What is Lead Scoring?
In marketing, a lead is a potential client.
Sometimes that means a first-time visitor to your website who looked into all the right topics, and sometimes it means a person in your lobby with money to spend today.
With so much variation in who or what a lead is, how do you quantify all that nuance? One way is with a method called lead scoring.
What Is a Lead Score?
When you hear “lead score,” I want you to think “behavior.” Lead scoring is nothing more than a method of organizing leads by what actions they take. What sort of actions? Actions that virtually “raise their hand” indicating their interest in what you are selling. These indicators could be as simple as how much they interact with a company’s website, email, and other content; or more distinct such as interacting with a specific white paper or submitting a specific form. The higher the score, the more they have shown interest in your product
While the score can also act as a trigger for an automated program, the behavior is what the marketing and sales departments are actually interested in seeing. Different behaviors indicate how prepared they are to make a purchase. Examining that behavior prepares the sales and marketing teams to make contact.
How do I Score Behaviors?
Lead scoring is not a one-size-fits-all system. Every company will need to create a personalized ranking system based on the behaviors of their leads. For one company, a visit to the About Us page might be only 1 point, whereas, for another, that could be worth 10. It depends on the complexity of your system and ultimately comes down to understanding your business, your clients, and what indicates interest in your particular product or service. Lead scoring is an important tool in understanding your audience and leads. Still, it requires careful attention to build a system unique to your business. When it comes to creating your lead scoring system, keep in mind:
What Lead Scoring Isn’t
• A definitive qualification
• A replacement for human reasoning
• The only way to measure engagement
What Lead Scoring Is
• A method of prioritizing leads
• An indicator that further action is required
• A useful tool in a more extensive qualification process
