(2025 Update)

When we receive enquiries about building digital marketing funnels, we usually speak to someone who has tried ClickFunnels or another funnel builder but hasn’t achieved results. The truth is that having the tools isn’t enough – if you don’t know how to connect everything properly, you’ll waste both time and money. Based on our data, over 50% of new clients come to us because they didn’t succeed building their sales systems using ClickFunnels, Kartra, Groove, or LeadPages.

This situation became even more critical in 2024 when Groove Funnels announced they were changing their offers permanently. Thousands of business owners who had built their entire marketing systems on Groove suddenly found themselves scrambling in 2025, facing the daunting task of rebuilding everything from scratch or migrating to expensive alternatives. Many discovered they’d lost years of work, customer data, and optimised campaigns overnight.

Honestly, if you gave me a huge box of motorbike parts, I’d know they fit together somehow, but I could stare at them for years and still not build a working bike. That’s because I don’t understand how engines work or have experience building motorcycles.

In digital marketing, the main challenge is connecting the dots (or jigsaw pieces, hence our logo).

Here’s a straightforward guide to building effective sales systems from scratch without relying on expensive monthly software subscriptions.

Start with the End Result for Your Digital Marketing Funnels

Most funnel builders, including ClickFunnels, encourage you to begin with the first step without creating a proper strategy. They don’t push you to develop a roadmap, so you’ll likely start with the landing page. This approach is completely wrong!

You must begin with the end goal: what action do you want your leads to take, and in what order? If you jump straight into any builder without a strategy – even copying existing templates – you’re likely to fail.

When we take on new clients, we ask about their revenue goals, what they want to sell, and who their target audience is. This allows us to reverse-engineer the process and guide them there. Most funnel builders don’t work this way.

You can map your process using visualisation tools. We love Miro boards because they allow collaboration with clients, but there are plenty of free alternatives. If you’re considering starting with this step, we can help through our custom funnel mapping services at LMNts Marketing.

Choose Your Niche Before Building Digital Marketing Funnels

When I say choose a niche, I mean pick one and stick with it. Don’t change your mind constantly. We’ve actually fired clients who do this because we need you to have a clear vision for your business.

After choosing your niche, drill down further into a sub-niche. Then identify the problem they’re most motivated to solve, and find the segment most likely to purchase from you. Target those people specifically. I know it’s easier said than done, but if you need help, try our free ideal client exercise.

Once you’ve identified your target audience and their problem, craft your main message. Brainstorming on paper or using mind mapping tools yields the best results. Alternatively, consider our Marketing SWOT service to help build profitable conversion systems.

Pick the Most Suitable Lead Magnet for Your Sales Funnel

Now you can examine different types of landing pages. Honestly, creating high-conversion landing pages is an art form, so you must be crystal clear about the problem you’re solving. Remember, you’re not selling what you do – you’re selling the solution. Most people are motivated to move away from pain or towards pleasure, as Russell Brunson explains.

For lead magnets, choose from gated videos (viewable only after submitting details), eBooks, free courses, checklists, or workbooks. Consider your audience’s preferences: do they prefer reading, watching videos, or interactive content? This might explain why you never made money with ClickFunnels.

Your lead magnet must be presented enticingly and relate to what you’re selling. If you’re selling parenting support or courses, offer a free checklist that helps people recognise their problems. Business coaches might create quizzes that score visitors’ answers and highlight issues, then offer free consultations immediately after.

Once your landing page is set up (you can design one on WordPress or hire a freelancer), add the next steps and begin driving traffic to your site.

The Recipe: What You’ll Need for Custom Digital Marketing Funnels

You’ll need either a website with drag-and-drop design features or a template to work from. This helps you build landing pages easily without subscribing to monthly services that might disappear overnight.

Add marketing automation to your site. For automatic confirmation emails, you’ll need an autoresponder that can send download links, follow up with prospects, track traffic, and segment leads based on interest levels. We use ActiveCampaign, but any email marketing software works.

