This is the journey potential customers will go through, from learning about your brand to completing a purchase. The marketing funnel system is undoubtedly powerful and can increase profits and sales.
However, it can be further netherlands phone number library optimized by using strategies such as lead scoring. Through lead scoring, you will be able to get to know your customers better and understand how likely they are to complete a sale. In turn, this will tell you how much effort you need to put into attracting them!
Lead scoring models may vary from company to company, but they are equally necessary when it comes to securing more sales. Learn all about this system below.
What is lead scoring?
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Simply put, Lead Scoring is a points-based system that allows you to put a score on a lead. The more interested a prospect is in your business, the more points and higher scores they will receive.
Based on this score, the marketing team can better understand whether it is worth spending effort and resources to acquire that potential customer. Of course, someone who shows a greater interest in the service or company will be considered to have a higher sales potential.
You and your marketing team can find basic templates and prompts for creating a lead scoring system online. However, these templates are rarely well-suited to your business goals.
In fact, every business is unique, and so are its customers, leads, and marketing strategy. Therefore, your lead scoring model should also be unique and tailored to the specific needs of your marketing funnel and business goals.
Lead Scoring in Business
While it’s easy to understand how beneficial lead scoring can be, identifying the implications this strategy could bring to your business is even more important. Lead scoring can be defined as a marketing and sales methodology that allows you to rank leads and prospects based on their sales readiness.
When applying lead scoring principles, you’ll award points to your leads based on certain actions they’ve taken along their journey through the sales funnel. Lead scoring also considers the lead’s current place in the buying cycle and their fit for your brand.
The classification used in lead scoring can vary. Some models use numerical points, some use letters like A, B, C, or D, some use indicators like “warm” or “cold.” Because your marketing team can specifically focus on those leads who show the highest sales readiness, they can optimize their efforts and increase efficiency.
Some of the factors used to determine a lead’s score and suitability for your brand include:
Actions taken throughout the sales funnel – such as downloading materials, leaving personal details or contact information, sharing/replying, and engagement.
The interest shown – including website visits, keywords used and emails opened.
Demographics – industry, job title, beliefs, and company size (especially for B2B)
How to Determine the Correct Lead Score
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There is no quick formula you can use to start determining the right lead scoring for your clients.
Of course, you'll use the methods you've implemented to give your leads points, attributes, or a score for each action they take when they're in the sales funnel. The more conversion-motivated a feature they responded to is, the more points you'll give that lead.
The first important step in calculating the right lead score is to understand the features you have implemented in your sales funnel and the most effective ones. These will be the ones that will help the lead score more points!
When trying to determine the correct lead score, you'll start by understanding the minimum and maximum score to deliver a lead. Typically, this is between 1 and 100.
The points you give to your leads can be accumulated due to certain actions taken. Some examples include:
Filled out a form on your site's homepage (20 points). This will give you access to data and details, so you can consider it a highly conversion-motivated feature. When a potential customer leaves their details, it means they are happy to be contacted by your company.
Engagement with your newsletter (15 points) – This is also another high score. It means that your potential customer’s interest is maintained over time and their engagement with your company is increasing.
Social media engagement (5-10 points, depending on the action taken). A customer who follows your page or account will get 5 points for their initial interest. However, if you notice that they continue to interact with your posts or through direct messages, you can increase this score to 10.
Website or blog visits (5 points). Many potential customers may click on your blog or website, especially due to an efficient marketing strategy. However, not all of them will maintain that interest or leave their details behind. Therefore, just one visit or one viewing can add up to around 5 points.
Naturally, there are many more actions a potential customer could be taking in the sales funnel. This mostly depends on how your marketing team has created said sales funnel and what they expect a potential customer to do while they are there. It could be opening an email, responding to a call to action, or leaving their details.
Once you have assigned a point for each action, you can start tracking the lead's actions through dedicated software. You can now easily add up the points for each action. The last step is to organize the leads based on the number of points they have received for their actions.
Where does marketing automation come into play?
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The process described above may seem simple at first. However, you should also consider that your business might be receiving a large number of customers and potential customers.
This is when tracking them using software and understanding their journey through the marketing funnel can become much more complicated. In fact, you will need to count the actions of each lead! Of course, this is not possible, efficient or convenient when done manually. However, it is possible to use automated marketing systems to increase the accuracy and reliability of the results.
First, your marketing team will start by creating and setting up a model that can accurately score each lead. This is important as each model will be created specifically for a particular brand or business.
This human element that the marketing team adds to the lead scoring system is crucial. In fact, it allows you to better understand a potential customer’s journey and reactions.
However, your leads will grow and be ready to grow. This is when automation becomes crucial. Marketing automation You will be able to track every action taken by each lead, no matter how many you receive. This automated process allows you to have better control over the score each lead will receive.
Additionally, you can gain better control over the lead journey. As soon as they reach a predetermined score, the automated system will identify them and pass them on to the sales team . This way, these particular leads will go through a customer journey created specifically for them.
An example of such a situation could be that when a specific lead reaches a certain score, they will be sent to a specific email campaign, where they will be encouraged to try a demo or trial of the product. This system allows them to go through a specific touchpoint that could increase the likelihood of a sale .
How to combine your CRM with Lead Scoring
As we have seen, it is essential to incorporate the right lead scoring software into your business to track a lead’s journey and understand the type of treatment your marketing team should reserve for them.
However, not all lead scoring software is equal or as suitable for your business. Therefore, when selecting the right lead scoring software, you need to consider the importance of certain important factors such as integration with other systems. Among these, one of the most important is CRM Options and Capabilities .
This is due to the vast amount of data and information that a CRM software can communicate to a lead scoring software. In fact, CRM software will collect and store historical data, behavioral testing patterns, and databases. When your lead scoring marketing has access to such an impressive amount of data, it can begin to fine-tune the scores and create more accurate results.
If you have opted for a software that focuses solely on lead scoring, you should make sure that it has access to your CRM software.
What is CRM?
CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is a system that allows businesses and companies to manage every interaction with their audience. Thanks to the software used, data, behavioral patterns, and other useful details are saved along the way. In turn, this data is often used to optimize the sales process, productivity, efficiency, and future projects.
An efficient CRM software is essential to properly utilize the data collected from your audience to create more suitable and attractive products. It is also important to increase long-term business sustainability.
How to combine it with lead scoring
When looking for software that can help you fine-tune your customer relationship management and get more accurate lead scoring results, there are a few on the market that might be a good fit for your business. Check out some of them below:
Ontraport
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Ontraport is a scalable platform that helps you keep all the data collected through CRM in one place. Because of this, you can get a clearer idea of where a certain lead is along the funnel journey and what to expect from them. In turn, you can also act faster when they reach a certain score, knowing exactly how to get them to the next touchpoint. The platform also includes some special features, such as powerful marketing automation and web page results.
