Lead scoring offers a highly useful tool, not only for increased engagement but also for conversion.
For lead nurturing, scoring simplifies the process of handing over qualified leads, helping to align sales and marketing teams in a way that drives ROI and reduces wasted time and effort. Despite the benefits lead scoring offers, many businesses end up scoring leads manually, using a combination of guesswork and customer track record.
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In order to see genuine results from this strategy, you first need to ensure that your lead scoring model is set up for success. Leads typically fall into two broader categories: explicit and implicit.
Explicit leads include demographics, firmographics, BANT (budget, authority, needs, timeline) and any other information that is submitted voluntarily.
Implicit leads include behavioural data, such as website browsing activity, email engagement, downloads, clicks, social media shares, comments, enquiries and other signs of engagement.
In order to see a notable difference in your conversion, you will need to do the following:
Ensure that your sales and marketing goals are aligned
Both sales and marketing teams need to work together to create a lead scoring model that is aligned, relevant and achievable. Mistakes happen when there is no clear alignment. Marketing teams will have a very different insight to sales teams, and both may have conflicting ideas on how leads should be qualified. Working together to define a scoring model that is based on solid data is the only way to keep everyone on the same page.
Define your key lead scoring attributes
How will you score leads? Most scoring models use a combination of explicit and implicit scores, which results in a well-rounded lead score. You could focus on demographic criteria – leads that represent your ideal customer, in your target area, and defined budget. You could also focus on behaviour – downloads, comments, shares, content interaction, enquiries, follows, and webinar interaction. Assign a score from 0 to 20 for each criterion, with negative scores being the coldest and highest score being the hottest.
Determine the attributes that will result in lead qualification
At what point will marketing hand over the lead to sales? Determine a score threshold that will result in a lead being seen as qualified to move up the funnel. This could be a high score over 15 or a defined behaviour such as enquiry form or quote request. Without this step, you may find that leads are rushed through the cycle before they are ready, or you may lose out on a warm lead by not qualifying quickly enough.
Refine and perfect your lead scoring model
Lead scoring models should never be forgotten or ignored. You will need to take into account churn, incorrect or updated lead data, re-engagement with cold leads, and many other factors. When you consistently refine and perfect your model, it will be easier to avoid duplicate leads, missing lead information, and other small issues that can quickly become bigger issues if left unchecked.
As your lead scoring model is tweaked and improved, you will soon begin to notice a difference in your conversion. It may not happen overnight, but over time, it will become easier to identify and target leads when they are primed for purchase. This is what makes lead scoring such a valuable tool.
Feature image: Mark A via Unsplash
