• By michelle
• In Content Marketing, Copywriting, digital marketing

7 Steps to Customer Value Optimization

 

Customer value optimization, or CVO, is more than a marketing buzzword.

CVO is the method that maximizes the monetary value of each customer that comes through your sales funnel.

To attract your ideal customers and double their lifetime value, it takes 7 simple, yet important, steps.

Before we get into the nitty-gritty, know that we are a Digital Marketer Certified Partner that is certified to teach CVO.

Using the CVO system, we’ve completed many successful campaigns for clients—from sales funnels that double income to marketing strategies that produce 6 figures in a matter of days.

As a Certified Partner, we know how to double the value of each lead that converts to a buyer, which sets the foundation for recurring WINS.

When you follow the 7-step formula we outline in detail below, you will…

• Grow your online presence.
• Build profitable customer relationships.
• Attract your ideal buyer persona.
• Nurture customer relationships.
• Overcome conversion hurdles.
• Increase revenue.

These outcomes happen when you accomplish 3 objectives:

# 1. Increase the number of customers that engage with your business.

#2.Raise the transaction value for each purchase made.

#3. Multiply the number of transactions for each customer.

The 7 steps to CVO make up the one and only process that creates escalating, sustainable, recurring revenue.

That fact alone should express why CVO matters to your business.

However, CVO doesn’t simply create a revenue stream that stops or a single cash injection…

The process maximizes the dollar amount, multiplies the number of transactions, and sets the framework for sustainable, long-lasting digital marketing.

When it’s described that way, the process seems long and difficult.

However, CVO is a simple task when you have an expert help you complete the only 7 steps.

To help you out, we’ve created a 42-point checklist that shows you where you are at all times.

By “where you are,” we mean that this 42-point checklist helps you keep track of your progress in the Customer Value Optimization process.

Why Waiting to Implement a Sales Funnel Is a Bad Idea

Before we outline the 7 steps in the CVO process, you need to know one thing…

Don’t sit on your hands and wait to deploy these strategies.

Now more than ever, businesses require a bulletproof sales funnel to attract leads and convert sales.

Having a sales funnel is the difference between being the best-kept secret and having a reputation as a premier business.

Every second your funnel isn’t moving at full capacity, you’re missing out on recurring revenue that builds your business.

Our copywriting team is dedicated to business growth. In fact, we’ve dedicated ourselves to growing 10,000 businesses within the next 5 years as Digital Marketer Certified Partners.

For that reason, we are giving you information that would ordinarily cost thousands of dollars.

But, you know, we’re giving it to you for free. We like you that much.

How Customer Value Optimization Works

CVO is surprisingly simple and incredibly effective as long as you understand one rule…

Your sales funnel content is not about you…or your business…and very little of it will focus on your products or services.

Your sales funnel content revolves around your audience’s unique needs. This content provides real, sustainable value and answers tough questions.

These are the defining characteristics that are included in each of the 7 steps we’re about to describe.

The 7 steps are…

1. Defining your customer avatar and crafting the perfect message.
2. Attracting your buyers through the right traffic source for you.
3. Creating an ethical bribe.
4. Effortlessly turning prospects to buyers.
5. Selling your core product or service.
6. Maximizing profits.
7. Sparking ongoing customer conversations.

Again, these steps are very simple to complete.

When you do it, you’ll enjoy more customers, more purchases, and maximum revenue.

Let’s get started.

Step 1: Define your customer avatar and craft the perfect message.

Your customer avatar is one person. That’s it.

The first step involves sketching out who this person is.

His struggles.

Her needs.

His wishes.

Her objections.

His goals.

Her knowledge.

The more detailed you can be, the better.

You can keep your customer avatar sketch brief and come back to flesh it out later. The idea is to figure out who your customer is, so you can craft the ideal marketing messaging.

After you finish, your customer profile will look like this:

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Susan B. Business Owner is really freaking good at offline sales. Her brick-and-mortar shop attracts customers through fliers, word of mouth promotion, and quality signage.

Susan brings in $30,000 a month in revenue—that’s $360,000 per year. Not bad. The struggle is that she has two employees who are paid $52,000 per year. Plus, she needs new technology every couple of months.

She also has the store rent, training fees, and product to buy.

She doesn’t have much leftover to build her business.

Not to mention that Susan has a personal life, too. She’s got college-bound kids, a home mortgage, car payments, and a stack of bills.

Susan is talented, driven, and offers a quality service. But the dollars she’s making result in stalled growth.

She needs digital marketing to pump more money

into her business, so she can grow and have more than enough left over.

