You’ve heard of lead scoring, right? You know what it is, but you’re not sure how to put it into action. Everything is explained here!
What exactly is Lead Scoring?
Lead scoring is a technique used in sales prospecting to assess the quality of prospects.
💡 In other words, you’ll pique the prospect’s interest in your brand. The better the score, the more likely people are to purchase your goods or service.
It enables you to rank prospects based on their maturity level and relevance as company targets. 🎯 CRM solutions are frequently used to establish an automated lead scoring system, which aids in tracking and optimizing prospecting performance.
Inbound marketing is a marketing and sales technique that is centered on acquiring new clients rather than actively soliciting.
Implementing marketing automation tactics to retain prospects and convert them into customers is part of this. Lead scoring is especially beneficial for B2B organizations looking to find the most qualified prospects for their offer.
As an example of lead scoring, consider the following:
Lead Scoring Procedures
Setting up efficient lead scoring requires several essential phases, including establishing the objectives, selecting the right scoring criteria, awarding points through automation, monitoring and evaluating the results, and developing a marketing plan to construct a solid lead-generation process.
Let’s take these steps one at a time! 😊
Define your goals
Before you begin analyzing prospects, you must first define your objectives. It is critical to define the aim of scoring.
That is what you want to accomplish.
💡 If you sell digital training and your aim is to reach as many buyers as possible through your sales page, you will not have the same “scoring tiers” as if you wanted to sell hot tubs to individuals in a real store.
Here are some examples of objectives:
😎Improving lead quality (many people visit your site but only a few purchase your stuff)
📈The increase in conversions
📉A reduction in prospecting cost
Determine the Rating Criteria
Once the objectives have been specified, the next stage is to identify the scoring criteria. The criteria that will be used to evaluate the prospects must be determined.
💡 These criteria may comprise, for example, demographic information, internet behavior data, company engagement data, and so on.
If you require more specific examples, consider the following:
1️⃣ Prospecting directly:
Goal: Find the most qualified prospects for a sale.
Scoring criteria: annual revenue, company size, industry…
2️⃣ Brand Development:
Goal: Determine which prospects are most likely to become brand ambassadors.
Scoring criteria: Engagement on social media, frequency of content sharing, amount of followers…
3️⃣ Customer journey enhancement:
Goal: Determine which clients are most likely to require technical training.
Scoring criteria: The number of help requests, the number of chat contacts, the history of technical support, the technical skill level…
Scoring
Point allocation: Once the scoring criteria have been identified, it is important to establish how many points each criterion is worth. ⭐ This will help you to prioritize the prospects based on their importance to the firm. In this phase, you will utilize the scoring criteria you selected to determine what is important and what is not.
💡 This is precisely like going over a resume! Several scoring criteria can be identified as “equally important” and others as more important since they make the prospect’s activities more interesting.
Returning to our given example, the goal is to increase sales performance on the website:
| The prospect finds the site through a traditional search | ⭐ |
| The prospect visits a product page | ⭐⭐⭐ |
| Prospect returns to the site a second time | ⭐⭐ |
| The prospect adds an item to their shopping cart | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Prospect attempts to make a purchase but abandons it at the final stage | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Prospect visits the site after clicking on a paid advertisement | ⭐ |
We’ll move on to automation once you’ve determined the importance of each scoring factor and created your scorecard.
Tips on Assigning Points
💡 Most people struggle to come up with appropriate scoring criteria. Effectively, they will be determined by what you are selling, your personas, and what you know about them. The more information you know about your target, the more precise your lead scoring will be.
The Project’s Maturity
Examine the maturity level, particularly in the case of large transactions (real estate, construction…). This can include details such as the date the project was begun, the budget allotted, the decision maker’s level, the stage of purchase the project is in, and so on.
The more mature the project, the more likely it is to be labeled “ready to buy.”
Interests and needs of the prospect
Information gathered through interactions with the prospect, such as pages visited on the company’s website, products or services seen, content downloads, and so on, can be used to evaluate the prospect’s interests and wants. The greater the prospect’s interest in the company’s products or services, the more relevant he or she will be evaluated, raising the score.
Demographics
Age, gender, occupation, industry, and other demographics might assist establish a prospect’s relevance to the organization. 💡 Prospects in that area, for example, will be rewarded points if the company’s primary target market is mid-sized firms.
