ClickFunnels is one of the world’s fastest-growing companies in the technology space. Over the years, the company has evolved into a comprehensive solution and resource that helps small and medium-sized businesses scale their revenue and drive growth.
The company was co-founded by Russell Brunson and Todd Dickerson in 2014. Much of the company’s early strides and successes can also be attributed to other founding team members like Dave Woodward and Ryan Montgomery.
ClickFunnels’ rapid growth under Dave Woodward’s leadership is a critical factor in the company’s success. His passion for marketing and relentless focus on customer growth has provided a springboard for revenue drive.
“We want our customers to ascend and continue to ascend. It means their business is growing, and that is what we want for them.” — Dave Woodward.
Since its inception in September 2014, Dave Woodward has steered the company to over $100,000,000 in annual revenue in less than five years. The SAAS platform has processed over $6.6 billion in sales, powered more than 7.1 million sales funnels, and over 1.3 billion contacts and leads have opted in.
For a non-VC backed company, ClickFunnels’ success story has been remarkable and nothing short of amazing. The company has defied the odds to become one of the most successful players in the tech space. As a result, they have earned recognition and awards for their incredible work and achievements.
In 2019, ClickFunnels was named as the Best Entrepreneurial Company in America by Entrepreneur’s Entrepreneur360 list. For three years in a row (2018, 2019, 2020), Inc magazine has listed ClickFunnels as one of America’s fastest-growing private companies. In addition, Forbes listed ClickFunnels as one of America’s Best Startup Employers.
ClickFunnels boast of over 127,000 active users, with more users joining the ClickFunnels family every day. ClickFunnels has helped more business owners generate millions and even tens of millions in annual sales than any other landing page or funnel software on the market.
In this growth study, we look at how the Dave Woodward-led company fared in their early days, their business dynamics, and how he helped ClickFunnels scale the company to $100 million in just three years.
About Dave Woodward
Dave Woodward is a purpose-driven entrepreneur and the CEO of ClickFunnels. Before assuming the CEO’s role, he served as the company’s Chief Revenue and Business Development Officer between 2015 and 2019.
The man who has been at the forefront of ClickFunnels’ success didn’t just burst onto the scene. Before joining ClickFunnels in 2015, Dave Woodward served in senior leadership roles across multiple industries. Between 1994 and 2003, he served as the regional director of Americo, Houston, Texas. During his time at Americo, he engineered business growth and oversaw the company’s expansion into 12 states, and eventually, the company’s sale.
As Dave recounts in his podcast with Matt Wolfe and Joe Fier, he found his love for marketing during the sale of Americo. He got so excited about it that he decided to set up his marketing agency and got heavily involved in direct response marketing at the time. Dave became the President and owner of Monopolize Inc. for 17 years, where he helped grow insurance, investment, mortgage, and real estate businesses through internet marketing and growth expansion.
Dave holds both Bachelors and Masters degrees from Brigham Young University. He is a Guinness Record Holder and has been listed multiple times in Who’s Who of International Business. Dave Woodward has spoken at podcasts, interviews, and events hosting up to 4,500 attendees, including Funnel Hacking Live, Traffic & Conversion, SaaS Academy, and more.
Beyond his role as CEO of ClickFunnels, Dave Woodward is the host of the weekly Funnel Hacker Radio Podcast. He shares incisive marketing and business secrets during his podcasts with the growing ClickFunnels community he helped build.
Dave’s radio podcast features seasoned business experts, digital marketing professionals, filmmakers, entrepreneurs, public speakers, and success coaches. Together with his guest, Dave’s podcast episodes cover a wide range of topics, including:
- 17 Steps to Uncommon Success with John Lee Dumas
- 6 Pillars of Intimacy Framework with Tony DiLorenzo
- Should You Be an Entrepreneur or a Business Owner with Ryan Daniel Moran
- How to Create Defining Moments — Nicholas Bayerle
- How to Pivot When Everything is Going Against You — Trey Lewelle
ClickFunnels Winning Strategy
The idea for ClickFunnels came at a time when startups had to depend heavily on different professionals to create content before putting their great solution on the market. Launching a product meant businesses had to deal with delays from the graphics guy, the tech geek, or the developer.
Entrepreneurs had to deal with lots of back and forth when there were edits or adjustments on product or marketing content. Due to delays, entrepreneurs were at risk of missing out on the opportunity to capture the market before product launch.
As David Woodward noted, “ClickFunnels was born out of necessity.” The solution is designed to help startups and entrepreneurs build complete sales funnels, generate leads, sell their products online and rake in revenue. The ideal ClickFunnels user is any salesperson who needs a simple-to-use technology to build their business and grow sales without bundling lots of different technology resources.
However, the early days of ClickFunnels weren’t always rosy. Prior to the actual launch date, they tried to get some early users to test the solution a couple of different times but could not get the traction they wanted.
Customers didn’t think the solution was good enough. That meant the team had to go back to the drawing board. Moreso, they didn’t get the right user interface, and the app wasn’t user-friendly. Eventually, they made some tweaks to the solution and launched it in September 2014.
At the end of 2015, the company had just about 10,000 users and was still trying so hard to get things up and moving.
