Before you spend time & money increasing leads, you should look at improving and optimizing conversions.

In order to optimize conversion you do need some number of leads, but the number doesn’t have to be huge. As soon as you start to see consistent metrics on conversion (and you need to make sure you define conversion clearly too), you can look at optimization.

It’s a lot cheaper and less risky to work on improving conversions than it is to generate more leads.

Fairly simple A/B testing, landing pages and basic metrics analysis can give you the tools needed to optimize conversions. None of this has to be expensive or overly complicated, but it does require a lot of attention to detail, focus and commitment.

As soon as conversion increases – even a small amount – any investment made in generating leads is going to be much more valuable.

To learn more about A/B testing and conversion metrics, visit these sites:

• Which Test Won?
• ABTests.com
• KISSMetrics blog

And follow these people on Twitter:

• KISSMetrics
• Cindy Alvarez
• Hiten Shah
• Eric Ries