The issue is that she doesn’t know the first thing about creating a sales funnel.

Like most entrepreneurs, she reads articles, attends a few webinars, and sets one up on her own. Unaware of the CVO process, she doesn’t follow the 7 steps.

After wasting precious time building a funnel that didn’t convert and marketing dollars on ads that didn’t perform, Susan decides it’s time to bring in the experts.

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The above customer avatar sketch shows a unique value proposition, which is a crucial element to craft your messaging.

Before we continue, it’s important to call out the colossal difference between a unique value proposition and a unique selling proposition.

A unique selling proposition refers to the product or service.

A unique value proposition highlights the benefits you create.

To further drive home the point, here are two examples:

• Unique selling proposition: “I develop and sell email marketing software.”

• Unique value proposition: “I allow hardworking business owners to segment their marketing list, create successful sales funnels, increase revenue, and build lasting customer relationships.”

Once you have your buyer persona sketched out, you’ll know what messaging your audience needs to hear. When you need help, your favorite professional copywriters are a phone call or contact form away.

Step 2: Attract your buyers through the right traffic source.

Many business owners waste major revenue with advertising that doesn’t work. With the marketing dollars draining, many assume that lead generation is the problem.

Even though lead generation investments often fall short, know that it has nothing to do with your lack of traffic or qualified prospects.

The true issue is a nurturing and conversion problem, (more on that in step 3), but attracting traffic is very simple.

With that out of the way, the CVO process enables you to attract leads through…

• Blogging.

• Search engine optimization.

• Email marketing.

• Social media.

• YouTube ads.

• Banner advertising.

We recommend a combination of those traffic sources, but leading someone to a landing page doesn’t mean a conversion automatically happens.

So what if prospective customers read your content, but don’t take action and  give you their contact information?

Not to worry—you can fix everything and lock in maximum ROI with an ethical bribe.

Step 3: Create an ethical bribe.

We call it an ethical bribe, but it’s more formally known as a lead magnet. If you’re not familiar, the concept is simple.

• You offer something valuable for free.

• Your prospect gives you his or her email for said value.

• You deliver, and your prospect uses the tools or advice you’ve given.

• You earn expert credibility and the prospect engages on a deeper level.

Boom—instant conversion.

Well, first you have to craft a lead magnet to place on your website or landing page. Here are 6 basic rules for successful lead magnets:

1. Your lead magnet must be quick. When prospects use the tools, tricks, and resources offered in your lead magnet, you win. A 20,000-page manual is too much to handle.

2. Your lead magnet must be actionable. Lead magnets provide a tool, skillset, resource, or useful information that your audience can apply.

3. Your lead magnet must produce results. Customers continuously buy products and services if they work effectively. Your lead magnet will become successful if it shows real results.

4. Your lead magnet must be free. Yes, we’ve already said it. But contact information is the only thing that changes hands.

5.Your lead magnet must be relevant. If you understand your customer avatar, and you have a quality subject matter, then you’ll have no trouble creating relevant content.

6. Your lead magnet must be delivered instantly. Not many people like waiting around.

Now that you know the basic rules for effective bribes, here are a few examples of lead magnets that work.

Example 1: The Checklist

The Checklist is a lead magnet that illuminates the milestones involved in solving an issue or performing a task, or provides a set number of insightful/educational tips.

The lead magnet below provides prospects with educational material on functional medicine. Readers discover the benefits of functional medicine and discover why working with this doctor will improve their health.

Example 2: The How-to Guide

The How-To Guide provides a training of some sort. A successful How-To Guide Lead Magnet will…

• Offer examples and case studies.

• Reveal common mistakes to avoid.

• Showcase a problem and solution dynamic.

• Implement storytelling to illustrate points.

One of our best-performing how-to lead magnets is featured below.

As long as you can create an immediate win with your lead magnet, you’re in good shape. Yes, there’s no revenue in this step. But there’s something more valuable at play…

You’ve established a relationship.

Step 4: Effortlessly turn prospects to buyers.

Did you read that? Effortlessly turn prospects to buyers.

Yes, we said that. And we’re not kidding.

You can very easily turn your prospects into paying customers. All it takes is a tripwire offer.

Your tripwire is a low-dollar, high-value offer that puts your customer avatar into a buying mindset.

If your customer pays between $7 and $20 dollars at this step, he or she is much more likely to pay for your more comprehensive and pricey core services later.

Your tripwire can be almost anything. A few ideas include…

• A paid webinar.

• A physical object.

• A book.

