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Our Honest GoHighlevel Review 2020 – The Best Jack of all Trades or Master of None?

What is GoHighlevel?

GoHighlevel is a new-age marketing tool that consolidates the most useful marketing tools under a single umbrella. It’s a marketer’s best friend. Because Go Highlevel does so much, it’s hard to actually say “what it is” without excluding some of “what it is”.

Later in this GoHighlevel review, I’ll go into more detail on how we use GoHighlevel, but for now I want to give you a summary to help you figure out if it’s right for you:

GoHighlevel helps us with:

  • Client acquisition.
  • Link building (It’s an SEO thing).
  • Automating our business (this is HUGE and life changing).
  • Client fulfillment.
  • It’s our ultimate client retention tool.
  • Serves as a scalable CRM for ourselves and for our clients.
  • Reputation management.
  • Building out funnels.
  • Call tracking, revenue tracking, and lead tracking.
  • Increasing ROI on adspend and existing clients.

If you’re someone who is looking for ways to save time through business automation and make money, then this tool is the right one for you.

Please refer to the graphic below where you can see EVERYTHING that GoHighlevel replaces.

>Reserve Your Spot: GoHighLevel 14 Day Free Trial

Go Highlevel Review

Besides what’s on that graph, there’s a few more things you should know about “what Go Highlevel is” and does:

  1. You can white-label it as your own tool.
  2. It focuses heavy on automation. This frees up your time so you can focus on what matters.
  3. It’s infinitely scalable. Their agency plan starts at $300/mo and allows you to have unlimited accounts. We use this feature at our agency to create accounts for our clients, for our own websites, and for all our lead-generation GMBs.
  4. It’s cloneable. If you’re a digital marketer, I’m going to be giving you templates that you can upload to your account to hit the ground running. Once you create your first “build” for your clients, then you can clone them for the next. This is powerful for people are niche specific.

GoHighlevel Review: Read This Section to See If It’s Right For You

In this section, I want to help you figure out if GoHighlevel is right for you and your business situation.

Starting off, I want to address Gohighlevel’s weaknesses. It’s not a perfect solution for someone who is into e-commerce. If that’s you, I would stick to Shopify and all of it’s plug ins.

Aside from that, GoHighlevel is a great fit if:

  1. You’re already paying for and using any of the services above. GoHighlevel will consolidate all your tech under one umbrella. This will simplify your stack, save you time, stress, and money.
  2. You are a digital marketer who is a freelancer, has an agency, or focuses on affiliate. Bonus points if you focus on SEM or Social Media advertising.
  3. You sell online courses or digital products that involve funnel building, auto responders, or membership areas.
  4. You want new, creative, and easier ways of picking up digital marketing/agency clients.
  5. You’re looking for ways of simplifying your technology, reducing costs, and would prefer to gain power instead of losing it.

If any of those descriptions seem right, then read on.

Our Honest GoHighlevel Review

 

For this GoHighlevel review, let’s talk about the negatives first because that list is a lot shorter than the positives.

Our first experience with GoHighlevel was that the software felt somewhat overwhelming. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but diving into GoHighlevel requires a certain mindset.

Because GoHighlevel does so much, it feels like there’s a serious learning curve. To combat that, and to properly train our team we had to approach it with a “one step at a time” mentality.

Here are some of the areas where we just put the time into understanding:

  1. What triggers are and how to use them.
  2. How to combine triggers and campaigns to automate a large portion of our business.

Once we figured out those two things, by sitting there and reading all the options, the rest became easy.

For us to learn how to use GoHighlevel it took about 2 days of being DEEP in the software.

However, to make sure we help you, when you sign up using this link below (it’s connected to our GoHighlevel account), you’ll automatically get access to our Digital Agency Template and to a course that teaches you how to use GoHighlevel.

Overall though, GoHighlevel feels overwhelming because it’s 15 different tools in 1. However, taking the time to learn all the other tools that we replaced like Mail Chimp, Clickfunnels, Leadpages, CallFire, Zapier, WordPress took way longer cumulatively than just learning how to use GoHighlevel.

