Lead Scoring is the best way to measure the leads’ possibility of becoming a customer. This score will let you analyse and curate a suitable lead nurturing strategy.
If you have a content publishing background, you are probably familiar with SEO, content management systems (CMS), and customer relationship management (CRM) software applications. These applications help website owners create, modify, and optimize content for their target audience.
However, if your primary motive is to grow your business with the support of such content marketing systems, it is essential to know how many visitors are there for your product, or just to view your content.
How would you measure organic traffic and monitor leads for your business?
The best way to do that is to add your domain property to the Google Search Console (GSC). GSC is a free platform that helps website owners monitor organic traffic and gives you an analysis of how Google views your website.
All that said, one question still remains. How would you identify between visitors who are interested in buying your product, visitors who visit your website only for your content, and those who are halfway through buying your product? This is where lead scoring comes into play.
Table of Contents
- What Is Lead Scoring?
- Lead Scoring Model
- Set Proper Values for Lead Scoring Models
- Uses of Lead Scoring
What Is Lead Scoring?
Lead scoring is the process of assigning values to leads, with which a marketer identifies the possibility of a lead becoming a customer. A lead with a high value denotes that they are more likely to become a customer.
Lead scoring develops effective collaboration with the marketing and sales teams of businesses. Using well-organized scoring models, the marketing team can qualify and prioritize leads based on their level of interest in your business, and the sales team can easily follow up with the best, or hottest, leads first.
Lead Scoring Model
The pain points behind creating a scoring model is to help the sales rep quickly identify the types of lead so as to not waste time and energy on leads that may never convert to a customer. It is necessary that your scoring model fulfills this sole purpose. How would you frame a proper and effective lead-scoring mode?
Well, here are a few points that can help you define a relevant scoring model:
- Have a broader idea of your target audience by creating ideal customer profiles.
- Analyze the behavioral pattern of your audience.
- Strategically assign values to your leads.
- Set the minimum qualifying score for a hot lead for the sales team to pursue.
- Never settle with one model, it is vital to update your scores based on the trends of the market and your business growth.
Based on the above-mentioned tips, your scoring models must contain the following information for the marketing and sales team to predict leads.
- Implicit Information
Information, such as website visits, opting for an email newsletter subscription, responding to emails, downloading resources, form filling, and free demos come under implicit information of a lead scoring model.
- Explicit Information
The contact information, job title, designation of the individual, industry background, and geographic location of a lead comes under the explicit information of the lead scoring model.
Set Proper Values for Lead Scoring Models
The first step is to define values based on your business impact on the lead and steadily increase the values proportional to their response. For instance, let’s say you run an e-commerce business and your website provides blog posts, how-to guides, and useful tips on home-based products.
- When a lead visits your website, it is not a direct indication that they are interested in buying your products. It is possible they are visiting your website accidentally. For such leads, you can allot a low score, as it may take time for them to actually purchase a product from you.
- Whereas, if the same lead visits multiple times, views blogs, and downloads resources from your website, you can allot a greater score, but not a maximum score yet. The marketing team can focus their attention on such leads, as they need nurturing before the conversion phase.
- When a visitor starts visiting your website on a regular basis, checking out different products, and signing up with their credentials, it is evident the visitor is a hot lead, and is so close to becoming a customer.
If you have a closer look at the above-given example, you can get a clear idea of how to stage your own lead scoring model. To drive it home, a website visitor gets 2 points, a lead who uses an email ID to sign-up gets 10 points, a lead who downloads free resources or visits blog posts gets 30 points, a lead who adds an item to their cart gets 50 points, and finally, the lead who is ready to check out products gets the maximum score.
Uses of Lead Scoring
What’s interesting about lead scoring is that you can easily identify and differentiate between hot, warm, and cold leads with positive and negative scoring. Following are the industry-based importance and uses of lead scoring.
- It increases the efficiency and collaboration of the work between the marketing and sales departments of a company.
- The sales department is provided with a crystal clear picture of which leads to target.
- It helps the marketing and sales professional identify where the prospect stands, in the process of buying.
- It helps predict the Return on Investment for marketing your business.
- It increases the overall workflow of your business and the alignment of the marketing and sales workforce.
- It increases the conversion rates of leads for your business.
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- 10 Lead Capturing Tips for an Effective Appointment Setting
- Inside and Outside Sales – 5 Unique Differences
- How To Generate Sales Leads without Cold Calling
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Do I need separate software for lead scoring?
Most businesses use built-in scoring software from their CRM systems. For example, you can create your own scoring system, using HubSpot CRM, to control and monitor leads. Third-party or external application software that helps you manage leads includes ActiveCampaign, Zendesk, and SalesForce.
2. What is the purpose of lead scoring?
One of the hardest things in the marketing industry for businesses is to differentiate between hot leads and cold leads. Lead scoring is the perfect way to identify leads based on their level of interest in your business. It gives companies and businesses the opportunity to effectively target prospects and convert them into customers.
3. What information should I add to a lead scoring model?
A typical lead scoring system must include demographic, activity-based information, implicit and explicit information (behaviors and interests), and firmographic information. Adding this necessary information and allotting scores to your leads can help identify hot and cold leads to proceed with the sales conversion process.
4. What is negative scoring?
Negative lead scoring is the process of reducing points from leads who are losing or have lost interest in your business. Characteristics and parameters of negative lead scoring include short visits to your website, unsubscribing to emails, giving false CTA credentials, far geographical locations, and people who only want to use free demos or resources.
Hot, Warm, or Cold Leads? Know How To Identify Them!
With an optimized lead scoring model and a strategic team plan for your business, achieving your business goal is guaranteed. If you haven’t created a model for your business, or if you are a startup company, an effective lead-scoring system is what you need to survive in the market.
Feel free to contact us to build your sales pipeline, and take your business to the next level. At Appointments, we offer you the assurance of delivering excellent results.
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