How To Promote ClickFunnels
If you’re here, you’re probably already aware that ClickFunnels runs an affiliate program. In this article, we’ll be looking at the various ways to promote ClickFunnels and how to make money by being a ClickFunnels Affiliate.
Firstly: What is ClickFunnels?
Feel free to skip to the next heading if you already know what ClickFunnels is. Put simply, ClickFunnels is an online sales funnel builder which uses an intuitive drag-and-drop interface to guide you through the design of an e-commerce site. The interface replaces the standard page editor of other products, and you don’t need to be a coder to use it. ClickFunnels is a SaaS (Software as a Service) product, meaning it’s software that runs completely in a browser – there’s nothing to download or install (this is also known as ‘on-demand software’).
Using ClickFunnels is easy. Starting with a blank sheet, ClickFunnels will walk you through, step by step, the stages needed to create a landing page (squeeze page), a sales page, an order form and many more. These sales funnels are proven to work, and use a set of funnel building templates designed by sales and marketing experts. Once you’re happy with the basic design, you can add a range of upsell actions – such as their email marketing tool Follow-Up Funnels, opt-ins to membership pages, automated webinar delivery and mailing list sign-ups.
Launched in 2014 by Todd Dickerson and the e-commerce guru Russell Brunson, ClickFunnels has proven immensely popular with users who want a marketing tool with no coding required, an easy learning curve, and an almost instant, positive impact.
If you want to find out more about ClickFunnels then take a moment to look through this guide, which we’ve put together to cover the basics. The guide will open in a new tab, then you can come back here to learn more about the best ways to promote ClickFunnels and its range of additional products.
What Do We Mean By ‘Promoting ClickFunnels?’
At first glance, this might make no sense. Surely ‘promoting’ is just another word for selling? How can you make money by selling software that you don’t own? The answer is to become a ClickFunnels Affiliate.
Globally, the affiliate marketing industry is worth over $12 billion and 81% of brands rely on affiliate marketers for lead generation. Even companies as large as Amazon use affiliate marketing.
Let’s assume you have a product or a service that you’re selling online. It’s been going OK, but you want to start maximising your sales so you’ve been looking at becoming a ClickFunnels Affiliate. The key thing here is that you already have a valuable commodity: your email list. Some of the people on that list will be running their own company – and it’s safe to say that they will be just as interested as you are in increasing sales.
If you can demonstrate to them that ClickFunnels works (and you can, because you’ve just made a sale to them), then they’re likely to want to evaluate it themselves. As a ClickFunnels Affiliate, you will earn a commission when they eventually sign up. And as ClickFunnels is a subscriptions service, you’ll keep earning that commission every month.
Look at it this way: say you’ve just bought a new hybrid electric car – maybe a Toyota Prius. Admittedly it was a bit of an outlay, but it’s easy to drive, it’s convenient, it cuts down on emissions and – most importantly – it saves you money. Of course it does: that’s exactly what it was designed for. Now let’s say you have a friend who’s thinking of buying a new car. He asks your advice and because you’re happy with your new car, you suggest he looks at an electric. He takes your advice, takes a test drive, and ends up buying a Prius, the same model as yours.
He’s happy, because he’s saving money on fuel. Toyota are happy, because they’ve just sold another new car. And you? Well, the salesman at the Toyota showroom might wave at you the next time you walk past, but it’s doubtful he’s going to pay you any commission!
Now look at that scenario again, but change ‘electric car’ to ‘online sales funnel’. The basic elements of the story are the same, but at the end of the story you do get paid a commission. This, in a nutshell, is what we mean by promoting ClickFunnels. And the best part is that it’s all essentially free.
How Much Does It Cost to Become A ClickFunnels Affiliate?
Financially? Nothing. Not a penny. Once you start using ClickFunnels yourself, you’re automatically enrolled in the ClickFunnels Affiliate Program. And even if you’re just evaluating the platform, the affiliation links are all there, ready for you to promote to your customers. But in reality everything costs something, and what ClickFunnels needs is time and effort. Irrespective of whether you’re using free traffic sources, qualified leads or paid advertising, affiliate marketing needs a dedicated mindset.
Don’t expect to make a fortune overnight, and don’t be tempted to jump from idea to idea – that’s a proven recipe for failure. Read through our guide and – once you’ve decided on an approach – stick to it until you start to see results. There are plenty of upsell opportunities and additional revenue streams that you can add at a later date, but you need a solid foundation first.
