Build an Effective Lead Scoring Model
Lead scoring marketing isn’t merely about assigning a point value system to your qualified leads
Developing a lead scoring model is also about gauging how likely people are to purchase. Similarly, it can help you determine how large their purchase will be, and the timeframe of that purchase. With this abundance of customer information, both your sales and marketing teams will benefit. They will gain an acute understanding of who their biggest prospects are, and where to better focus their attention.
What is lead scoring?
While every company has a different system for assigning points to score their leads, most companies choose to use data from past leads to generate their lead scoring system. To do this, you’ll need to evaluate past leads who became customers and what qualities they share. Next, you’ll need to do the same for the leads who never became customers and compare their commonalities. Once you discern what attributes equate to more customers, you’ll be able to assign points to those attributes and score leads based on what your company values.
What are lead scoring models?
Lead scoring models indicate whether or not your scoring system reflects the compatibility of your leads to your product. In other words, they help determine whether the score you give a lead is the right score.
Here are the most common lead scoring models based on the data you collect from your leads:
- Demographic information
- Company information
- Online behaviour
- Email engagement
- Social engagement
- Spam recognition
What else can I use lead scoring for?
Recognise and target leads that need nurturing
Your lower-scoring leads may require more nurturing to increase their engagement and interest. Lead scoring will help determine which leads are more likely to convert and which require additional attention from both sales and marketing, to successfully travel down your sales funnel.
Test assumptions about your target market
Lead scoring can be used as a predictive model to forecast the success of your sales funnel. If your lead scoring system is accurate, it will help you predict your revenue, and the quality and quantity of leads in your pipeline. When you understand the behavioural patterns of your target market or buyer personas, then you can hone in on the patterns that lead to a purchase, and eliminate or come back to the leads that don’t exhibit said behaviour. Once you gain insight into your target market, you can refine and improve your lead scoring system based on the characteristics that lead to more sales.
Identify your brand enthusiasts
Lead scoring tools enable businesses to track the engagement of their customers over time. Customers with the highest levels of engagement are typically the most satisfied, most vocal customers when it comes to promoting your business and products. These customers are also the most likely to recommend your business to their social circles and beyond, helping you add more leads to your sales funnel, organically. A successful lead scoring system will help you target your brand enthusiasts to encourage them with automated campaigns. With inbound marketing principles, your net promoters will encourage more people to convert into customers, growing your fan base and sustainably boosting sales.
Refine your marketing messages
Once you have established your buyer persona(s), you can begin to test which marketing messages work for certain people, as opposed to others. Lead scoring can help you segment which contacts are the best match for your business and products. Your company can also test various approaches to determine which leads are less interested and why. In the same way, you can market to your less interested leads in a more personalised manner, either by being more aggressive with your CTA, improving the customer experience, or by contacting them more often.
Lead scoring tools
Marketing automation
Once you’ve determined which leads are the most likely to convert, you can employ marketing automation tools to further segment your leads with varying scores. Marketing automation tools are vital to your digital transformation, as well as streamlining your entire process. With MA, you can select and drop your leads into nurturing campaigns built specifically to develop them into sales-ready leads.
Predictive lead scoring
For most businesses, lead scoring can be complicated – especially when done manually. Not only do you have to keep updating your lead scoring system to maintain accuracy and reliability, but you also need to consider the constant feedback you’ll receive from your team. Predictive lead scoring takes on the manual process of tweaking your lead scoring methods so you can focus on nurturing your leads instead. Predictive scoring uses machine learning to identify your best leads based on customer data and behaviour. Leads with strong potential to become customers will be identified through an algorithm that sorts leads based on the characteristics that are most likely to result in a sale. Similarly, machine learning technology can get smarter and improve over time, helping you assign more accurate scores to your leads. Also, your lead follow-up strategy will optimise itself as you collect more and more data.
