How Lead Scoring Identifies Hot Prospects for Conversion

To stay competitive when it comes to lead generation it is important to be able to identify and prioritize leads with the highest conversion potential. Lead scoring is a powerful technique that enables organizations to assess and assign scores to leads based on their level of engagement and likelihood to make a purchase. According to abdaislam, a staggering 85% of high-growth companies utilize lead scoring, highlighting its significance in driving successful conversions. Let's explore the concept of lead scoring, its advantages, and how it empowers businesses to optimize their lead conversion processes.

Picture this: You're a lead generation wizard, armed with a crystal ball that reveals which prospects are destined to become your loyal customers. Sounds like magic, right? Well, it's not quite sorcery, but a clever strategy called lead scoring. By assessing and assigning scores to leads based on their engagement and conversion potential, you can unlock the secret to sales success. Prepare to embark on a captivating exploration as we unravel the concept of lead scoring, its myriad advantages, and how it empowers businesses to optimize their lead conversion processes. So, wave your wand and say 'Abracadabra,' for the journey begins now!"

What is Lead Scoring?

Imagine having a powerful tool that helps you and your sales and marketing team assign numerical values to leads, providing a clear picture of their interest in your goods or services. Lead scoring is the art of evaluating the worthiness of leads based on various factors, such as how well they align with your company's ideal customer profile and their engagement with your website - from the pages they visit to the actions they take, such as clicks and interactions. It's like a compass guiding you towards the most promising leads, enabling you to prioritize your efforts and maximize conversions.

The total score obtained through lead scoring serves as an important indicator of the likelihood of conversion. By assigning points based on the prospect's engagement with your company, including actions like click-through rates in emails and browsing your website's pricing page, the score reflects the level of interest exhibited. The value assigned to each lead may vary across businesses, determined by factors such as the nature of your industry and the quality of the prospect. For instance, if clicking on the page showcasing your product features indicates a strong readiness to become a customer in your industry, allocating more points to such actions can prioritize those leads. In fact, according to NuGrowth, 68% of effective marketers attribute lead scoring as a top contributor to revenue generation. 

Lead Scoring Process

To get a better understanding, let us do a basic rundown of the lead scoring process.

What makes a qualified lead must be agreed upon by the sales and marketing teams before the lead scoring procedure can start. To evaluate whether a lead is qualified, information is gathered about their occupation and position within that industry. When determining whether a lead would be interested in a company's goods or services, information about the lead's activities, demographics, or areas of interest is also taken into consideration. How the lead engaged with your company from clicks via email and downloading of content, to how they navigated on your website all would have a score value set up of course by you and your sales and marketing team.

 The sum total of the score would identify if the lead is likely to convert or not. The points would usually come from the various engagement points that a prospect would have with your company. Some will have deductions to show that a prospect could be losing interest, such as unsubscribing to your email newsletters. The "value" of each lead varies from business to business but is typically determined by the level of interest a lead has exhibited in the business or where they are in the customer journey.

Depending on how probable the prospect is to become a customer, each action they do is given a point value. Qualified prospects are those that are a perfect fit to the ideal customer profile and have demonstrated a high level of interest; these leads are handed on to sales departments, while leads that are a good fit but have had little contact are forwarded to marketing teams for lead nurturing.

 Lead Scoring Models

With lead scoring models, you can make sure that the numbers you assign to each lead accurately reflect their level of product suitability. Every lead scoring model you develop will support a specific characteristic of your consumer.

Below we have 6 different lead scoring models on the kinds of data you can collect from your prospects.

1.    Prospect Behaviour

You can learn a lot about a lead's interest in how they use your website. Look at the leads you have that end up becoming clients. Ask questions such as how many offers did they download? Which pages on your website did they browse before making a purchase, and how many? Keeping track of interactions that prospects take that shows that interest. You can add points when they do actions that bring them closer to a sale, such as looking at the pricing page of your website. Other behaviors such as unsubscribing to your email newsletter would also entail a deduction of points, as prospect disinterest would also mean they are less of a priority.

2. Social Network Engagement

You may also get a sense of a lead's level of interest by looking at how involved they are with your business on social media. How many times did they click through on Facebook and Twitter postings from your business? How frequently did they share or retweet those posts? You can assign points to such behaviors so that they move up the priority list for your sales team to convert.

3. Demographics

This can help narrow down your focus with accounts that only fall within your company's target audience. So let us say if you have a product that only services women of child-bearing age, then you'd want to remove older women from your list.

4. Company Details

If the nature of business would mean that you target other businesses you may want to identify company-specific information such as the number of employees and company revenue. This is particularly important if your business is a B2B organization. You can also ask tailored questions for such information on your landing page forms, or in emails in order to know how many points you'd give leads who fit in with your target demographic and deduct points from leads who aren't at all what you're looking for.

5. Email Activity

Through your landing page forms or any opt-ins, a lead may opt to accept emails from your company. How can you know how much this person is interested in your products and services? One way is through the open and click-through rates of the emails you send.

Your sales team will want to know who always clicked through your offer promotion emails or who opened each email in your lead nurturing campaign. They can then concentrate on the people who appear to be the most interested. Leads who click through on high-value emails, including any offers you may have made, may also receive a higher lead score from you.

6. Spam Behavior

This one is a bit different, but you do have to watch out for it and try to detect if the responses or signals you get from your prospects could be spam. Spam will just waste your time. For example, leads who filled out landing page forms in ways that could be spam should be allotted low scores.

The modals for lead scoring that we just have discussed are good indicators that could help you in properly finding traits in your prospects that could serve as indicators of how interested they are in your business. How much scores you allot really is up to you, your marketing, and your sales teams. The different modals or traits you might want to rank for lead scoring or prioritization should not be limited by the example we have given. It really depends on the needs that your company identifies. These are just a guide. According to LeadSquared, companies that use lead scoring have experienced a 77% lift in lead generation ROI.

To conclude, we just discussed the basics of Lead Scoring. This whole process is easier said than done. How effective your lead scoring strategy would really depend on the input on how well you, your marketing and sales team, would be able to identify the position of the prospects if they are about to convert or if they need a bit more push. Due to the subjective nature of how prospects behave, it would be good for you to employ an agency that does lead scoring as they are more familiar with the subtleties of consumer behavior. There are multiple advantages to this, foremost they will have the expertise and experience, you don't have to hire an in-house team, and pay only for the service that you will get, to name a few. We here at XYNC, do exactly that. We invite you to contact us to start optimizing your lead generation efforts and increase your sales.