Are We a ClickFunnels Affiliate?
Yes we are. It’s not our main revenue stream, but we earn a nice commission by promoting ClickFunnels and some of its associated products. The profit we make from it helps us to pay for hosting our side-project websites, like this one. We’re more than happy to promote ClickFunnels to our customers because we know it works: we use it ourselves in our other online businesses. ClickFunnels helps us with our CRM, and we’re about to add the Follow-Up Funnels autoresponder to look after a big email campaign that’s planned for next year.
What Do I Need to Promote ClickFunnels?
If you’re willing to put in the time and effort, you’ll find that all the tools you need are already there – integral to the ClickFunnels platform. Once any of your website visitors expresses an interest in ClickFunnels, that interest triggers a carefully-targeted campaign, run on your behalf by the ClickFunnels marketing team. (Later on you can choose to replace this with your own marketing, or use a combination of the two.) The quality of the campaign is excellent, and the fine-tuning and choice of message is really on point. It can come across as a little bit too salesy, but there’s no doubting it works, as we remember only too well…
What happened was this. One of our product guys, Paul, was looking at video conferencing software, and there was a link about ClickFunnels. He clicked on it, and it took him to a landing page. Paul didn’t have time to read it then, but the next day he got a follow-up email offering a discount on a dotcom secrets book written by Russell Brunson. He didn’t bite that time, but after two more emails – and a targeted facebook ad – Paul bought the book (it was about £15). To cut a long story short he showed us the book, we read a few chapters, liked the advice it gave, and ended up taking out a subscription to ClickFunnels’ basic monthly package.
Dotcom Secrets and Expert Secrets are two of the affiliate products that you can promote.
Fast forward a year and we’re still using ClickFunnels, and the video-conferencing company are still getting commission, because it was their Affiliate Link that started the whole process! And in case you were wondering, we bought the video-conferencing software, and Paul now heads up our online marketing.
How Much Can I Earn Promoting ClickFunnels?
The Clickfunnels affiliate program offers one of the most generous commissions for a SaaS company. Anything that’s eventually purchased through your affiliate link will pay you a 40% life-time affiliate commission. Apart from the ClickFunnels software itself – which has two subscription models at $97 (Basic) and $297 (Platinum) per month – there are a range of other products to promote that range from one dollar to thousands.
ClickFunnels also runs a superb promotion for affiliates called the ‘Dream Car Contest’. As soon as you convert 100 new users to ClickFunnels, the company will pay to lease you a car up to the value of $500 per month. Get that to 200 new users, and the value of the car goes up to $1000 per month. So not only will you be earning a minimum of $3,880 per month in commission, but you’ll also have a company car! And this is not an empty promise with caveats and small print – there are dozens of Dream Car winners out there.
Russell Brunson’s company is geared around what he calls ‘The Sales Ladder’, which focuses on increasing revenue by making incremental sales – each one at a higher value than the last. So even a sale of a $20 book, which will only get you $8 commission, can convert to an upsell of the Platinum package which will make you just under $120. And remember that all this upselling can be a totally passive income: you can choose to leave all the marketing campaigns to ClickFunnels, and sit sit back and collect the commission every month.
The Affiliate Program uses a tracker called a ‘sticky cookie’, which follows your customer across all of their devices. So once they’re part of your affiliate account, they remain part of your affiliate account no matter what ClickFunnels promotional page they view.
Some Ideas on How to Promote ClickFunnels
There are a lot of ways to promote Clickfunnels – you’ve probably thought of a few whilst you’ve been reading this article. A lot depends on your particular strengths, and of course how much time and effort – and budget – you’re willing to invest. ClickFunnels has a great webinar presentation called ‘Affiliate Bootcamp’ which shows you approaches from 15 of their Super Affiliates. It’s completely free and, if nothing else, it will give you some great ideas and demonstrate a lot of proven techniques. Even if you decide not to go the ClickFunnels route, we recommend it as a good investment of your time.
In the next few paragraphs, we’re going to suggest some ways to make money as a ClickFunnels affiliate. Some of these techniques are covered in the Bootcamp presentation, and some are ideas of our own which we’ve used to generate recurring commissions.