So for this GoHighlevel review, we’re going to give it 4/5 stars for usability.

GoHighlevel Review: How We Use it At Our Agency

For this GoHighlevel Review, I want to share with you how we use GoHighlevel at our agency because there’s plenty of people who promote/review products that they’ve never used – and that’s not us.

Method 1: Automating Client Acquisiton and Onboarding

One feature that we absolutely love about GoHighlevel is that it consolidates and automates a multi-channel outreach approach.

Previously, most of our outbound marketing for link building and client acquisition was all done through email.

When we added GoHighlevel to our agency, we were quickly able to replace both Woodpecker and Mailchimp while getting a higher quality service through Gohighlevel.

Our process now for Client Acquisition includes multiple touch points:

Day 1: Email

Day 2: Text

Day 6: Email

Day 7: Voicemail

Day 13: Email

Day 15: text

And we’ve seen our response rates skyrocket from around 4% using could emails to around 10-12% by combining text and the voicemail feature.

We’ve set it up so that if you’re interested in trying out GoHighlevel and use the link connected to our account, then you’ll automatically get some our templates emailed to you and built in your account

In doing our own research, we found that to add both text marketing automation and voicemail marketing automation would require 2 more services (on top of Woodpecker and Mailchimp), which would cost an extra $200/mo. 

On top of that, we’d also need to somehow use Zapier to integrate and glue it all together.

Pro Tip: Once we built out a campaign that worked, we just hired a few more people to constantly prospect a list of potential clients and enhance that lists quality.

Every week, we upload about 100-200 highly targeted prospects into our funnel and schedule between 10-20 client appointments all through GoHighlevel. 

Gohighlevel review booked client appointments

While we’re on that note, for the clients that don’t sign up, we add them to a nurture sequence so that our agency stays in touch and is providing value to them.

For the ones that do close, they get an on-boarding sequence (automated) so that we can get access to the typical things an agency would need (Google Analytics, FB accounts, Search Console, Website/Hosting/DNS access, etc..).

Method 2: Automating Our Link Building

I know this section will only appeal to the very small percentage of readers out there who build links for your clients. The same methods that we use for client outreach, can also be used for link building.

We have dedicated team members that prospect websites we’re interested in getting links from. We then plug them into a multi-channel outreach campaign, funnel them into a form where they give us the information we need (TAT, pricing, content guidelines, niches, etc…) then that gets zapped to our partners list.

If you want to receive a copy of our link building templates, funnels, and playbook, then when you start your 14 day free trial of GoHighlevel using the link below, we’ll automatically send it to you.

Method 3: Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

CRO is the most undervalued and neglected part of digital marketing. Most marketers focus on the front end – how to get leads in through the door, but never bother to figure out how to get leads to close.

We’ve dramatically increased our client’s ROI and decreased their customer acquisition cost by implementing GoHighlevel through several steps in the sales process, with the big one being when it comes to appointment booking.

By connecting GoHighlevel with Facebook Ads and Google Ads, you’re able to do quite a few things that lead to way higher conversion rates:

  1. Book appointments on the spot. What makes this special is that we use appointment reminder sequences via mobile and email. When a prospect books an actual appointment, they make a greater mental commitment to the service they’re interested in. By adding appointment reminders, you dramatically increase the rate at which people show up for a service by 30% at worst and 80% for outlandishly good clients.
  2. Force calling means that when somebody fills out a lead form, either through PPC, or Facebook ads, then they instantly get a call to connect them with you or your client. By using this system, you strike while the hammer is hot and thus dramatically improve your conversion rates.

Including this little bit of CRO into your marketing not only increases the conversions you get for yourself, but for your clients, thus making you a more valuable marketer to them.

Method 4: The Ultimate Client Retention System

GoHighlevel_client_retention

If you have ROI tracking and appointment booking in your business then it’s like rigging a slot machine in your favor so that everyday is payday, because now, your clients will (most likely) never fire you.

So why read this section? Because I’m going to show you how we use GoHighlevel to develop the ultimate client retention system.

