What can be the impact on your turnover if you do not identify your best prospects?
Your marketing and sales teams probably have the answers to these questions… and of course, they are not surely positive!
Most marketers agree that implementing a lead scoring strategy is a must!
And it is surely not me who will say the opposite …
If you want to boost your ROI, you must not stop at the stage of generating leads. They should also be noted in order to determine which ones are really ready to buy.
So, how do you put in place an effective lead scoring strategy?
Why is this strategy so important to a business?
I invite you to better understand lead scoring by answering these few questions:
How to estimate the score of a prospect?
What are the steps to follow to estimate the maturity level of your leads?
How to improve the rating of your leads?
How does lead scoring serve your business?
Lead scoring is a methodology aimed at classifying leads according to their level of maturity.
This classification is generally based on their behavior. To put it simply, lead scoring consists of assigning a score to your prospects according to their degree of maturity in relation to your offer.
The higher the score, the more a lead is considered a qualified prospect, that is, a prospect likely to become your customer.
Suppose a lead:
Follow you on social media,
Subscribed to your newsletter,
Has viewed your products and / or services,
And visited your pricing page …
You necessarily give it a high score compared to a lead who just visited the home page of your website.
Know that by determining the hot leads, you make it easier for your sales teams.
Indeed, these will only focus their efforts on prospects who are ready to buy.
In short, your sales and marketing teams will be able to have fun at work and improve their performance thanks to lead scoring.
On what basis should a prospect’s score be estimated?
To estimate a prospect’s score, you don’t necessarily need a calculator!
You simply have to base yourself on a few criteria:
Your buyer’s personas,
The degree of intention,
The potential of the prospect,
The degree of engagement with your business …
What are the steps to follow to estimate the maturity level of your leads?
What are the steps to follow to estimate the maturity level of your leads?
You obviously have to go through several steps to rank your leads even some of us also touches the performance industry directly or may use some top affiliates who will refer your products on commission basis. In the same way, few of us also use coupons or voucher codes to grow their sales or leads.
Step 1: define your buyer’s personas
This step consists of defining your personas, in particular to know if this or that person is perfect for your products or services.
The goal here is to define the exact criteria for your targets.
Suppose you have baby and child items. Automatically, your ideal targets are pregnant women and mothers.
You determine the criteria that meet your expectations. Then, you create a buyer persona, among other things by:
Examining your customers’ data,
Carrying out a survey among them,
Performing online research …
Step 2: Select the behaviors and attributes to note
Once your buyer’s personas have been defined, list the behaviors to note, for example:
Subscribe to your newsletter,
Download your white paper,
Open an email,
Visit a web page,
Register for the webinars you offer,
Fill out a contact form,
Interact with your business on social networks,
Interact with you on your website …
Regarding demographic attributes, consider information such as:
Age,
Sex,
The geographic location,
The area of the activity,
Annual income …
Of course, this must be done in agreement with your buyer’s personas.
If you are unsure of which behaviors should be rated, do not hesitate to seek the advice of your sales team.
The latter is probably the best informed about the behaviors adopted by the prospects most likely to become customers.
If not, why not ask your customers directly?
What prompted them to buy your products or seek your services?
Note the most important behaviors!
In addition to these 2 methods, also identify the actions taken by your prospects before making the purchase, using Google Analytics.
My advice: activate the tracking of user activity with Tag Manager as most of the marketing companies done.
Note: Don’t forget to define behaviors that indicate a lack of interest or disengagement from your prospects. Indeed, a hot prospect can become “cold” overnight. These are therefore negative ratings.
Step 3: assign a score to each behavior
To rate a behavior, ask yourself if it indicates a probability of conversion.
It is indeed common to meet a lead who signs up for a newsletter just because they like the content of a website, and not because they are planning to buy something …
In addition, it is rare that a prospect who signs up for a free trial or requests a demo does not proceed with the purchase if your products meet their expectations …
Therefore, it is more appropriate to give a higher score to a free trial subscription rather than a subscription to your newsletter.
In summary, the probability of conversion is the most important indicator.
Step 4: determine the level of points qualifying a prospect
Before taking the last step, you need to determine the point level that makes a prospect qualified, that is, the level at which a prospect is willing to buy.
Is it 40 points, 50 points or 60 points?
My Advice:
Determine the right level of points,
Do not hesitate to do tests,
Take the necessary time to properly identify this threshold …
Step 5: add up the points awarded to each lead
Once your scoring system is in place, the last step is to identify hot leads.
To do this, add up the points awarded to each lead.
Of course, those who have reached the preset point level are qualified.
Then all you have to do is create a solid follow-up plan to convert them into customers:
Offer tutorials,
Offer a case study,
Set up a “drip marketing” emailing strategy … Drip marketing is an Inbound Marketing technique that involves contacting prospects or customers with an automated sequence of several emails.
