Editor Features Archives - ClickFunnels

How To Start A Blog And Earn Money

John Parkes — Thu, 07 Nov 2024 07:43:50 +0000

The post How To Start A Blog And Earn Money appeared first on ClickFunnels.

Thinking about starting a blog?

Maybe you have a passion for writing. Or maybe you’ve seen the thousands of bloggers who turn their websites into side hustles and full-time incomes.

These bloggers are living the dream: working remotely, traveling the world, and answering only to themselves.

But as you can imagine, a small percentage of people who start blogging actually succeed in making a living from it.

We’re here to make sure you fulfill your dream.

Below, we’ll walk you through seven steps to create a blog and start making money – literally within hours.

Let’s get into it!

How to Make a Blog That Actually Earns Money

The majority of websites and blogs never see much success.

Most are abandoned, fail to attract meaningful traffic, or don’t make enough to justify the time and effort.

Here are some eye-opening statistics:

Only 8% of bloggers make enough income to support their family
About 81% of bloggers never make more than $100 from their blogs

If you’re reading this, it’s likely you want to make more than $100 from this.

You’re here to make a blog that works for you – one that grows in both audience and income over time.

Why Most Blogs Don’t Make Money

There are many reasons why most blogs fail to earn anything substantial.

Let’s take a look at some of the biggest pitfalls:

Not considering monetization from the beginning: Many bloggers jump in without a strategy, which can make it harder to introduce paid products later.
Not picking the right niche: Broad, unfocused blogs are harder to monetize. A well-defined niche helps attract a specific audience willing to pay for targeted products or services.
Not picking a topic they enjoy: Blogging requires persistence, and if you don’t enjoy the topic, it’s easy to lose interest before you see results.
Choosing a complex website builder: Difficult-to-use platforms can create unnecessary barriers, eating up time and energy.
No ongoing training in how to monetize blogs: Blogging requires continual learning, especially as trends and strategies change.
Not having easy monetization features: Without tools that make it simple to introduce sales funnels, memberships, or lead captures, many blogs struggle to convert visitors into income.

While these factors are important, there’s one more core issue.

And it’s this:

Most website builders are designed to make blogging or website creation easy, but they aren’t built to make monetization easy.

If You Want to Monetize Your Blog, Read This

ClickFunnels was launched in 2014 by Russell Brunson and Todd Dickerson to solve a specific problem.

They needed an easier way to create web pages that could convert visitors into customers.

Every time they wanted to promote a new product or service, they had to rebuild the whole website from scratch.

It wasn’t sustainable.

So they created ClickFunnels to serve as a powerful monetization platform they could use themselves.

Since its launch, ClickFunnels has attracted over 100,000 active users.

Today, more than 2,000 of those users have generated over $1 million each using ClickFunnels websites – they’re members of the “2 Comma Club”.

And here’s how they did it.

The platform introduced the concept of “sales funnels” which allow users to guide potential customers step-by-step toward a purchase.

Funnels are particularly useful for bloggers who want to monetize because they offer clear pathways to sales without the need for advanced tech skills.

ClickFunnels might not be your traditional blogging platform.

But that’s its strength.

Unlike standard website builders, ClickFunnels is a dedicated monetization platform that you can also use to create and manage your blog content.

Below, we’ll go through seven easy steps to build a profitable blog using ClickFunnels.

Try ClickFunnels For 14 Days For Free!

How to Start a Blog and Make Money in 7 Steps

Below we’ll go over the 7 main steps to help you start a blog that generates income.

There’s a lot to cover so consider bookmarking this article or saving a link somewhere so you can revisit it.

Ready?

Let’s go!

1. Choose a Niche for Your Blog

Starting a blog and monetizing it involves time and dedication.

But it becomes much easier – and rewarding – when you’re writing about something you enjoy.

This is why picking your blog’s niche first is crucial.

Choose the wrong niche and you’ll start making excuses and eventually give up the idea altogether.
Choose the right niche and you’ll have an endless source of motivation.

The “1,000 True Fans” Concept

Your blog’s success, however, relies on more than just your preferences: it’s about what matters to your readers.

What can you bring to the table that readers would value?
What would keep them coming back for more?
What would they pay you for?

In his book Expert Secrets, ClickFunnels co-founder Russell Brunson introduced a powerful concept called the “1,000 True Fans”.

The concept is simple:

You don’t need millions of followers to make a successful blog – you need only about 1,000 dedicated true fans to make good money.

A “True Fan” is someone who consumes everything you produce.

They don’t just passively read your blog: they engage with your content, buy your products, and share your message.

But here’s the thing.

A lot of new bloggers make the mistake of trying to appeal to everyone.

Instead, be an expert on a subject that a small group of people care about, and you’ll find your blog ends up being highly profitable.

The “Two Years Ahead” Concept

What do you know that others would find valuable?

Here’s another useful concept:

You don’t need to be a world-renowned expert in your field to create life-changing content; you just need to be about two years ahead of where your audience is.

Ask yourself:

What do you know now that you were desperate to know two years ago?
If you were struggling with something, what content would you have loved to read about?
Are there others experiencing the same challenges you also experienced?

This concept of teaching someone who’s only a couple of years behind you is powerful because it makes the idea of being an “expert” more accessible.

You don’t have to be the world’s best.

Being just a few steps ahead of someone is enough to make your content engaging, authentic, and valuable.

For further inspiration on selecting your niche click below to grab a free copy of Expert Secrets.

Otherwise, let’s move on!

Click Here To Read Expert Secrets For Free!

2. Consider How You’ll Monetize Your Blog

Many bloggers dive into creating content without a clear monetization plan.

They focus on getting traffic.

While it’s not a bad approach, if your goal is to make money then you’ll save time thinking about monetization from the beginning.

Why?

Because the niche and audience you choose will impact how easily you can introduce paid products, services, or other monetization strategies.

So, how do you start thinking about monetization right from the start?

The Three Markets

In Expert Secrets, Russell Brunson explains a powerful way to approach monetization by focusing on the “Three Core Markets.”

These are the overarching themes that nearly every successful blog or business falls into:

Health
Wealth
Relationships

Start by asking yourself which of these markets best fits your expertise.

Identifying this core market will give you a solid foundation for building a blog that can make money – because everyone wants better health, increased wealth, or stronger relationships.

Next, dig deeper to find your submarket.

For instance, if you choose the health market, possible submarkets could include diet, fitness, mental health, or skin care. For wealth, it could be investing, real estate, or online business. And in relationships, you could focus on dating advice, marriage counseling, or parenting.

Then go out and look for other successful bloggers in that same submarket.

This approach can benefit you in three ways:

Focus on Core Desires: By tying your blog to one of the big three – health, wealth, or relationships – you’re aligning with things that people universally value.
Discover What Sells: Checking out successful bloggers in your niche will give you insights into what kinds of products or services actually make money.
Create a Unique Selling Point: By finding a fresh angle or unique offering within your submarket, you can carve out a new space, making it easier to monetize.

This might seem like overkill when you’re just starting.

However, researching other blogs in your niche is a real-world lesson in monetization.

Subscribe to their newsletters, explore their products, and even make a few purchases if you can.

Notice what happens after you buy: are there upsells to coaching, communities, or premium products?

Could you offer something similar?

Could you offer something better?

Taking these steps will provide insight into how other bloggers turn their audiences into income and give you ideas for crafting a monetization strategy that works.

For further inspiration on monetizing your niche, you can click below to grab a free copy of Expert Secrets.

Otherwise, let’s move on!

Click Here To Read Expert Secrets For Free!

3. Choose Hosting and Website Builder

Once you’ve chosen your niche and thought through your monetization strategy, the next logical step is choosing a platform to actually build your blog.

Most people who start blogging aren’t web designers or tech experts.

To launch a blog you’ll need to:

Get a domain name
Purchase hosting
Find a website builder
Choose a template
Add basic design elements
Review for a professional look
Hit launch!

The sheer number of steps can feel intimidating and, honestly, can even prevent people from getting started.

So why not make it easy for yourself?

Building Your Blog the Easy Way: With ClickFunnels

With ClickFunnels, creating a blog is simple.

The platform is designed to support both beginners and experienced marketers and allows you to build beautiful, high-converting blogs without needing any coding knowledge or third-party plugins.

It’s literally “drag-and-drop”.

All you need to do is pick a theme, customize the layout, and add your content and you’re ready to go live.

Plus, ClickFunnels is much more than a blogging tool.

It’s an entire business platform that ties together your blog, website, products, CRM, email marketing, and more.

Here’s a breakdown of what makes blogging on ClickFunnels so easy:

Establish Authority: Build credibility and establish yourself as an expert with valuable, engaging blog content.
SEO Optimization: ClickFunnels blogs are optimized to rank well on Google, helping you attract long-term organic traffic.
Content Repurposing: Easily turn blog posts into social media content, giving you omnipresence across platforms.
Convert Visitors to Leads: Use exit popups, lead magnets, and sales funnels directly from your blog to capture leads and drive sales.
Integrated Business Growth Tools: Instead of patching together multiple tools, ClickFunnels offers an all-in-one solution for building and growing your business, including email marketing to nurture readers into customers.

Using ClickFunnels for your blog means you’re not just building a blog; you’re building a fully integrated business platform.

Here’s what the back end of ClickFunnels looks like when creating your blogs:

And here’s how easy it is to later monetize your blogs with products or service offerings:

Try ClickFunnels For 14 Days For Free!

4. Brainstorm Blog Topics

Your blog topics will depend on how you’re planning to promote your blog.

If you already have an audience to tap into, then focus on creating compelling, transformative content.

To help you tell these stories in a powerful way, check out the Epiphany Bridge script in Russell Brunson’s Expert Secrets.

This script walks readers through your journey so they become invested in both your story and your products.

But what if you don’t have any audience at all?

Google Hacks to Find Blog Topics

If you’re starting out with no audience, don’t worry.

Many bloggers build their first audience through search engines, bringing in traffic (and sales) directly from Google.

The advantage of this approach?

It’s free.

By creating blog posts targeting specific search keywords, you can attract readers who are actively searching for information so they’re already primed to engage with your content.

But of course, you need to choose keywords relevant to your niche.

And… that won’t take you years and years to rank for.

So how can you find the right keywords?

In the book Traffic Secrets, Russell Brunson explains a practical, actionable method to uncover high-impact keywords through the “Dream 100” exercise.

Here’s a quick overview:

Start with Your “Dream Keywords”: Think about the phrases your dream audience would type into Google to find the kind of solution your blog offers. Russell’s “Dream 100” keywords for ClickFunnels included terms like “sales funnels,” “digital marketing,” and “growth hacking.” Make a list of 10-20 phrases that match the products, services, or solutions your blog is about.
Find Long-Tail Variations: Instead of focusing solely on these popular keywords (which can be competitive) look for longer, more specific versions that are easier to rank for. To do this, type one of your dream keywords into Google, and note the autocomplete suggestions that pop up – these are highly relevant, frequently searched terms related to your topic.
Explore Related Searches: After searching, scroll to the bottom of Google’s page to see “related searches.” This list gives more ideas for closely related, long-tail keywords.

For example, if your dream keyword is “sales funnels,” you might find suggestions like:

“Sales funnels for Shopify”
“Sales funnels explained”
“Sales funnels for real estate”
“Sales funnels templates”

Following this approach, you can build a keyword list that includes specific terms your target audience is actively searching for.

And if you expand each dream keyword into 10 long-tail keywords, you’ll have a solid list of blog topics – just like Russell’s examples above – giving you a roadmap for targeted content that can attract organic traffic.

For even more depth, you can explore software tools (Russell shares a list at TrafficSecrets.com/resources) to assess monthly search volume, competition, and other metrics for each keyword, helping you further refine your list for maximum impact.

Click Here To Read Traffic Secrets For Free!

5. Setup Your Blog

In this section, we’ll walk you through setting up your ClickFunnels account, customizing the look and feel of your blog section, and getting everything ready to write your first post.

And all this in just a few minutes!

No other platform makes it this quick and easy to get your blog up and running.

Follow along with the screenshots below as we guide you step-by-step through the setup process.

Sign Up for Your Free 14-Day Trial

The first step is to sign up for your free trial of the ClickFunnels platform.

You can do this by visiting clickfunnels.com.

Then enter your email address and you’ll be taken to the page below, where you need to introduce your personal details and a card – don’t forget you won’t be charged!

Navigate to Your New Blog Section

Within seconds you’ll receive a welcome email with a link to sign in to your new ClickFunnels account.

If you click it, you’ll be taken to the ClickFunnels dashboard.

From here, find the “Site” in the menu and then click “Blog”.

Click “Open in New Window”

Your account comes preloaded with two blog posts.

By clicking on the button that reads “Open in new window” you’ll be taken to your actual website and one of the pre-loaded blogs.

Edit Your Blog Design

The default blog template looks like the screenshot above.

But… customizing it to suit your preferences takes minutes!

Go back to the dashboard and under “Site” click the button reading “Overview”.

From here, you’ll see a button reading “Edit Site”.

Click it.

Welcome to the ClickFunnels Drag-and-Drop Editor

Now you’re inside the famous ClickFunnels drag-and-drop editor!

Later on, you can come back here to edit the homepage of your website and other elements like the header, logo, menu, products, funnels, and more.

But for now, we’re looking at the blog design.

Find the page called “Blog post” under “Blog home” in the left-hand menu and click it.

Starting Editing Elements

You’re now looking at your blog post template.

You can hover over any element to start editing it.

Just click the cog icon that appears in a colored box around the element, and you’ll find an editing window appears.

Welcome to the Editor

This new window will let you edit elements such as spacing, styling, sizing, colors, fonts, formatting, layout, and more.

For example, let’s look at editing fonts.

Just click the button reading “Edit Style”.

Editing Font Styles

You’ll now get a pop-up in the center of your screen.

This pop-up is called your “Style Guide”. You can edit the fonts for your headlines, subheadlines, and content here to any you like.

The changes will be reflected instantly across your website.

Editing Colors

To edit color schemes, simply hover over a colored element and click the cog icon.

You’ll find the side menu popping up again.

This time, click on “Edit style colors”.

Change the Color Scheme

Here you can change the colors of major elements in your site such as backgrounds, headings, content, icons, and more.

The changes will be reflected instantly across your site.

The theme colors will always come in handy when making quick changes in the future that you want to reflect the overall design and branding of your website.

A Peek at Monetizing Your Blog

The ClickFunnels blog template comes pre-loaded with a CTA to sell a product.

You can quickly edit the text and styling of this CTA box.

But here’s where the magic happens.

If you hover over the button element and click the cog icon, you’ll see the option to change the button actions.

To start selling your own product or services, all you’d need to do is create a product in the ClickFunnels dashboard and link to it here – and you’re done!

That’s the beauty of ClickFunnels.

You get a blog, drag-and-drop website builder, sales funnel, online store, payment processor, CRM, customer center, email marketing platform, and more all in one place.

Try ClickFunnels For 14 Days For Free!

6. Write Your First Blog

At this stage, you’ve already laid a solid foundation by defining your niche, understanding your audience, planning your monetization strategies, and brainstorming topics.

Now, it’s time to create your first compelling blog post.

So, how do you do it?

How to Create an “Instructional” Blog Post

Most people search on Google with the goal of solving a specific problem, answering a question, or learning something new.

BuzzSumo, after analyzing over 100 million article titles online, found that “instructional” headlines generated the highest engagement and shares on Facebook.

In other words, these are headlines that suggest action or provide essential information.

BuzzSumo found that:

Instructional phrases like “how to” “you need to” and “why you should” were among the top-performing headlines.
These types of headlines communicate urgency and clarity, offering readers a direct “need to know” approach that implies important or exclusive information.

For example, popular articles included headlines like:

“What You Need to Know About Toxic Plants”
“What You Need to Know About the COVID-19 Vaccine”
“Why You Should Stop Using Plastic Bags Immediately”

The key?

These headlines use “you” to speak directly to the reader, emphasizing the essential nature of the information.

They also tap into FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), implying that readers could miss out if they don’t read the article.

An Instructional Blog Post Headline

BuzzSumo also discovered that some of the most popular blog headlines use numbers.

These headlines promise specific, actionable information, which makes them highly clickable.

Out of the top-performing headlines, six out of the first twenty started with a number, with phrases like “X things to,” “everything you need,” or “X reasons why” also ranking high.

Here’s why numbers work:

Clarity and specificity: Numbers in headlines tell readers exactly what to expect, and a “listicle” format makes information easy to digest.
Curiosity and FOMO: Headlines with phrases like “X reasons why” or “everything you need” spark curiosity by promising useful or exclusive insights.

The type of blog post that includes a number in the headline is often called a “listicle”.

Listicles are perfect for creating actionable steps – like “7 Steps to Start a Blog” – and also happens to be easy to follow and retain.

For inspiration, check out popular blogs in your niche and see how they structure their posts.

Find examples you enjoy or that are already engaging readers and consider recreating their style to fit your own topic.

Finally, remember that blogging is all about practice.

Your first posts may not be perfect, and that’s okay – the goal is to keep writing, publishing, and improving.

And with ClickFunnels, it’s easy to edit your posts anytime, so you can update your content as you learn more and grow your blog.

7. Promote Your Products or Services

The strategy we covered above is all about writing content that ranks on Google.

Many successful bloggers generate six-figure incomes relying solely on Google traffic, making it an excellent starting point.

Of course, there are many other ways to promote your blog posts (social media, paid ads, email marketing, influencer partnerships, video marketing, and more).

