Marketing

My Comparison of Clickfunnels VS Simplero

Kim · March 31, 2022 · Leave a Comment

I’m often asked which marketing automation software I prefer. And that’s a hard question to answer. Because there are several that I love almost equally! Two of my favorites are for sure ClickFunnels and Simplero. They do similar things, some things one does better and some things the other does better. And some things only one will accomplish. Here are my thoughts on these two platforms, in no particular order, as a freelancer who builds and manages sales funnels and email marketing for my clients.

What I love about ClickFunnels

The people who run ClickFunnels KNOW digital marketing. Like, they are the expert of experts. And that’s evidenced by how well their brand is marketed. And thus all of their funnel “recipes” are designed to create “perfect sales funnels”.
They teach you what they know! If you are brand new to sales, digital marketing, and other aspects of the online business world, you NEED to check out their free and low-cost training opportunities. Start with the books by Russell Brunson. Grab Expert Secrets here through the ClickFunnels website. (Pay attention to how the funnel flows! That’s where your education begins!) Another great resource to really dive in and start learning funnels is the One Funnel Away challenge.
Amazing sales funnel and landing page builder. Whether you choose to use a free or premium template or create your own from a blank page (or have your team’s funnel builder or techy VA do it for you), you can rest assured that the basic elements of quality web design and sales funnel design will be in place when you are done. It’s a relatively simple drag and drop platform with an uncomplicated way to embellish your design with CSS code.
Payment processing is smooth. You do have to choose one payment processor, but using Stripe (for example) through ClickFunnels has always been a very smooth experience.
Set up of multiple products is straight forward.
Upsells are done nearly perfectly as well. This software was absolutely designed to perfect the art of the upsell. (You know, “Do you want fries with that? Or a dozen of whatever you just bought? Or an upgrade to the VIP package?”)
You can place your ClickFunnels pages on your WordPress website using their plugin. (Not free from glitches, unfortunately, but overall it usually works quite well.) This means that you don’t necessarily need a secondary URL or subdomain to present your ClickFunnels pages to the world, and you certainly don’t want to put out your landing pages with the default ClickFunnels url on them.
They have a fantastic affiliate program. Want to be in the affiliate business or simply refer your clients to them and cash in on their account month after month? Make sure you sign up for an affiliate account! (That’s why I’m using my affiliate links in this blog post, by the way. Because why would you want to talk about and send someone to a platform and NOT use an affiliate link?)
They also allow you to have your own affiliate program for your products and it works pretty well, also. Affiliate links use cookies that embed themselves on the user’s browser memory and tell the seller who provided them with the link so that they can compensate the referrer appropriately.

Cons of ClickFunnels

Their funnels aren’t always pretty. They actually like to say that ugly funnels sell better than pretty funnels. I’d have to see the stats on that one and understand their definition of “ugly”. Because I wouldn’t describe their funnel templates as ugly at all! They are neat and aesthetically pleasing and well designed. But they do tend toward feeling quite masculine. So maybe that’s why they aren’t “pretty”? And maybe what matters in how well an “ugly” vs “pretty” funnel sells has to do with your product and target market? I know I’m biased because of my profession, but I always find myself more inclined to purchase from a beautifully done funnel.
The tech issues. Things break…alot. Cache doesn’t purge when you’ve made changes…alot. Little glitches abound.
Related to that, their tech support has a reputation for being terrible. They have made strides to do better in the past couple of years, but seems that it’s still lacking compared to other platforms. And while, maybe, someone is working on the tech issues on the backend quickly, they tend to not let you know about it. The best tech support for ClickFunnels that I’ve found (other than hiring your favorite funnel geek)? Head to the official Facebook group and scroll/search for the issue you are experiencing. You are likely to find the solution, or the lack of solution other than “just wait it out”. If you can’t find a solution, post your question. You will probably get a couple of helpful answers and a ton of “I can fix that for you” offers.
Their membership site platform leaves a lot to be desired. It’s great for a simple member offer, such as lifetime access to a virtual summit recording. But if you want a more robust interactive membership site, this is not the solution for you.