Although the turn of the millennium decimated scores of tech startups and their financiers, ClickFunnels survived. The company weathered the dot . com bubble burst, which exposed many tech startups as empty shells that were totally unprepared for the hyper-competition of the business world.
According to Dave Woodward, the Chief Revenue Officer at the time, ClickFunnels experienced several evolve-or-die scenarios. They had to employ several innovative marketing strategies to secure user sign-ups. The company leveraged influencers, affiliate marketing, weekly webinars, and marketing events to launch the solution between September and December 2014.
“85 to 90 percent of buyers in the first year at ClickFunnels came from affiliates and joint venture partners.” — Dave Woodward.
Bolstered by the numbers and traffic from webinars and affiliates, ClickFunnels further targeted about 33 percent of their traffic and revenue from affiliates and another 33 percent from in-house traffic efforts. The company invested about $750,000 to $1 million per month on paid traffic. In addition, they enjoyed a lot of brand recognition and some organic growth at the time and leveraged content marketing to increase traffic and grow their customer base.
ClickFunnels’ success can be attributed to three strategic moves hinged on Dave’s customer-centric culture — building a community of hyper-engaged and active users, affiliate marketing strategies, and the focus on customer success.
The company positioned itself to drive customer retention and reduce churn by building a vibrant community of loyal users and customers.
With an inclusive customer culture and software that works, ClickFunnels is passionate about helping small and medium-sized businesses grow revenue. The solution is targeted at entrepreneurs with revolutionary ideas but don’t know how to launch them to the market.
Beyond selling services and subscriptions, ClickFunnels quickly added coaching and mentorship sessions to help users get the most out of their sales funnel. The company has licensed quality business leaders like Tony Robbins, Russell Brunson, Dan Kennedy, Frank Curran, etc., to help marketers enjoy unprecedented success based on proven business principles.
Another strategy that helped ClickFunnels reduce churn is offering a 14-day credit trial. Unlike other SAAS tools that opted for the freemium model, ClickFunnels has a two-step registration process that requires customers to enter personal data and credit card information. On average, the platform boasts of about 1800 signups daily, with about only 700 to 800 entering their credit card information.
ClickFunnels has an onboarding process that helps them drive 50 percent conversion for customers that have completed signups. In addition, they also continue to follow up with customers that supplied their personal data to drive more conversions.
Unlike traditional SaaS businesses, where churn is measured monthly, ClickFunnels’s onboarding process is a critical part of measuring and reducing churn. According to Dave Woodward, customers were willing to pay if ClickFunnels could help set up their email respondents (STMP), domain setup, and payment gateway.
The next value driver was to help customers get at least 100 contacts during the second month. ClickFunnels also provided free membership sites, so when a user got two or three paying subscribers on his site, he/she will have felt a sense of obligation to pay the subscription.
The core elements of ClickFunnels’ strategy and organic growth are:
- Mentoring and helping customers progress along their entrepreneurship journey.
- Providing tools and resources to help users rake in revenues and profits.
- Seeking innovative ways to create value for users continually.
- Making your customers your ambassadors (Attractive affiliate programs).
As Dave Woodward noted in the Beyond 8 Figures podcast with Steve Olsher, “ClickFunnels is just scratching the surface.” The company is actively working to decrease churn by working more with customer service, retention, sales to ensure that customers succeed quickly.
ClickFunnels Becomes a Profit Driver Under Dave Woodward
ClickFunnels is a Saas platform that helps entrepreneurs, merchants, and salespeople thrive in the digital economy. The software provides funnel building and landing page tools to help businesses:
- Increase page visits and drive conversions
- Increase sales, cross-sell, and upsells
- Maximize profits from sales
- Reduce cart abandonment
With a simple drag and drop editor, users can create attractive and high-converting landing pages and funnels that walk their customers through each step of the sales process. ClickFunnels organizes everything that entrepreneurs need to market, sell and manage their product into a single dashboard.
ClickFunnels platinum allows entrepreneurs to create follow-up funnels that drive customer retention and repeat sales. Using multi-dimensional marketing, marketers can quickly reconnect with their audience anytime and anywhere, send highly-targeted messages to their customers through email, social, text, and desktop notifications.
For many users, ClickFunnels isn’t just a solution. It’s a community of over 250,000 entrepreneurs, salespeople sharing ideas, tips, tricks, sales hack inspiration, results, and successes with each other. The solution provides value for users in the following niches:
- Agency / Freelance
- Information Products
- E-Commerce
- Coaching / Consulting
- Network Marketing
- Local Small Business
- B2B Lead Generation
- Blogging / Affiliate
- Non-Profits
Since its launch in 2014, ClickFunnels has been a profit driver, and tons of users have documented their growth and crossed a million dollars in sales in the last six years. In 2017 ClickFunnels created the “Two Comma Club” award to celebrate entrepreneurs who reached the 7-figure financial milestone inside one of their ClickFunnels. Between 2017 and 2020, more than 700 funnel hackers have earned the awards, having crossed the $1 million mark in sales.
Dave Woodward’s task-oriented leadership style and wealth of experience have transformed ClickFunnels into a million-dollar company without debts or external capital. Known as a leader who takes no for an answer, Dave’s ideologies and strategies for delivering results revolve around managing by metrics without losing sight of the individual and human elements that make things happen.
