ClickFunnels had changed the way we all build marketing funnels. And while the process is simple, to start building one from scratch has never been easy. You don’t know what works best for your market. How the audience will react to different designs, colours, and headlines.
While there’s no right or wrong way in creating your sales funnel. It is best to begin to funnel hack your way to more profits. Learn from your competitors that already succeeded and model them. Not copy, but model. Modelling what works will save you lots of time and money. Here we will show you How to Build Marketing Funnels step by step.
Here’s a Simple Roadmap To Start Funnel Hacking
1. Make a List of Competitors
The very first thing you’ll need to do is to research your niche market. Who is making the most sales in the market? Make a list of all of your competitors and try to find a pattern they have on their landing page. For instance, when I do research on my competitor\’s Instagram, I’ll look at the photo they post. The theme, colour, and focus. The same applies to a landing page or other content.
2. Screenshot Everything
We call this a swipe file. Most of us will have a compilation of swipe files. This is our own collection of sales funnels that we saw, not only from our competitors but also from other marketers.
First, download a screenshotting tool that will allow you to easily screenshot website pages (full pages from top to bottom). Start saving them on your computer. Here you can use the “Full Page Screen Capture” extension if you’re using Chrome.
Next, create a New Folder called <Competitor Name 1>. And start taking screenshots of all the pages they have. Keep them in the folder. It’s best if you can also sketch their sales funnel flow. So, you can recall their steps as well.
What we generally do is setup folders along the lines of:
- Competitor Research Folder Structure
- Front End Funnel Landing Pages
- Backend Funnel Landing Pages
- Ad Creatives
- Retargeting Ad Creative
- Others
3. Start Building Your ‘Funnel Hacking Checklist’
Now that you’ve taken screenshots of your competitors’ homepages, it’s time to analyze.
Then, start by opening a Word Document or Google Doc and start taking down some of the key trends you see. For example:
- What type of headlines and subheadlines do they use
- How they hook their audience in the headline
- What colour theme do they use and where?
- How many colours are on a page?
- Do they include social proof/testimonials?
- How do they structure their call-to-action button?
- Do they have videos or just text?
- Do they list benefits, features, or both?
- Are there any pop-ups during exit?
- Is there a full sign-up form or just an email opt-in?
- Do they mention prices for their products?
- If so, what are their price points?
4. Track Their Tools
So now you have the idea of building your sales funnel. Then, you’ll need to know their systems. How they bring in traffic to the page and convert it.
To find this out, you’ll need to download two more Google Chrome Extensions.
1. Ghostery sees the “invisible” web, detecting trackers, web bugs, pixels and beacons placed on web pages that gather information about your internet activity.
While this app is primarily designed to stay hidden from trackers, it’s also a great tool for marketers to spy on their competitor’s websites.
2. BuiltWith Technology Profiler allows you to see what tools and technology a site is using. How the site is built on which platform and what tracking methods they’re using.
Now that you’ve installed both of these tools, reload the page and you’ll be able to see all of the tools and tracking which is taking place for every visitor who hits their website.
5. Use Advanced Competitive Intelligence Tools
This is where we use other tools to study our competitors. It not only contains their tracking but also where they get their traffic, their ranking and their target keyword. The more we know about our competitors, the higher the chance we can win the game.
SimilarWeb is the one that we always use. It lets you see a wide range of activities that are going on within the websites. One of our favourite activities that you can see on SimilarWeb is the top referring sites and top destination sites as people flow in and out of your competitor’s website. You can also get information like a breakdown of social traffic, banner ads, other similar websites and more.
Summary – How to Build Marketing Funnels
By getting this information, you can then craft your irresistible offer and landing page for your product and service. Remember this, by Funnel Hacking, we mean modelling what works. But not copying it. Happy funnel hacking.
Learn about how to build your first business in Your First Funnel Challenge where Russell, the founder of ClickFunnels will guide you over 5 days challenge to build a successful online business.