Wondering how to improve your sales funnels?
Today, we will share the five best places to get inspiration for a successful sales funnel!
#1: Russell Brunson’s “DotCom Secrets”
Our co-founders, Russell Brunson and Todd Dickerson, launched ClickFunnels back in 2013.
They were both seasoned entrepreneurs with over a decade of experience selling products and services online via sales funnels.
In fact, through years of trial and error, Russell had developed a sales funnel of his own called the Value Ladder.
That is the sales funnel he used to take this company from zero to $10M in annual revenue in just one year, eventually growing it to 100,000+ active users and 100M+ in annual revenue.
Since then, Russell has taught countless entrepreneurs how to grow their businesses with sales funnels through his webinars, books, and online courses.
At least 2,331 ClickFunnels users have generated over $1,000,000 in revenue via sales funnels built with our software. And these are just our Two Comma Club award winners!
Today, Russell is recognized as one of the top sales funnel experts in the world. Want to learn from him?
The best place to start is his bestselling book “DotCom Secrets”. It covers everything you need to know in order to build sales funnels that convert, including:
- The Value Ladder sales funnel.
- The seven phases of a sales funnel.
- Upsells, cross sells, and downsells.
- Ten different funnel variations, including squeeze page funnels, book funnels, cart funnels, webinar funnels, product launch funnels, and more.
- We use the “Hook, Story, Offer” copywriting framework in the vast majority of our copy, from social media posts to marketing emails to landing and sales pages.
- Eight proven funnel scripts that you can implement in your funnels.
- A breakdown of the fundamental marketing math, such as customer acquisition cost, average order value, and more.
- Advice on how to learn from your competitors through funnel hacking.
- Practical tips on how to build your funnels and optimize them for conversions.
To our knowledge, “DotCom Secrets” is the most comprehensive book on sales funnels.
It has sold over 300,000 copies worldwide and has a 4.7-star rating on Amazon and a 4.2-star rating on Goodreads.
What’s best is that you can get a copy 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!
#2: Russell Brunson’s “The Funnel Hacker’s Cookbook”
Russell also wrote “The Funnel Hacker’s Cookbook”. It’s a much lighter read that only has three chapters.
In the first chapter, he goes over the key page elements. Think of them as “ingredients” that you can use to design high-converting pages for your funnels.
In the second chapter, he provides “recipes” for different types of pages that you may need to create for your funnels.
In the third and final chapter, he shares “recipes” for his 22 favorite funnels:
- Squeeze page funnel
- Reverse squeeze page funnel
- Lead magnet funnel
- Bridge funnel
- Survey funnel
- Application funnel
- Ask campaign funnel
- 2-step tripwire funnel
- Sales letter funnel
- Video sales letter funnel
- Membership funnel
- Daily deal funnel
- Invisible funnel
- Webinar funnel
- Autowebinar funnel
- Product launch funnel
- Hero funnel
- Homepage funnel
- Cancellation funnel
- Storefront funnel
- Summit funnel
- Live demo funnel
“The Funnel Hacker’s Cookbook” is a free downloadable companion to “DotCom Secrets” that you can print out and keep on your desk for reference. Also, if you want to order a physical copy, you can get it for free if you cover the shipping!
Download “The Funnel Hacker’s Cookbook” for FREE!
#3: ClickFunnels’ Sales Funnels
We also recommend exploring some of our other funnels if you want to see how we implement the concepts that Russell teaches in practice. You can use our lead magnets as starting points for this.
Russell has written two more best-selling books: “Traffic Secrets” and “Expert Secrets,” which you can get for free if you cover the shipping. Needless to say, we highly recommend them!
We also have our free “30 Day Summit” interview series where he presents the Two Comma Club award winners with this question: what would you do if you lost everything except for your ClickFunnels account and Internet access and only had 30 days to make the money you need to save yourself?
It’s worth noting that Russell didn’t just ask this question in the abstract; he pressed them for specific details, like what they would do on day one, day two, and so on. These are proven entrepreneurs who have already made at least $1,000,000 from their sales funnels, so you can learn a lot from these interviews.
Then, there’s our free “5 Day Lead Challenge,” where Russell takes you through building your first lead generation funnel step-by-step over five days.
Finally, ClickFunnels software comes with a free 14-day trial to check it out without any risk.
All these free offers serve as entry points to our Value Ladder. Taking advantage of them can provide insight into how we structure our funnels, upsell and cross sell, and use email marketing. See if you can implement the same tactics in your sales funnels!
#4: “Make Money Online” Sales Funnels
The “make money online” niche has a terrible reputation, perhaps deservedly so, considering how many scammers are out there.
However, there’s no denying that the entrepreneurs in this niche are always ahead of the curve when it comes to building sales funnels. That’s why we recommend studying their methods regardless of your industry!
Make a list of YouTubers in the entrepreneurship niche with at least 100k subscribers and systematically explore their funnels. See what they use as their lead magnets, how they present those free offers, and how they pitch their paid products and services. You don’t have to buy anything, just observe how they do things.
Also, if you feel like you need to purchase someone’s online course because it will change your life, don’t do it because you can probably get the same information for free elsewhere. However, try to reverse-engineer what made you feel that way because it’s a sign that their funnel is effective.
You can learn a ton from the people in this space if you have an open mind. A lot of these tactics can be implemented in other industries with great success!
#5: Your Competitors’ Sales Funnels!
Funnel hacking is the process of systematically exploring your competitors’ sales funnels.
The reasoning behind it is simple: why waste time trying to reinvent the wheel when you can look at what’s already working, learn from it, and then implement those lessons in your business?
Figure out who the main players in your niche are and investigate their sales funnels.
Just be organized about this. Create a separate folder for each competitor and a subfolder for each sales funnel if they have more than one. Then, as you go through their sales funnels, make sure to document everything:
- Record the entire process with screen recording software.
- Download their lead magnets so that you can easily access them later.
- Save all their marketing emails in one text document. Create a table of contents and add each new email to navigate this document later easily.
- Screenshot their landing pages, sales pages, upsell, cross sell, down-sell pages, and all the other pages in their funnels. You can use a Google Chrome plugin like ZohoAnnotator or GoFullPage for this.
- Take notes as you are going through their funnel. You can jot them down with pen and paper and then type them into a text document later.
If they offer a free consultation, a strategy call, or a product demo, book it and ask them if it would be okay to record it.
Also, if their funnel includes a free webinar, record the entire thing and then use transcription software to transcribe that recording so that you can read their webinar script.
Ideally, you want to go through their entire sales funnel if that’s financially feasible, but if it isn’t, go as far as you can afford. That will enable you to see how they process orders, the quality of their products and services, how their customer support handles inquiries, and more.
Once you finish their funnel, start going through all the information you collected. Analyze their offers, copy, and funnel structure. Why are they doing what they’re doing?
Never straight-up copy your competitors’ funnels because it’s a bad look. Instead, take time to understand their approach, learn everything you can from it, and then use that knowledge to build a better funnel!
Another ‘idea rich’ post of yours Stephen. Keep ’em coming…
Glad you like it!