Here’s My Honest Clickfunnels Review for Struggling Marketers in 2019
Okay, first things first; Happy New Year to you and your loved ones. With the start of 2019, I know for a fact that there are a majority of internet marketers and self-proclaimed tech pundits who do not need an intro, or a crash course into how the gears move in this industry.
However, if you used to live the life of a troglodyte – like me, you will need someone to fill you in on what’s going on online these days. Especially, if you are a “struggling” marketer, or an aspiring ‘soon to be’ internet sensation, there is a lot that can go wrong between today and the remainder of the year. Read on below.
Table Of Content
Clickfunnels Review for First Timers:
Like a typical online services review website, I will not ramble right away about Clickfunnels review. You need to know whether this program is for you or not. This will save you time and effort on your part. Click Funnels is basically for small business owners, startups and for those individuals who provide services to other companies or are into affiliate marketing.
If you are a marketer who freelances his skills for different clients from all over the World Wide Web communities, Clickfunnels is for you. The funnels are basically customer conversion strategies in the form of a sales page, email pitch, landing page, custom website etc.
If you just about started in the internet-marketing niche, Clickfunnels is not for you. Their Free Trial only lasts for about 14 days; this is to give you enough air to get to the basics and that’s about it. From then on, there’s a cost factor to account for.
The monthly fee for the Clickfunnels program is to the tune of $297 a month. If that seems “outrageous” to you, you can pay annually and receive mega savings. Regardless, you should expect to dole out some neat cash by the end of each pay cycle.
Considering that I do not make $300 a month easily, because I am more of a hobbyist marketer, I would strongly recommend that you stay away from Clickfunnels if you are new to online marketing. The price is right for people who are already coming into the Funnels community with a solid investment or a steady guaranteed cash flow until their online or real life business reaches breakeven point.
That’s perhaps the only “flaw” or setback of having Clickfunnels as a SaaS. The program itself is amazing and can do wonders for those who have a business with potential. Aside from the money factor, some brainpower also goes into developing a business to fruition. The founder of the program: Russel Brunson worked his ‘shiny hiney’ off to bring this program to online users. It works like a charm – given that you have some skills under your belt.
Let’s dig in further.
What is Clickfunnels and Why Is It So Damn Hot On The Internet?
Have you ever seen a funnel in real life? I bet you have. If you haven’t, you can make one with a piece of paper. The outer rims are broad and as the cone shape goes deep, the funnel’s focus narrows down on what’s most important – and that’s what Russel Brunson’s Clickfunnels is all about.
Get it?
Never mind. This concept is applied brilliantly by Russell in the form of ‘SaaS’ module. ‘SaaS’ is the abbreviated form of Software as a Service, where you do not have to install or download the said software onto your computer; everything is available online. You are only required to pay the service charges on whatever payment term tenure is.
Anyhow, Clickfunnels is all about helping people redirect their online/ offline business visitors into converted customer using a sales funnel. You remember seeing those sales pages with infinite scroll design a few years ago? Well, that kind of sales page is obsolete, but it is one of the accurate examples of what Clickfunnels can help you to achieve.
The Clickfunnels program is setup online in the form of different sales funnels by Russel himself. These so-called ‘funnels’ are basically different service modules for interested people. Let’s say, you are an e-preneur who just came up with a sensational business website for your customers. In this context, you will be looking for Clickfunnels’ sales page funnel.
It is also called a landing page funnel. Likewise, if you yourself are serving customers through a software service, email marketing or whatever there is, then you should be looking into the Membership funnel or Backpack Funnel. The latter two were designed for email marketers and SaaS providers.
One of the many best things about Clickfunnels sales funnel system is the flawless integration of the program into an online system. For instance, you bought a WordPress ecommerce website template, you can copy the concerned Click Funnels code and then paste it into the backend to see things implemented in a jiffy.
The ‘wow’ factor for me is that payment modules can also be setup through the same code just as easily. I can use my Paypal account info to setup a gateway for my customers who would be eventually buying my services through a Clickfunnels landing page. Not to mention the fact that the funnels’ content is so damn gripping and well written, that it had me sitting at the edge of my seat.
If I were my own customer, I’d have signed up to my services in an instant. That’s how Clickfunnels landing pages make an impact on online traffic.
Some of the Main Highlights of Click Funnels Review:
There are a few reasons for strongly recommending Click Funnels to aspiring entrepreneurs. Some of them are appended below. Please note that the following reasons are based on actual real life experience that I had during the Clickfunnels review phase. Your experience, may or may not be any different – i.e. depending on the membership you are using.
- Great SaaS model that serves customers on the move with precision based funnel pages.
- Ability to sign up as a free member for a 14 day trial period. No strings attached.
- Great Landing Page builder and customization options.
I would like to explain a bit about the 3rd point – i.e. landing page builder and all that. You have the option of choosing from a boatload of Clickfunnels templates. Eventually you can decide on which template coincides with your business model and then apply it for maximum conversion.
The funnel template is lined up with different customization options – either by code or by preset click n’ activate menus. If you are a coder, I believe you can take it to the next level with customization of Clickfunnels templates. If you are not a coder, it’s okay, there’s nothing to fret about. The system will work fine for you without any hassles.
As much as there is a variety of templates, there’s a sense of temptation which will make it a little difficult for impulsive Clickfunnels users to stick with one thing. Since all of the templates are so damn good and visually stunning, you may find yourself switching between different templates and vice versa.
Built In Integrations:
I mentioned some stuff about integrations earlier in this Clickfunnels review. For instance, you can incorporate your PayPal user ID or Stripe ID for receiving payments from your clients. Once everything is setup, your online visitors on the front landing page won’t know the difference whether it is a Clickfunnels page or your own website. It’s that much flawless.