What I love about Simplero

Simplero will do what ClickFunnels will do, and more. The sales pages you can build (from template for from a blank page) can look just as good as any other landing page builder. Mostly this has to do with educating yourself.
You can put almost everything in Simplero… your email list, your subscriptions, your website, your blog, your membership site. And it all works so well!
Payment processing is smooth and you can choose multiple payment processors (Stripe and PayPal, for example).
Their tech support is on point! Have a problem? They respond within minutes or hours (depending on complexity and time of day). Just can’t figure something out? They almost always know the answer.
They have extensive, searchable, free trainings available, using their own course platform.
They make constant improvements! Nearly every single time I log in, I get a notification of a list of things they have improved.
They really listen and care about their users. Many of the ongoing improvements are based on user suggestions. Want the platform to do something that you loved about another platform? Just have a vision of what would make a certain aspect of Simplero even better? Submit a suggestion and they will read it, consider it, and implement it at some point if it makes sense and is possible.
They also have a great affiliate program, both for you to help promote Simplero (here’s my affiliate link!) and that you can use to promote your own programs with your own affiliates.
One login for everything housed in Simplero. Let’s say you have purchased a course from 2 other people and you have your own Simplero account. If you use the same email for all 3, you will find it all under your profile. I love that feature!

Cons of Simplero

When I first started using Simplero for a client’s projects a year or so ago I was amused by the title. “Simplero” suggests its “simple”, right? It’s most certainly not simple! I screamed at my computer a great deal while learning this platform. lol But now that I’ve mostly mastered it, I find it to be simply wonderful. Maybe that’s why they use the name Simplero?
Some aspects are a bit limited. But again… they listen and if you want a particular new feature or upgrade to an existing feature, suggest it and it just might happen within a few months.

Let me know which platform you love, hate, or want to know more about. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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***This post or website contains affiliate links, which means that I may receive a commission or other compensation if you make a purchase using these links. As someone in the digital marketing industry, I strongly recommend that you also start to share affiliate links of your own! But be kind and honest when using them. Don’t just randomly throw affiliate links out there. Use the product first, know the seller first, or at least do your research first. Everything you see referred to on my website is either a product I have used for myself or a client or is from someone who I know and respect in the virtual business world. Enjoy!***

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Internet Marketing 101 and the Cincinnati Gorilla

Kim · June 1, 2016 · Leave a Comment

Stock image of a gorilla from Pixabay

If you haven’t heard about the tragic killing of an endangered Gorilla in the Cincinnati zoo last week, then you may have just returned from an internet-free zone on a deserted island. (Or at least not been on social media recently.) The event was tragic, and no matter how it turned out, it likely would have ended in tragedy. I’m not here to lay out my opinions on whether or not the Gorilla had to be killed or whether or not the mother of the child who fell into the exhibit is at fault.

What I am here to discuss is how this relates to internet marketing, the way stuff goes viral on Facebook and Twitter and how this can contribute to your business building efforts. I know, you are probably thinking that it’s got NOTHING to do with it! Well a discussion I had this morning, on a Facebook post, with someone totally created my thoughts on this.

Here’s how it went. Someone wrote an article that shows the father of the child has a criminal past. Exactly HOW is that relevant? 100% not relevant! But it accomplished getting at least one other article written about that article, calling out the reporter as a racist because of the family being African American.

Now I don’t know that reporter from Adam, so I have no way of knowing if that reporter is a racist; nor does the author of article number 2, I presume.

What I do find incredible, is that even though article number 1 has absolutely zero to do with the situation at hand of who was or was not at fault for the killing of that majestic creature, it has gone viral. Why? Because it has a piece of information that was not available elsewhere. It touched on two things that are more or less hot topics in our current culture (parenting skills and endangered animals) and threw into the mix what we all seem to love best…plain old fashioned gossip about the people involved. I mean, the court of social media had already tried and convicted the mother, now they can justify themselves by seeing what a “bad guy” the dad is too. And it just so happened that the family in question is black.

Article number 2 picked up on that little detail and capitalized on it by simply throwing the extremely hot topic of racism into the mix. Author 2 “called out” the “racism” in article number 1. Whether that racism is real or not is apparently irrelevant. (The irony being that the publisher of article number 1 is not even an American company.)

