Why We Love and Hate Software Tools
We love them and we hate them. And right now, we live in exciting times. There are an abundance of tools, utilities, systems to choose from. Katra, Kajabi, ClickFunnels, Groovefunnels, GoHighLevel, Skool, connect.io, system.io to name but a few. I’ve been in this game long enough to have looked at most of them some time or another. So I totally get it when people tell me it gets overwhelming.
So many tools claim to be “the best solution”. Well they would, wouldn’t they!
The Overwhelm of Software Choices
Believe me when I say I understand how confusing and overwhelming it can be trying to pick one. The image I added here just about sums it up! In previous years when I was starting out in this game, I looked at dozens of tools. I signed up for all the subscriptions, played around, created comparison spreadsheets and got totally engrossed in working out what does what. It was a headache! These things are almost designed to confuse!
I knew I wanted to run webinars so I looked at all the platforms. I ended up using GetResponse, which is an email marketing platform with webinars added. It seemed ok at first, but like so many things in life, it is only when you start to use something regularly that you get to know them properly. Finding out all the cool features. And limitations.
Learning Through Experience
Some things that are almost impossible to discover when you first start using them. I soon found myself researching alternatives and the one I am using now I have been with about two years, it has all the features needed and great tech support.
Avoiding Analysis Paralysis
Analysis paralysis! I want you to avoid this completely and so I am going to make some firm recommendations to you right now. If we work together and you have these, me and my team can absolutely help you out because we use them every day ourselves.
Essential Software Recommendations
- Appointment bookings – Calendly
- ThriveCart – create and sell digital products including appointments for time, ebooks, courses etc. handles voucher codes and affiliate sales
- Webinar hosting – webinargeek
- Email marketing - activecampaign
- Messenger marketing – ManyChat
- Website building – WordPress
- Video conferencing and recording Zoom – record meetings and provide notes, pretty essential for coaching
- Video hosting – YouTube can be used but not ideal as you have less control
I use a number of other tools, some “smaller” ones and Chrome extensions. I want to avoid loading too much on you though. I have used the above for several years now and in my opinion are best in class.
Why All-in-One Platforms Are Not Always the Best Choice
There are some platforms that try to combine a number of these things but I do not think they do it very well. It is very tempting to buy one solution, I advise against.
Where to Start?
So where the heck do you start?? I suggest Calendly because you can set up your calendar to mirror your written daily action plan, blocking out time to work and integrating with your calendar. You can add the booking link on your social profiles and include in your email footers.
By the way, this is a good time to remind you that we’re here for the long term. We’re building out our infrastructure to last for the duration of your coaching career. Remember Rome was not built in a day.
Planning for Growth
On your plan, we should have short-, medium- and longer-term objectives. The medium and longer may be less detailed because we firm them up as we get closer to those points in time, so we can add some high-level objectives in there.
These might look like:
- Start to run live webinars
- Create an evergreen webinarfunnel
And alongside we can add subscribe to webinargeek, activecampaign and thrivecart for example.
Yes, there is a lot to deal with but the beast of overwhelm is easily conquered by making a list and turning it into a plan by adding dates to dilute the effort across several months and just focus on what is in front of you today. The rest will still be there tomorrow.
Implementing Your Webinar System
Next to implement is webinargeek which is a webinar platform. There are many reasons for this.
It will allow you to offer and run webinars - live, on demand and automated. Take payments for webinars. Create an offer page to display at the end of your webinar, provide a registration page and offer page builder, send out emails and a bunch of other really helpful features. It can show you who registered, who viewed and who didn’t view your webinars.
Webinargeek will absolutely be at the heart of what you need to be doing.
The Power of Email Marketing with ActiveCampaign
Next is Activecampaign – this will allow you to create email sequences to nurture your audience, inform them of offers, and generally stay in touch. It integrates very well with webinargeek also.
Selling with ThriveCart
Thrivecart is next. This allows you to create digital products and offers a host of other features such as affiliate management (you can provide others with their own unique link that they can use to promote your product to their audiences and receive a commission payment from you.), voucher codes to make time limited special discount offers, order bumps, upsells and down sells.
Expiring links, PDF purchases, course membership management, payment plans and a lot of other cool and helpful features. Used in conjunction with activecampaign you have a perfect system for making $$$.
The Other Contenders: Are They Worth It?
Karta, Connect.io, Clickfunnels, Groovefunnels, Kajabi, Systeme.io, Gohighlevel.com, Skool amongst others.
I have looked into these products and they are evolving all the time. They all claim to be the “all in one solution”. And they have loyal followings. I’ve tried most of them and they all have serious limitations.
Take Kajabi – want to add an email in between two others in a sequence. Believe me, that is painful to do. There are so may limitations with each of these products, I have endured frustration with trying to do work that is thoughtlessly simple in the products I use.
Setting Up Payment Systems
You will need accounts with google pay, Apple Pay, PayPal, Stripe amongst others in order to accept online payments. The platforms mentioned allow you to integrate with these systems.
And in turn you may need to set up the appropriate legal entity, here in the UK I run my business through a Limited registered company for this purpose. Again, in the UK we can use card payment machines, SumUp being a recommended one, works with Starling Bank accounts.
Messenger Marketing with ManyChat
ManyChat is the platform of choice here. It is last on the list because I see this as a nice to have and its set up can be paid for by the increased $revenue you are hopefully now enjoying. It is a great way to add a layer of interest to your marketing efforts.
Messages get very good open rates compared to emails which means a smaller audience can yield results. Great for appointment reminders and interacting with people directly – you can jump in on an automated sequence and start a real chat. WhatsApp of course is now a platform of choice for many marketers. ManyChat can accommodate both.
The Endgame – Building Your Automated Money-Making Machine
Once you have all your platforms integrated and working, you will have an evergreen automated money making machine!
#WinningWithWebinars #WebinarFunnels #PaulJordanWebinarCoach
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