The Basics of Good Lead Scoring

Long-term sales opportunities result only when you have good number of qualified sales leads. Identifying and evaluating qualified sales leads is not an easy task, and the only useful method to get sales-ready leads is lead scoring. According to Marketing Sherpa, many marketers are still under the process of implementing lead scoring as a daily activity in their process. Lead scoring can increase lead generation ROI to up to 77 percent.

Lead scoring requires critical thinking. Based on the scores you derive, you can identify which lead is hot, warm or cold, and thus, which leads are ready for effective pursuing. Unqualified leads will just eat up the sales rep’s time. According to Chuck Schaeffer, lead scoring can be an accurate indicator of a perfectly qualified lead, and basing your lead scoring on multiple factors (numeric plus relative scoring) improves this process.

However, before you delve into multiple lead scoring and account lead scoring, you must first understand the basics of lead scoring. These basics can vary from business to business depending on their criteria and strategy.

Basics of Good Lead Scoring:

Lead Score Based on Company Information

For B2B companies, it is more crucial to have information on the company – like the size of the company, industry type, revenue and target market. When you add forms on your website to capture more leads, then you need to add these fields. You can also capture this information on a company website and professional social websites.

How to score: Have a basic score scale, like 0-10. Based on this scale, you can add scores and subtract scores, depending on the information and lead’s behavior. If you are a SaaS company you may target small and medium sized companies. Your idle lead will be a company with 10-500 employees, any industry, 1-5 million revenue and technology as your target market. Here, you can add five points to any lead with more than ten employees, but subtract five points (negative scoring) if there are more 1000 employees. Add and subtract the exact score allotted to the criteria.

Lead Score Based on Online Behavior

The activity logs of your lead when he or she was on your website or landing page is what derives the scoring for online behavior. What actions did your leads take when they were on your page? Did they check the pricing page, downloaded any offers, visit various pages or fill out any forms? You should score your lead based upon these types of factors. The types and number of pages and forms they check are equally important.

How to score: Allot 0-10 points to different pages based on their importance or your criterion. Add or subtract the score based on the activity or inactivity of the lead on that page. If your lead visited the pricing page add five points, or if your lead downloaded any offer add another three points. However, if your lead’s website activity has stopped, then add a negative score.

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Lead Score Based on Email Performance

Whenever a lead visits your page they sign up for your emails. However, you cannot be sure if this lead is a hot lead. So how do you conclude? You monitor the email performance. Monitor email open rates and click-through rates to understand how your lead is performing.

How to score: Allot scoring to every element and link in your email to understand how your lead is performing. Add one point if the lead opens your email, add three points if he clicks on a link, add another five points if he downloads any offer and continue likewise. Add negative scoring if the lead opts for the unsubscribe email.

Lead Score Based on Social Engagement

Your lead engaging with your brand on social media matters when it comes to understanding his buying intention. You need to monitor the social activities of your leads around your brand. Did they like your Tweet or FB update? Did they share it? Did they download the offer from your social page? Did they like your social page? All of these require scoring, and based on that scoring you will weed out your leads.

How to score: Check their social activity on your company social page and start scoring them. Add 1-10 points for each – liked your page, liked your post or tweet, shared your post or tweet, replied to your post or tweet and so on. Use negative scoring if there is a complete lead’s inactivity on your social page.

Lead Score Based on Content Upgrade

Not many marketers are doing this, but this can be really helpful in understanding your lead’s interest in your product. Start placing content upgrades on your website, email and social media. Depending on the number of downloads, add a score to your lead.

How to score: Add a score whenever your lead downloads a content upgrade. However, you should allot a different score to every content upgrade. For example, an e-book could have six points, a checklist or cheat sheet could have three points, an infographic could have four points and so on. If the lead just clicked on the upgrade, but doesn’t download it, then add negative scoring.

Lead scoring will obviously help you weed out the good leads from the cold ones. However, if negative lead scoring is not used whenever appropriate, then you might be faced with a challenge of big scores and too many leads. So, be careful with your score scale. Try to keep it as minimal as possible and actively use negative scoring wherever applicable.

Lead scoring facilitates lead prioritization, which helps sales reps to prioritize leads that get the most attention. This is what really drives sales and allows you to capture sales, as well as marketing qualified leads.