How To Become An Effective Funnel Hacker

Last updated on February 4th, 2025 at 03:49 am

Building sales funnels that convert is a skill.

Entrepreneurs who are good at it tend to follow certain best practices.

Today we are going to take a look at the ten habits of highly effective funnel hackers. Adopting them can help you increase your conversion rates!

#1: Doing Their Homework

Highly effective funnel hackers do a ton of research before they start building a new sales funnel:

• Customer research – This includes reaching out to their dream customers and talking to them one-on-one, participating in niche online forums frequented by them, following the same influencers that they follow, consuming the same content that they consume and attending the same events that they attend.
• Market research – This includes taking time to understand the niche they are in, identifying the main competitors, and reading all available customer reviews for their products.
• Funnel research – This includes going through the sales funnels of their main competitors, from watching their ads to subscribing to their email lists to buying their products and services.

Generally speaking, the more research you do, the easier it will be for you to build a sales funnel that converts. So put it in the work required to understand your target audience, your niche, and your competitors!

#2: Following the Value Ladder Sales Funnel Structure

There are several popular sales funnel structures out there but we believe that the Value Ladder is the most effective one.

Here’s what it looks like:

There are three important aspects of this funnel structure that you need to understand:

Free Offer

Every Value Ladder sales funnel starts with the Bait stage where you use a free offer called lead magnet to attract potential customers and get their email addresses.

Gradual Increase in Both Value and Price

With the Value Ladder sales funnel, you pitch your least valuable and least expensive offer first (the Frontend stage), then a more valuable and more expensive one (the Middle stage), and finally your most valuable and most expensive offer (the Backend stage).

This gradual approach allows you to build trust over time until eventually, you have built enough of it to close that last sale. Remember, as online marketers love to say, the money is in the backend!

Logical Progression From One Offer to the Next

If you want your Value Ladder sales funnel to convert, merely having a value and price progression won’t be enough.

There also needs to be a logical progression from one offer to the next. But what does that mean?

It means that each offer should provide a solution to a problem that the customer is struggling with at that particular time.

Example: Health and Fitness Value Ladder

For example, let’s say that you are a personal trainer and want to build a sales funnel for your business.

The most common problem that people struggle with when it comes to health and fitness is losing weight. So you can start there and create a lead magnet that explains how to do it.

Then, you can have a one-on-one consultation with you as your Frontend offer where you create a personalized plan to help the customer implement the information from your lead magnet.

Then, you can have a personal training package with one consultation per week as your Middle offer to help them stay accountable and follow through with the personalized plan you provided.

Finally, you can have another, larger personal training package as your backend offer designed to help them get fit once they succeed at losing weight.

See how there’s a logical progression from your lead magnet to your Backend offer?

#3: Sticking to the Basics When it Comes to Designing Sales Funnels

When entrepreneurs get the hang of building sales funnels, they often start creating increasingly elaborate ones.

While you can make your sales funnels as sophisticated as you want with our software, the truth is that simple ones usually convert the best.

That’s why highly effective funnel hackers tend to stick to the basics and use proven sales funnel templates instead of trying to come up with something new.

#4: Sketching Out Sales Funnels by Hand First

Highly effective funnel hackers often sketch out their sales funnels by hand first before they start building them.

For example, our co-founder Russell Brunson is widely recognized as one of the top sales funnel experts in the world.

When he needs to create a new sales funnel, he starts by either drawing it on paper or on a whiteboard.

Of course, you can use software to sketch out your sales funnels if you want to, but we recommend trying the analog approach first. Maybe it will work for you as well?

#5: Building Sales Funnels as Quickly as Possible

The only way to find out whether your sales funnel converts is to build it and start driving traffic to it.

This might seem obvious but novice funnel builder often struggles to wrap their heads around it and end up wasting a ton of time trying to build a perfect funnel without any market feedback.

Meanwhile, highly effective funnel hackers build the minimum viable version of their sales funnel as quickly as they can, often in a matter of hours.

Then, they start driving traffic to it to establish baseline conversion rates. Once they have that baseline, they start optimizing their funnel.

#6: Optimizing Sales Funnels With A/B Testing

Highly effective funnel hackers have an “Always Be Testing” mentality — they are constantly testing various ideas in hopes of increasing the conversion rates of their sales funnels.

