You may already score leads in some way within your lead generation strategy. Like many businesses, you may treat this as something that is sort of useful but not an absolute essential. Done right, lead scoring can actually be highly valuable to your campaigns. In this guide, we share some insight into how you can maximise your lead generation efforts using lead scoring.
How to Use Lead Scoring for Better Lead Generation Results
To truly succeed in lead generation, without wasting time and effort, scoring leads can be highly effective. With that said, simply assigning values to leads is a common lead scoring mistake. This strategy continues to evolve as the digital landscape evolves, meaning that a very careful approach is needed to score leads effectively and see results in your lead nurturing efforts. If you’re wondering how to get more from your lead scoring efforts, here are some tips to keep in mind.
Aim for an integrative approach
Lead scoring works best as part of an integrative approach. Ideally, you should be using this strategy as part of a multi-channel nurturing strategy that integrates a number of factors to score leads. If you are using automation tools, it’s all too easy to let your system do the scoring in the background based on lead behaviours. The trouble with this is that by focusing only on behaviours, you are missing out on the many other factors that can indicate sales-readiness, from demographics to intent. Integrating your CRM and your automation tools can help you get a far more balanced insight into which leads have the best chance of converting.
In order for this to work, your systems and strategies need to be integrated. Data needs to be able to flow seamlessly without any issues. You also need to plan a scoring model and strategy that works best for your business. Many of the older lead scoring models might not be suited to an integrated approach, while other models might give you a far better chance of accurate scoring.
Score on demographic data
Although you should not focus on demographic data exclusively, just as you shouldn’t focus entirely on behaviours, including this data in your scoring model can be a good starting point. This data helps to identify leads in a wider, more generalised way. For example, for B2B lead scoring, you could start with location or look at job title if you are targeting a specific audience. A CEO or sales director would be far more likely to have a higher score than a receptionist or assistant.
Other demographic criteria you could consider include the lead’s level of seniority within the company, the industry, the department, the number of employees within the company, the annual revenue, and the location. All of these criteria give you a bigger picture of the type of lead you are targeting. Demographic data only gets you so far, however, which is why you also need to dig a little deeper to include engagement and behaviour in your scores.
Score on engagement and behaviour
Engagement is a major factor that ties in closely within intent. Potential leads that are actively engaging with your company will have a far higher score than those that show little to no engagement. Engagement also ties into behaviour – how potential leads interact with your content, especially. As potential leads enter the lead funnel, they are tracked on a number of behaviours, with engagement being the most important of these behaviours. This is where you need a very careful nurturing strategy that nurtures leads at each stage of their journey. A potential lead that shows a higher engagement would receive a very different nurturing email sequence to a lead that has not done much besides download a free content magnet. Saving your bottom of funnel content for the leads who show genuine signs of engagement will help you focus on the leads that have more chance of converting.
On a related note, do not only focus on website engagement when you calculate your lead scores on engagement. Social media engagement can also provide excellent data, particularly for younger audiences. Email engagement and mobile engagement should also be considered.
Collaborate with your sales team
Handing over leads to your sales team is easier and quicker than collaborating. But when you work with your sales team right from the start, you have a much higher chance of getting accurate scores. Your sales team has plenty of insight into your leads’ pain points and journey. They will often understand the sales cycle far better than any other department. This gives you insight into your leads’ tendencies, interests, and other useful information that will help you create a scoring model.
To get the most from this insight, find out which actions and demographic data you should be focusing on and ask them how they would assign points. Which job titles are worth more points? Which areas have the lowest chance of turning into sales? Would contact form submissions have a higher value than webinar attendance? When you are aligned with your sales team, it also becomes far easier to hand leads over in a way that closes the deal smoothly.
Set a scoring threshold
It may sound obvious – a lead scoring threshold is something that is surprisingly often overlooked, however. The biggest problem with this is that when there is no threshold in place, it becomes all too easy for leads to be moved over to sales before they are ready. Although alignment with your sales team is important to keep the lead process smooth, making sure that leads are ready to be passed over to sales will make the transition even smoother. If a lead is passed over before they are fully ready, there is a big risk of leads feeling pressured or even going from warm to cold before you have time to undo the damage caused by a too-soon transition.
To avoid this happening, set lead scoring benchmarks. Determine the point when a lead is considered hot and ready to convert. This can often be unique to your company and industry. A decision-maker could make direct enquiries through your lead forms, download more than two content magnets and show intent to purchase.
Incorporate progressive profiling
You could also consider progressive profiling as part of your lead generation scoring model. Using this approach, you would prepare questions that allow you to get a deeper insight into your prospective leads. You could include specific questions in a form, for example, or you could include a selection of content to download according to interests.
Another way to integrate this approach is to offer leads more targeted content once they have signed up, which reduces the need to enter more details when visiting your website. Rather than asking for basic information such as email address on return visits, you could ask a few questions in return for providing more targeted and relevant content. Leads will be able to progress through your sales funnel a lot more quickly using this system.
Improve Lead Generation Results With Lead Scoring
Using these strategies, you should start to see far better results with your lead generation campaigns. With the many lead scoring benefits on offer, this system acts as a powerful for converting more leads.
