Why Lead Scoring Practice Is Essential for Your Marketing Strategy

In today’s competitive business landscape, generating high-quality leads and effectively prioritizing them for sales engagement is crucial for driving revenue and maximizing conversion rates. This is where lead scoring comes into play. In this article, we will explore this concept, discussing its importance, benefits, and best practices. 

The essence of the lead-scoring technique

Lead scoring is a methodology used by businesses to evaluate and rank leads based on their likelihood to convert into customers. It involves assigning a numerical value or score to each lead, which helps prioritize and allocate resources effectively. The scoring process takes into account various factors, such as demographic information, firmographics, engagement behavior, and lead source.

The purpose of lead scoring is to identify the leads that are most likely to convert and focus sales and marketing efforts on them. By assigning scores based on specific criteria, businesses can determine the quality and potential value of each lead. This allows them to prioritize their follow-up activities, personalize communication, and allocate resources efficiently.

It all comes down to measuring how well a product fits a particular user and how strong their intent to purchase is. Fit and intent are the basis by which you determine which potential customers are qualified and which are not. In essence, potential customers can be categorized into two groups:

1. Applications at the bottom of the conversion funnel are called sales-qualified leads (SQL). SQLs are those leads that you can pass on to the sales department for further work without remorse. They have visited your page in the network (whether it’s a social profile or a landing page hosted), read a few articles, and have those characteristics that indicate their high potential to make a purchase.
2. Potential customers who need to get additional information about the product (for example, the principles of the service, its options, and features) get a lower rank — marketing-qualified leads (MQL). Their “nurturing” to the next level is the responsibility of marketers.

Lead scoring offers several benefits to businesses. It helps optimize resource allocation by directing sales and marketing efforts toward leads with the highest potential. It improves sales and marketing alignment by providing a common framework for evaluating leads. It also enables personalized communication and tailored messaging, increasing the chances of successful conversions.

How to score leads?

Scoring leads is easy, you only need to determine the main criteria (characteristics), and then carefully and objectively make a rating of all your received leads in accordance with them. Each criterion is assigned a weight based on its importance in predicting conversion.

The criteria used for lead scoring can vary depending on the business and industry. Common factors include 3 categories:

• lead demographics (job title, company size, and location)
• engagement behavior (website visits, email opens, and content downloads)
• lead source (referrals or inbound marketing campaigns)

Here is an example of a lead scoring based on demographic criteria:

Lead scoring tips

If you’re already stoked to try out lead scoring in action ASAP, use our list of tips to get the most out of it.

Clean up your list of leads

Before you get started, you should clean and qualify your leads. There are many services that can confirm that your lead is a real person with a working email address and social media profile. You can also use qualifying questions for it. Clarifying questions force the potential customer to assess the situation and provide the information you need. This helps filter out leads that don’t make sense to engage with.

Create an image of the ideal customer

Many studies show that most potential customers don’t buy anything. To avoid it, you need to see which leads look like your best customers. Ask yourself, what are their most important qualities? What correlations can you find between engagement types and deals closed?

By making sure you differentiate between the types of content they engage with, the channels they use, and the keywords they search for — you can better segment your database and categorize leads.

Use the BANT approach

The Inseev Interactive team has suggested a special method for counting the number of potential customers: the BANT method — an abbreviation of:

• Budget — Does the lead have a budget to purchase your solution?
• Authority — Does he have the authority to make decisions about its purchase?
• Need — Does his company need a product?
• Timeline — Is there a timeframe for selling it?

This system is ideal for understanding whether a lead is of high quality, but the quality of good leads may vary depending on the service or product type.

Know your limit

The evaluation of a lead should not be determined solely by the value that it can bring to your business, but also by the value that you can provide to a potential client in response. Although ambitions are important when it comes to business, they should never have a bad effect on the quality of your product or service.

Unfulfilled promises can damage the professional reputation and credibility of your business. If you are not sure of your capacities, analyze the resources of your business and only then decide whether you have enough current resources to provide a quality product or service to the client.

Think outside the box

Remember that there are no universal solutions. Everything will depend on the type of your company. For this reason, you need to create a unique lead qualification model based on the needs of your audience when it comes to attracting potential customers.

Think ahead

Do not get hung up on the evaluation of any particular sale or transaction. It is necessary to take into account the LTV of this client and apply it to the cost of attraction. Do not forget to take into account the personal factor and imagine how these customers will suit your business. If you rate this partnership 3 out of 5, then the results will be appropriate.

Final thoughts

Lead scoring is a powerful tool that empowers businesses to make informed decisions, prioritize their efforts, and drive revenue growth. By systematically evaluating and ranking leads based on their potential value and likelihood to convert, businesses can focus their resources on the most promising prospects, resulting in higher conversion rates and increased revenue.

However, lead scoring is not a one-time process. It requires continuous evaluation and refinement to adapt to changing market dynamics and customer behaviors. Businesses need to regularly assess the performance of their scoring models, refine the criteria, and ensure data quality to maintain accuracy and effectiveness. Do not forget that this is not a perfect technology, and leads that don’t seem promising at first glance may well soon become your gold mine.