The results, folks, is every internet marketer’s dream come true. And we all know that controversy sells just as well as “relevant” information.

Those of us who have been in this game long enough, know that one way or another, money is made by traffic to your website. Some of us make money from the clients that find their way to our website. But newspaper-type businesses make money from the advertisements on the website. The more people who view and/or click on those advertisements, the more money they make.

So how does a British newspaper, most likely the last one into the game, make a few extra bucks off a story that had surely had every possible angle already beaten into the virtual ground before the main media even picked it up? You find something unique. And that just happened to be that the dad of the child who fell into the gorilla cage has a not-so-pretty history. Never mind that he is now a law-abiding family man. Never mind that he wasn’t even at the zoo. What matters to the reporter and to the company that she works for, is that it’s something unique.

Would it have mattered if the family happened to be white? I doubt it. Gossip is gossip no matter who it’s about. Just look at the other articles on that website. Plenty of nasty gossip, and most of its about white people. We all say gossip is a disgusting thing, but we still eat it up and contribute to it.

Let me summarize:

Article 1’s author did some extra digging and “broke” a story around the world, irrelevant as it may be, that people apparently are eating up. It’s pure gossip.
The second article, created a buzz in the US on a hot topic that nobody had likely even thought of in relation to this parenting vs endangered animal story.
Article number 1 has 70K shares. Article 2 has 22K shares. Together that’s nearly 100,000 shares and likely millions of comments and clicks to the articles between all those posts.
Article 2 creates a quality link to article 1, and watch those Google spiders go. SEO baby! Plus, both articles are linked in those 100K shares that I mentioned above.
Both articles are now making some serious bank from the advertisements on the sides of those stories. Just because someone didn’t notice as their child slipped into the gorilla cage.

So what can we learn from all of this if we step back and look at the situation without emotion? Find a story that is “all the talk”. Find a unique angle to that story. Write about that unique angle, even if its controversial or of questionable ethics. (But please listen to your heart and your gut before you do that!) Link to other well-done and popular articles. Get your story out there on social media. Run ads if you have to at first. Just get people talking about your perspective. And watch the readers pour in.

In case you haven’t noticed, I am actually doing the same thing that the reporters did. Finding a unique twist on that story. I mean, really? A gorilla and a child can turn into an article on internet marketing and SEO? LOL That’s how it’s done folks!

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Speaking of marketing 101… CoachGlue has a fantastic resource to help you work out your social media plans. Check it out here! (Yes, those are affiliate links. )

LeadPages new Drag & Drop Builder…I like it!

Kim · March 31, 2016 · Leave a Comment

I build landing pages…opt in pages, sales pages, webinar registration pages…you name it, that’s a major part of my business! I create them for myself and mostly for my clients. Anyone who has thought about building a landing page of any kind has likely heard of LeadPages. If you have used it and wanted some creative license with your new page, you likely found yourself quite frustrated with the cookie-cutter limitations that it had.

Well, now the game has changed! I just had the opportunity to try out their new drag & drop builder for the first time. Its got a couple of limitations I have noticed, but overall its a HUGE improvement! I can now happily recommend LeadPages to my clients who have heard they should use it.

What I didn’t like:

Integration with WebinarJam did not seem to carry through to the drag & drop. (The integrations on drag & drop are very limited compared to the regular templates.) This specific page I was working on required that integration, so I had to turn around and return to the basic template (and the frustrations that go with it…boo!). I think if you have the LeadLinks upgrade that might be a work-around. This client did not.
There are a limited number of templates to begin your build with. While not essential, its nice to have their proven templates as a guide. I didn’t have trouble finding an opt in page, but there are no thank you pages with the drag & drop option.
Everything seems to have really slowed down. Maybe it was just me, or maybe it was just today, however it seemed to be a server load issue…but I had to refresh loading pages a few times because they just kept loading and loading and loading. I’m sure this is temporary!

So far that’s my only complaint. And I expect that integration issues is something that will be resolved before too long. Plus, I’m sure the d&d templates are being added to frequently.

For a straight forward opt in page going to one of the more common integrations, such as Aweber or Go To Webinar, or with a simple link, the new LeadPages Drag & Drop page builder is quite nearly perfection met.