But we’re not going to get into that here.

Instead, we’ll focus on how to use your blog as a tool to promote the products or services you’re monetizing.

By strategically placing promotions within your content, you can drive conversions and revenue directly from your blog.

Here are a few ideas that you can set up within minutes using ClickFunnels.

5 Ways to Monetize Your Blog

ClickFunnels is the ideal platform for monetizing your blog thanks to its features for turning readers into leads and sales.

Below, we explore five ways to leverage ClickFunnels’ tools to monetize your content.

Each of these features is included in your 14-day free trial.

They are:

Selling a digital product with a sales funnel: ClickFunnels makes it simple to create a sales funnel tailored to a digital product, such as an eBook, templates, or downloadable guides. Relevant calls-to-action in your blog can guide readers seamlessly into your sales funnel for conversions.
Selling an online course: If you’re an expert in your niche, consider creating a course. With ClickFunnels, you can direct readers from blog posts into an online course funnel. Offering a free introductory lesson or mini-course as a lead magnet can be especially effective.
Selling a membership: For ongoing value, a membership or subscription service can be a great choice. ClickFunnels enables you to set up a members-only area with exclusive content. Just ensure the membership content aligns with the topics you’re already blogging about to attract the right subscribers.
Using landing pages to generate leads: Not every reader will be ready to purchase immediately. Capture leads by directing traffic from your blog to a targeted landing page with a lead magnet, such as a checklist or mini-guide related to your post’s topic.
Generating leads and selling through email marketing: With ClickFunnels’ email marketing features, you can collect email addresses from blog readers and nurture them with relevant offers. Create an email series that builds trust and highlights the benefits of your products or services.

Final Thoughts: Make Money Blogging With ClickFunnels

Starting a blog requires strategy, dedication, and the right tools.

In this guide, we’ve covered essential steps – from selecting a niche and monetization strategies to setting up and promoting your blog.

But one factor stands out:

To turn a blog into a source of income, you need a platform built for monetization.

ClickFunnels is uniquely designed to help bloggers not only create compelling content but also seamlessly monetize it through funnels, lead capture, and more.

With its 14-day free trial, you can start building your blog with powerful tools that drive real results – without needing a tech background.

Ready to start a blog that works for you?

Try ClickFunnels today and take the first step toward a profitable blogging journey.

Try ClickFunnels For 14 Days For Free!

Thanks for reading How To Start A Blog And Earn Money which appeared first on ClickFunnels.

How To Build A Strong Online Presence

Mike Blankenship — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 12:42:43 +0000

The post How To Build A Strong Online Presence appeared first on ClickFunnels.

Imagine waking up each day knowing you’ll get a high-value lead or sale without doing anything.

That’s the power of a strong online presence.

But if you’re not currently investing any meaningful time into building your digital brand, you’re not the only one.

A lot of service providers get enough business via referrals that they neglect building out their online presence. Others selling info products or e-commerce products get enough sales via one of two marketing channels that they’re not investing into other channels either.

So why is building your online presence so important?

Relying on referrals or a single marketing channel is, frankly, a huge risk.

You’re often just one month or one technical issue away from watching your business collapse in front of your eyes.

Starting today, we’re not going to let that happen.

In this post we’ll look at 12 genius ways to build your online presence quickly and effectively, in a way that diversifies the sources of your leads and sales.

We’ll also give you key tips to use each method to get fast, short-term results.

Ready to start?

Let’s dive in!

Not convinced You Need an Online Presence? You’re Not alone

If you’re not completely convinced about investing in an online presence, you’re not alone.

Maybe your business has grown steadily through referrals, or maybe you’ve cracked a single channel (like Facebook ads or PPC) that brings in cash flow.

If it works, it makes sense not to see online presence as a priority – why spend hours on social media, blog posts, or outreach when you’re already seeing results?

You’re in good company with this mindset.

Let’s look at some stats:

60% of small business owners don’t use social media at all (TBTech.co).
41% of small business owners feel their business doesn’t need a website (Moneyzine).
36% of small businesses don’t even have a website at all.
25% of small business websites get updated less than once a year.
40% of small businesses admit they don’t understand how websites or social media can help them attract new customers.

Mind-blowing, right?

Especially since we all know the internet’s reach: Over 3.1 billion people actively use Facebook, and 2.5 billion people actively use Google.

So why aren’t you taking advantage?

There are several common reasons that hold a lot of business owners back:

It’s uncomfortable – You might feel uncomfortable putting yourself out there or promoting yourself on social media.
You’ve been burned – You might have invested in social media or SEO services only to feel disappointed by lackluster results.
No time – Delivering for clients might take so much time that there’s none left for online efforts.
Operational overwhelm – Maybe the thought of where to begin feels overwhelming – so you put it off.
No short-term gains – Maybe you feel the results will take too long to see, making it hard to justify the effort.

Despite these blocks, if you’re reading this there’s still a lingering thought that maybe it’s time to build your online presence.

So let’s look at some good reasons why.

5 Reasons Why You Need to Build an Online Presence

If you want a sustainable business or financial freedom, it’s essential to build your online presence starting today.

Think of online presence like having a storefront in a busy area: if potential customers can’t see you, they won’t come in.

Here are five reasons more reasons to convince you why building an online presence is so important:

Expand Your Reach Beyond Your Past Clients

An online presence lets you reach a broader audience, connecting with people outside of your immediate network. Research shows over 50% of shoppers start their journey online, so building an accessible online presence is essential for stable growth and a steady flow of new customers.

Build Credibility and Trust

Consumers tend to trust businesses they can research, and a solid online presence establishes brand credibility. Studies show that 81% of buyers research products online before buying; having a website and active social channels reassures potential clients and can make a difference in closing sales.

Unlock New Sales Opportunities 24/7

With an SEO-optimized website or regular social media content, your services are available any time of day, making it easy for customers to convert when they’re ready. Businesses with consistent content marketing see six times higher conversion rates, allowing you to capture leads and clients without constant manual effort.

Resilience in a Changing Market

An online presence provides resilience against market shifts, helping you connect with clients across multiple channels. If one source of leads dries up a diversified online strategy – using social media, organic search, or email – keeps you adaptable and keeps your income stable.

Scalability for Long-Term Success

Unlike in-person efforts, your online presence can scale as your business grows, allowing you to expand your client base without a proportional increase in work. For digital service providers or info product sellers, this means reaching a global audience and gaining income stability as you scale.

Convinced?

Good.

Now let’s look at how you can start building your online presence, and see the results fast.

12 Genius Ways to Build a Strong Online Presence (And Get Results Fast)

Below we’ll go through 12 genius ways to build your online presence.

We’ll also give you some key tips to start using each of these methods to see short-term results and help you build momentum and motivation.

1. Get Clear on Your Target Audience

Why it works: Knowing your ideal customer’s pain points, motivations, and interests allows you to tailor your online presence specifically to them. You save time and resources by targeting the right audience from the start, enhancing your chances of engagement.

Who should consider it: Ideal for any business looking to grow its online presence, particularly if your offerings cater to a specific niche.

How to use it for quick wins: Create a one-page customer avatar that outlines your ideal client’s characteristics. Refer to it every time you create content or make an online connection, ensuring you always address their needs directly.

2. SEO

Why it works: SEO places your website in front of people actively searching for relevant products or services, making it a powerful organic tool for visibility.

Who should consider it: Essential for businesses selling products or services with high search demand.

How to use it for quick wins: Focus on low-competition, long-tail keywords. Rather than “weight loss products,” try “natural weight loss products for women over 50.” Targeting niche terms or highly localized markets can lead to faster results.

3. Google Business Profile

Why it works: Google Business Profile (GBP) is free and puts you in front of people searching for local services, giving you visibility in Google Maps above other search results.

Who should consider it: Especially beneficial for local service providers aiming to attract nearby customers.

How to use it for quick wins: Complete your profile thoroughly, including images and services. Gather reviews, as these contribute to rankings and attract customers, positioning your business as a trusted local option.

4. Build an Email List

Why it works: An email list gives you a direct line to potential customers without relying on social media algorithms, allowing you to reach out and convert leads at zero cost.

Who should consider it: Best suited for e-commerce, info-product businesses, or those with recurring launches.

How to use it for quick wins: Start with a CTA on your site or social media, offering a freebie or discount to new subscribers. Use an automated email sequence, like the “soap opera sequence,” to warm leads and guide them toward making a purchase within a week.

5. Social Media Platforms

Why it works: With billions of daily users, social media offers a vast reach for building awareness and trust with your target audience. Regular, relevant content lets you connect with potential customers personally.

Who should consider it: Any business—but it’s crucial to choose platforms aligning with your audience: LinkedIn for B2B, Instagram for e-commerce, TikTok for younger audiences, etc.

How to use it for quick wins: Use a “Dream 100” strategy to engage with key potential clients regularly. Comment, like, and share content to get noticed by your target audience and encourage reciprocal interest in your content.

6. Niche Sites

Why it works: Platforms like Behance, GitHub, Clutch, Upwork, and Fiverr attract users interested in specific professional services, helping you find a highly targeted audience.

Who should consider it: Perfect for creative professionals, tech specialists, or consultants whose audiences frequent these specialized sites.

How to use it for quick wins: Build a strong portfolio on relevant platforms, prioritizing positive reviews, ratings, and showcases of past work to establish authority quickly.

7. Build (Or Update) Your Website

Why it works: Your website acts as a digital storefront, showcasing your services or products while also providing valuable SEO potential and supporting credibility.

Who should consider it: Vital for any business building an online presence, especially those utilizing SEO or directing paid traffic to their site.

How to use it for quick wins: Emphasize social proof on your site. Showcase testimonials, reviews, and case studies that resonate with your target audience to foster trust and boost conversions.

8. Blog Content

Why it works: Blogging establishes authority by addressing your audience’s specific questions and pain points, drawing organic traffic, and encouraging social sharing.

Who should consider it: Valuable for any business whose customers research before buying, especially service-oriented or educational brands.

How to use it for quick wins: Focus on your audience’s biggest challenges. Create posts with actionable solutions, highlighting how your products or services provide essential support in their journey.

9. Video Content

Why it works: Many people prefer video for its accessible, engaging format. You can educate potential customers and demonstrate expertise, capturing interest quickly and effectively.

Who should consider it: Ideal for businesses needing to showcase product usage, provide educational insights, or explain complex topics.

How to use it for quick wins: Address common questions or problems with short, informative videos. Position yourself as an expert by solving viewer pain points, and upload to YouTube to capture SEO benefits.

10. Meta Ads

Why it works: With targeted ads, you can instantly reach your ideal audience on Facebook and Instagram, gaining traction without the lengthy process of organic growth.

Who should consider it: Especially effective for consumer-focused businesses with products or services suited to social platforms.

How to use it for quick wins: Promote a low-cost product or a lead magnet to gather emails and get people into a sales funnel. Lower-priced offers encourage impulse buys, helping you generate quick conversions while building a warm audience.

11. PPC (Pay-Per-Click)

Why it works: Like SEO, PPC puts you in front of high-intent customers, but without the extended wait. It’s an immediate way to drive traffic and sales with scalable results.

Who should consider it: Ideal for businesses with products or services people are actively searching for, particularly in competitive markets.

How to use it for quick wins: Set up targeted landing pages to capture leads efficiently. Optimize regularly to refine keywords, landing page copy, and conversion rates, creating a funnel that’s built to convert.

12. Influencer Marketing

Why it works: Influencers already have engaged audiences who trust them, making it easier to showcase your products to a receptive group, bypassing the need for gradual organic growth.

Who should consider it: Best for businesses with a strong visual element, such as lifestyle, fashion, beauty, or fitness, that can attract influencer partnerships.

How to use it for quick wins: Collaborate with influencers who share similar audience demographics. Look for those who have promoted products like yours successfully, as this indicates compatibility with your brand and customer profile.

Ignore This, and Your Online Presence Will be Worthless

Imagine you’ve just implemented one or more of the 12 strategies to build your online presence.

You’ve gained visibility and are attracting visitors to your website or social media profiles.

But as time goes on, you notice something troubling: the leads and sales you expected just aren’t materializing.

What’s the problem?

It’s likely your newfound traffic isn’t converting into tangible results. When this happens, it’s often because you lack an effective sales funnel.

Simply getting people to your site isn’t enough; you need a structured way to nurture them into becoming leads and ultimately customers.

This is where ClickFunnels comes in.

Designed specifically to address the issue of converting online traffic, ClickFunnels offers DIY funnel-building software that provides all the essential elements to turn visitors into leads and sales.

Here are five ways ClickFunnels can help implement the strategies we’ve discussed:

Create Landing Pages for Lead Magnets: Attract email subscribers by offering valuable content that resonates with your audience.
Add CTAs to Your Website: Direct traffic to custom landing pages, guiding potential customers through your sales process.
Build Multi-Step Funnels: Seamlessly turn readers into leads, then nurture them into low-ticket sales before upselling to mid- and high-ticket items.
Automate Email Sequences: Develop targeted email campaigns that sell products and keep your audience engaged over time.
Design Without Developers: Easily create blog posts, embed video content, and customize design elements without needing extensive technical skills.

Don’t let your hard work go to waste.

With ClickFunnels, you can create a compelling online presence that effectively converts traffic into leads and sales.

Try ClickFunnels Free for 14 Days!

Final Thoughts: Turning Your Online Presence Into New Customers

Building a strong online presence is essential for success in today’s digital landscape.

Implementing strategies like optimizing your website, engaging on social media, and creating valuable content can significantly boost your visibility.

However, gaining traffic is only half the battle.

Converting that traffic into leads and sales is crucial. Without a structured funnel to guide potential customers through their journey, you risk wasting your efforts.

ClickFunnels is designed to address this exact challenge, providing user-friendly tools to create effective sales funnels.

By allowing you to build landing pages, automate email sequences, and design without needing technical expertise, ClickFunnels empowers you to transform your online presence into a powerful sales engine.

If you want to turn your traffic into real results, ClickFunnels is your go-to solution.

Start optimizing your conversion rates today!

Try ClickFunnels Free for 14 Days!

Thanks for reading How To Build A Strong Online Presence which appeared first on ClickFunnels.

Top Benefits Of Using ClickFunnels For Your Business

Mike Blankenship — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 07:40:58 +0000

The post Top Benefits Of Using ClickFunnels For Your Business appeared first on ClickFunnels.

Have a great business idea but don’t know how to turn it into real sales?

You’re not alone.

Many aspiring entrepreneurs see the potential of their vision, but without design or coding skills they struggle to bring it to life. Over time, these dreams often get left behind due to limited time, tech frustrations, or the high cost of setting up an online business.

That’s why we created ClickFunnels.

With our intuitive drag-and-drop builder and proven templates, ClickFunnels makes it simple to build a professional website or store that’s ready to launch within minutes.

Since 2014, we’ve helped hundreds of thousands of people turn their ideas into income – 2,000 of whom have even made over $1M directly on the platform.

But our journey hasn’t ended yet.

As ClickFunnels keeps growing, we update our offerings every year to ensure we remain the most seamless, powerful way to start and scale an online business.

Keep reading to see the many benefits of ClickFunnels in 2024 and see how we can help you take control of your ideas and make them profitable.

ClickFunnels’ membership site builder is straightforward and requires no technical expertise. It’s as simple as setting up your course and granting access to paying members, with a secure login to keep content private. Add new materials and update content easily to keep members engaged and coming back for more.

Learn More About Membership Sites

8. Create Global Products

What is it?

With ClickFunnels, you can create a product once and seamlessly embed it across your website, funnels, and email marketing campaigns. Whether it’s an online course, a membership site, or even physical products, ClickFunnels makes it easy to manage all of your products from a single platform.

Why do I need it?

Why do I need it?

Why do I need it?

Build lasting relationships by managing the entire customer journey with ease, from sales pipelines to automated communications. ClickFunnels’ MessageHub feature, for example, helps you to manage SMS, email, and social messages in one place. You can also build out your automated workflows within the CRM, and use calendar integraitons to set appointments.

How Easy is it With ClickFunnels?

ClickFunnels’ CRM tools make it simple to track and nurture leads. MessageHub enables ongoing engagement, while Appointments and Opportunities streamline lead conversion through each sales stage.

Learn More About CRMs

Want to Try ClickFunnels Before Buying?

As you’ve seen, ClickFunnels offers a comprehensive suite of features designed to help you take your business from idea to profit – fast.

From intuitive design tools to proven templates, ClickFunnels makes it possible to launch your online funnel seamlessly and start converting visitors into loyal customers.

But don’t just take our word for it.

ClickFunnels lets you try it for yourself, risk-free, with a 14-day free trial.

There’s no catch, no long-term contract and no commitment if it doesn’t feel right.

We’re offering this trial because we believe in the transformative power of ClickFunnels, and we want you to experience how it can simplify your business journey and fuel your growth firsthand.

If you’re ready to unlock financial security and freedom with a tool trusted by hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs, the next step is simple:

This is your opportunity to turn dreams into reality.

With nothing to lose and everything to gain, there’s never been a better time to take action.

Try ClickFunnels Free for 14 Days!

Thanks for reading Top Benefits Of Using ClickFunnels For Your Business which appeared first on ClickFunnels.

Customer Acquisition Guide For Startups

John Parkes — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 12:53:11 +0000

The post Customer Acquisition Guide For Startups appeared first on ClickFunnels.

As Gabriel Weinberg, the founder of DuckDuckGo, put it in his book “Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth”:

“Almost every failed startup has a product. What failed startups don’t have are enough customers.”