Share Funnels
As a user of ClickFunnels, every Funnel you create has a unique share funnel URL which, as the name suggests, can be shared with others. Let’s say your business, whatawidget.com, has developed a sales funnel that has a uniquely-designed landing page (squeeze page) ideal for visitors who want to buy widgets. Share Funnels means you can give a copy of that funnel to another widget company, for free, and then they can make it their own by changing the logo, typeface, etc. If that company is not already a ClickFunnels user, they’ll be prompted to sign up and you’ll earn commission. It’s a very powerful lead magnet, as giving away a proven sales funnel for free shows confidence in ClickFunnels. And confidence is a very persuasive sales tool.
Promoting Local Businesses
This is a variation of the above, still using Share Funnels, but it requires cold-calling and making face-to-face sales pitches. Choose a business type, or a variety of types such as dentists, or restaurants, or nail salons. Using the drag and drop templates included in ClickFunnels, create a marketing funnel that will work for that business, and then sell it to them, or even offer it for free as a loss-leader. Making the first sale can be tough, but you can then use it as a case study to convince your next potential client. Local knowledge can make you stand out from the crowd; using a phrase like “Tommy Hastings from the copy shop over the road increased his footfall by 35%” is a powerful convincer. Once the owners have agreed, you give them the Share Funnels URL and remind them they need to sign with ClickFunnels to make the funnel live. The rest is comparably easy.
Write a Clickfunnels Blog
Find a feature of ClickFunnels that you want to write about, or just a general ClickFunnels review, and create a blog. Although on the face of it this sounds easy, there’s a lot of work involved. Creating the blog website is simple – you can use WordPress, Wix or Squarespace, for instance. (If you’re already a blogger, that part is done). But with blogging, content is king and you’ll need carefully SEO-optimised articles to generate a decent amount of traffic.
Our advice is to target long-tail keywords, such as ‘using facebook to generate leads’ or ‘Best ClickFunnel Landing Pages’ (you can set up a Google Alert to see how often your chosen keyword is being searched). Once the blog is up and running, the key is to keep adding well-researched, relevant content. As you slowly build authority and create trust in your content, you can start to increase ClickFunnel offers and promotions. Blog content, like the page you’re reading now, is one of our favourite ways of promoting ClickFunnels.
Write a Comparison Blog
Another effective blogging technique is to write comparison blogs, which list the pros and cons of two (or more) competing products. When business owners are deciding which software to use, it often comes down to a shortlist of two. They’ll typically use Google to look for a feature comparison to help them decide, and if your keywords have been chosen properly, you’ll be at the top. The beauty of this is that you can create affiliate links for both software choices so, whichever they choose, there’s a good chance you’ll get some affiliate commission. Just type ‘clickfunnels vs’ into Google to give you an idea of which competitors to compare. As you can see from our screenshot above, ‘ClickFunnels vs LeadPages’ or ‘ClickFunnels vs Kartra’ would be good comparison articles to write (although because it’s as simple as googling, you won’t be the only one writing that particular article…!)
Promote Just One ClickFunnels product
This is a slower process, but the ROI can be significantly greater. A lot of ClickFunnel promoters scatter-spray their sites with every promotion they can find a link for. This approach can work very well for experienced promoters with a very strong following (known as ‘Super Affiliates’ in ClickFunnel-ese), but we don’t recommend it for new affiliates. You’ll notice that this article, for example, is not really promoting any products – we’re mentioning a lot, but we’re not trying to highlight any in particular.
The trick to promoting just one product is to give expert advice on that particular product. You’ll need to do a lot of research – not just reading blogs and write-ups but actually speaking to people who know the product. A favourite with a lot of high-earning affiliates is the ‘One Funnel Away Challenge’ (OFA). It’s basically a 30-day intensive training course that pretty-much guarantees the user a high converting funnel, and it’s hosted by Russell Brunson himself (the co-founder of ClickFunnels). OFA is a good product to promote, as it costs only $100 and there’s currently an affiliate offer in place where you get to keep 100% of the commission (it’s a loss-leader for ClickFunnels, but they make a lot of money on upsells). For more details about the OFA, take a look at the ClickFunnels OFA webpage.