Interactions with the Company
Interactions with the company can include things like emails opened, forms filled out, phone calls, meetings, and so on. The more a prospect engages with the company, the more relevant they will be viewed and hence given high marks.
Data from Social Media
Social media data such as newsletter subscriptions, social network followers, comments, and mentions can aid in determining a prospect’s relevance to the organization. The more active a prospect is on social media and demonstrates interest in the firm, the more invested they will be deemed and hence evaluated highly.
Setting up an Automation
Setting up automation with marketing automation software: After defining the scoring criteria and points, it is critical to set up automation to gather and analyze data on prospects.
This can be accomplished through the use of CRM software or a marketing automation platform. Here are some CRM examples. 👇
- Hubspot CRM
- Zoho CRM
- Salesforces
- Airtable
- Pipedrive
Each CRM operates differently and provides for personalized lead scoring; you simply need to identify what works best for you. Lead scoring can also be done by hand, but I don’t recommend it because it is time-consuming.
Each validated step drives the prospect to the next stage in this Hubspot lead scoring example.
Each step in these sequences automatically generates an action.
For example, if the prospect hits a product page on your website, she may receive this type of email.
💡 Hello, {{First name}},
I noticed you went to our fantastic product page [product name].
Do you have any questions about using it?
Here are more details > links to the YouTube page
Examine the product once again.
[Insert product image here]
As another example, you can go to the stage when the prospect has filled out a quote request with appointment scheduling, and the phone appointment is automatically added to the salesperson’s schedule.
Hundreds of various automation scenarios can be imagined depending on your goals, criteria, and tools. 😎
Results tracking and analysis
To determine whether lead scoring is effective, it is necessary to follow and analyze the outcomes. This can include things like:
- The rate of lead conversion
- The price per lead
- Rate of customer retention.
Depending on the findings, the scoring criteria or points can be adjusted to boost the lead scoring even further. Lead scoring will also enable you to determine where in the sales process you are losing the most sales. Do all of your leads complete step 4 but never step 5?
If this is the case, a blocking factor has been found and must be modified between these two procedures until all purchasing stages are completed effortlessly.
Adoption of a Nurturing Strategy
Once quality leads have been discovered, a nurturing strategy must be implemented to convert them into customers. This can involve marketing automation measures to keep in touch with leads on a regular basis and urge them to become customers.
I’m not going to go into detail on this because nurturing is another topic for now.
How Can You Use a Landing Page, a Website, or an Email Campaign to Score Leads?
I’ll use Amazon as an example to demonstrate my thesis. Lead scoring is used by Amazon to optimize email advertising and increase conversions.
This information is used by the company:
- Customer interests and needs.
- Demographics and market segmentation.
- Online habits.
- Type of subscription (premium, freemium).
Amazon was able to analyze prospects based on their relevance to email marketing and target the most qualified prospects to enhance conversions by using these score criteria.
Amazon recommends things based on what you’ve already purchased or what is typically sold together…
The company will also ask you questions in order to properly categorize its offerings,
And creates offers based on the types of subscriptions you have.
All customer data is gathered on the site to improve the user experience and help him locate the best things based on his preferences, hence smoothing the purchase transition; these data are collected via cookies from your site.
How Does LinkedIn Lead Scoring Work?
On LinkedIn, there is a mechanism for lead scoring that involves multiple steps:
Use LinkedIn Profile Data
LinkedIn profile information, such as geography, industry, and professional interests, can be utilized to categorize and rank prospects based on their relevance to the company.
(Optional) Make use of LinkedIn’s Lead Management Tools
Sales Navigator monitors prospect interactions and grades them based on their maturity and usefulness to the business.
Use Third-party Tools
Third-party solutions, like as CRM and marketing automation software, can also be utilized to collect and analyze lead data on LinkedIn. These technologies can be linked to LinkedIn in order to track interactions and score prospects based on scoring criteria.
Utilize Interaction Data
LinkedIn interactions like posts, comments, shares, mentions, and clicks can be utilized to assess prospects’ interest in the organization. Prospects who expressed an active interest in the company’s openings received bonus points.
You can also use Leadsourcing to automatically contact people who leave comments on your posts.
Lead scoring on LinkedIn can be done using these several approaches to target the most qualified prospects for the firm.