According to him, the number one cause of failure isn’t the product, it’s the poor distribution.

He argues that many entrepreneurs who build great products simply don’t have a good distribution strategy.

In his view, when it comes to startup success, the only essential thing is growth. Everything else follows from that.

We agree with this perspective because you can have the best product in the world but it won’t matter if you can’t get enough customers to keep your business afloat.

That’s why today we want to share our complete guide to customer acquisition for startups…

Table of Contents:

Niche Down as Much as Possible

Founders often make the mistake of going after the largest possible target audience when they should be doing the opposite and zeroing in on the smallest possible niche.

For example, Facebook, which had over 3 billion monthly active users in the last quarter of 2023, started out as a social network for Harvard University students in 2004.

It then gradually expanded to other Ivy League universities, then to all universities in the United States, and then finally became available to the general public in 2006, two years after its launch.

Facebook almost certainly wouldn’t have been able to gain traction if the company had gone after everyone in the world who had Internet access right from the get-go.

So figure out the smallest possible niche that you could target that is still large enough for you to generate enough revenue to keep the lights on. Once you dominate that initial niche, you can start gradually expanding your target audience!

Conduct Extensive Customer Research

We’ll be blunt:

You probably don’t understand your dream customers as well as you think you do. And the further removed you are from your target audience, the more likely that is to be the case.

That’s why we recommend conducting extensive customer research before you start thinking about customer acquisition:

Figure out where your dream customers are hanging out online and join those spaces.
Figure out who your dream customers are following and start following the same influencers, thought leaders, and content creators.
Figure out what content your dream customers are consuming and start consuming it yourself.

You want to immerse yourself in the online world of your dream customers as much as possible because that will give you the context you need to create effective marketing campaigns and write persuasive sales copy.

Pay special attention to the exact words, phrases, and metaphors that your dream customers use to describe the problem that your product can help them solve. You want to use the same language when selling your product!

Take Stock of the Resources at Your Disposal

As our friend Alex Hormozi loves to say, the first rule of entrepreneurship is “Use what you have”.

That’s why we want you to take stock of the resources that you have at your disposal.

Marketing strategies that we are going to discuss in the next section all involve a trade-off between time and money to some extent: the less money you are willing to spend, the more time you will need to invest.

Choose a strategy that will allow you to capitalize on the resource that you have more of, whether that’s money or time.

Beyond that, you want to look at everything else that you have that you could use to your advantage, including your talents, skills, and connections.

Ideally, you want to go with a marketing strategy that will allow you to play to your strengths and won’t require learning completely new skills from scratch because that will enable you to hit the ground running.

Of course, that isn’t always possible, but try to make the most of what you already have!

Choose a Marketing Strategy

We recommend choosing one of these marketing strategies and focusing on it exclusively until you hit the point of diminishing returns:

Marketing Strategy #1: Cold Email

Cold email is the most accessible marketing strategy but it is also extremely time-consuming and best suited for B2B as opposed to B2C.

It’s impossible to predict conversion rates in advance but you should be prepared to send 100 cold emails per day to schedule 10 sales calls and make 1 sale.

And just to be clear: we are talking about personalized cold emails where each message is customized for that particular recipient.

Don’t send potential customers low-effort copy-paste spam. Not only does it not work, it can also get you in legal trouble!

Set Up a New Domain Name and Email Address

Start by setting up a new domain name that is similar to the main domain name of your startup and then create a new email account associated with that new domain name.

This is a precautionary measure in case your cold emails get marked as spam and you end up getting blacklisted by email service providers like Gmail. It’s best not to put your main domain name and your main email address at risk.

Also, before you start your cold email campaign, use a service like lemwarm to simulate back-and-forth email activity. That should make you look more legit in the eyes of email service providers and hopefully help you avoid spam filters.

Find a Lead Generation Expert and Buy 100 Leads

After that, go on Fiverr, find a B2B lead generation expert, and order a spreadsheet with 100 leads based on your dream customer criteria.

That spreadsheet should include a list of target companies, a contact person for each of them, and their full name, job title, and email address.

If that lead generation expert does a good job compiling leads, you can order a spreadsheet with 1,000 leads the next time.

Start Cold Emailing Leads

It’s best to start slow – perhaps with just 3 cold emails per day – because a sudden spike in your email activity can seem suspicious and might get you blacklisted by email service providers.

Gradually increase the cold email volume until you are sending 100 cold emails per day. Don’t go beyond that because that may be crossing into the spam territory.

Use Justin McGill’s QVC Framework

We recommend following the QVC framework that Justin McGill, the founder of LeadFuze, used to go from zero to $30k in monthly recurring revenue in just one year:

Question – In your subject line, ask a question related to the problem that your product addresses. Ideally, it should hit the key pain point. That will help you get the potential customer’s attention and hopefully prompt them to open your email.

In the body copy, ask a similar question that hits the same pain point, but use a more detailed phrasing. That will hopefully get them interested enough to continue reading.
Value proposition – The intro question should be followed by a few value proposition sentences that explain what your product is about. You want to present it as a solution to their problem.
Call to action – End the email by asking the potential customer if they would be interested in a demo. Make sure to phrase it as a yes or no question!

Here’s a sample template that follows this framework:

Continue Following Up Until You Get a Response

The odds are that the people you are reaching out to are pretty busy so you may not get a response straight away.

That’s why it’s so important to follow up with them. Justin McGill said that he has seen a lot of success with this four-email email sequence:

QVC cold email that we just discussed.
Case study email – It should showcase how your product helped someone just like them.
Value add email – This can be another case study but it can also be a blog post link, a relevant news article, or something else that they might find interesting.
Break-up email – Let them know that you won’t be following up anymore and encourage them to reach out to you in the future if they ever want to learn more about your product.

McGill would also add this “P.S.” section to all his emails, starting with the initial QVC one:

This is a great idea because it enables you to continue following up while also being respectful and providing that person with a way out if they don’t want to hear from you anymore.

Make Sure to Stay Organized!

When you are only sending a few cold emails per day, keeping track of everything is easy.

But once you start increasing the volume, it can get out of hand really quickly as the replies, the back-and-forth, and the scheduled demo calls start piling up.

That’s why we recommend setting up some sort of customer relationship management (CRM) system right from the start.

Our software includes a CRM functionality that can be really helpful here!

With ClickFunnels’ CRM functionality, you can manage email, social media DMs and text message conversations in one place, schedule demo calls and see how leads are progressing through your sales pipeline.

Marketing Strategy #2: Cold Calling

Cold calling is similar to cold email in that it’s an accessible but time-consuming marketing strategy that works best for B2B businesses.

All you need to get started is a list of leads that meet your dream customer criteria, your phone and a cold call script.

We recommend using Patrick Dang’s five-step cold calling framework:

Research the prospect because that will make everything else much easier.
Build rapport with the prospect by bringing their attention to something that you have in common.
Explain why you are calling, set the agenda for the call, and ask them for permission to get started.
Ask questions to uncover the pain points related to the problem that your product addresses.
Leverage the pain points you uncovered to position your product as a solution to their problem and ask them if they would be interested in a product demo.

If they say yes, ask them for their email address and tell them that you are going to send them a calendar link with available times, then thank them for their time and end the call.

Once you hang up, send them that calendar link immediately and then continue following up once a week, the same way you would if it was a cold email instead of a cold call.

Factors like energy level, tonality, and cadence of speech matter a lot in cold calling. You might want to record your cold calls and then listen to how you sound so that you’d have a better understanding of how you are coming across.

Just make sure to check whether that’s legal where you live because the laws regarding recording phone calls vary between jurisdictions.

Also, just as with cold email, it’s important to stay organized when you are making a lot of cold calls every day, which you can do with our customer relationship management (CRM) system!

Marketing Strategy #3: Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is about getting other people to promote your product to their audiences and then paying them a commission from each sale.

It’s another affordable but time-consuming marketing strategy, though a big difference between affiliate marketing and cold outreach is that affiliate marketing can work well for B2C as well.

If you do enough customer research, you should already know who your dream customers are following online. Make a list of these influencers, thought leaders, and content creators, find their email addresses, and start cold emailing them.

For example, you can create a webinar funnel for your product, reach out to potential affiliates, and pitch them a partnership that looks like this:

They promote your webinar to their followers
You organize and host the event
You split the sales proceeds with them

That’s what our co-founder Russell Brunson did during our first year in business and it worked really well!

Also, once you have success with one affiliate partnership, you can use it as social proof in your cold emails and leverage it to get more affiliates on board!

Social media marketing is super affordable and less time-consuming than cold outreach. However, it will likely take you a few years to gain momentum.

As such, this marketing strategy is perhaps best suited for people who have full-time jobs and are working on their startups on the side.

Pick a social media platform that allows you to play to your strengths, which is going to boil down to the choice between the text medium and the visual medium.

Then, create a content schedule that you can keep up with indefinitely. Ideally, you want to post at least once a day, but quality is more important than quantity.

You should also incentivize engagement by rewarding it. If someone leaves a comment under your post, like it and reply to it. That will serve as positive reinforcement.

Be warned that social media marketing can be demoralizing because, in the beginning, your follower growth is likely going to be extremely slow.

However, if you stick with your content schedule, keep the content quality high, and reward engagement, eventually, it will start accelerating!

Marketing Strategy #5: Video Marketing

Video marketing is similar to social media marketing in the sense that it will likely take you a few years to gain momentum. However, it is also both more time-consuming and more expensive.

That being said, a YouTube channel has more staying power than a social media following, which makes it a more valuable asset from a business perspective.

This marketing strategy is best suited for people who not only have full-time jobs and are working on their startups on the side but who also either have video production skills already or are genuinely interested in learning them.

You want to publish one YouTube video per week, target a keyword that your dream customers are searching for, and make sure that your video is better than all the other videos that are currently ranking for that keyword.

Production quality doesn’t matter much as long as the audio is decent so no need to overthink it. What’s important is content quality. Your video needs to meet the search intent of its target keyword.

Once you publish your video on YouTube, cut it up into shorts and then publish those shorts both on YouTube and on TikTok.

Video marketing can be demoralizing at first due to slow channel growth, but if you continue publishing one video per week and make sure that it’s good, your channel will eventually start gaining momentum.

Also, if you want to grow your channel faster, we recommend watching this video by Vanessa Lau where she shares a bunch of tips and tricks that can help you accelerate growth:

Marketing Strategy #6: Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization can still work well in 2024.

However, we wouldn’t recommend this marketing strategy unless you either have previous experience with it or are targeting a niche where your competition is clueless about SEO. Why?

Because getting organic traffic from Google Search is becoming increasingly difficult and this trend is likely going to continue in the foreseeable future.

Here are some factors that you might want to consider:

There are only 10 spots on the first page of search results.
The top search result has an average click-through rate of 27.6% and is 10x more likely to get a click than the tenth search result.
The top three search results get 54.4% of all clicks.

Realistically speaking, this means that in order to get organic search traffic, you need to not only reach the first page but also rank in the top three search results.

It’s unlikely that you will be able to do it by creating high-quality content alone since backlinks play an important role in search rankings. And link building can be difficult if you don’t have any connections.

Also, now that anyone can use large language models like ChatGPT to produce content at scale, the Internet is getting flooded with “AI slop”. This has sparked a lot of discussion on whether SEO as we know it is dead.

All this makes search engine optimization an uphill battle that may not be worth it, especially considering that you could be investing those resources into growing a social media following or building a YouTube channel instead!

Marketing Strategy #7: Paid Advertising

Paid advertising is the best marketing strategy for those who have more money than time.

It can work really well for startups that have a substantial war chest as well as for solopreneurs who have high-paying jobs and don’t mind spending money on growing their side hustles.

Of course, it’s still a skill: you’ll need to invest time in learning how to run ads on your platform of choice, testing various campaign ideas, optimizing your campaigns, etc.

The learning curve can be pretty steep but the feedback loop is fast. You’ll know whether your campaign is working or not within a few days.

Mastering paid advertising is empowering because it gives you the ability to drive traffic wherever you want, whenever you want, which you can then use to promote anything.

If you have no previous experience with it, Udemy is probably the best resource for learning the basics because it has paid advertising courses for all major social media platforms.

Wait until the next sale and you should be able to get a course for less than $20!

All of These Marketing Strategies Can Work Well!

First-time founders often spend too much time obsessing over which marketing strategy they should choose.

The truth is that all of the strategies listed above can work well if you are willing to put in the time to master them and have the patience to play the long game.

So pick one that makes the most sense considering the resources that you have and get to work!

Build a Sales Funnel

We believe that the best way to grow a startup is to build a sales funnel for it and then drive traffic to it with your marketing campaigns.

What is a Sales Funnel?

A sales funnel is a system designed to convert visitors into leads, leads into customers, and customers into repeat customers.

How to Build a Lead Magnet Funnel

A lead magnet is a freebie that you offer to the potential customer in exchange for their email address.

The most straightforward sales funnel that you can build is the lead magnet funnel which consists of just two pages:

A squeeze page where you present your lead magnet and encourage the potential customer to type in their email address to get it.
A thank you page where you thank the potential customer and explain how to get access to your lead magnet.

Once you have their email address, you can use email marketing to pitch them your product.

For example, you could have a lead magnet that teaches them how to solve a specific problem and then use email marketing to pitch them your product as the best tool for implementing that solution.

This is what we do: we use our lead magnets to teach people how to build sales funnels and then pitch them our funnel builder software!

Once you have your sales funnel set up and ready to go, you can start driving traffic to it by using the aforementioned marketing strategies to promote your lead magnet.

You can build a lead magnet funnel for your startup with ClickFunnels!

Just because someone gave you their email address doesn’t necessarily mean that they are ready to buy your product. And that’s okay!

Continue building trust by providing free value via email and make sure that you stay top of mind with them.

The best way to do it is to launch a weekly newsletter. Send your subscribers an email that follows the same template every week on the same day at the same time.

Link roundup newsletter format can work really well for this. Share links to interesting content from around the web: blog articles, YouTube videos, podcast episodes, etc.

You can model it on Tim Ferriss’ “5-Bullet Friday” newsletter. Obviously, don’t copy his exact template. Instead, come up with something similar that makes sense for your industry.

Add a “P.S.” section at the end of every newsletter issue and use it to promote your product. Say, if you run a software startup, you can encourage people to sign up for your free trial.

Once you launch your newsletter, you can use it as a lead magnet and create a marketing campaign for it.

ClickFunnels has an email marketing functionality that makes it easy to grow your newsletter!

Follow the 50% Rule!

In his book “Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth”, Gabriel Weinberg discusses what he calls “The 50% Rule”.

The idea is simple: you should spend 50% of your time working on your product and the other 50% of your time working on customer acquisition.

We highly recommend adopting this approach, especially if you are someone who is great at creating products but not so great at marketing and selling them.

Otherwise, it’s easy to fall into a trap where you stay in your comfort zone, endlessly tinkering with your product, and then have to shut down your startup because it isn’t making any money!

Want to Learn How to Build Sales Funnels That CONVERT?

Our co-founder Russell Brunson used sales funnels to take ClickFunnels from zero to $100M+ in annual revenue in less than a decade.

He is now widely considered to be one of the top sales funnel experts in the world. Want to learn from him?

His best-selling book “DotCom Secrets” is the best place to start because it covers everything you need to know in order to build sales funnels that convert.

This book is available on Amazon where it has over 2,500 global ratings and a 4.7-star overall rating.

But you can also get it directly from us for free…

All we ask is that you pay for shipping!

So what are you waiting for? 🧐

Get “DotCom Secrets” for FREE!

Thanks for reading Customer Acquisition Guide For Startups which appeared first on ClickFunnels.

How To Build An Effective Business Model For Startups

Mike Blankenship — Thu, 26 Sep 2024 05:52:20 +0000

The post How To Build An Effective Business Model For Startups appeared first on ClickFunnels.

Looking to scale your startup?

Then you’re about to discover the most important element in every business’ success: the business model.

A business plan outlines a company’s goals and strategies. But a business model is how they’re going to monetize their products or services.

Arguably, the business model is more important.

How will you achieve your goals if you don’t know how you’ll make money?

By the end of this article, you’ll understand how to create a simple but effective business model for your startup.

And you’ll also know what to fix when it’s not working.

Why Startups Die Without a Business Model

A business model is the way a company makes money.

It explains who you’re selling to, what you’re offering, and how you’re getting paid.

The business model is one of the most crucial elements in any startup. Without a business model, you can’t make money. And without a good business model, you can’t scale.

For example, let’s say you’ve built a shiny new app.

You decide your main goal is to get to 1 million users without worrying about how you’ll actually make money. You hit your target but soon when you try to monetize the app you aren’t generating enough revenue to stay afloat.

This is not just a thought experiment.

Take a look at three startups that went viral but couldn’t find a good business model:

Yo (2014-2016)

Yo was a viral app that let users send the word “yo” to friends. It quickly gained popularity on Product Hunt, but the founder, Or Arbel, admitted his biggest mistake was “not charging customers from day one.” Once investors saw there was no revenue, funding dried up, and the app shut down.

HQ Trivia (2017-2020)

It attracted over 2.3 million players with live trivia games, but the founder, Rus Yusupov, admitted they were still “solidifying their business model” when investors pulled out. Despite its viral success, HQ Trivia couldn’t figure out how to make money and eventually had to close.