Promote ClickFunnels on a YouTube Channel (and other video hosting sites)
Increasingly, YouTube videos are being seen as the final place to go in order to assess a product. Reading about a product can give a great deal of useful information, but it’s very one-dimensional. Many manufacturers have links on their product pages to videos that review the product and give ‘how to’ advice. If you’ve ever tried to assemble a wardrobe from Ikea, you’ll know exactly how useful a how-to video can be!
There are as many ways to promote using YouTube as there are using any other medium – in fact probably more. How-to videos are great sales tools because they’re genuinely useful; realtime side-by-side feature comparisons are much more immediate if the comparison is being shown to you on a screen. YouTube videos also have one killer advantage – they’re completely free.
Here’s a fact about promoting on YouTube: business owners who watch a product video are far more likely to convert to a sale. This is quite logical when you think about it. People surf websites all the time, switching from one browser tab to another at a whim. But if a potential customer decides to invest their valuable time in watching your product video, they’ve practically already decided to buy your product. They just need to validate that their choice is the correct one. But video promotions don’t convert to sales by themselves, so make sure you provide a link in the text below the video – and if it’s an affiliate link then it will need to be cloaked. (YouTube only allows links that point to your website – cloaking is what allows you to redirect these links to your ClickFunnels Affiliate account.)
You can also include a link to your blog if you have relevant content, or to a spec sheet to accompany some product demo footage. You can also embed a video in your blog, which opens up a whole range of interesting blogging options. This article is not the right place to go into detail, but if you want to know how to generate additional leads using video: we’ve produced a guide called How To Promote ClickFunnels with YouTube. Remember that Google runs the same sort of search engine algorithms for YouTube as it does on webpages. So you’ll need to understand about high ranking keywords, optimising the video description, choosing the correct video tags and how to design a compelling video thumbnail. We cover all this in the guide.
Promote ClickFunnel Events
If you’re not sure about creating your own videos, then ClickFunnels hosts a number of video events, or webinars, that you can link to on your website. These are easy to promote because they have a built-in FOMO-factor, especially if you highlight a closing date to join the webinar or limit the number of attendees. If you can sell this as an exclusive event, perhaps only to your top 20 customers, then you can maximise the chances of attendance. As with everything produced by ClickFunnels, the webinar emphasis is on making sales and making money. Some viewers have commented that the delivery is sometimes too ‘evangelical’, but there’s no doubting that the hosts believe their message. In fact we made this comment to one of the ClickFunnels teamleaders and she said “Yeah, we know. But what can it hurt to listen?” It’s hard to argue with that.
Promote ClickFunnels on Social Media
As with the YouTube section above, there’s a lot we have to share about how to promote using social media. It’s really a separate topic in itself, although a lot of the techniques outlined here can be used to great effect. We’d really like you to read our separate Guide to promoting ClickFunnels on Social Media where we cover the benefits and techniques in more detail. For now, just be aware that there are very effective ways to promote Clickfunnels by leveraging the following social media platforms:
- Facebook groups
- Quora
How Much Support Will I Get From ClickFunnels?
ClickFunnels, as an organisation, was not designed to be a marketing company or a business opportunity. In fact on every one of their website pages, they state “ClickFunnels is a website and funnel builder that helps businesses sell their products and services online.” That being said, there is a mass of sales support available direct fromClickFunnels. Their follow-up campaign effort is immense, with emails, facebook messages and so-called nag screens appearing every time you move away from a page. Remember that ClickFunnels uses sticky cookies to track your visitor’s movement across the net and across all of their devices. Each one of these messages is carefully targeted and takes into account which web page was visited and how long your visitor stayed there, and which part of the page they clicked on whilst they were visiting.
ClickFunnels, as they say themselves, just sell software. But from inception, they have understood that a well-supported, well-compensated affiliate sales team can generate billions in extra revenue. They want you to succeed and they need you to succeed. As an affiliate, if you get half of a whiff of a thought of a lead, they will do everything they can to help you convert it to a sale. And then pay you an industry-beating commission. Every month.
In Conclusion
Thank you for your time. We hope you’ve found this guide a useful introduction to the many ways that you can promote ClickFunnels, and we’ll be very pleased if it helps you make money as an affiliate. If you’re interested in evaluating Clickfunnels, we suggest you sign up for their free 14-day trial. It’s an unrestricted version of the software, so you can try out all the features including the Affiliate Program. We’re always happy to talk, so please contact us if you have any questions.
