It is often difficult to determine if the prospect you are talking to will pan out. You don’t want to waste either of your time. So how can you get the most bang for your buck when looking for new prospects? The easiest way is through lead scoring.
So what is lead scoring? Simply put, it is a way to rank leads based on different criteria. With this, you can optimize your sales and marketing efforts to generate higher-quality leads and most importantly turn those leads into paying customers. According to a study by Eloqua, B2B companies that used lead scoring were able to improve their close rate by 30%, revenue by 18%, and revenue-per-deal by 17%! Additionally, it also improves lead generation ROI by 77%.
So how does it work? Usually, it gives different values depending on what a customer does at different stages of the sales funnel. Once a certain number of points is reached, a prospect turns into a “hot lead”.
Additionally, it allows you to best understand the stage that a potential prospect is at. For example, you don’t want to start bombarding them with call-to-action (CTA) before they are ready!
Not every company uses the same lead scoring model. However, in general, they all take into account several factors including:
• Demographics
• Online behavior
• Company information
• Engagement on social media
• Email engagement
• Spam detection
It is important to understand that lead scoring is important for every part of the customer journey from marketing to sales to customer support whether it be from Marketing qualified leads (MQL), Sales qualified leads (SQL), or other opportunities.
So how can you start lead scoring?
The first step is to create a lead scoring model where you:
• Define your buyer persona
• Analyze their online behavior
• Assign score attribute, putting more weight behind ones that bring more conversions
• Assign values to scores. An easy, clear method is the 1-5 scale
Next, you need to calculate lead scores. The three main ways you can do this are:
• Manual lead scoring where you compare your newly acquired customers vs. your generated leads vs. your former high-quality leads
• Logistic regression lead scoring to calculate the probability of conversion based on previous actions. This is much more precise as it uses data mining and analysis techniques
• Predictive lead scoring uses machine-learning to look through data to find leads
In addition, some important metrics that you might want to look at including:
• Video watch time
• Click-through rate
• Open rate
• Interactive actions
• On-page analytics
Third, once you have produced lead scores, you need to segment them. This allows you to personalize your strategy when approaching each customer.
Lastly, if you aren’t good at this or don’t have the time to do it yourself, consider automating the lead scoring process with things such as:
• CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software such as Salesforce, Hubspot CRM, and Microsoft Dynamics 365
• SMM (Social Media Marketing) tools such as Sprout Social, NapoleanCat, and Sendible
• Email marketing tools such as Salesforce Pardot and HubSpot
In conclusion, when using lead scoring, developing a proper strategy is extremely important. It will allow you properly analyze potential customers and utilize the correct strategies when pursuing them.