Vine (2013-2016)

The popular short-form video app, saw similar issues. Vine allowed users to create 6-second looping videos and grew quickly – it attracted popular creators like Logan Paul and Daniel Dobrik. But without a strong business model, it couldn’t monetize its user base. Twitter, which acquired Vine in 2012, shut it down in 2017 due to increasing competition and the inability to generate sustainable revenue.

In all of these cases, the lack of a well-defined business model led to failure.

No business model = no business.

Below, we’ll walk you through a simple business model framework to help you avoid this fate.

An Effective Business Model Template

Scaling a startup to millions of dollars in revenue is exciting, but it’s not easy. Managing that money flow can be complex.

But the essence of a business model is simple.

Here’s a proven business model template from The Value Engineers, incorporating elements from academic research on the topic. It breaks down into four key elements:

The value proposition: What are you offering? Who is it for? What makes your offer unique?
The value network: Who are the key partners involved in delivering this value?
The revenue model: How does the business make money? What cash flows are involved?
The delivery model: How is your product or service delivered to customers?

You don’t need to write a long business plan to answer these. Short, clear sentences will do the job.

At its core, these are the four main factors that determine the strength of your business model.

Below, we’ll look at how some of the world’s top companies have their business models condensed into this simple template.

10 of the Most Profitable Business Models for Startups

Now that we’ve seen the template, let’s put it into action.

Below, we’ll dive into some of the most profitable business models by looking at real-world examples of successful startups.

Although a business model is more than just a revenue model we’ll categorize the following examples based on how they charge customers.

Remember, there are always more factors at play.

1. ClickFunnels (Tiered Subscription Fee)

The Value Proposition:

ClickFunnels offers an all-in-one platform for creating marketing funnels, websites, and sales pages.
ClickFunnels offers tools for businesses to increase conversions and sales.
ClickFunnels is part of an ecosystem that includes live seminars, resources, training, and niche-specific funnels to help users grow their businesses.
ClickFunnels is constantly adding new features to help users stay ahead.

The Value Network:

Entrepreneurs, marketers, and online businesses
Payment processors
Third-party integrations (e.g., email marketing tools, CRM platforms)
Developers and tech partners

The Revenue Model:

Tiered subscription fee: ClickFunnels offers a basic subscription for startups and a higher-priced tier with additional features for larger businesses.

The Delivery Model:

Cloud-based platform accessible through the web, with integrations and tools for building and managing online sales funnels.

2. Netflix (Flat Subscription Fee)

The Value Proposition:

Netflix offers global on-demand video streaming at any place, any time, on any device
Netflix has a large content library with original high–quality content
Netflix provides personalized recommendations

The Value Network:

Content producers
UP holders
Rights clearing organizations
Investors
Competitors

The Revenue Model:

Flat monthly subscription fee: Netflix originally charged a flat monthly fee, though they introduced a tiered structure that includes ad-free viewing and the ability to share the subscription with extra members. This was to cut down on password sharing.

The Delivery Model:

Streaming

3. Amazon Web Services (AWS) (Pay-Per-Use)

The Value Proposition:

AWS offers cloud computing services like storage, databases, and machine learning on a pay-as-you-go basis
Flexible, scalable, and cost-effective for businesses of all sizes
High reliability and security for critical infrastructure

The Value Network:

Developers and tech companies
Hardware and software vendors
Data centers
Service integrators and consulting partners
Global regulatory authorities (for data compliance)

The Revenue Model:

Pay-per-use model: customers are charged based on their usage of computing resources (e.g., storage, processing power, data transfers).

The Delivery Model:

Cloud-based delivery through a web-based platform, accessible globally

4. Facebook (Advertising-Based)

The Value Proposition:

Facebook offers a free social media platform for connecting with friends, family and communities.
Tools for businesses to reach and engage with their target audience through targeted advertising.
Personalized user experience based on interests, activities, and behaviors.

The Value Network:

Users
Advertisers (businesses targeting specific demographics)
Content creators (media companies, influencers)
Developers (third-party apps and services integrated with Facebook)

The Revenue Model:

Free for users: Facebook generates revenue through advertisers who pay for targeted ads.

The Delivery Model:

Social media platform accessible via apps and web browsers

5. Airbnb (Commission-Based)

The Value Proposition:

Airbnb provides a platform for people to list, discover, and book accommodations globally.
Unique and personalized stays are often cheaper than hotels.
Hosts can earn money by renting out their homes or spare rooms.

The Value Network:

Hosts (property owners)
Guests (travelers)
Local governments (compliance and regulations)
Insurance companies
Payment processors

The Revenue Model:

Commission-based: Airbnb takes a percentage from both the host and the guest for each booking.

The Delivery Model:

Marketplace platform available via apps and the web, facilitating bookings and payments.

6. PayPal (Transaction Fee)

The Value Proposition:

PayPal offers a secure and easy way for individuals and businesses to send and receive payments online.
International payment transfers with currency conversion.
Fraud protection and buyer/seller security guarantees.

The Value Network:

Banks and financial institutions
Merchants (e-commerce platforms, individual sellers)
Consumers
Regulatory bodies
Developers (for PayPal integrations in websites and apps)

The Revenue Model:

PayPal charges a percentage-based transaction fee to merchants for each sale processed through its platform.

The Delivery Model:

Online payment platform integrated into e-commerce sites and apps, with a web and mobile interface for users.

7. Etsy (Marketplace/Platform Fee)

The Value Proposition:

Etsy offers a marketplace for creative entrepreneurs to sell handmade, vintage, and unique items globally.
Easy-to-use platform for small businesses to reach a large audience.
Buyers get access to one-of-a-kind products with a personal touch.

The Value Network:

Sellers (artists, craftsmen, vintage item collectors)
Buyers
Payment processors
Logistics companies (shipping and delivery)
Community of creators and buyers

The Revenue Model:

Etsy charges a listing fee to sellers and takes a commission (transaction fee) when an item is sold.

The Delivery Model:

Marketplace platform available via website and apps, with integrated payment and shipping solutions.

8. Microsoft (Licensing)

The Value Proposition:

Microsoft offers software and tools, like Windows and Microsoft Office, to businesses and individuals.
Productivity software for personal, educational, and business use.
Frequent updates and support for users, ensuring security and new features.

The Value Network:

Corporate customers and consumers
Software developers and hardware manufacturers (PC and device makers)
Channel partners (resellers, system integrators)
Competitors (Google, Apple, etc.)

The Revenue Model:

Licensing model: Microsoft charges per-user or per-device licensing fees for its software.

The Delivery Model:

Software is delivered as downloads or pre-installed on devices, with subscriptions available for cloud-based versions like Microsoft 365.

9. Amazon Associates (Affiliate Marketing)

The Value Proposition:

Amazon Associates offers a way for individuals and businesses to earn money by promoting Amazon products through affiliate links.
Affiliates earn a commission on every sale generated through their unique referral links.
Access to a vast product catalog and easy-to-use link-building tools.

The Value Network:

Affiliates (bloggers, websites, social media influencers)
Amazon (retailer)
Consumers (those purchasing products)
Merchants (selling products on Amazon)

The Revenue Model:

Commission-based: Amazon pays affiliates a percentage of sales made through their referral links.

The Delivery Model:

Affiliate programs are managed online through Amazon’s dashboard, with tracking and reporting tools available for affiliates.

10. Spotify (Freemium)

The Value Proposition:

Spotify offers music streaming anytime, anywhere on any device.
Free access to a vast library of music with ads.
Premium subscribers get ad-free listening, offline playback, and better sound quality.
Personalized playlists and recommendations based on user preferences.

The Value Network:

Music creators and record labels
Advertisers (for free users)
Payment processors (for premium subscriptions)
Hardware partners (e.g., smart speakers, mobile devices)
Competitors (Apple Music, Tidal, YouTube Music)

The Revenue Model:

Freemium model: free users with ads and premium users with a monthly subscription fee.

The Delivery Model:

Streaming through apps on mobile, desktop, smart speakers, and other connected devices.

How Flexible Should You Be With Your Business Model?

If you’re reading this, you’re likely still figuring out your business model.

So, here’s the big question: After creating your business model, how strictly should you stick to it?

There are strong opinions on both sides of this debate.

Flexible Business Models – Some argue that a business model will “figure itself out” as you grow. If you get too caught up in the details, you might never get to making actual revenue. For example, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams admitted that he didn’t know how to make money from Twitter even three years after its launch. Yet, he didn’t seem too worried. He focused more on user engagement and satisfaction. Despite struggling with its revenue model, Twitter was still bought by Elon Musk for $44 billion in 2022.
Fixed Business Models – On the other hand, some insist that having a rock-solid business model is essential from day one. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, famously sketched out Amazon’s business plan and model during a road trip. He planned out every detail, including the decision to sell books via a marketplace model. This structure was used in Amazon’s early days and even during its IPO. Only after validating that business model did Bezos begin expanding Amazon’s offerings.

So, which approach is right?

The truth is, that the best strategy is to have a business model but stay flexible.

Be prepared to pivot if it’s not working. Some of the world’s most successful startups pivoted – even after getting funding and investment.

How ClickFunnels Helps Startups Like You Stay Flexible

ClickFunnels is an ideal tool for startups that need flexibility.

It allows you to test different business models without needing expensive developers or infrastructure changes.

Here’s how:

Rapid Funnel Creation: Quickly set up different sales funnels to test various revenue models.
A/B Testing: Easily run A/B tests to see what type of offers or pricing models work best.
Customizable Payment Options: You can easily switch between subscription, one-time payments, or pay-per-use models.
Integrated Email Marketing: Seamlessly update your marketing based on changes to your model and funnel.
Analytics Dashboard: Track real-time data to measure how successful each business model experiment is.

With ClickFunnels, startups can adjust, tweak, and refine their approach without major disruptions, making it perfect for testing new business models.

Not sure if it’s for you yet?

Don’t worry, you can take advantage of our introductory offer to try ClickFunnels free for 14 days.

Try ClickFunnels for Free!

Final Thoughts

Building a startup without a business model is like driving blindfolded. You might get somewhere, but it’s not likely where you want to be.

A business model gives you direction, focus, and, most importantly, a way to make money.

We’ve walked you through the TVE business model template, which is simple but powerful.

We also explored examples of how companies like Spotify, Airbnb, and PayPal fit into this template. Each business model was tailored to fit their revenue strategies and delivery methods.

Finally, we made a compelling case for using ClickFunnels to help your startup remain flexible and adaptive.

It offers tools like rapid funnel creation, A/B testing, and a customizable payment system, which are essential when pivoting your business model.

Remember, a business model isn’t set in stone.

The most successful businesses adjust and refine their models until they find what works. And with tools like ClickFunnels, you can easily make those adjustments without losing momentum.

Try ClickFunnels for Free!

Thanks for reading How To Build An Effective Business Model For Startups which appeared first on ClickFunnels.

Essential Tips For Success And Growth

John Parkes — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 08:28:57 +0000

The post Essential Tips For Success And Growth appeared first on ClickFunnels.

Customer service is extremely important regardless of what business stage you are in.

However, if your business is new, there’s very little margin for error. Acquiring your first customers is an uphill battle so every single one of them matters.

Moreover, your brand reputation is so fragile at that point that even a few bad reviews might be enough to tank your company.

That’s why you can’t afford to let anyone down. So how can you keep your customers happy in those early days?

Table of Contents:

Make Customer Service Your Top Priority

As the CEO of Zappos, Tony Hsieh was known for his relentless focus on customer service. He even wrote a book about it called “Delivering Happiness”. Image source: Harvard Business Review

It’s way too common for entrepreneurs to see customer service as an afterthought that isn’t worth pouring resources into.

Often, they aren’t even aware of this mindset because it tends to be implicit rather than explicit.

You may genuinely believe that you care about your customers but your true priorities are shown by how you allocate your resources.

So if customer service only gets scraps, you are not giving it the attention it deserves.

We recommend reading “How I Did It: Zappos’s CEO on Going to Extremes for Customers”.

In this case study, Tony Hsieh explains why they prioritized customer service at Zappos:

“Our philosophy has been that most of the money we might ordinarily have spent on advertising should be invested in customer service, so that our customers will do the marketing for us through word of mouth.”

He details the lengths that they went to in order to provide excellent customer service, including relocating the entire company from San Francisco to Las Vegas, a drastic move that cost half a million dollars.

And in case you are wondering why they couldn’t simply outsource it:

“We were reluctant to outsource the call center, because we’d had bad experiences with outsourcing in the past. In fact, one of the big lessons of Zappos’s first few years was that it never makes sense to outsource your core competency, especially if your aim is to be maniacal about customer service.”

The quote above reveals something important about the company’s attitude towards customer service: their aim was to be “maniacal” about it. We believe that this should be the main takeaway from the case study.

After all, if you have a new business, your resources are probably limited, so you won’t be able to implement most of what Hsieh talks about. But what you can do is make customer service your top priority, just like Zappos did!

Set Clear Expectations Right From the Start

New business owners sometimes make the mistake of overselling their products and services.

They do that in their marketing materials, during sales calls, and when interacting with potential customers face-to-face. Anything to get a sale.

That is shortsighted because it inevitably leads to having a bunch of unhappy customers who are angry at you because they feel that you misled them.

That’s why it’s so important to set clear expectations right from the start:

Make sure that you are accurately representing your product or service. Avoid using clickbait headlines, making bombastic claims, and telling wild tales. Yes, you want your copy to be persuasive, but it also needs to be realistic.
Be honest about the current state of your product. If it’s still in development, be upfront about it. What features are currently available? Not “soon”, but right now?
Put the interests of potential customers first. If you talk to someone who is interested in your product or service and realize that it’s not the right fit for them, be honest about it and recommend a better solution if you are aware of one, even if that means sending them to a competitor.

Doing these three things can help you protect your brand’s reputation, reduce churn and build goodwill!

Personally Welcome New Customers

Personally send every new customer an email where you introduce yourself, thank them for their purchase, and encourage them to reach out to you if they need any help.

Just make sure to differentiate this email from the automated onboarding emails. You can do that with a casual subject line, something like “Hey there – just wanted to say hi!”.

Create a Great Onboarding Experience

Here are three things that you can do to improve your onboarding experience:

Make the setup process as simple as possible and only include the steps that are absolutely necessary. Everything else can wait.
Keep the customer updated at each step. This is especially important for service and ecommerce businesses. If someone places an order and doesn’t hear back from you, they might start getting antsy and request a refund!
Guide the customer towards their first win. You should aim to get them their first result as quickly as possible.

We also recommend reading “The Elements of User Onboarding” by Samuel Hulick.

This book focuses on customer onboarding in the SaaS context, but some of the general principles can be applied to other types of businesses as well.

An example of how to simplify onboarding to get the new user their first win as quickly as possible. Image source: “The Elements of User Onboarding”

Set Everything Up Yourself if You Have to

Y-Combinator is one of the best-known startup accelerators in the world.

One of the techniques that they are teaching their founders is the so-called “Collinson Installation”.

It’s named after the Collinson brothers who would ask people at Y-Combinator events if they’d be interested in trying Stripe. Whenever someone said yes, the brothers would respond with “Right then, give me your laptop” and set them up on the spot.

Keep in mind that people who are interested in your product or service don’t always have the mental bandwidth to set everything up themselves. They might start procrastinating on it or simply forget about it.

That’s why it often makes more sense to just do it for them. Of course, you won’t be able to keep this up forever, but this approach can work well in the early stages!

Respond to Customer Support Queries in a Timely Manner

People are used to dealing with large companies that offer customer support 24/7/365.

However, new businesses typically don’t have the resources to provide customer support around the clock. So how can you meet the customers’ expectations?

That is going to depend on how critical your product or service is.

If your customers are relying on you to help them with something that is absolutely essential, you will need to set notifications on your phone and be on call until you can afford to start hiring customer support agents. There’s just no way around it.

However, if your product or service isn’t essential, then you should be able to maintain a more sane work schedule.

Make it clear on your website what your office hours are and provide a timeframe within which the customers can expect to get a response (e.g. one business day).

Generally speaking, the reason people start freaking out when they don’t get an immediate response is not the lack of response itself, but the sense of uncertainty and feeling ignored.

For example, if someone submits a customer support ticket on a Friday evening and they don’t hear back from you for the entire weekend, they might start spamming you with increasingly angry messages.

However, if that same person knows that you finish work at 5 PM on Friday and start again at 9 AM on Monday, they probably won’t freak out because they will expect to get a response on Monday.

Solicit and Implement Customer Feedback

If your business is still in its early stages, you probably have some misconceptions about what matters the most to your customers.

That’s why it’s so important to proactively solicit customer feedback. You can do that in several ways:

Ask new customers what they are currently struggling with in your welcome email.
When you resolve a customer support request, assuming that the interaction was positive, ask that customer what they like the most about your product or service.
Conduct interviews with your most loyal customers in order to understand why they continue doing business with you.
Conduct interviews with customers who cancel in order to understand why they decided to leave.
Monitor brand mentions across the web and pay attention to customer reviews. What are people saying about your product or service?

You want to store all this data in some sort of a centralized database so that you can analyze it later. Notion can work well for this. Over time, patterns will begin to emerge!

Send Hand-Written Thank You Notes to Your Customers

Wufoo famously sends their customers hand-written thank you notes by mail.

At first, they would send a thank you note to each new user, which they did for as long as they could until eventually it became unsustainable.

Now, nearly two decades later, they still take time each week to write and send thank you notes to a handful of customers. It has become a company tradition!

Hand-written thank you note from one of the developers at Wufoo. Image source: ZURB

This proved to be an effective way to improve customer retention. Apparently, customers who received hand-written thank you notes were much less likely to churn than the ones who didn’t.