• A video training series.

• Information that builds on your lead magnet.

• Community membership.

As long as you charge a low-dollar amount and continue to deliver value, you will automatically convert prospects to customers.

Here’s a good example:

This $7 webinar tripwire delivers more value than the low-dollar amount indicates.

However, it also provides a necessary step to create maximum revenue. And that necessary step is to lock in the first transaction.

Before the invention of the tripwire offer, marketers had a difficult time getting that first YES. The tripwire bridges that gap and preps your customer to purchase your core offer.

Step 5: Sell your core product or service.

You’ve reached the easiest step!

Selling your core offer is a matter of marketing it strategically, which includes…

• Writing the sales page.

• Crafting product copy.

• Developing emails.

• Building on the lead magnet and tripwire.

• Explaining the value.

• Projecting the results.

• Leveraging social proof.

In our experience, many business owners freak out at this point.

The question of transitioning from low-dollar purchase to a bigger buy is scary. Not to worry—you’ve already jumped the highest hurdle in selling your tripwire.

Once the first money exchange happens, it becomes much easier to keep selling to those who’ve purchased. (Even if the original dollar amount was low.)

Once new customers gain value from your lead magnet and become customers via the tripwire, purchasing your core offer should be a no-brainer.

Our client Dr. Ruth Roberts is a prime example.

Her core offer is a bundle-and-save shipment of pet health supplies with an accompanying book and recipe, and numerous bonus items including lifetime access to a pet health community.

At the point of the core offer, prospects had already watched her educational video (the tripwire) to gain insight into pet health.

Those who did not say YES immediately were put into a nurture sequence that led them back to watch the video and further educated them on gut health for cats and dogs.

Step 6: Maximize profits.

At the beginning of this article, we promised you that the content you’re reading will deliver three benefits.

To recap, so far you’ve learned how to…

1. Increase the number of customers with a lead magnet.
2. Increase the number of purchases with the tripwire and core offer.

Now it’s time for the third step in the CVO process: increasing the value of each transaction.

It may shock you to hear this, but many businesses don’t make a penny from their core offers. Several business owners use that money to drive more traffic, hire more employees, or offset advertising costs.

The real money comes in step 6, which reveals how to maximize profits in the form of upsells and cross-sells.

What Successful Cross-Sells Look Like

Think of the last time you bought something from Amazon.

You’re looking at the pair of boots you’ve had your eye on. You decide to buy them, and lo and behold, there it is…

The cross-sell.

Amazon will show you what other customers who purchased those boots picked up. It could be a complementary belt, or polish, or even another pair of boots. This angle works.

In fact, the cross-sell earns Amazon major bank.

 

According to an article from Forbes Magazine, “Amazon attributes up to 35% of its revenue to cross-selling – both the “Frequently Bought Together” and “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” sections promote products related to the item that you are currently viewing on the site.”

Imagine what you could do by increasing sales 35%. Add a complementary service to your core offer, and you’ll see superior results.

What Successful Upsells Look Like

The core offer may feel like a natural stopping point, but doing that defeats the purpose. Never forget: CVO hinges on recurring, escalating revenue.

For that reason, upsells are vital.

Think back to Dr. Ruth Roberts’ core offer. After purchasing the bundle shipments, customers immediately gained access to purchase additional complementary products.

This upsell is beautifully presented, if we do say so ourselves:

Step 7: Spark ongoing customer conversations.

Earlier we made a huge promise. We told you that, with a CVO-style marketing funnel, your business could generate income while you’re busy growing your company or golfing on a Friday morning.

This happens when you establish a marketing funnel that provides a return path to your products and services.

Let’s face it: one purchase isn’t enough.

For a sales funnel to be successful, it needs to increase the lifetime value of each person who enters your marketing funnel.

When you deploy continuously relevant material to your audience and follow up with them, you create additional purchases.

We recommend leveraging additional lead magnets and tripwires, so that you can turn the CVO process into a conveyer belt of conversions.

Other methods to bring customers back include…

• Loyalty programs and coupons.

• Ad retargeting efforts.

• Exit offers and downsells.

• Organic, relationship-based social media.

Set up an ongoing relationship, and your marketing funnel will create multiplying purchases.

In our humble opinion, the most effective way to do this is consistent communication in the form of email marketing.

Keep delivering value, and you’ll continue generating income.

Keep Track of Your CVO Progress

Don’t forget you can revisit these 7 steps anytime you want. However, we want to make it even easier for you.

That’s why we’ve developed a checklist that shows you where you are in the CVO process.