Have you used LeadPages Drag & Drop feature? What did you think abou tit?

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* Some of the links in this article are affiliate links. *

Tips to Build Your Business Online and Offline

Kim · January 17, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Recently we attended an all day webinar through Virtual Rebarcamp and learned great information about building your business and marketing your business online and off. One of the sessions I attended was titled “The 7 A’s To Building Your Business Online & Offline” hosted by Darin Persinger. Because of his experience as a trainer and coach in the real estate industry, the session was very valuable.

Below are highlights of this great information. It outlines strategies to use when building your business.

Audience – Know them! Who are they, where are they located? For example, if you are an agent in Manhattan, your blogs are probably not going to reference planting a garden in your fenced back yard. However this may be appropriate for the agent blogging in a small town in North Carolina.
Availability – Make it easy for your audience to contact you. Make sure your phone number, email and office number are on each page of your website. Some agents have an area of the website where the user can click a button and immediately contact the agent. Even if the lead gets a voice mail, that is okay. As long as the call is promptly returned.
Approachable – Does your audience feel like they can contact you? When you first obtain a potential client/lead, do you make it known they can call you any time and there are no ‘stupid questions’? Generally with potential clients, you will give more at first and expend more effort. Do not get discouraged if they don’t respond at first. Be friendly and cooperative. And most important, be patient.
Acknowledge – EVERY email, every facebook interaction, every twitter @, every voicemail. Time is important to people. If they take the time to write or call, even if it is 120 characters on Facebook, acknowledge that.
Appreciate – There are 9 billion web pages and 200 million blogs out there today. There are also 6 billion tweets. There are so many places your clients can go to get information, or referrals, or real estate agents. Appreciate your clients. Time is even more precious than money because it is non-renewable. How do you say “thanks” to your clients or to people that refer clients? How do you acknowledge them?
Authority – People use the market leader. With so many options, they want someone that knows what they are doing and has their act together. Be confident. Learn it…share it!
Authentic – Be you! Not everybody will click, so there is no point in spending time being disingenuous or being someone you are not. Get involved in social media like Facebook, and be yourself. Most people can see through insincerity. They want someone that is going to be genuine and honest.

Some of these tips are pretty useful and some are common sense. But still a great reminder. Hopefully you’ll find them helpful as well!

How Does Facebook Work for Your Business?

Kim · January 3, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Facebook is incredibly popular. Everyone has heard of it. Many people have a Facebook page. And many of them are even active on it! Now that you can update it from a variety of sources, including your cell phone, the activity on Facebook is tremendous. In fact, Christmas day set a record for Facebook—it was the most visited website on the net! It even beat out Google!

What do people do on Facebook? Well, they keep up with their friends, they make new friends, they play games, they promote political and social causes, and they expand their business connections. Just about anything. Facebook is a place that people “live”.

Businesses are finding that the free advertising they get on Facebook is more effective than thousands of dollars of television or print advertising. We have long known that word-of-mouth is an effective way of getting business. Facebook is, in large part, word-of-mouth (err…hand?) marketing at its best.

Here is how it can work. Shelley goes on Facebook to knock out a few more “Mafia enemies,” and while she is there she thinks about her upcoming house hunt. She has browsed houses online quite often, but she wonders if there is a local Realtor on Facebook. So she searches for one. And sure enough, she finds one! Let’s say the Realtor’s name is Jim. Shelley becomes a fan of Jim’s business page and begins to get great updates about real estate in her area. When Shelley becomes a fan of Jim’s business, every one of her friends sees a nifty little update about her, it says something like “Shelley became a fan of Jim’s Real Estate.” Shelley’s friend Mark is also thinking of buying a house in the future. He sees Shelley’s update, and clicks on the link to Jim’s page. Mark likes what he sees, so he also becomes a fan of Jim’s page. Mark’s status is updated to reflect this, and his friend Peter sees it and clicks….well you get the idea. Once the first fans have been found, a business page can spread like wildfire!

Who are the people in your area finding when they search for Facebook business pages? If you aren’t on Facebook, then someone else is getting fans—and customers—that could be yours!