The reason for particularly highlighting PayPal as an integration is that I found it very hard to integrate payment receiving gateways into my service based websites. It was a few years ago – back then I was still doing the whole affiliate marketing and freelancing gig. So, my friend told me that you have to write the content yourself and then get in touch with Stripe, 2 CheckOut or Plimus as a payment processor.
The results were kind of unexpected. 2CO agreed to work as an intermediary to help me setup Paypal and other payment receiving methods, but these guys had their own policies about releasing payments and all that BS. Plus, 2CO would apply a premium percentage, every god damn time when I had to withdraw a payment.
Long story short, with Clickfunnels, Russel Brunson made it possible for his clients to integrate their own online services related things into the respective funnel landing pages. In fact, the integration is so seamless and so broad that you can literally customize your landing page to the last letter for a complete visual and user interface overhaul.
Great Content
Judging by the templates, Clickfunnels landing pages come with a loaded content style. This style is unique in many aspects from one category of the template to another. Plus, you also have the option of changing the content from minor things such as; company name to major stuff as well.
Objectively speaking, the quality of content is very good. I can say that Russel paid serious money to his content writers to pull off a compelling sales copy – and that too in a very general format. Normally writers can write good stuff if you give them specifics about the sales pages.
However, in Clickfunnels development phases, the templates had to be kept to a general format so that Clickfunnels users can eventually set things up and modify sentences to their own liking. That’s kind of a difficult feat which Russel Brunson pulled off– hats off to him.
If you want to see a maximum conversion happening on your Clickfunnels page, you should definitely change the content around a little bit. It will offer a personalized experience to your website/ business users and they will be happy to get by with a smile on their faces.
AB Split Testing:
Honestly speaking, this is the part of my Clickfunnels review where I did not doddle around with AB split mode. Basically, it is a split test feature where you can create an identical image of your landing page/ funnel and then customize different things.
I tried creating a ‘B’ page, which was the same as the ‘A’ category landing page. But in latter case, I played around with the code snippets to show only region specific traffic. This helped me to finalize the funnel during pre launch phase. AB split tests are old, they are nothing new; you should definitely try this part of the Clickfunnels program on your own.
Makes Money Like a Milking Cow
Given that you have setup Clickfunnels the right way for your online business, you can milk that landing page for many months to come. I wouldn’t say that it’s a guaranteed fool proof – one time setup thing where everything goes to auto run because a lot of things change after a month or so. In that realm, you will need to apply new changes to make your landing page more attractive an all that.
My best suggestion is that you should play around with your Clickfunnels sales page for two weeks – that is the exact duration of the trial phase. There are very strong chances that you will have learned a great deal about sales funnels stuff by then. Afterwards, decide on a payment plan – i.e. monthly or annually, and then stick with it.
Stuff I Didn’t Like About Clickfunnels:
On an overall scale, I’d say Clickfunnels is a solid deal. However, there are a few things which I didn’t like. I take them as a setback; a minor bump on the plain road.
Startup Account Has Very Limited Perks:
During my Clickfunnels review phase, I discovered that the startup account has certain limitations. If you have a new business that only gets under 20,000 visitors and just about a 100 whopping webpages, the starter account will do fine.
The full suite goes all the way to many many more webpages, ability to support massive online traffic, additional premium category Clickfunnels templates and etc. I think that starter account is good because of the cost factor and just the necessary number of features that I could look for as an entry-level user.
The Cost Factor:
Whoopsie- daisy, the price to sustain Clickfunnels membership is very high. At $297 a month, you need to think long and hard about whether you have the kind of real life, or online business with promising returns. If not, there’s always another day to come back to it.
I believe that the starter account comes with a piddly $97, whereas premium account goes to $297 a month. I tried the starter account and I loved it, and it gives me a reason to switch to premium as soon as I have enough visitors to my page.
Service Interruptions:
Since Clickfunnels is mighty popular, they have millions of online users. Those millions of users have hundreds, if not thousands of online visitors. Imagine all that traffic, alongside Clickfunnels dedicated users pouring on the funnel pages day in- day out.
Yes, this can cause service interruption. You may experience your landing pages opening slowly, or momentarily inaccessible. However, the company is looking into it, and offering solutions through their dedicated customer support channel.
I personally didn’t run into such service outages, but I did read a lot about such incidents at different forums. Apparently, back in the day when Clickfunnels was launched, there were no such issues. Ever since more and more customers started coming in, the landing pages uptime percentage dropped a lot. I think, Russell should look into such technical glitches and incorporate better safety measures for his clients etc.
New User Interface = Iffy User Experience
I take it that in order to keep things updated to the latest Web standards, Russel’s team is constantly rolling out interface and user experience related updates. One day, you might be working on a Clickfunnels backend dashboard that has been there for a month or two, and the next day, the dashboard is completely revamped.
You will frown a lot, but you will eventually learn where you are supposed to click and all that. I don’t create a lot of fuss over such rollouts because every new user interface is better that old one. However, many online users are not comfortable with such unannounced updates. There should be an option to stick to a version of the Clickfunnels dashboard which you like the best.
Again, this is not a vice, or a chink in the Clickfunnels armor; the statement is entirely opinionated.
To Use Or Not to Use Clickfunnels For Your Business:
The decision eventually lands on your shoulders, but I am definitely up for it. If you have a real life business, the scope and exposure of your “shop” is immediately limited to the local vicinity and the advertising channel you are using.
Imagine hundreds of thousands of customers coming in because of the internet. That’s where Clickfunnels can really help you. You can send the word out about your services and then wait for the money wagon to park in. But don’t forget to play safe in the long run.
