer.
- Step 4: Decide to use a template and make it yourself? You’ll need to develop a landing page and subpages that explain what your business is about, what you sell, why someone should buy, etc.
- Step 5: Wait for things to start happening. Just because you built out a full website doesn’t mean you will get any traffic or sales. When your calls-to-action aren’t strong enough or you aren’t sharing your unique value proposition well, your website could just sit there unseen.
Once you have a website, you’ll want to begin creating optimized content to improve your search rankings. Search engine optimization is an entire field of knowledge that guides creators to make relevant content. SEO best practices say that a regular blog posting schedule, inbound links from other authority sites, and keyword usage are crucial for good rankings.
ClickFunnels: For Sales
To review, we now understand that ClickFunnels is a great tool that will help to convert paid traffic and make sales. If all you care about is the ROI, then you would be just fine only using ClickFunnels.
ClickFunnels Building Process
If you’ve decided on the ClickFunnels route (whether instead of or in addition to a website), you’ll find that the process can be much faster, easier, and more affordable. You’ll have an effective sales funnel that can get to work.
Here’s what you’ll have to do:
- Sign up with ClickFunnels. You’ll need to select the paid plan option that works best for you.
- Build your funnel. Use tried and true templates or begin from scratch. You’ll be able to build your funnel out with their easy drag-and-drop interface. Everything from landing pages to upsell pages and even thank you pages can be part of the funnel. You can even adjust all the details from colors to text to images.
- Go live. Seriously. That’s it. There’s no coding required, and no confusing fees or processes.
If you want to take it a step further, you can add on to your funnel with:
- Email: Follow up with customers via email about their order fulfillment, abandoned carts, and other cues.
- Fulfillment: You can even integrate your delivery services into ClickFunnels for faster turnarounds.
How ClickFunnels Work
The breakdown above clearly shows how easy a ClickFunnels plan is in comparison to building a website. Once you have your funnel set up, though, how does it all work?
Let’s take a step back and share what ClickFunnels actually is and how the whole process works.
What Is ClickFunnels?
ClickFunnels is a company that was founded back in 2014 by Russell Brunson. Since then, Brunson and his team have turned their business into a company earning over $100 million each year. With over 100,000 active members, it’s one of the most popular sales funnel applications out there.
ClickFunnels is, at its core, a software system to build sales funnels. However, it also has a lot of additional benefits. You can even use ClickFunnels to create:
- Landing pages
- Selling pages (or squeeze pages)
- Webinars
- Membership or subscription sites
- Order bumps
- Downsells
- Upsells
- Affiliate programs
- Email sequences
If we had to choose our favorite features that ClickFunnels offers, these would be our picks:
ClickFunnels Top 3 Features
- 1. Funnel templates.
A lot of ClickFunnels’ new members aren’t that knowledgeable about how to create funnels. That’s perfectly fine. Brunson helps his members out by providing 22 different funnel types that he personally uses in his own business.
Amongst these 22 templates are three main categories:
- Sales pages
- Events
- Lead capturing
These categories contain simple options like a Squeeze Page Funnel. This funnel will collect emails and then brings your audience to a thank-you page. ClickFunnels also offers complex funnels like a 2-Step Tripwire funnel. This funnel, for example, uses a low-ticket product to entice buyers and then up-sells them to a more expensive product.
New funnel builders will love that each of these funnel types has its own page of templates to get started with. These come in both paid and free options. Templates are great because even without design skills, your funnels will look professional and consistent.
- 2. Drag & Drop Editor
These editors have been making many interfaces on the internet much easier to navigate for a while now. ClickFunnels utilized this tool to make customizing your funnels a breeze. Everything from design elements to layout and content is easy to adjust and intuitive. With no HTML or CSS coding to worry about, creating the exact sales funnel you want is possible.
- 3. Page Elements Selection
When building out your funnel pages, you’ll need flexibility in order to create the ideal experience for your visitors.
Elements (also known as widgets) are vital to get the ball rolling. Common elements include things like Images, Text, Buttons, Headlines, and Video. ClickFunnels has all of these.
ClickFunnels also has more advanced widgets for members. This means things like SMS club signup, progress bars, surveys, pricing tables, FAQ blocks, timers, and custom HTML options.
How It Works
A sales funnel takes online visitors through a seven-step process in order to capture the maximum sales:
1 – Determining the temperature of the traffic. What’s this audience’s awareness level of what you’re offering? If they’re unaware, they’re a ‘cold’ audience. If they’re aware of you but not what you offer, they are ‘warm.’ If they know you well or have purchased before, they’re a ‘hot’ audience. Your funnel will categorize them accordingly. This category will affect the messaging they receive throughout the rest of the funnel.
2 – Pre-Frame Bridge. Know that you know the temperature, you can send them to a bridge page with messaging crafted just for them. This step sets the right tone.
3 – Qualifying Subscribers. Next, they’ll see a form to enter their email in exchange for some small offer of value. This could be a download, video, or special article.
4 – Qualifying Buyers. If they fulfilled the form on the previous page, they’ll make it to the next page. Here, they will see the first paid offer.
5 – Identify Hyperactive Buyers. If they react and make the purchase, they qualify as a hyperactive buyer and this completes phase five.
6 – Ascend the Value Ladder. In phase six, you build a relationship with them and continue offering higher values and higher-cost items. As long as you continue providing value with each one, they should be willing to continue buying from you.
7 – Change the Selling Environment. Once you know they are a loyal customer, you can change the selling environment and try reaching out by phone, for example.
Final Verdict: Are Both a Website and ClickFunnels Plan Necessary?
The answer depends on the kind of traffic and the results you are looking for.
Only concerned about boosting your search engine ranking and reeling in the organic, inbound traffic? You’re better off focusing your efforts on your website.
Do you care about boosting ROI and making more sales than ever? If that’s the case, you’ll definitely want to leverage a ClickFunnels membership.
Do you want to boost sales while also increasing your search ranking and building an organic digital presence? If you want the best of both worlds, your best bet is to focus on both a website and your sales funnels with ClickFunnels.