Lead Scoring
Traditional lead scoring is the process of ranking the sales readiness of all leads against an agreed definition of a qualified lead.
The general benefit to this analytical approach is that only the ‘hotter’ leads are focused on so ensuring sales and management time is spent productively rather than in areas less likely to yield positive results – at least in the short term.
Karen Harding
Head Of Marketing, Objective
Lead scoring has helped our clients’ sales and marketing teams really focus their efforts on the highest potential leads to maximise return on investment.
Lead Scoring Services
Marketing and sales teams work together to score leads based on their behaviour, demographics and other agreed metrics specific to their market and the type of customers in it. This scoring system lets the sales and marketing professionals determine the level of interest that a prospect has in their business, where they are placed in the buying cycle, and the overall fit to the business.
Additionally, predictive marketing analytics can be used to enhance lead scoring by predicting scores of new customers based on the similarities to existing customers. Lead scoring is especially useful for inbound marketing where many leads may come in, but they can be quite a mixed bag in terms of how ‘ready’ they are to buy. Some will be just beginning to ‘look around’ while some may be further along the purchase process.
Lead scoring will help sift and identify the stage leads that are in the buying cycle.
How Does Lead Scoring Work?
With lead scoring, the marketing team can identify and prioritise their leads. They send the qualified ones directly to the sales team and nurture those not yet ready to purchase.
A key benefit of lead scoring is its ability to let you know in real time which campaigns and activities bring in the best leads. Lead scores are split into types – for example:
- Demographic Scores relating to static information such as role and size.
For example, a CEO would score more than a manager and a large company more than a small company. - Behavioural Scores relating to activities and behaviour.
For example, downloading a white paper on the website and sending a message via the ‘contact us’ page would score much more than looking at the ‘about us’. - Quality Scores relating to the confidence you have in your data and how complete it is.
For example, a contact with address, email and phone information – perhaps validated by their opening an email – would score more than from someone where some of this information is missing.
The problem with this approach is that it can be challenging for marketers to interpret the data in a way that is both consistent and accurate as scoring is very subjective. For example, your prospect will be scoring points as and when they take various actions such as asking for a free quote. Therefore you need to carefully establish your criteria for scoring a market qualified lead (MQL).
Top Quality Lead Scoring Support
Objective can integrate analytical databases for lead scoring, meaning you can set up the scoring rules and scores based on dozens of types of interactions in the customer journey. It means you can set very specific parameters based on your business and not a cookie cut of everyone else’s. We will help you with this all-important step.
Once your ‘rules’ are established, then our top class lead scoring system can run on autopilot ensuring your leads are analysed and sorted into appropriate categories to ensure your sales staff can continue to focus on the prospects more likely to convert into customers. Meanwhile your ‘warm’ leads should enter a nurturing marketing campaign where they are gradually moved further along the purchase process.
When a sales-ready lead is defined, you can set up the rules in the marketing intelligence system so all anonymous and identified leads are ranked against your definition, which can determine the precise point when a lead is ready to begin conversion.
A well-conceived lead scoring system can prove an invaluable asset for your business’s sales and marketing efforts, but expert set up is crucial to ensure your leads are handled in the most appropriate way – and that’s where we can help.
At Objective we have set up many lead scoring systems for clients of various types to help them boost their sales efforts: talk to us today to see how we can do the same for you.