According to a Marketing Metrics study, your probability of selling to a new prospect is between 5 percent and 20 percent. However, the probability of selling to an existing customer is between 60 percent to 70 percent.

One of the most effective ways to boost revenue is to increase and optimize the value of new leads. If you focus solely on optimizing the conversion rate of non-buyers, you’re leaving money on the table!

LVO gives your business a competitive advantage that increases your profitability.

Conversion Rates vs Lead Value

First we must make a distinction between lead value, conversion value, and conversion rates, since people often mix up the concepts.

Conversion rates, as understood by most marketers, are about getting more visitors to buy your core offer.

So it boils down to optimizing your conversion. You want to squeeze as many buyers as possible out of those leads you worked so hard to generate. Your conversion rates are the end result of all your elements crafted together. It’s the sum of whether your efforts and campaigns worked or failed.

Instead of spending energy on converting more visitors into buyers—try a new technique. It provides value to your leads while you’re still making a profit. Lead Value Optimization (LVO) is about making each lead spend more, instead of turning more visitors into buyers. This type of optimization is constantly driving value to your funnels by increasing upsells and repeat customers.

LVO is simple in concept. Get a customer to checkout. Make sure they don’t forget about you, and get them on a mailing list. Upsell them and offer add-ons. Promote other products and services. Make more profits.

If it’s so easy, why is LVO so underutilized by so many businesses?

Mainly because businesses are quick to write off visitors and leads who don’t convert on their first visit. Instead they continue to optimize for conversions. Rather than focusing on just your Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) and new buyers, focus on LVO as well and you can increase your revenue from the customers who are already buying.

The LVO Process

Nearly 96 percent of website visitors aren’t ready to purchase anything. But what happens when they are ready to buy? When visitors to your website are ready to buy, are they going to buy into everything they could?

The process of LVO is similar to your standard sales funnel, but with a few tweaks.

1. Acquire Traffic
   Direct people to your website or product through organic, paid, or social marketing channels. Find out which works best for your needs.
2. Low to No Conversion
   We’ve already established that few of your visitors will purchase or convert the first time they come to your site. So now what?
3. Retargeting Campaigns
   Follow your website visitors after they leave your site, whether via emails or retargeted ads on other websites and social sites. Grab and utilize email addresses. Implement tracking pixels to help increase conversion rates and build customer trust.
4. Nurture Your Leads
   Provide an experience or information that keeps people coming back for more.
5. More Value-Added Upsells and Sales
   Once you’ve got users hooked in, start implementing LVO techniques to see an increase in upsells and sales.

Optimizing each lead that comes into your database is crucial for an effective marketing campaign. Especially as this process continues to drive customers back to your website. Using LVO, you can save both time and money while your customer still gets the unique value that only your business can provide.

Use LVO for Bigger Sells

When you focus on CRO, you’re trying to make more of your visitors convert. LVO is about making each lead spend more money when they do convert. If your customer sees your business as worthwhile, they’ll trust you enough to invest in what you do again.

Optimize your leads by adding value to the experience of using your business, and you’ll make more money. A value-added upsell is something you can sell to your customers along with your core offer. The upsell provides value to them—and makes you more money per sale.

Once we’ve spent money and had a good experience somewhere, we are more likely to be willing to spend on their services/product again.

Instead of focusing solely on better conversion rates, use the below techniques in your marketing strategies:

Cross Promote Your Related Stores

Whether you’re selling physical or eCommerce products, cross promoting your relevant stores and products is an easy way to optimize the value of each new lead. Increase your lead value by letting people know you have other products for sale. Inform them after they’ve abandoned your site, or after they’ve bought something from your business.

Cross Promote Affiliate Stores

If you’re offering information products or software, cross-promoting your affiliates is a simple way to add additional value to your leads. For example, look at NutriSystem, a meal delivery service. If you’re buying leads to come to your sites for equipment like treadmills, gyms, or free weights, it’s a sound bet they want to get fit. They’re buying for a reason. So earn money from referrals by promoting a healthy meal plan and meal delivery service to your leads: NutriSystem.

Promote Information Products

Any piece of media that instructs, informs, or educates is known as an information product. Information products are a great option for making more money from each lead. Examples include an eBook, white paper, podcast, or recipe collection. And they aren’t limited to downloadable files or physical media. Types of information products that work for any industry:

• eBooks
• Physical books
• Workbooks
• Email newsletters
• Print newsletters
• Email courses
• Step-by-step instructional videos
• Recorded Q&A sessions
• Live case studies
• Podcasts
• Audiobooks
• Expert interviews
• Checklists and cheat sheets
• Questionnaires
• Surveys

The market for education, training, self-help, and self-improvement content is massive. Anyone with expertise can create, sell, and profit by creating an info product.

Upsell Add-Ons

Upselling exists in many forms, but its core remains the same. Give your customers the opportunity to purchase additional items that enhances, benefits, or supplements their current experience and/or purchase.

Market studies have proven when customers are in ‘buying mode,’ they are more likely to increase their purchase. It goes for both eCommerce and brick-and-mortar stores, but the placement of an item right at the point of purchase is important. Online, links to small items right on the checkout page are very effective.

For example, if someone is already shelling out hundreds on a drumset, why wouldn’t they just ‘go ahead’ and get the $50 educational CD set as well?

Upselling is not just for optimizing the value of new leads and prospects. It’s also great for converting returning visitors. Creating upsells and add-ons accelerates your path to profit by optimizing the value of your new leads and visitors, while also keeping your current customers happy and selling more to everyone.

Upsell Intangible Objects

Upselling works great with intangible items. These are things people can’t see or hold, but that offer more value—and make you more money.

Intangibles offer a great way to make more money from every lead. For example, offer the option to pay extra to get a purchase shipped out that day, and make more money off the bigger sale—everybody wins. Another intangible upsell is to offer extended warranties. Most vendors will work with you to provide an extended warranty.

Lead Value Optimization > Conversion Rate Optimization

Using these techniques, you can start generating more money from every lead that comes into your database. Think of Lead Value Optimization as a mindset to incorporate into your marketing. Opportunity is all around you—you just have to reach out and grab it. Of course, you need website traffic to get any kind of user in the first place, and for that you need search engine optimization. Download The Future of Search Engine Optimization: 5 Ways to Adapt Your Content for 2017 eBook for everything you need to increase your traffic and turn readers into leads.