Lead scoring is part of online digital marketing. It starts after you already have built a big enough lead list. So, this blog is not going to talk about how you can generate new actionable leads for your online business and where companies can find prospects. Instead, it will focus on properly sorting out your list.
When we say sorting out your list, we refer to differentiating between those who are interested in your product and those who aren’t.
What are Leads
Lead, or prospect, are two interchangeable terms. They refer to anyone who has an interest in your business. Simply put, anyone you have a fair chance of converting into a loyal customer as a lead.
Many companies set their target market long before they launch their business. It starts by defining what market you want to penetrate and a consumer profile perfect for your services.
On the other hand, some companies pick their target market after experimenting with leads. The process starts by reaching out to different people and assessing whether they require your product/service.
When we say that a lead is interested in your product, they do not have to put it down in words. Digital marketers usually have simple opt-in forms on the website that asks site visitors for their personal information. If a person gives you that information, you can call them an actionable lead.
Before we continue to the next part of this blog, here are a few fun facts for you about leads.
According to a Gleanster Research Report, only 25% of leads are legitimate. This means, if you do not want to waste your money targeting the wrong leads, you should properly go through all the different leads you have and only reach out to those who can realistically buy your product.
Here is another fun fact. Did you know sales representatives will give up after 1.3 phone calls per lead? This is a very low number when you rely on cold outreach to sell your product. If you have a team of sales representatives who have a similarly low outreach attempt per lead, you should talk to them. But while doing so, do not ask them to overdo it. You do not want your leads to block your number because you started calling them every waking hour.
How are Leads important for Digital Marketing?
Leads are important for every online business. If you want your business to survive, you should invest heavily in lead generation. Along with survival, lead generation also helps a company grow and increase its revenue.
The sole purpose of lead generation is to increase sales and convert prospects into clients. But, digital marketers do not go straight at it. Every digital marketer tries to inform the prospects about the product and grab their attention with the hopes of making a sale.
Many companies have only a marketing team. This team is responsible for lead generation, as well as reaching out to them. On the other hand, some companies have separate marketing teams and sales teams.
In such a company, the marketing team is responsible for generating leads. Once they have a big enough list of leads, their job is done. They will then forward the list to their sales team. The sales representatives will now reach out to them, nurture them, and aim to one day convert them into buying customers — usually with the help of quality email marketing campaigns.
A byproduct of lead scoring is that it helps you form a definite persona or customer profile. After you conduct your first lead scoring, you will have a better understanding of the traits and characteristics of your prospects. You will have a solid understanding of the qualities that helped you convert leads into sales.
What Is a Lead Score?
Scoring leads is not qualitative at all. It is mostly quantitative. Lead scoring, as the name suggests, begins with assigning a numerical value to your leads. If you have one hundred leads in your list, you assign meaningful points to each one of them.
Stop right there. Have you started panicking about how you can score your leads? What factors do you need to consider? Is there a complicated math formula for assigning scores to your leads?
Well, there is no formula. And quite honestly, almost all the different digital marketers have a different formula for assigning scores to their leads.
Beginner’s Guide How to Score Leads?
Now, let us take a look at what factors you should consider while scoring your leads. How did you find the lead, what contact information you have about them, how often do they engage your social media posts? These are some questions that help you form a better understanding of your client and their behavior. Assign your score to any action, just like that:
If you have noticed, none of these questions are purely quantitative. Also, you do not involve any of your leads while giving them scores. The best idea is to use a simple Likert Scale of 1-10. This is a great technique if you have never actively looked for leads.
If you are an old business and already have an existing user base online, you can use data about the past clients to assess your new leads. For example, make a list of all the people who bought a product from you. Now assess their demography and all the other relevant information. When you have the profiles, you can compare them with your new leads. Look for leads who exhibit similar traits as your existing users.
You can further break down the criteria based on demographics and behavior. The demographic attributes will help you understand people who are the best match for your company. It will give information about their location, age, past work experience, industry, job designation.
On the other hand, we have behavior attributes. This includes information about how your leads act, how they behave, and how they interact with your website. The behavior attributes include information such as how often prospects check their mail inbox, what pages on your site the prospects visit most, how often they request a free trial, and so on.
Finally, there comes a negative part — for example, when someone unsubscribes from your website. This, too, should be considered in any lead scoring model.
Experiment with the lead scoring system listed above. Pick the one that best suits your current marketing campaign.
While doing so, always remember, all the data might not be relevant for your company. While coming up with a lead scoring method, you should focus on those data that help you make a sale. For instance, people who only visit your website to read blogs might not have a high conversion rate. On the other hand, people who often visit your knowledge base pages are more interested in your product.
Why Should You Put Effort into Lead Scoring?
The most obvious benefit of putting effort into scoring leads is so that you do not end up wasting your resources on fake leads. As mentioned above, 25% of all leads are illegitimate. This means that all those leads have provided you with fake information, or maybe they inserted an email they do not regularly check.
Every department of an organization runs on a budget. There are limitations of resources. This makes lead scoring more important.
Now, there are other benefits of Scoring Leads. The purpose of lead scoring is not only to assess the prospects but also to assess the marketing channels and marketing campaigns that work best with your clients.
When you know the type of marketing campaign that has the highest conversion rate, you will not have to waste time experimenting with the other channels only to find out they are not a good match for your customers.
Lead scoring also helps with sales and marketing alignment. As mentioned above, some companies have different sales and marketing departments. These two departments work independently of each other. However, the output from one is the input for the other.
After the marketing team has curated a list of actionable leads, they forward it to the sales team. The sales team is then responsible for outreach. But imagine a scenario where the marketing team has failed to identify the right leads. If it happens, every sales attempt by the sales team will be in vain.
When the marketing team has the right list of leads, the sales representatives have a higher chance of converting them into buying customers. The sales reps can prioritize which leads to go after first and who to follow up with regularly.
Conclusion
So there you go. We are guessing that right after reading the term lead scoring, many of you thought it might be something very complicated. Do not blame yourself; everyone makes this mistake.
We hope now you have a better understanding of what lead scoring actually is. It is an essential task for every company. Be it small or big, you should do lead scoring before launching every marketing campaign.
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