The Groove Funnels closure taught us a valuable lesson: when you don’t own your system, you’re vulnerable. Those who built everything on Groove lost years of work when the platform shut down. Building custom solutions means you own everything – your data, your pages, your customer relationships.

Consider working with a marketing automation agency to set everything up or hire freelancers for email copy and designs. You’ll also need a payment processor for invoicing, payments, and refunds.

The beauty of owning your system is freedom from monthly fees. Instead of paying £97-£297 monthly for software that might disappear, you invest once and own forever. This means unlimited pages, complete design flexibility, no monthly costs eating into profits, and total control over your customer data.

At LMNts Marketing, we offer custom funnel plans that eliminate ongoing software costs whilst providing superior flexibility and performance. Our clients often save thousands annually whilst achieving better results than expensive monthly platforms.

Test Your Conversion Systems

When budgeting for your system, always include traffic costs – something most people forget. There’s no point building anything without sufficient traffic to generate conversions. It’s like building a superstore in the desert.

With your allocated budget, start testing. Create variations of headlines, images, buttons, and even lead magnet formats to determine what your audience prefers. Try multiple traffic sources and calculate your return on marketing investment.

We typically use 10% of allocated advertising budgets on testing. It’s worthwhile because you’ll maximise conversions and improve campaign profitability. Think of it as laying foundations – it doesn’t show immediate improvement, just groundwork, but it’s essential for solid results.

Evaluate Your Digital Marketing Funnel Performance

After using your advertising budget, review the statistics. My best advice:

Lose the losers and keep the winners.

Eliminate the bottom half of variations whilst scaling up the top-performing ads. This way, you’ll stop shooting in the dark and run proven-to-convert campaigns from day one.

Repeat this evaluation every 4-12 weeks to monitor market behaviour changes.

Scale Your Marketing Campaigns

Once you achieve 1-6% conversion rates (depending on your offer), consider increasing your budget. When you’re getting £2-3 back for every £1 spent, scaling makes sense.

Scale by targeting different demographics, expanding reach, or adding products to increase customer spend and campaign returns.

Consider retargeting campaigns targeting site visitors who didn’t take action. Alternatively, use your autoresponder for retargeting campaigns, but ensure proper tracking is set up.

Add Steps to your Digital Marketing Funnel to Maximise Revenue

Once your basic system works (two or three steps with a few emails initially), consider additional offerings. Perhaps you have webinar recordings you could put on repeat, or you could create courses or upsell group coaching to existing students.

Opportunities are endless, but pause and brainstorm here. What could you add that costs little but offers high perceived value to customers?

Starting with simple systems and building upon them is easier than trying to perfect everything before getting your first lead.

Multiply Your Results By Working Smarter

Once your first system is optimised, you can start the next one – but only then. Russell Brunson advises not starting new projects until you’ve made at least $1M from the first one.

£1M might sound ambitious, but you can work smarter to achieve it. Adding high-ticket offers increases revenue massively, though you might need sales staff for closings. Consider affiliate routes – recruit people with access to your ideal clients who’ll add them to your system for a percentage of sale value.

The advantage is you won’t pay monthly fees anymore. Your system is easily managed, customisable, and available 24/7. You could literally be on a beach whilst people buy your programmes or book consultations.

Unlike Groove users who lost everything overnight, you’ll own your system completely. No platform can shut you down, no monthly fees can drain your profits, and no external company controls your customer relationships.

Conclusion

In conclusion, building digital marketing funnels without ClickFunnels is absolutely possible and often superior. You can succeed or fail with or without builders if your foundations aren’t right. Follow these steps and you’ll crack the code of marketing automation whilst running sales on autopilot – all without worrying about platforms disappearing or monthly fees eating into your profits.

Resources:

• https://brandfinance.com/insights/measuring-marketing-romi
• https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/retargeting-campaigns-beginner-guide
• https://about.crunchbase.com/blog/7-ways-to-optimize-your-sales-funnel-to-max-out-conversions/
• https://neilpatel.com/blog/guide-to-optimizing-funnels/
• https://www.copy.ai/blog/digital-marketing-funnel 
• https://getwpfunnels.com/digital-marketing-funnel/