If you implement what I show you in this GoHighlevel review, you can almost guarantee that you’ll retain all of your clients.

The only 2 reasons a client should ever fire you are because:

  1. They don’t like you.
  2. You don’t deliver results.

While I can’t help you with your personality in this GoHighlevel review, I can help you with the latter.

The thing about results is that if you can’t translate what you’re doing into ROI, then to the client, you’re not really producing results.

Here’s what I mean…

Let’s say a Black Swan even happens that sends the global economy into chaos and now your client has to tighten up their operations. They’re figuring out who to keep and who to fire.

GoHighlevel Review Scenario 1:

If the client knows that they spend $3,000/mo with you and net $21,000 back, then they know you bring in a 7x ROI net.

GoHighlevel Review Scenario 2:

But, if your client spends $3,000/mo with you and know that you “rank them for the #1 position on Search Engines” then they no longer know with clarity the ROI.

So, because they’re playing it safe, they’re probably going to cut costs/fire you because it’s not clear to them how much money you bring in.

GoHighlevel let’s you track inbound calls, texts, leads, and then organizes them into a pipeline for your clients (all automated) so that you have irrefutable proof of the results you generate for your clients.

In short, it bridges the gap between your marketing efforts and the results that the client is getting.

GoHighLevel_Review_Pipeline

Additionally, besides bridging that gap, there’s one more thing I want to mention in this GoHighlevel Review. And it’s that because you’re using GoHighlevel to provide so many services (see the first image of this article), then you become irreplaceable.

Because for a client to replace you, they have to sacrifice/replace their:

  • SMS Marketing
  • Email Marketing
  • Voicemail Marketing
  • Appointment Booking
  • Web Funnels
  • CRM
  • Primary Marketing (SEM / Social Media Marketing)
  • Business Automation

Delivering these services to your clients doesn’t take much. The results your clients get are incredible. But the hook is that for them to leave you, they have to either give up so much or replace everything they’re losing.

Being irreplaceable and proving your ROI is a bullet proof strategy for client retention.

Method 5: Business Automation

We’re not bot coders or script writers, and because of that, we always thought automating our business would be hard. 

GoHighlevel saves us hundreds of hours of work each week through automation – and the best part? It was pretty easy to set up. Through their systems of triggers and campaigns we’re able to automate nearly everything on the customer fulfillment end. For example, we can:

  1. Send out automated voicemails wishing our customers a happy birthday.
  2. Let customers use our calendar to schedule appointments. This sequence also comes with automated follow up reminders which dramatically increases conversion rates.
  3. Automate our follow up and nurture sequences.
  4. Automate our on-boarding messages and packages.
  5. Automate our reporting and call tracking.

Those are just some examples but list goes on and on. On top of helping our business out, this is a service that we’ve been able to offer to our clients that’s saved them hundreds of thousands of dollars in employee expenses and time.

As just 1 example, in the past, some of our contractor clients would have their admin manually call people and remind them to schedule maintenance. Through GoHighlevel we were able to automate this process using a voicemail campaign and literally save them 3 weeks worth of dedicated work.

GoHighLevel Review: The Different Parts

In this section, we’re going to cover the different parts of GoHighlevel and review them briefly.

GoHighlevel CRM: Is It Good?

As far of CRMs go, we can only compare it to what we’ve seen and used. So far, the Gohighlevel CRM is very competitive with other CRMs like Hubspot, Pipedrive, Acuity, MindBody, Insightly, and Infusionsoft.

GoHighLevel_Review_Pipeline

For most businesses, GoHighlevel is absolutely outstanding. But, for those who have e-commerce websites with 20+ products, we would not recommend using GoHighlevel (this recommendation does not include people selling digital products).

The GoHighlevel CRM completely replaces the CRMs we mentioned above and for only a fraction of the price.

Some of the other cool features about their CRM is that you can add unlimited employee accounts for each business.