Considering that in the early stages, every single customer matters, taking a page from Wufoo’s playbook and experimenting with hand-written thank you notes might be a good idea!

Grow Your New Business FAST With ClickFunnels!

ClickFunnels is an all-in-one marketing platform that has everything you need to launch, manage, and grow an online business, including:

A website builder that you can use to create a website that is optimized for lead generation.
An e-commerce functionality that you can use to launch an online store.
A sales funnel builder that you can use to build sales funnels for your business.
An email marketing functionality that you can use to grow your email list.
A CRM functionality that you can use to keep track of everything that is happening in your sales pipeline.
An online course functionality that you can use to create and sell online courses.
A membership site functionality that you can use to create an exclusive online community.
An A/B testing functionality that you can use to optimize your sales funnels for conversions.
A business analytics functionality that you can use to collect data, analyze it and make future predictions based on it.

Try ClickFunnels Risk-Free!

Let’s be real:

We are biased in favor of our software.

So we understand if you take what we say about it with a grain of salt.

Fortunately, we have a free 14-day trial, so you don’t have to take our word for it.

You can go and see ClickFunnels for yourself without any risk!

So what are you waiting for? 🧐

Start Your Free Trial Today!

P.S. Here’s What Our Customers Say About ClickFunnels…

Thanks for reading Essential Tips For Success And Growth which appeared first on ClickFunnels.

10 Affordable Tools To Help Your Business

Mike Blankenship — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 05:34:42 +0000

The post 10 Affordable Tools To Help Your Business appeared first on ClickFunnels.

Remember when you had to break the bank just to get your business off the ground?

Those days are long gone.

You don’t need a fortune to access powerful business tools. In fact, some of the most game-changing solutions out there won’t cost you an arm and a leg.

But here’s the kicker – with so many options floating around, how do you separate the wheat from the chaff?

In this guide, we’ll walk you through our top picks for affordable business tools that pack a serious punch. And the best part? You won’t have to sell a kidney to afford them.

1. ClickFunnels — Only $81/Month

There’s no shortage of cheap digital tools in the online world — you have this for email, that for hosting, and another for your ecom storefront.

But there is a shortage of tools that bring all those things into one place.

That’s where ClickFunnels comes in.

It gives you everything you need to build, manage, and grow your online business — including sales funnels, websites, email marketing, and lots more.

ClickFunnels isn’t just another tool — it’s the Swiss Army knife of online business.

For just $81 a month (that’s less than your coffee habit, admit it), you get a full suite of tools that can transform your digital presence.

So, what’s in the box?

Sales Funnels: Say goodbye to scattered web pages. ClickFunnels guides your customers through a smooth, conversion-optimized journey. It’s like having a digital salesperson working 24/7.

Website Builder: No coding? No problem. Our drag-and-drop editor makes creating stunning websites easier than assembling IKEA furniture (and way more fun).

Email Marketing: Keep your customers coming back for more with powerful email automation.

Online Courses and Membership Sites: Got knowledge to share? Turn it into cold, hard cash with easy-to-create courses and membership areas.

Analytics: Because guessing is for weather forecasts, not business decisions. Get clear insights into what’s working and what’s not.

A/B Testing: Because sometimes you need to test the waters before diving in. Split test everything from headlines to entire pages.

Smart Checkout: Boost your average order value faster.

CRM: Keep tabs on your contacts, appointments, and deals.

Workflows: Automate your marketing.

Global Products: Create once, sell anywhere. It’s like copy-pasting but for your entire product catalog.

Community Features: Build a thriving tribe around your brand.

API & Webhooks: For the tech-savvy folks, integrate ClickFunnels with your existing stack.

Store Funnels: Selling physical products? Ship and fulfill orders without breaking a sweat.

Blog: Position yourself as an industry expert.

And much more…

But here’s the kicker — ClickFunnels isn’t just about features. It’s about results.

Businesses of all sizes have used ClickFunnels to skyrocket their online presence and profits.

A well-oiled funnel is the difference between being a needle in the haystack and being the magnet that pulls customers in. And at $81 a month, ClickFunnels isn’t just affordable — it’s a steal.

Try ClickFunnels Free Today!

2. Voomly — Only $19/Month

Video content is king. But creating videos is only half the battle — hosting, optimizing, and leveraging them for business growth is where Voomly shines.

Voomly is a comprehensive video marketing solution that can significantly boost your online presence and conversion rates.

Here’s what Voomly brings to the table:

Cost-Effective Video Hosting: Voomly offers high-quality video streaming at a fraction of the cost of other platforms. They use the same content delivery network as major players like Amazon Prime and Hulu, ensuring smooth playback without buffering issues.

Interactive Video Features: Transform passive viewers into active participants with features like in-video email capture, interactive surveys, and call-to-action buttons. This allows you to build your email list and guide viewers through a customized journey based on their responses.

Advanced Analytics: Gain deep insights into your video performance with detailed analytics. Track views, engagement rates, and viewer behavior to optimize your content strategy.

Custom Branding: Make your videos stand out with a branded player. Customize colors, add your logo, and create a cohesive brand experience for your audience.

Video Funnels: Create tailored video experiences that guide viewers towards specific actions, whether it’s making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or booking a consultation.

Fast Load Times: Voomly boasts some of the fastest load times in the industry, which is crucial for keeping viewers engaged and improving your site’s overall performance.

Secure Hosting: Keep your content safe with SSL/TLS encryption and other advanced security features.

Voomly also offers a suite of video creation tools as part of their package, including Doodly for whiteboard animations, Toonly for cartoon explainer videos, and Talkia for text-to-speech voiceovers.

I’ll share more about these tools below!

Try Voomly Today For Free!

3. Geru — Only $37/Month

Launching a successful sales funnel can be a costly game of trial and error.

Geru changes this by allowing you to simulate and optimize your funnels before you invest a single dollar in building them.

Here’s how.

Funnel Mapping: Use Geru’s drag-and-drop interface to visually map out your sales funnels, from landing pages to upsells and backend offers.

Profitability Simulation: Input your projected conversion rates, product prices, traffic costs, and other variables to simulate the potential profitability of your funnel.

Pre-made Funnel Library: Access over 30 proven funnel blueprints across various industries and business models, saving you time and providing inspiration.

Scenario Testing: Run “what-if” scenarios to see how changes in pricing, traffic costs, or conversion rates might impact your bottom line.

Detailed Reporting: Get comprehensive reports on key metrics like Revenue, Profit, Average Order Value (AOV), Cost Per Acquisition (CPA), and Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).

Agency Tools: Create visual funnel maps and potential ROI projections to impress clients and win more business.

Geru is particularly valuable for:

Entrepreneurs launching new products or services
Digital marketers optimizing existing funnels
Agencies pitching funnel strategies to clients
E-commerce businesses planning promotional campaigns

By allowing you to test and refine your funnel strategy before implementation, Geru can save you significant time and money. It helps you identify potential issues, optimize your offer structure, and ensure your funnel is set up for profitability from day one.

Try Geru For Free Today!

4. Doodly — Only $49/Month

Engaging visuals can make all the difference.

Doodly offers a simple yet powerful solution for creating professional-looking whiteboard animation videos, even if you have no design or technical skills.

Here’s how!

Easy-to-Use Interface: Drag-and-drop functionality allows you to create animations quickly and easily.

Multiple Board Types: Create videos on whiteboard, blackboard, glassboard, and even green screen backgrounds.

Custom Image Import: Use Doodly’s Smart Draw technology to animate your own imported images.

Vast Asset Library: Access thousands of custom-drawn characters, props, and scenes covering various topics and niches.

Voice-over Integration: Record or import voice-overs directly within the software and easily sync them to your animations.

Royalty-Free Music: Choose from a selection of background tracks to enhance your videos.

Multi-Platform Compatibility: Install and use Doodly on both Mac and PC.

Regular Updates: Benefit from frequent software updates with new features and improvements.

Doodly is particularly useful for:

Marketers creating engaging video content for social media or ads
Educators developing visual aids for lessons or online courses
Businesses explaining complex concepts or products to customers
YouTubers looking to enhance their video content
Non-profit organizations creating compelling campaign videos

By allowing you to create professional-looking animated videos without the need for extensive design skills or expensive outsourcing, Doodly can significantly boost your content creation capabilities. These engaging animations can help increase viewer retention, improve information recall, and ultimately drive better results for your marketing or educational efforts.

Try Doodly Free Today!

5. Toonly — Only $49/Month

Capturing and maintaining audience attention is crucial. Toonly offers a user-friendly solution for creating engaging animated explainer videos, even for those with no design or technical expertise.

Here’s how!

Intuitive Drag-and-Drop Interface: Create professional-looking animated videos with simple point-and-click actions.

Extensive Asset Library: Access a vast collection of custom-drawn characters, props, and backgrounds covering various topics and niches.

Premade Scenes: Get started quickly with ready-to-use scenes combining backgrounds, characters, and props.

Voice-over Integration: Record or import voice-overs directly within the software and easily sync them to your animations.

Royalty-Free Music: Choose from a selection of background tracks to enhance your videos.

Multi-Platform Compatibility: Install and use Toonly on both Mac and PC.

Regular Updates: Benefit from ongoing software updates with new features and improvements based on user feedback.

Toonly is particularly useful for:

Small business owners and service providers looking to introduce their offerings
E-commerce store owners aiming to showcase products in an engaging way
Digital marketers create attention-grabbing ads and social media content
B2B companies explaining complex products or services
Trainers and presenters seeking to enhance their educational materials
Non-profit organizations crafting compelling stories for fundraising

Animated explainer videos created with Toonly can be used effectively across various platforms:

Website and landing pages to reduce bounce rates and increase engagement
Social media channels to boost shares and attract new followers
Sales videos to present products or services in an appealing way
Email marketing campaigns to improve open and click-through rates
Crowdfunding campaigns to stand out and increase funding success

Try Toonly Free Today!

6. Talkia — Only $49/Month

High-quality voiceovers can significantly enhance the impact of your videos.

Talkia offers an affordable and user-friendly solution for creating professional-sounding voiceovers without the need for voice actors or recording equipment.

Key Features of Talkia:

Advanced Text-to-Speech Technology: Utilizes WaveNet technology, also used by Google and Amazon, to create lifelike voices.

Diverse Voice Library: Offers a wide range of male and female voices, including different accents and even children’s voices.

Multiple Language Support: Create voiceovers in various languages, enabling international marketing efforts.

Customization Options: Adjust speaking rate, pitch, pauses, and emphasis to fine-tune your voiceovers.

Background Music Integration: Add background music from a library of tracks to enhance your voiceovers.

Easy-to-Use Interface: Simple text input and voice selection process for quick voiceover creation.

Multi-Platform Compatibility: Works on both Mac and PC and exports MP3 files compatible with all major video editing software.

Talkia is particularly useful for:

Digital marketers creating Video Sales Letters (VSLs) and promotional content
Content creators producing educational and training videos
Authors looking to create audiobooks cost-effectively
Businesses developing multilingual marketing materials
Website owners adding narrated videos to their sites
Social media marketers creating engaging video content

By enabling the creation of professional-sounding voiceovers without the need for expensive voice actors or recording equipment, Talkia can significantly enhance your content creation capabilities. These voiceovers can help increase viewer engagement, improve information retention, and ultimately drive better results for your marketing or educational efforts.

Try Talkia Today Free!

7. People Builder — Only $49/Month

Have you ever struggled to find the perfect characters for your whiteboard animations?

People Builder might just be the solution you’ve been looking for. This innovative software is designed to work seamlessly with Doodly, allowing you to create custom characters that perfectly match your vision.

What sets People Builder apart?

Unparalleled Customization: With a staggering 52 million unique character combinations, you’re only limited by your imagination. Adjust age, gender, skin tone, body size, facial expressions, and outfits to create characters that truly resonate with your audience.

User-Friendly Interface: Even if you’re not tech-savvy, you’ll find People Builder intuitive and easy to use. The four-step character creation process is straightforward and fun.

Doodly-Ready Characters: Each character comes complete with pre-made draw paths, ensuring they integrate perfectly into your Doodly videos without any extra work on your part.

Versatile Output: Export your creations as JPEG, PNG, WebP, or DAS files, making them compatible not just with Doodly, but with a wide range of video software.

This tool is a game-changer for anyone creating whiteboard animations, but it’s especially valuable for:

Marketers looking to create relatable characters for their target audience
Educators needing diverse representations in their instructional videos
Course creators wanting to add a personal touch to their content
Storytellers aiming to bring their narratives to life visually

The ability to create characters that reflect your specific audience can significantly boost engagement and relatability in your videos. Whether you’re explaining a complex concept, selling a product, or telling a story, having the right characters can make all the difference.

A unique feature worth highlighting is the 130 different character poses available. This allows you to depict a wide range of actions and emotions, from a businessperson working at a desk to someone jumping for joy.

Try People Builder Today Free!

8. Pyks — Only $49/Month

First impressions are everything. That’s where Pyks comes in — a game-changing graphic design tool that puts professional-quality visuals at your fingertips.

What sets Pyks apart?

Simplicity meets sophistication: Forget complex design software. Pyks offers an intuitive interface that anyone can master, without sacrificing quality.

Template treasure trove: With a vast library of professionally designed templates spanning 23 genres, you’ll find the perfect starting point for any project.

Customization king: From eBook covers to product labels, Pyks lets you tailor designs to your brand with ease.

Image arsenal: Access over 1.5 million royalty-free images, clip art, and stock photos to elevate your designs.

Who’s it for?

Pyks is a versatile tool that caters to:

Authors looking to create eye-catching book covers
Course creators needing professional-looking course materials
Digital marketers crafting lead magnets and promotional graphics
Software developers wanting to visualize their products
Supplement sellers aiming to design attractive product packaging

Key features:

40 different types of eCovers
User-friendly photo editing tools
Special text effects for standout designs
Background customization options
Regular software updates

By putting professional-grade design tools in your hands, Pyks helps you:

Save time and money on freelance designers
Maintain consistent branding across all your visuals
Quickly iterate and test different designs
Increase perceived value of your products

Whether you’re an established brand or just starting out, Pyks empowers you to create visuals that capture attention, convey quality, and ultimately drive more sales.

Try Pyks Free Today!

9. Magnetic Marketing — Free

Magnetic Marketing is a comprehensive marketing education program that combines the timeless wisdom of Dan Kennedy with the modern digital marketing expertise of Russell Brunson.

It’s not software, but rather a treasure trove of marketing knowledge delivered through multiple channels.

Key Components:

NO B.S. Magnetic Marketing Newsletter: A monthly physical newsletter packed with marketing and business strategies.
Behind The Scenes Walkthroughs: A complementary newsletter providing real-world examples of marketing campaigns and their results.
Extensive Bonus Materials: Including courses, live event recordings, and books covering various aspects of marketing and business growth.

Who is it for?

Entrepreneurs and business owners looking to improve their marketing skills
Marketers seeking to stay updated with both timeless principles and current trends
Anyone interested in learning from two of the most respected names in direct response marketing

Value Proposition:

Learn from Marketing Legends: Get direct access to the knowledge of Dan Kennedy and Russell Brunson.
Practical, Actionable Advice: Receive strategies you can implement immediately in your business.
Continuous Learning: Regular newsletters ensure you’re always up-to-date with the latest marketing insights.
Comprehensive Resources: From books to video courses, cover all aspects of marketing and business growth.

By subscribing to Magnetic Marketing, you’re investing in an ongoing marketing education that can transform your business and marketing approach.

Try Magnetic Marketing Today Free!

10. Secrets of Success — Free

Secrets of Success is a mastermind community that brings together high-performers and aspiring achievers who are committed to personal growth and success across all areas of life.

Key Components:

Monthly Book Club: Curated by Russell Brunson, featuring in-depth discussions on rare and impactful books.
Exclusive Content Library: Access to rare, unpublished works from thought leaders of the ‘New Thought Movement’.
The Secrets of Success Masterclass: A foundational course to help members establish their path to success.
Nightingale Conant’s Greatest Hits: Access to a vast library of self-development content, including 7,000 never-before-released tracks from Earl Nightingale.
Affiliate Program: Opportunity for members to earn commissions by referring others to the community.

Who is it for?

Entrepreneurs and business leaders seeking continuous personal growth
Individuals passionate about self-improvement and success principles
Those interested in rare, historical personal development content
Anyone looking to be part of a community of like-minded, ambitious individuals

Value Proposition:

Access to Rare Knowledge: Gain insights from hard-to-find and never-before-published works of renowned thought leaders.
Community of High Achievers: Connect with and learn from other success-oriented individuals.
Curated Learning Experience: Benefit from Russell Brunson’s expertise in selecting and interpreting impactful content.
Holistic Approach to Success: Focus on improving all aspects of life, not just business or finances.

By joining Secrets of Success, you’re investing in your personal growth and joining an exclusive community of like-minded individuals committed to achieving extraordinary success.

Try Secrets of Success Today Free!

Final Thoughts

Having access to the right tools can make all the difference in your business’s success.

From ClickFunnels’ comprehensive marketing platform to Voomly’s video marketing solutions, and from Doodly’s whiteboard animations to Talkia’s text-to-speech capabilities, each of these low-cost tools offers unique features that can help elevate your marketing efforts and streamline your operations.

However, tools are only part of the equation.

As the Secrets of Success community reminds us, personal development and a growth mindset are equally crucial for long-term success.

By combining powerful, affordable business tools with continuous learning and self-improvement, you’ll be well-equipped to face the challenges of entrepreneurship and achieve your business goals.