A/B testing, also known as split testing, is the most popular conversion rate optimization method out there.

Let’s say that you have two lead magnet landing page headline ideas that both seem promising. How can you figure out which one should you use?

Create two versions of your lead magnet landing page – version A and version B – that are identical except for the headlines.

Then, drive the same amount of traffic to both versions, wait until your experiment reaches statistical significance, and look at the conversion rate data to see which headline worked better.

You can then either A/B test the winning headline against a new one or keep it and move on to optimizing some other page element.

The vast majority of A/B tests that you run won’t amount to much but over time, the “Always Be Testing” mentality can help you maximize conversions!

#7: Testing Different Marketing Channels

Highly effective funnel hackers also test different marketing channels to see which traffic source converts the best.

Consider using Facebook ads to generate the traffic you need to optimize your funnel and then experimenting with paid advertising on other social media platforms, influencer marketing, podcast ads and so on.

#8: Doubling Down on What’s Already Working

Once highly effective funnel hackers identify their best traffic source, they start pouring more and more resources into it.

“Do more of what works” is another one of those things that seem obvious but may not feel intuitive to novices.

That’s why our friend Alex Hormozi encourages entrepreneurs to ask themselves: what’s stopping you from doing 10x more?

For example, if your ad campaign is working with a $1,000/day ad spend, why can’t you increase it to $10,000/day?

Of course, this is often easier said than done, so you don’t have to interpret this thought experiment literally. If you can’t do 10x more, maybe you can do at least 2x more?

That being said, it might turn out that there’s nothing stopping you from doing 10x more, in which case you should just start doing it!

#9: Adding Downsells, Upsells, and Cross Sells to Their Core Offers

Highly effective funnel hackers know that the easiest way to increase the profitability of a sales funnel is to add downsells, upsells and cross sells to the core Value Ladder offers.

Downsells

A downsell is an offer that you make once the potential customer has rejected your core offer. It’s supposed to be a downgrade that provides a fraction of the value for a fraction of the price.

Note that the downsell should be completely separate from your core offer as opposed to a discount on it.

Upsells

An upsell is an offer that you make once the potential customer has accepted your core offer. It’s supposed to be an upgrade on it.

You can offer them more of that product at a better price, a subscription for that product at a better price, or a bundle that includes that product and some extra stuff that they might be interested in.

Cross Sells

A cross sell is also an offer that you make once the potential customer has accepted your core offer. However, instead of being an upgrade on it, it’s supposed to be complementary to it.

Why Downsells, Upsells, and Cross Sells Work So Well

In the case of downsells, the fact that the potential customer has checked out the core offer indicates that they have at least some interest in it.

This means that they might be willing to purchase a product that is related to it but much more affordable.

Meanwhile, if they decide to buy the core offer, you know for sure that they are in a buying mood. That’s the best time to pitch your other products and services!

In all likelihood, if you add these extra offers to your core ones, some percentage of people who visit the core offer sales pages will end up buying them.

The money from those extra sales might be enough to cover your customer acquisition cost, allowing you to increase not just your sales funnel’s revenue, but also its profitability.

#10: Leveraging Email Marketing to Improve Their Conversion Rates

Highly effective funnel hackers understand that you can have the best sales funnel in the world and some people will still end up rejecting your core offers. And that’s okay!

Keep in mind that just because they aren’t ready to buy now, it doesn’t mean that they will never be ready. You just need to earn their trust and stay top of mind with them.

That way, if they ever need a solution to a problem that one of your core offers addresses, your product or service will be the first to come to their minds.

This is where email marketing comes in: once you have the potential customer’s email address, you can continue building trust by providing free value.

The best way to do that is to start a weekly niche newsletter. That way, you’ll be able to reach out to your subscribers every week and stay top of mind with them without coming across as too salesy.

After all, if every newsletter issue provides genuine value, people won’t mind if you advertise your core offers at the bottom of it with a “P.S.” section or a banner ad.

Moreover, you can also use your newsletter as a lead magnet and promote it on your social media and with paid ads. That can help you grow your email list much faster!

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!

P.S. Here’s What Readers Say About “DotCom Secrets”…

What Readers Say About “DotCom Secrets”