This means the administrator, the sales team, and other members can all log in and access vital information for the business. This centralizes communication and helps keep the business accountable for communicating with their clients

GoHighlevel_CRM

Additionally, you can control each individual employee’s level of access and visibility.

This means sales members can have access to the pipeline and conversations. 

The admins/managers have access to the sales members.

And the business owner can have access to everything.

Or maybe, you sell GoHighlevel as individual pieces with up sells so the business only gets further access as they pay more.

GoHighlevel Review: Is the Marketing System Good?

GoHighlevel’s marketing system consists of 2 main parts: 

  1. Inbound/Outbound Outreach
  2. Inbound Traffic Conversion

The “Inbound/Outbound Outreach” has 5 channels:

GoHighlevel_review_outreach_channels

  1. Text.
  2. Email.
  3. Voicemail.
  4. Messenger.
  5. Forced Call.

First, the power GoHighlevel offers you through these 5 marketing channels alone would cost you around $400/mo and requires 4-5 different tools that would all need to be integrated with each other.

Second, yes, they’re marketing is good. By combining the marketing channels with their “triggers” and “trigger links” you can get GoHighlevel’s outbound marketing system to do pretty much anything.

For example, if you want a campaign for customers who add to cart but don’t purchase, you can do that.

If you want a campaign for if customers click on email link, you can do that.

If you want custom messaging sequences based on where the prospect is in their buyers journey you can do that.

If you want to distribute leads to multiple vendors based on the lead’s qualifications, you can do that.

There are no limit when it comes to GoHighLevel’s marketing system.

GoHighlevel Vs. Clickfunnels and other builders

Copy of Go High Level Review

Although we love Clickfunnels, we have to give the win to GoHighlevel. First, to even compare the two, you have to be looking at Clickfunnels Etison suite to match some of what GoHighlevel can do.

Right there, you’re looking at $300 for Clickfunnels and $97 for GoHighlevel.

Second, GoHighlevel literally does everything that Clickfunnels can do, but better, simpler, and with more in-house integrations.

Both Clickfunnels and GoHighlevel:

  1. Come with Funnel building tools (they use the same builder).
  2. Come with Website building tools (GoHighlevel’s is better and comes with templates).
  3. Comes with Email marketing and segmenting capabilities.
  4. Comes with an amazing community of talented marketers.
  5. Have an extensive library of training documents.

However, where they really stand apart is customer service and the affiliate programs.

Lately, Clickfunnels customer support has been beyond awful (we know because we used to be users prior to switching to GoHighlevel). On the other hand, GoHighlevel’s team is fantastic.

On top of that, the Clickfunnels affiliate program makes you jump through tons of hoops to get in for a 25% payout.

GoHighlevel gives you 40% and their affiliate program is super easy to get started with.

Where Clickfunnels Stops, GoHighlevel Picks up.

Clickfunnels has fallen behind. Their “product” hasn’t been further developed in years and it’s really set the stage for something like GoHighlevel to take the stage.

Clickfunnels is like a 1998 computer while GoHighlevel is the modern, 2020 one. Where Clickfunnels stopped, GoHighlevel picked up.

With GoHighlevel you can set up more than just email campaigns without having to do further integration. You can add 

There isn’t a single thing that Clickfunnels does that GoHighlevel does not. So your money is better spent on GoHighlevel rather than Clickfunnels.

GoHighlevel Review: Repuation Management

Reputation management can have several meanings. The way that we use it our agency is specifically to gather reviews our clients.

When Paul the Plumber has 400 5 star reviews on their Google My Business and Facebook pages, while their competitors only have 20 or so reviews, guess who is going to get the client? Paul the Plumber.

How Does GoHighlevel Help With Reputation Management?

There’s a really big green button on the top left of GoHighlevel. When a client needs to be checked into the business, all the business owner has to do is click that big green button.

Once they’re checked in, they’ll be plugged into an automatic review request messaging sequence that can be fired off 1 hour, 1 day, or even 1 week after their visit.

If you want to cancel and prevent the request from going out then you can do that too. But overall, it makes getting reviews super easy because “checking a client in” is something that admins need to do anyways.

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