Thanks for reading 10 Affordable Tools To Help Your Business which appeared first on ClickFunnels.

What Is The Your First Funnel Challenge?

Mike Blankenship — Thu, 12 Sep 2024 17:15:00 +0000

The post What Is The Your First Funnel Challenge? appeared first on ClickFunnels.

Have a business idea that you’re dying to get out into the world…

… but don’t know where to start?

Russell Brunson’s Your First Funnel Challenge is a 5-day online boot camp where you’ll launch your first (or next) business idea side-by-side with real-world entrepreneurs… without taking on a mountain of debt or getting stuck in “analysis paralysis”.

Here’s everything you need to know.

The Gameplan

Here’s the 5-day game plan…

Day 1 – Funnel Hacking

Each day is jam-packed with lessons to learn and actions to take.

Day 1 is no exception.

We’re going to unveil the most successful types of sales funnels in the online world today (this is changing all the time… so you’ll learn something new even if you’re uber familiar with sales funnels).

We’ll then help you determine which of these killer funnels is best for your specific business idea (whether it’s in finance, eComm, coaching, info products, biz opp, or some other niche) — and you’ll “ethically steal” the perfect funnel for your own purposes.

Additionally, you’re going to work with two superheroes in the funnel building world on Day 1.

Jamie Cross went from selling her soap at local farmer’s markets to building an online eCommerce empire, entirely bootstrapped — she even joined our Two Comma Club.

Stacey & Paul Martino are saving marriages with coaching funnels. And you’re going to learn exactly how they maintain a steady stream of high-paying clients (this is critical info for coaches).

Join The ‘Your First Funnel’ Challenge!

Day 2 – Your First Funnel

On Day 2, we’re going to show you the first funnel that every business (no matter your industry) should start with. And then we’re going to plug stuff into your funnels so it’s ready to go live ASAP.

We’re making it super simple… so you can take action and get real results.

We’ll also talk about how you can craft irresistible headlines and the five core follow-up emails that every funnel requires on the back end (you can write all of them in a single sitting).

Plus, you’re going to work with a few more amazing people on Day 2.

Garret J. White is a legend in the ClickFunnels community. He’s our most requested speaker by far because he spits fire whenever he takes the stage. On Day 2, Garret will teach you how he uses funnels to transform men’s lives all around the world.

Annie Grace has built an online empire helping people overcome their dependence on alcohol. On Day 2, she’s going to show the “hourglass funnel” she uses to attract her dream customers… so she doesn’t have to chase them.

Join The ‘Your First Funnel’ Challenge!

Day 3 – Hook, Story, Offer

Day 3 is a doozy.

We’re going to show you the secret behind how ClickFunnels went from a simple idea inside of Russell’s head… to the multi-million $$$ empire it is today.

It’s all about storytelling.

We’ll teach you how to find your unique hook, tell a compelling story that resonates with your core audience, and position your offer so that you can make as many sales as possible.

You’ll get to work with…

Stephen J. Larsen started as a freelance funnel builder learning the ropes. Now he’s got a massive funnel-building empire. He’s going to teach you how to transform your funnel-building skills(that you learned the previous days) into a massive profit-generating opportunity.

Kristine Mirelle (a.k.a. the “music hustler”) is a professional musician, 2-Comma Club Winner, and founder of Laugh My Ads Off. She teaches businesses how to create hilarious ads that grab attention and get conversions. And that’s what she’s going to show YOU how to do.

Join The ‘Your First Funnel’ Challenge!

Day 4 – Irresistible Ads

What’s a killer funnel without high-quality traffic?

On Day 4, we’re giving your our most closely held secrets about how to drive hordes of dream customers to your funnel.

You’ll unearth a “honey hole” of golden customers who are LOOKING for your offer, learn how to bring in customers like clockwork, and create high-converting, low-cost ads.

Plus, you’re going to work alongside…

Eileen Wilder had no idea what a funnel was just two years ago… and now she’s a multiple 2-Comma Club Winner! She’s going to teach you how ANYONE can add a virtual high ticket offer to their funnel for a MASSIVE boost in sales!

Join The ‘Your First Funnel’ Challenge!

Day 5 – DO it NOW!

Now we’re crossing the finish line.

On Day 5, we’ll help you eliminate your limiting beliefs, teach you how to stack your offer to increase your average order value, and tell you a story that will inspire you to keep taking action.

You’re going to hear from…

Daymond John, shark tank legend, is going to go LIVE and share his own story on how he “bootstrapped” his way to success!

Join The ‘Your First Funnel’ Challenge!

Here’s What to Expect From Your First Funnel Challenge

So… what is this challenge going to require of you? What results can you expect to get from it?

Here’s what you can expect.

Your Mind is a Sponge…

You’re going to be taking in a LOT of information over these 5 days. You’ll be learning from some of the best minds in the entrepreneurial world… and it’s important to attend every session ready to take notes!

Take Massive Action…

You’ll need to put in the work to get results from this challenge. But don’t worry, we’ll be there with you every step of the way to help you take massive action and get results!

Get Everything You Need…

You’re going to get everything you need to build and bootstrap your business idea from scratch. The know-how, the mindset, the tools, and tactics — all of it, from real-world entrepreneurs who are living the life you want to live!

Funnel Hackers UNITE…

By signing up for this challenge, you’re going to be joining a community of entrepreneurs who are committed to taking their businesses to the next level.

Change Your Life…

It might sound cliche… but this challenge has the potential to change the trajectory of your life. More freedom. More impact. More fun making money the way you want to make money. We’ve seen it happen time and time again, and we know it can happen for you, too!

Who is Your First Funnel Challenge for?

The Your First Funnel Challenge is for anyone who wants to build a business online.

If you’re an aspiring entrepreneur with an idea for a business, but you don’t know how to get started… this challenge is for you.

If you’re struggling to get traction with your online business, and you’re looking for a way to get things moving in the right direction… this challenge is for you.

If you’re fed up with your 9-to-5 job and you’re ready to take control of your life and your income… this challenge is for you.

The Your First Funnel Challenge is for anyone who is ready to take their business (or sapling idea) to the next level.

If that’s you, then sign up!

Who is Your First Funnel Challenge NOT for?

If you’re the type of person who likes to sit on the sidelines and watch others take action… this challenge is NOT for you.

If you’re not willing to put in the work to see results… this challenge is NOT for you.

The Your First Funnel Challenge is NOT for people who are not ready to change their lives.

If you’re happy with where you’re at in life, and you don’t want to rock the boat… this challenge is NOT for you.

But if you’re ready for a change, and you’re ready to take massive action to see results… then sign up for the challenge now!

How Long is Your First Funnel Challenge?

5 days. 1 hour each day.

Why?

Because we didn’t leave any fat on the bone (most long challenges could easily be cut down to less if they focused on action and execution).

It’s going to be an exciting and thrilling five days.

Make sure you set aside the necessary time and energy to take action!

But Wait! There’s More…

You know us…

At ClickFunnels, we love to blow your socks off with mind-boggling bonuses. We want to make the Your First Funnel Challenge an absolute no-brainer, value bomb.

So…

Here’s the other cool stuff you’re going to get!

Bonus #1: The World’s Greatest Funnel Builders

What if you got to sit at the feet of some of the world’s greatest funnel builders as they told you their deepest secrets of success?

That alone would be worth tens of thousands of dollars!

Dean Graziosi

Dean Graziosi is a multiple New York Times bestselling author, entrepreneur, trainer, and infomercial legend! For over 25 years, Dean has dedicated his life to helping entrepreneurs create the life and freedom they crave.

Grant Cardone

Grant Cardone is a best-selling author of The 10X Rule and If You’re Not First, You’re Last, as well as a marketing trainer, entrepreneur, and real estate mogul.

Grant will show you how to apply the 10X Rule to every part of your life so you can live a life of freedom, happiness, and wealth!

Myron Golden

Myron Golden, Ph.D. is one of the most in-demand speakers and trainers in sales, marketing, and business development in the world— helping men and women get what they’re actually worth!

Todd Brown

One of the top funnel builders and marketing legends in the world, Todd Brown has worked and consulted with titans of direct response marketing, including businesses such as Agora.

He’ll be teaching how to develop YOUR “big idea” so you, your brand, and your offer can stand out even in a saturated market!

Russell Brunson

Hey, that’s our founder! Now that you have a funnel live, Russell will show you the “One Funnel Away” process that can help take your funnel to the next level and potentially break through the 1 MM in sales and achieve a 2-Comma Club Award at Funnel Hacking LIVE!

Bonus #2: No Product? No Problem

Wish you could build a baller business… but don’t have a great product idea?

This bonus is going to solve that for you.

Attend this exclusive one-day event where you’ll learn the secrets behind how serial entrepreneurs come up with an endless stream of great business ideas. Specifically, you’ll learn from…

Keala Kanae & Anthony Morrison

Keala Kanae and Anthony Morrison are two of our top ClickFunnels super affiliates who have won multiple 2-Comma Club Awards and continue to generate thousands ClickFunnels trials per day.

They’ll show you how they use funnels to promote other people’s products for big, fat commissions, and how you can ethically steal their secrets for your own funnel and start producing sales practically overnight!

Bonus #3: Your Winning Funnel

Every industry is different. Every niche is different. Every offer is different.

So how would you like to get THE BEST funnel that works for your specific business idea?

That’s what we’re going to give you — all you have to do is plug in your copy and offer, then flip the switch.

We invited the TOP EXPERTS of their field to show us the exact funnel that CRUSHES it for them.

And the crazy part is, they’re going to GIVE YOU their highest performing funnels.

Here’s the line-up of funnel experts coming to teach…

Jeff Walker

Jeff Walker is the KING of the product launch funnel. He’ll show you the “dos and don’ts” of this type of funnel, and how to win big every time you launch a new product.

Trey Lewellyn

Trey Lewellyn is a Jedi Master when it comes to high-converting eComm funnels… and he rarely allows anyone to see what goes on behind closed doors. He’ll show us how he uses advertorials to test and find winning offers… and when it’s time to scale scale scale!

Pedro Adao

Pedro Adao is an 8-figure business owner and the #1 go-to industry expert when it comes to “challenge funnels.” He’ll show you how to “niche down” and create a challenge funnel that attracts YOUR TARGET BUYERS to your offer!

Dan Henry

Dan Henry is a multiple 2-Comma Club Award winner and 8-figure business owner that has helped THOUSANDS of everyday entrepreneurs charge more!!! He’ll be showing you how to easily create high-converting webinar funnels.

Gabe Schillinger

Gabe Schillinger is a 2-Comma Club Award winner and music producer that’s worked with names like Snoop Dogg and Kendrick Lamar. He’ll show you how to expertly craft contest funnels to grow your business, no matter the type of business you’re in!

Stephen J. Larsen

Stephen Larsen will join us once again, but this time, he’ll show you how to build an affiliate/networking marketing funnel that can help scale your business to the moon! (THIS type of funnel is level 10 critical to learn if you want to go from 0 to FAT STACKS OF GREEN in as little time as possible!!)

Perry Belcher

Perry Belcher is an 8-figure business owner, investor, coach, trainer, consultant, and marketing LEGEND! He’ll show you how to use “trip-wire funnels” to gain an AVALANCHE of ready-to-buy customers!

How Much Does the Your First Funnel Challenge Cost?

The Your First Funnel Challenge is only $47. We don’t want anything to stand in your way of having a successful funnel business, so we’re giving you access to everything you need to get started.

What’s the catch?

Well, you are going to have to put in the work to watch the lessons and do the homework if you want to see results — there’s no way around it.

Also, there’s an add-on option where you can buy a VIP seat for $29. This gives you recordings, a coach to help you implement, answer your questions, and NOT procrastinate. It’s a fantastic deal if you want the upgrade… (usually coaching like this costs hundreds)… we probably should have charged more. But, hey, we’re here to see you succeed! And we know that this will give you your best shot.

Awesome results require awesome action.

But we’ll be there with you every step of the way, cheering you on and supporting you as you build the business (and life) of your dreams.

So what are you waiting for?

Join The ‘Your First Funnel’ Challenge!

Thanks for reading What Is The Your First Funnel Challenge? which appeared first on ClickFunnels.

Essential Steps For Starting A Business

John Parkes — Fri, 23 Aug 2024 07:20:12 +0000

The post Essential Steps For Starting A Business appeared first on ClickFunnels.

Launching your own business is one of the most exciting adventures you can have in life.

It’s not just about making money; it’s about creating a better life for yourself and your loved ones.

But the journey is not easy.

Studies suggest that 87.7% of entrepreneurs struggle with mental health issues due to the stress and pressure of running a business.

So what if there was a smoother path to success?

ClickFunnels co-founder Russell Brunson discovered exactly this after years of exhaustion as an entrepreneur. In his book DotCom Secrets, he talks about finally finding success and fulfillment by asking four key questions before launching any new product or service.

These questions form what he calls the ‘Secret Formula’.

Below, we’ll explore these questions and provide actionable tips to help you launch a successful business you’ll also love working on.

Get ready to unlock the secrets to building a business that transforms your life!

What is the ‘Secret Formula’ to Launching a Business?

After Russell created the Secret Formula, he began using these four questions with his private coaching clients.

These were high-level clients who invested $25,000 a day to work with Russell.

Luckily for you, we’re diving into these questions today and it won’t cost you a cent!

The four questions that make up the Secret Formula are:

Who is your dream customer?
Where are they congregating?
What bait will you use to attract them?
What’s the result you want to give them?

That’s it.

That’s the secret formula.

The answers to these questions will literally determine the success or failure of your business launch.

In the sections below, we’ll explore each question in detail, offering practical and actionable tips to help you answer them effectively and keep your business on the path to success.

Step #1: Who is Your Dream Customer?

Most people who start a business begin with an idea for a product or service.

Let me guess — that’s exactly how you started, right?

But here’s the thing: it’s the wrong way to begin.

Instead, you need to start by thinking about your dream customers and considering what they want.

Take a quick look at a few examples of businesses that initially launched a product or service and completely failed – until they shifted their focus to understanding their dream customers and how best to serve them.

Post-it Notes: From Failed Adhesive to Office Essential

Post-it Notes began as a complete failure.

It was originally developed as a weak adhesive that no one seemed to need. The product only found success when 3M realized that their dream customers were office workers who needed a simple way to organize and communicate.

By repositioning the product as a tool for note-taking and reminders, Post-it Notes became indispensable in offices worldwide, leading to annual sales exceeding $1 billion.

Slack: From Failed Video Game to Workplace Communication Powerhouse

Slack started as a failed video game development project called Glitch.

The game found a small group of raving fans. But the majority of players didn’t like the game and the creator, Stewart Butterfield, and his team, struggled to grow revenue.

But while working on the game, Butterfield created an in-house communication tool that helped streamline their workflow. His team realized that their true dream customers were not gamers, but businesses that needed better internal communication tools.

After pivoting to focus on workplace messaging, Slack became a massive success, growing to over 12 million daily active users by 2020 and generating $902 million in revenue that same year.

Starbucks: From Coffee Bean Retailer to Global Coffeehouse Brand

Starbucks originally failed to gain traction as a coffee bean retailer, with customers uninterested in brewing high-quality coffee at home.

The company pivoted when it realized that its dream customers were actually looking for a social experience around coffee.

By transforming into a coffeehouse that offered a “third place” between home and work, Starbucks grew to over 30,000 stores worldwide and reported $32 billion in revenue in 2022.

The ‘Magic’ of Launching Your Product to an Audience You Know Will Buy

Quick note.

I’m not saying that you should scrap your business idea.

What I’m saying is that defining your dream customer, figuring out the problems they want to solve, and matching your product to the solution will help you reach success faster.

When you get this right, magic literally happens right out the gate.

Here’s a couple exams of businesses who built their product or service idea around their dream customers first, and then experienced miracles when launching their business.

Airbnb: Helping Homeowners Make Extra Cash and Revolutionizing the Rentals Industry

Airbnb began with a clear focus on their dream customers – homeowners looking to earn extra income.

The co-founder, Brian Chesky, understood the audience’s problems because he had rented out an air mattress in his shared flat to make some money. His guests loved the experience, and the business grew organically from there.

AirBnb struggled to get investors interested at first. They thought the idea posed safety issues — at first, the idea was to rent out a room while owners were still there.

But Airbnb quickly gained traction among its target audience.

This customer-first approach helped Airbnb grow rapidly, reaching over 6 million listings in more than 100,000 cities by 2020, with the company valued at over $100 billion by the time it went public.

Peloton: Catering to Fitness Enthusiasts With a Premium Home Workout Experience

Peloton identified their dream customers as fitness enthusiasts who craved the energy and community of live workouts but wanted the convenience of exercising at home.

By developing high-quality exercise equipment paired with live-streamed and on-demand classes, Peloton created a unique, tailored experience that resonated deeply with the target audience.

This focused approach led to rapid success, with Peloton reaching over 1.4 million subscribers and generating $1.8 billion in revenue by 2020, just eight years after launching.

Dropbox: Simplifying File Storage for the Everyday User

Dropbox was founded after Drew Houston, the company’s founder, grew frustrated with not being able to access important files while commuting by bus.

He kept forgetting his USB stick.

This led him to create a cloud storage solution that would allow people like him to access their files from anywhere.

Dropbox was built with a clear understanding of its dream customers – everyday computer users frustrated with managing and sharing files across different devices.

