As you are likely well aware by now, ClickFunnels is an awesome online funnel building platform that is absolutely jam packed with features – especially given their aim to be a true all-in-one platform for digital marketers around the globe… And creating a membership site is no exception!
In fact, it is extremely easy to set up a basic ClickFunnels membership site in virtually no time at all!
Not only can you create simple and professional looking membership sites but you can also integrate them seamlessly with your ClickFunnels sales funnels and connected payment processors and third party auto-responders.
Why Create A ClickFunnels Membership Site At All?
Before I get too deep into how you can use ClickFunnels to easily create great looking membership sites, I want to quickly point out why there is such a need for membership areas in the first place.
Membership sites allow you to monetize your knowledge and skills as well as continue to develop a sense of community all at the same time.
This is a BIG deal in today’s fast paced internet marketing world.
Your customers are seeking something that they perceive to be high value and they also want to feel connected to you as the teacher.
A membership site is a great way to achieve both of those objectives as a dedicated membership area filled with well-structured modules and lessons, downloadable PDFs and links to other online resources can (if executed correctly) certainly make someone feel like they are getting value for money compared to just a downloadable PDF for example.
You can of course also include other calls to action to say join your Facebook group or even continue to upsell your customers from within the membership areas.
The possibilities are endless!
I don’t want to get too side-tracked here but if you haven’t yet read Russell Brunson’s Expert Secrets book then I implore you to grab a FREE copy of the book and read it from cover to cover.
It is a goldmine of ideas as to how to create your tribe and membership sites are just one part of your online marketing arsenal!
Ok so without further delay – lets dive into what you really came to learn…
How To Create A ClickFunnels Membership Site – Tutorial
ClickFunnels really is a one-stop-shop as it enables you as the marketer to create a membership funnel with a dedicated membership area so you can literally guide your prospective customer through all of the steps you wish to do things like:
- Capture their email
- Sell them your digital products and courses
- Offer an order bump to maximize the order value
- Give them access to your membership area using the email they used for making the purchase
- Create registration pages, membership access pages and lesson pages
- Lock certain areas of your members area
- Drip feed content over time
- Re-prompt the customer to purchase any upsell they declined the first go around
- And so much more!
The video below provides a step-by-step overview as to how you can easily create a basic membership site using ClickFunnels:
At a high level you will want to follow the below series of steps to get your membership site built:
- Pre-Step: Absolutely make sure you have ClickFunnels if you don’t have it already! It’s an amazing tool and better yet there is a totally risk-free 14 day trial for you to try it out! Get yours here
- Once you have your ClickFunnels account all setup, go ahead and click ‘Add New’ from within the ‘Funnels’ section of ClickFunnels
- On the next step, select to ‘Start Cookbook’
- Choose Membership Funnel and pick a free template or purchase a premium one should you wish to. Note: you can of course start with a blank membership funnel should you wish to as well
A membership funnel typically looks like this:
From there you can continue to use ClickFunnels like you normally would to name your funnel, edit the look and feel of the template using the ClickFunnels page editor etc.
Everything is so customizable in ClickFunnels so you can really play around to get the design the way you want it to be but remember its conversions that matter at the end of the day and not how pretty the page is 🙂
Once you have your layout all setup you can start adding new lesson sections and lessons. This is how you can break up your lessons into modules and also restrict access to certain parts to the member areas to only those customers that bought access.
I would recommend that you try to be as organized as possible when setting up your lesson sections and lessons. It’s easier for you from a maintenance perspective and it also greatly improves your student’s experience if they can navigate your members area with ease.
Other Important Things To Know About Running A ClickFunnels Membership Site
- Just like with your funnels, ClickFunnels hosts your members areas
- You can integrate your favorite payment gateways such as Stripe and PayPal
- They have a number of professional looking membership site templates for you to choose from
- You can connect automations and follow up funnels behind your membership funnels to ensure ongoing intelligent and targeted communication with your prospects and customers to generate you more revenue opportunities
But there are a handful of limitations for you to know about:
- As ClickFunnels is not a pure membership site builder as its core service offering relates to funnels, some membership specific features found in other focused teaching platforms such as student progress tracking are currently missing.
- That said watch this space as features continued to be rolled out and ClickFunnels is always improving! For example this used to be true of capabilities such a drip delay of content, a capability which has now been added!
- You need to embed your videos within your ClickFunnels membership areas using external third party tools like YouTube (free) or Vimeo, Wistia etc (paid). ClickFunnels does not currently allow you to host your videos on their platform itself.
Conclusion – Is Creating a ClickFunnels Membership Site Worth It?
For most readers, ClickFunnels is absolutely a great way to go if you want to create a membership site.
It comes loaded with a number of cool features, is continuing to get better all of the time and can have you up and running in a professional manner in virtually no time at all.
Even better you only need one tool monthly subscription as ClickFunnels can do so many different things for you and membership funnel capabilities are of course included in their $97 per month plan.
For enterprise level users looking for an all singing all dancing pure digital course platform then there are some limitations to using ClickFunnels as mentioned above and it may be a dedicated teaching platform that you are really searching for.
That said, I strongly believe the ability to integrate every part of the membership business process flow from initial email opt-in all the way to sale and then ultimate content delivery is what makes ClickFunnels stand out! It is very very powerful in that regard.
And given that ClickFunnels offers a 14 day FREE trial that is completely risk free – what is there actually to lose in checking out the ClickFunnels membership funnel capabilities for yourself?
Thanks for reading and good luck with your new membership area!