Within just two years of launching, Dropbox reached 50 million users. By 2017, the company was generating over $1 billion in annual revenue and made its place as a leader in the cloud storage industry.

How to Shape Your Business Launch Around Your Dream Customers

So…how can you get your business off to a successful launch like that?

The easiest way is with a customer avatar.

In the video below, one of ClickFunnels’ top affiliates John Lee Dumas talks about how defining his customer avatar helps him create products that sell.

It really helps you to map out your dream customer in a document you can come back to for reference.

Here’s an example of what a customer avatar document, based on John Lee Dumas’ insights, might look like.

This is just a random example.

But you can expand upon this basic customer avatar to tune in to your dream buyer.

Now let’s move on to step two, where we figure out where our dream customers hang out online.

Step #2: Where are They Congregating?

Now that you’ve identified your dream customer and matched your product to their pains and dreams…

You need to actually find your dream customers online.

Too many businesses have failed because they launched a great product or service that solves the real problems of a group of people… but they just couldn’t get in front of them.

Take a look at these examples below.

Juicero: A Premium Product That Didn’t Reach Health-Conscious Consumers

Juicero was a high-tech juicing machine that failed to succeed.

It was probably a great product… but it never effectively reached its intended audience of health-conscious consumers who valued convenience and fresh produce.

Instead of targeting digital platforms where this audience congregates – like Instagram and health-focused blogs – Juicero focused on general media coverage and high-end retail placements.

This disconnect never reached the kinds of people who would see the value in spending $400 on a juicer, which would save them time in their own daily juicing routines.

As a result, Juicero shut down in 2017 after failing to generate sustainable sales.

Quibi: Missing the Mark With Mobile-First Millennials

Quibi was designed to provide high-quality, short-form video content for mobile users.

But it struggled to reach its target audience of millennials who are already engaged on platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram.

Quibi was instead advertised on traditional media channels like TV and billboards. Had it targeted its ideal audience where it actually was… it could have been a better success.

However, after spending nearly $2 billion on the project, Quibi shut down just six months after its launch in 2020 due to low subscriber numbers.

Google Glass: Failing to Engage Early Adopters in Tech Communities

Google Glass was an amazing product that displayed information through a device resembling eyeglasses.

It had new features like augmented reality and voice control.

But instead of focusing on digital platforms where dream customers congregated – like tech forums, Reddit, and specialized tech blogs – Google Glass was marketed through mainstream media and high-profile public demonstrations.

This approach didn’t work. The mass-market consumer didn’t really see the value in the fancy features.

Google Glass was discontinued in 2015 after poor sales and privacy concerns.

How to Find Your Dream Customers and Advertise Only to Them

Step two to launching a successful business is finding out where your dream customers are, so you can get in front of them.

You’ll not only get sales more easily…but you’ll avoid wasting money on failing ads.

This is important. In the examples above, it probably wasn’t the product that flopped – it was because the product wasn’t put in front of dream customers.

We wrote about finding where your customers are in this post about the Dream 100.

To help you target your dream customers, start by finding the digital spaces where they are right now. I recommend you list out these spaces one by one and find the following:

10 websites and forums
15 active Facebook groups
50 influencers on Facebook & Instagram
30 podcasts
40 email newsletters
20 blogs
20 YouTube Channels

Here’s a cheat sheet you might want to use to help you get there.

I know it sounds like a lot.

But this is an exercise that will pay off in huge rewards when you come to actually launch your business.

Take a look at how the businesses below leveraged pre-existing communities online to launch a successful business.

Craftsy: Harnessing the Power of Communities for Rapid Growth

Craftsy quickly found success by targeting its dream customers – craft enthusiasts – on platforms where they were already active.

To gain their first 1,000 customers, the company focused on Facebook groups dedicated to popular categories like quilting. They also partnered with sources running quilting newsletters, helping them monetize by introducing Craftsy to their audiences.

Craftsy rapidly expanded its reach, growing to over 8 million people segmented across various clubs, and turning into a $24 million business.

HelloFresh: Leveraging Podcasts to Reach a Hungry Audience

In 2020, while other meal kit companies like Blue Apron were struggling with the pandemic, HelloFresh added 1 million new customers in the first quarter alone.

How?

HelloFresh’s success was driven by a strategic focus on lifestyle, motherhood, and cooking influencers, as well as targeted podcast sponsorships.

The company offered special discounts and shared personal experiences of cooking with their kits on podcasts their dream customers listened to – busy individuals who valued healthy and convenient meals.

This strategy led to a 50% increase in new customers during the campaign, proving the power of targeted marketing to an engaged and loyal audience.

MVMT: Harnessing Instagram Influencers for Explosive Growth

MVMT, the stylish watch and accessories brand, skyrocketed from $0 to a $100 million exit in just five years by strategically partnering with Instagram influencers.

By focusing on their dream customers – young, fashion-conscious individuals – MVMT used influencers to advertise their products.

This approach allowed them to grow their influencer channel 7X, resulting in over 100,000 discount codes and affiliate conversions. During the campaign, their partner influencers created more than 39,000 pieces of content.

This influencer-driven strategy helped move MVMT to rapid success, transforming the brand into a social media sensation and a leader in the direct-to-consumer market.

See how powerful this can be?

When you find out where your target audience congregates, then you don’t need to focus on building a platform yourself.

You just advertise on a platform someone else has built.

Now let’s move on to the third step, where you’ll learn how to attract customers on these platforms and launch your business successfully.

Step #3: What Bait Will You Use to Attract Them?

The next step is to consider the bait you’re going to use to bring your dream clients into your world and get them interested in your products or services.

You’ve probably heard of this type of bait referred to as a lead magnet.

But before we dive deeper, let’s take a step back.

You might be wondering: if you’ve already defined your dream customer and know where to find them, why not just get them to buy your product or service right away?

The truth is, it’s not always that straightforward.

Even some of the most established companies with well-known products still use some form of bait to attract potential customers, get them to explore their offerings, and ultimately make a purchase.

Let’s look at a couple of examples.

McDonald’s: Baiting Customers With Free or Discounted Food Items

McDonald’s usually offers free or heavily discounted items, like free fries or a $1 coffee, when customers download and use their mobile app.

These offers encourage customers to try the app and place orders through it, where they are exposed to additional menu items and deals.

The convenience and savings often lead to repeat purchases, increasing customer loyalty.

Amazon Prime: Free 30-Day Trial to Reel Customers in

Amazon offers a free 30-day trial of its Prime membership as its own lead magnet.

The 30-day trial includes benefits like free shipping, access to Prime Video, and exclusive deals.

The trial is designed to showcase the value of Prime membership, making it hard for users to give up these perks once the trial ends.

And this converts them into long-term paying members.

Dyson: Risk-Free Trial Period & Free Returns on Expensive Appliances

Dyson also offers a risk-free 30-day trial on their high-end home products, such as vacuum cleaners and air purifiers.

Customers can purchase a product, use it at home, and return it within 30 days for a full refund if they don’t like it.

This is a powerful lead magnet. There’s no risk for the consumer to spend money.

And while it’s a potential risk for Dyson…it allows consumers to check out the quality and performance of Dyson products firsthand.

This leads to increased sales and customer confidence in the brand.

Warby Parker: Selling Glasses With a Free Home Try-On Program

Warby Parker allows customers to select up to five pairs of eyeglasses to try on at home for free for five days.

This is a creative lead magnet.

It makes it easy for customers to test different styles and fits without any obligation to purchase.

The convenience and personalized experience often lead to customers buying at least one pair after the trial period, increasing sales and customer satisfaction.

Levi’s: Generating Leads With a 20% off First Purchase for Email Sign-Up

Pretty much all e-commerce websites offer you a discount just by signing up to the mailing list.

Levi’s does the same, offering new customers by offering 20% off their first purchase when they sign up for the brand’s email newsletter.

This lead magnet makes it easier to get a sale off first-time customers.

Additionally, by signing up, customers receive regular updates on new products, sales, and exclusive offers, keeping them engaged with the brand and encouraging future purchases.

15 Different Kinds of Lead Magnets for You to Use

See how the lead magnet works?

Using a lead magnet helps you increase the number of sales you get from the same number of people, and that’s important for a successful business launch.

So how can you get started building a lead magnet?

There are many different types of lead magnets, and the best one will depend on the product or service you’re looking to sell.

Here’s a breakdown of 15 different kinds of lead magnets to help you choose the right one for you.

1. Free Trial

Example: A SaaS company offers a 14-day free trial to let users explore premium features of their project management tool.

2. Discount Code

Example: An online clothing retailer provides a 15% off coupon for first-time buyers who sign up for their newsletter.

3. Free Shipping

Example: A home goods store offers free shipping on all orders for customers who join their loyalty program.

4. Ebook/Guide

Example: A digital marketing agency offers a free ebook on “10 Ways to Boost Your Website Traffic” in exchange for an email address.

5. Webinar/Workshop

Example: A financial consulting firm hosts a free online workshop on “How to Invest Wisely During Market Volatility.”

6. Free Sample

Example: A skincare brand offers a free sample of their best-selling moisturizer with sign-up for their email list.

7. Exclusive Content

Example: A news publication provides access to a special report on “Emerging Trends in AI” for users who subscribe to their email updates.

8. Template/Checklist

Example: A productivity app offers a downloadable daily planner template to help users organize their tasks effectively.

9. Quiz/Assessment

Example: A fitness brand provides a free “Find Your Ideal Workout Plan” quiz that recommends products based on the results.

10. Contest/Giveaway Entry

Example: A fashion brand offers entry into a giveaway for a $500 shopping spree in exchange for following them on social media.

11. Free Consultation

Example: A real estate agent offers a free 30-minute consultation to discuss home buying or selling strategies.

12. Access to Exclusive Sale

Example: A luxury fashion retailer offers early access to a seasonal sale for customers who join their VIP email list.

13. Early Access to Products

Example: A tech gadget company provides early access to new product releases for users who sign up for their email notifications.

14. Recipe Book or Meal Plan

Example: A health food brand offers a free downloadable recipe book featuring meals made with their products.

15. Video Tutorial Series

Example: A home improvement store offers a free series of video tutorials on DIY home renovation projects to email subscribers.

You can read more about creating a lead magnet here.

So how do you know what lead magnet is best to bait your dream customers?

Most of the time, if you’re not clear on your lead magnet, it’s because you’re not clear enough yet on your dream customer.

So go back to step 1.

In fact, in the book DotCom Secrets, Russell Brunson describes the power of the bait to attract only dream customers…and finds out that the more you define your dream customers, the easier it becomes to get them to purchase your products or services.

Here’s Russell:

As my company moved away from selling to beginners and toward attracting dream clients, our first step was to create new bait that would attract “Mike” or “Julie.” So we created a book called DotCom Secrets Labs: 108 Proven Split Test Winners. This bait worked great for us, because most beginners don’t know what a split test is. But we KNEW that Julie and Mike (our DREAM customers) would know what these terms mean and they would be hungry to get their hands on the book. Within days of launching this new offer, we had thousands of dream clients lining up to work with us. When you find out what your dream clients want, it becomes very easy to attract them.

If you want to check out DotCom Secrets in full, then you can currently get the book for free (just handle shipping).

Check the offer out below

Get DotCom Secrets Here For FREE!

Step #4: What Results do You Want to Provide for Them?

One of the most powerful insights in DotCom Secrets is this sentence from Russell Brunson:

“A business is NOT about products and services. A business is about what result you can get for your clients.”

Ultimately, a successful business is not so much about the product or service itself.

It’s about the transformation the products or services create for customers.

Think about it.

Some of the greatest products and services place more emphasis on the ultimate transformation than on the product itself.

Take a look at these examples…and you’ll instantly understand this in a new way.

Nike: “Just do it.”

Nike’s slogan doesn’t mention shoes, apparel, or sports equipment.

Instead, it speaks to the transformative power of motivation, empowerment, and the ability to overcome challenges.

The message is about achieving personal greatness and pushing beyond limits, with Nike products being the tools to help you do that.

Apple: “Think Different.”

Apple’s iconic slogan doesn’t describe the features of their computers, phones, or other devices.

Instead, it promises a transformation in the way you think, create, and interact with the world.

Apple products are positioned as enablers of innovation and creativity, appealing to those who see themselves as trailblazers or visionaries.

L’Oréal: “Because You’re Worth it.”

L’Oréal’s slogan focuses on the customer’s self-esteem and confidence, rather than the cosmetics themselves.

It suggests that using their beauty products is a way to affirm one’s self-worth and embrace personal beauty, making the purchase feel like an investment in yourself.

Red Bull: “Gives You Wings.”

Red Bull’s famous slogan doesn’t directly reference the energy drink itself.

Instead, it conveys a transformation, promising that the drink will energize you and give you the metaphorical “wings” to achieve more, be more alert, and take on challenges with greater vigor.

Coca-Cola: “Open Happiness.”

Coca-Cola’s message isn’t about the soda’s taste or ingredients.

It’s about the emotional experience it promises.

“Open Happiness” suggests that by drinking Coca-Cola, you’re unlocking moments of joy, connection, and satisfaction.

How to Give Your Dream Customers What They Want

Defining the end result ultimately comes back to step 1: the customer avatar.

You should deeply understand the pains of your dream customer…and be able to see what their dream future looks like.

But how do you actually use this desired result to help launch your successful business?

Ultimately, this last step will help you most when writing copy that brings people into your lead magnets, funnels & higher priced products & services.

For example, you’ll make promises of the results in your:

Headlines
Subheadlines
Hero Image/Video
Ad Copy
Benefit Bullets
Customer Testimonials
Before-and-After Photos
Call to Action (CTA)
Value Proposition
Landing Page Copy
Email Opt-In Offer
Lead Magnet
Guarantee/Promise
Sales Video or Explainer Video
Success Stories/Case Studies
Social Proof
Product Page Description
Exit-Intent Popup
Onboarding Emails
Follow-Up and Upsell Messages

Feel a little overwhelmed?

Don’t be!

ClickFunnels actually just released Marketing.AI, an AI-powered marketing platform. It helps ClickFunnels users use AI to write their sales copy and content in seconds.

All you have to do is click this link to start building an AI-powered sales funnel.

You then input some basic details about you, your products or services, your dream audience and the results they want to get.

Then, you can choose from different funnels you want to build, based on your lead magnet and end product.

Then, you can quickly build your funnel using the drag and drop interface.

On each page, you can use AI’s help to get the right message across.

You can also choose a specific writing voice to speak the kind of language that your dream audience understands.

And that’s it!

Within minutes, your funnel will be ready.

On the last page, you’ll be asked to sign into your ClickFunnels account.

If you don’t have one, you can create a new trial via our 14-day free trial.

Try Our AI Funnel Builder for Free!

Final Thoughts on Successfully Launching a Business

A lot of the content you come across about launching a business online tends to focus solely on administrative tasks.

The structure is something like:

Choose a business structure
Registering your business
Get a federal and state tax ID
Obtain licenses and permits
Open a business bank account

While these steps are necessary for launching a business, none of them can guarantee your success.

It’s like expecting a gym membership to get you in shape by itself.

Unfortunately, success is never guaranteed.

That’s why this blog post focused more on the psychology behind launching a business, because this is where the real determinant of your business success lies.

These four steps might seem time-consuming right now. But they will save you weeks, months, and even years of hardship by helping you get a head start.

Trust me, you’ll thank yourself later.

Good luck with launching your successful business!

Try Our AI Funnel Builder for Free!

Thanks for reading Essential Steps For Starting A Business which appeared first on ClickFunnels.

How to Pick the Best Digital Tools for Your New Business

John Parkes — Tue, 20 Aug 2024 10:26:41 +0000

The post How to Pick the Best Digital Tools for Your New Business appeared first on ClickFunnels.

Every entrepreneur needs to build a software stack for their business.

That’s why today we are going to discuss how to choose the right digital tools for your startup…

Table of Contents:

The Time vs. Money Trade-Off

There’s a trade-off between time and money:

You can either spend more time and less money or you can spend less time and more money on completing any given task.

For example, you don’t need to pay for a website builder in order to create a website for your startup – you can simply code everything from scratch.

Of course, that is going to take time, especially if you don’t have any previous web development experience.

Generally speaking, if you just launched your startup, you want to be as scrappy as possible, so the more stuff you can do yourself, the better.

However, you also need to remember that time is a limited resource and there’s an opportunity cost to how you choose to spend it.

As a founder, your top priority should be getting paying customers, so if investing in software can help you free up time for that, then you should probably do it if your budget allows it.

Say, if you can afford to pay for a website builder, then it probably makes sense to use one and set up your website in an hour or two instead of spending an entire day or maybe even several days coding one from scratch.

Ultimately, when it comes to resource allocation, it’s an individual decision that is going to depend on what you have more: time or money.

As our friend Alex Hormozi loves to say, the first rule of entrepreneurship is “use what you have”

So look at the resources at your disposal and figure out how to best leverage them to grow your startup!

Avoid Premature Optimization

“Premature optimization is the root of all evil” is a quote that is famous among software engineers.

It comes from Donald Knuth’s legendary multi-volume work “The Art of Computer Programming.”

“The real problem is that programmers have spent far too much time worrying about efficiency in the wrong places and at the wrong times; premature optimization is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming.”

We would argue that startup founders also have a tendency to fall into this trap, which can get in the way of business success.

If you want to get your startup off the ground, you need to be prepared to do things that don’t scale, the most important of which is getting out there and acquiring users manually by any means necessary.

However, that will inevitably involve dealing with a ton of rejection so you might start procrastinating on it by focusing on various tasks that are less important but more comfortable.

Premature optimization is one of the ways in which procrastination can manifest: it’s easy to trick yourself into thinking that you are being productive when in reality you are just wasting time attempting to solve problems that don’t even exist yet.

For example, you might start agonizing over building a perfect software stack, automating various business processes, making sure that your startup infrastructure can scale, etc. That might feel productive but it’s likely a waste of time.

So forget about optimizing stuff, put together a system that works for the stage you are at and start focusing on what actually matters: persuading your dream customers to pay for your product.

As your startup grows, you’ll start hitting various bottlenecks, at which point you can begin streamlining your workflow based on real data.

What is Your Software Budget?

Your budget is going to be your main constraint when choosing digital tools for your startup.

That’s why you need to get clear on how much money you can afford to spend on business software.

Typically, B2B apps use a SaaS model where you pay a monthly subscription to get access to them, so it makes sense to think in terms of monthly expenditure.

Most of those apps offer substantial discounts for users who choose to pay annually but we don’t recommend going that route until you are sure that you like the software in question.

However, once you are happy with your software stack, renewing your subscriptions on an annual basis might make sense and can enable you to get the same functionalities for less money.

What Functionalities Do You Need?

You want to make a list of must-have functionalities that you are going to need to run your business.

Here are some suggestions:

Website Builder Functionality

Every startup needs a business website.

As we already discussed, while you can code one from scratch yourself, it probably makes sense to use a website builder instead.

Website builders typically come with template libraries full of beautiful website templates and include drag-and-drop visual editors that you can use to customize those templates.

There are also AI website builders that can generate an entire website for you in a matter of minutes based on a text prompt that describes what you have in mind!

Funnel Builder Functionality

A sales funnel is a system for converting visitors into leads, leads into customers, and customers into repeat customers.

If you want to grow your startup as quickly as possible, the best way to do that is to build a sales funnel for your product and then drive traffic to it.

Just like with your website, you can code your entire sales funnel from scratch yourself, but it probably makes more sense to use a funnel builder instead.

Typically, funnel builders come with a template library that features the most common sales funnel templates and provides a drag-and-drop page builder that you can use to customize those templates.

Note that page design is extremely important when it comes to landing page and sales page conversion rates.

Consequently, it’s best to use page templates that have been proven to work instead of getting creative yourself, assuming that your top priority is acquiring users!

Email Marketing Functionality

An engaged email list is one of the most valuable assets that a startup can have.

That’s why you will need an email marketing functionality that enables you to collect email addresses through opt-in forms, set up a welcome sequence, and send one-off broadcast emails to your subscribers.

You might also want some more advanced features such as list segmentation, automated workflows, and A/B testing.

Email Warm-Up Functionality

We would argue that cold email is the best way to acquire users in the early stages if you can’t afford to pay for ads.

However, if you start sending cold emails from your main email account, you risk getting flagged as a spammer and being blacklisted by email service providers such as Gmail.

Moreover, if that email account is associated with your company’s domain name, email service providers might blacklist not just your email address but all email addresses associated with that domain.

That’s why it’s best to create a new email account specifically for the purpose of cold email. But you can’t just go from zero to sending 100 emails per day. You need to warm up your account first.

Email warm-up tools simulate regular back-and-forth messaging between your new email account and various established email accounts, which sends a signal to email service providers that you are a normal person and not a spammer.

Typically, it takes a few weeks to warm up a new email account, but if you want to err on the side of caution, you can wait for a month before you start your cold email campaign.

Also, you still shouldn’t go from zero to 100 cold emails per day even once you warm up your email account.

Start with just 10 cold emails and increase the quantity gradually by adding 10 more every day until you get to 100 cold emails per day!

Cold Email Management Functionality

When you start your cold email campaign, you might be able to keep track of everything with a simple spreadsheet at first.

However, as you continue increasing the number of emails that you send, you will probably find yourself in need of cold email management software, especially once you begin getting responses from potential clients!

Customer Relationship Management Functionality

If you decide to go the cold email route, you will also need a customer relationship management (CRM) functionality.

The core CRM feature is the sales pipeline overview that allows you to see everything in one place.

On top of that, you might want additional features such as:

An appointment booking calendar that enables potential customers to book appointments with you without the need for email back and forth.
Automated appointment reminders that can help ensure that everyone shows up at an agreed time.
A contact database where you can store notes on each lead and then easily look up those notes before getting on a call with them.

Customer Support Functionality

While providing excellent customer support remains important throughout the entire business lifecycle, it’s absolutely essential for early-stage startups. Why?

Because if you just launched your company, it doesn’t have any momentum yet, acquiring users is an uphill struggle and your user base is so small that a few customers churning can have a noticeable impact on your revenue.

Moreover, your brand reputation is extremely fragile, which means that negative publicity and bad customer reviews can have a disproportionate impact on it.

Finally, if you are acquiring users manually by cold emailing them and then getting on calls with them, the relationships you have with these customers are going to be more personal.

That’s something that you need to keep in mind when it comes to customer support: if they don’t get a quick response from you when they need help, they will be more likely to get upset about it.

All this means that you need to be prepared to go above and beyond with customer support if you want to retain users.

It’s probably best to provide support both via email and via live chat on your website. Ideally, you want to set up notifications so that you’d get notified of new support tickets and could respond to these queries immediately!

A/B Testing Functionality

A/B testing, also known as split testing, is a conversion rate optimization method that works like this:

You create two versions of something that are identical except for the element that you are testing.
You drive the same amount of traffic to both versions.
You keep the version that converted better.

For Example:

You can create two versions of your lead magnet landing page that are identical except for the headline, drive the same amount of traffic to both of them, and then keep the headline that converted better.

Founders often get stuck in analysis paralysis and waste an enormous amount of time deliberating over various design, copy, and product decisions.

What we recommend doing instead is getting into a habit of running A/B tests, looking at the results, and making adjustments based on those results.

After all, why agonize over something like the call-to-action button color when you can simply run an experiment to see which color works best?

Business Analytics Functionality

You want to have analytics in place right from the get-go so that you can start accumulating data as early as possible.

Here are some of the metrics that you should be tracking:

Traffic sources and unique visitors
Visitor-to-lead conversion rate
Lead-to-customer conversion rate
Customer-to-repeat-customer conversion rate
Sales, revenue, and profit margins
Cancellations and churn rate
Gross profit and net profit
Month-over-month growth

Ideally, you want to use an analytics functionality that not only allows you to track and analyze business data but also enables you to run simulations and create future projections based on it.

Specialized Apps vs. All-in-One Marketing Platforms

You have two options when it comes to building your software stack:

Pay separately for a bunch of specialized apps and then use integrations to create a business workflow.
Pay for an all-in-one marketing platform and get everything or at least most of what you need in one place.

Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of each option:

Specialized App Pros and Cons

Generally speaking, specialized apps tend to be better than all-in-one platforms when it comes to the functionalities that they focus on.

For example, a specialized email marketing app will probably offer better email marketing functionality than an all-in-one platform, which shouldn’t be surprising.

Consequently, if you pay for a bunch of different apps, the overall software quality will likely be higher than what you’d get from an all-in-one platform.

However, getting all those specialized apps to play nicely with each other so that you can build a business workflow can prove to be quite a challenge.

Moreover, you can expect constant technical problems with this approach because there are so many moving parts.

For example, your email marketing app might get an update that breaks its integration with your funnel builder, and the next thing you know your sales funnel isn’t working.

Finally, when these technical issues occur, it can be hard to get them fixed because there’s often more than one company involved.

Say, if your email marketing app update breaks its integration with your funnel builder, you might have to deal with customer support at both companies. Who is supposed to fix this situation?

All this may not seem like a big deal right now but consider that the larger your business grows, the more these technical issues are going to cost you in lost revenue!

All-in-One Marketing Platform Pros and Cons

Generally speaking, all-in-one marketing platforms are not as great as specialized apps when it comes to any particular functionality.

However, since you are getting all or at least most of the functionalities that you need in one place, it’s much easier to set everything up.

Moreover, since there are fewer moving parts, you won’t have to deal with annoying technical problems as often.

And when such problems do arise, they are much easier to fix because you are only dealing with one company.

Of course, if you add a few specialized apps to your workflow on top of the all-in-one marketing platform, that is going to make things more complicated.

However, that’s still a much simpler and more robust setup than using a different app for every functionality that you need!

Grow Your Startup With ClickFunnels!

What is ClickFunnels?

ClickFunnels is an all-in-one marketing platform that has everything you need to launch, manage, and grow your online business!

What are ClickFunnels’ Most Notable Features?

ClickFunnels’ most notable features include:

A website builder functionality
A funnel builder functionality
An email marketing functionality
A customer relationship management functionality
An A/B testing functionality
A business analytics functionality

As you can see, our software provides most of the functionalities that we discussed in this article!

How Much Does ClickFunnels Cost?

ClickFunnels has two pricing plans:

The Startup plan costs $97/month – It includes unlimited funnels, courses, members, contacts, pages, and domains. You can have 3 workspaces and 3 team members.
The Pro plan costs $297/month – It includes unlimited funnels, courses, members, contacts, pages, and domains. You can have 10 workspaces and 10 team members.

Both plans have a free 14-day trial.

By the way, if you decide that you like our software, make sure to check out our annual subscriptions. You can save money by paying yearly!

Try ClickFunnels Risk-Free!

Let’s be real:

We are biased in favor of our software.

So we understand if you take what we say about it with a grain of salt.

Fortunately, we have a free 14-day trial, so you don’t have to take our word for it.

You can go and see ClickFunnels for yourself without any risk!

So what are you waiting for? 🧐

Start Your Free Trial Today

Thanks for reading How to Pick the Best Digital Tools for Your New Business which appeared first on ClickFunnels.

How To Use Data To Grow Your Business

John Parkes — Tue, 20 Aug 2024 09:29:21 +0000

The post How To Use Data To Grow Your Business appeared first on ClickFunnels.

You may have heard various thought leaders emphasize the importance of making data-driven decisions instead of relying on your gut feelings.

That sounds great in theory but it’s not always clear how entrepreneurs are supposed to implement this advice in practice.

That’s why today we are going to discuss five ways in which you can use analytics to grow your business…

Table of Contents:

#1: Zero-In on Your Most Profitable Customers

When you are just starting out, you don’t have any data so all you can do is make your best guess as to who your dream customers are and then market your products and services to them.

However, as your business grows and you start accumulating data, you should revise your definition of a dream customer based on which customers are the most profitable ones.

It’s quite likely that if you look at your sales data, you’ll find a Pareto distribution where a minority of your customers are responsible for the majority of your revenue.

You want to identify your most profitable customers, figure out what are the traits that they have in common, and create a dream customer persona based on those traits.

Then, use that dream customer persona to improve the targeting of your marketing campaigns so that you can attract more customers who fit that profile!

#2: Optimize Your Sales Funnel

First, you need to get the baseline conversion rates of your sales funnel, which you can do by driving traffic to it.

Once you know what your visitor-to-lead, lead-to-customer, and customer-to-repeat-customer conversion rates are, you can start optimizing your sales funnel with A/B testing.

A/B testing, also known as split testing, is a conversion rate optimization method where you create two versions of the same page that are identical except for the variable that you are testing and then drive an equal amount of traffic to both versions to see which one converts better.

For example, if you want to optimize a particular page in your sales funnel, it makes sense to test a bunch of different headlines and then keep the winning one.

The same goes for the page layout, color scheme, images, body copy, social proof, etc. You should test everything.

Keep in mind that although you might feel that you know what’s going to convert the best, you don’t actually know until you put your hypothesis to the test and look at the results.

Generally speaking, the fewer assumptions you make and the more A/B tests you run, the better your sales funnel is going to convert and the more money you are going to make!

#3: Increase Customer Lifetime Value

The ratio between your customer lifetime value and your customer acquisition cost is the most important business metric of them all. Why?

Because the more money you get from each customer, the more money you can spend on customer acquisition.

And, as Dan Kennedy put it, whoever can spend the most to acquire a customer wins.

Here’s how he explained it to our co-founder Russell Brunson:

@russellbrunson
Whoever can spend the most money to acquire a customer wins #entrepreneur #entrepreneur101 #businessmotivation #entrepreneurjourney #russellbrunson
♬ original sound – Russell Brunson

But how can you use analytics to increase your customer lifetime value?

Improve Your Onboarding

First, look at the data related to onboarding.

Analyze it and see if you can uncover patterns.

Is there anything that happens during the onboarding process that is likely to lead to that customer having a higher-than-average customer lifetime value?

Likewise, is there anything that happens during the onboarding process that is likely to lead to that customer having a lower-than-average customer value?

Once you identify the factors that have an impact on customer lifetime value, you want to optimize your onboarding process accordingly.

Pre-Emptively Counter Churn

Churn is the bane of all recurring revenue businesses. If you let it get out of control, it might not only offset growth but also lead to a decline in revenue and put your company at risk.

That’s why it’s so important to be proactive about reducing it and take measures to counter it pre-emptively.

Compare the data of customers who churn the earliest with the data of customers who churn the latest. What are the factors that make someone more likely to churn?

You will probably see people using your product less and less over time until they finally cancel their subscriptions, in which case you want to set up a system that allows you to detect a decline in usage and re-engage those customers before it’s too late.

You might also discover that it’s not that deep: maybe people’s credit cards expire, they forget to update their payment details and their subscriptions get canceled automatically without them even realizing it.

You can prevent this by setting up a system for keeping track of credit card expiration dates and automatically reminding customers to renew their payment details before their cards expire.

While churn is normal and inevitable, you can probably significantly reduce yours by simply identifying patterns and taking measures to address these issues before customers cancel their subscriptions!

Prioritize What’s Most Important to Your Customers

Sometimes business owners struggle to understand what is most important to their customers.

That can lead to them wasting resources on developing new features that no one cares about or even launching entirely new products that no one wants.

Fortunately, you can use analytics to avoid that and prioritize stuff that actually matters to your customers instead.

Start by collecting usage data for your website, online store, or app, and then look at the heatmaps to see if people are using it the way you intended.

You might discover that they find some of the elements of your user interface confusing, in which case you want to make it easier to navigate.

Then, look at which features your customers use the most and which features they use the least.

You might find a Pareto distribution in feature usage: it may turn out that your customers primarily use a few key features and barely touch the rest.

In that case, it makes sense to prioritize improving those key features and remove the rest of them to declutter your user interface.

Finally, make sure that you save and catalog all customer feedback that you receive, regardless of the channel.

Social media posts and DMs, emails, customer support tickets, all of it should go into one centralized database.

Once you build that database, you can use text analytics software to make sense of all the feedback. It should help you understand what is most important to your customers!

#4: Create More Accurate Future Projections

If you want to build a sustainable business, you need to be strategic about it.

Analytics can help you with that because the more historical data you have, the more accurate future projections you can create.

Make sure to remove highly unusual, one-off events from your data before you start analyzing it because they can distort the patterns.

Say, if some celebrity randomly mentioned your product and it went viral because of that, you should exclude that spike in sales from your data because that is unlikely to happen again.

However, if you paid an influencer to give you a shout-out and it resulted in a large number of sales, you should keep that spike in your data if you intend to continue using influencer marketing in the future.

If you want to be conservative in your analysis – which we would recommend – you can include negative one-off events in your data while excluding the positive ones. This can help you prepare to weather bad luck without relying on good luck.

Once you understand the patterns that are present in your historical data, you can start extrapolating them into the future.

There’s the obvious stuff like using the average churn rate, the average year-on-year growth, seasonal changes in sales, etc. to make predictions. But you can also create more sophisticated projections.

For example, assuming that your conversion rates remain the same if you drive 3x more traffic to your sales funnel, that should lead to a 3x increase in sales. Pretty straightforward. But will that also lead to a 3x increase in the customer support load?

You can look at the historical data, extrapolate from the existing pattern, and use that to decide whether to hire more customer support agents.

Of course, it goes without saying that no matter how powerful your data analysis software is, it’s not a crystal ball and you shouldn’t treat it as such.

There’s always a possibility that a black swan event will change everything. No one knows what the future holds so it’s best to err on the side of caution and play it safe!

#5: Set Realistic Sales Targets

You can also use analytics to set realistic sales targets.

First, look at the historical data and extrapolate from it to see what would be the most likely outcome if your salespeople simply continued doing what they have been doing so far.

Then play with the numbers to see what might be possible if they pushed themselves a little bit.

For example, if we assume that the conversion rates are going to remain the same, then making 20% more cold calls should lead to 20% more meetings with clients and 20% more sales.

Setting an annual sales target based on that could motivate your salespeople to get out of their comfort zone. It may be a stretch goal but it should be achievable.

Once you have your annual sales target, break it down into quarterly, monthly, and weekly targets.

Then, create a sales plan that outlines the action steps that your salespeople should take every day, week, and month in order to hit those targets.

Finally, set up daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly reviews to keep everyone accountable.

These reviews will help your salespeople stay on track throughout the year until they reach their annual sales target.

One quick note: before you do all this, run simulations based on historical data to see what would be the most likely downstream effects of your desired increase in sales. You need to make sure that your business can handle it!

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Sales Funnels

Our software features a library of proven sales funnel templates that you can customize with our drag-and-drop page editor.

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A/B Testing

Our A/B testing functionality enables you to optimize your entire sales funnel: from your landing pages to your emails to your sales pages to your downsells, upsellls, and cross-sells.

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Analytics

Finally, you can use our analytics functionality to collect business data, analyze it, and create future projections!

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