Currently, if a company wants to increase its level of sales , it must resort to the tools offered by marketing to start an effective advertising campaign that helps achieve the pre-established goals.
However, before starting a campaign, it is necessary to have a strategically organized database , made up of leads that the brand can then convert into customers. For this, it is extremely useful to implement what in the sector is known as Lead Scoring, a technique that facilitates the analysis of a brand's leads.
So, if you are interested in knowing how to implement Lead Scoring and what it can be useful for, you found the perfect article for you.
What is Lead Scoring?
Lead scoring is a marketing technique used to automatically qualify leads to identify their relevance to the brand using different types of criteria. The objective is to evaluate the degree of interest or score of the leads, qualifying them based on the probabilities that they actually become a real buyer.
In most cases, the selected criteria are linked to the moment in which the Lead is within the conversion funnel , that is, when the probability of making a purchase increases. However, the criteria are constantly changing. To give you an example, for a company it may be more important to analyze the interaction of leads with the brand, while for other companies it is better to pay attention to the similarity of the Leads' profile with that of the Buyer Persona. The important thing, in this case, is that there is a relationship between the objectives of the brand and Lead Scoring .
In addition, Lead Scoring not only allows you to make an initial diagnosis of your database, but also facilitates the monitoring of leads so that the sales strategies applied from Marketing are really effective. Let's not forget that each action you take will change the way the visitor interacts with the company. That is why we can think of Lead Scoring as an automated technique that facilitates decision-making by the brand, taking into account every aspect of business opportunities .
Likewise, Lead Scoring is very important because having a large number of Leads does not always guarantee increasing the profit volume of a company. In fact, it is not said that the lead will be converted into a client. That is why it is important to have an organized database.
Types of Lead Scoring
Today, there are two types of Lead Scoring that you can implement: one-dimensional and multidimensional. Let's see what are the elements that characterize each one.
One-Dimensional Scoring
This type of Lead Scoring has the objective of classifying leads with a score from 0 to 100. The score not only refers to the purchase of a product, but also to the predisposition of the lead to achieve a goal or the registration to a database. of data.
multidimensional scoring
Multidimensional Scoring is a more advanced technique than the one mentioned above. It is characterized by parameterizing a series of dimensions, that is, of the variables, that are going to be considered to qualify the leads of a contact database.
Among the most important dimensions we find:
- Make the lead resemble the Buyer Persona;
- Getting the client to know the brand beforehand;
- Identify the lead based on the phase of the purchase cycle in which it is located;
- Level of user interaction with the company's social networks;
- Time that elapses from when the user discovers a product until when he buys it.
What types of leads are there?
Now, in order to determine how to implement Lead Scoring, you need to know what types of Leads exist in Marketing.
lead
The lead is the potential customer who has provided you with their basic personal information because they have shown interest in the brand, but they are still a long way from making a purchase. In general, these consumers become part of a database thanks to the information that is usually collected through web forms.
We can say that the potential client is in what is known as the Top of Funnel of the purchase cycle.
Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)
It is a type of user who has shown several times that they are interested in the brand. This can happen when you communicate with the company several times or if you download the content that is sent to you.
With this type of Lead, the important thing is to provide more information about the products or services offered to promote the purchase, since it is in the Middle of funnel phase.
Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)
They are the leads that are contemplating making a purchase, so they are in an advanced phase of the marketing funnel . In most cases, the company obtained a favorable response to a promotion offered, such as a sample, a trial or a demo.
Typically, this type of lead offers a lot of valuable information, so you're more likely to close a sale. That is why this Lead is in the Bottom of the Funnel phase.
How does lead scoring work?
As we told you before, Lead Scoring allows you to go from a disorganized contact database to a matrix to which a series of characteristics can be attributed to each lead.
So that you better understand how it works, we present below how the matrix is formed. In general, this matrix has 3 differentiated variables:
- The degree of affinity of the Lead with the ideal customer of the brand. It is what resembles the visitor with the Buyer Person of the company . This type of score can be attributed automatically during each registration. The more similar the profile of the Lead is to the Buyer Persona, the higher the score that is attributed.
Among the criteria that must be considered are: geographic location, age, sex, work sector and purchase interest;
- The degree of knowledge of the company. This is another variable that you should consider, since it depends on the number of times the lead has interacted with the brand. At this point, we have to remember that interaction depends on Inbound Marketing and includes actions such as: visiting the web, clicking on calls to action, email open rate and interactions on social networks.
- The moment of the purchase cycle in which the lead is located. This third variable has to do with the moment of the purchase process in which each lead that is part of the database is located. It is a very important criterion to take into account because it helps to identify what type of content the company must create to capture the customer's attention.
How to apply Lead Scoring?
If you got here, and you are interested in implementing Lead Scoring in your company, with this article you will discover how to apply this technique.
As we have mentioned before, there are many alternatives and different levels to implement Lead Scoring. So that you can understand better, we are going to give you an example.
You can create a Subscriber List so that you will later use it as a database to start your Email Marketing campaign or you can resort to Lead Scoring to value each Lead based on the interaction they had with your advertising campaign. Some of the criteria that you can contemplate are: level of interaction, opening of emails, with division of email with friends and family.
At the same time, there are also other types of tools, a bit more advanced, such as those that allow you to analyze the frequency of purchases, the amounts spent, the categories, among others. However, the goal is to assign a score to each Lea based on the number of criteria it has met.
After you have qualified the leads that are part of your database, you can begin to establish which marketing techniques to implement, in an orderly manner to achieve the sales objectives that you have pre-set.
To do this, it could be very useful to resort to what is known in the sector as Lead Nurturing , whose purpose is to get leads to interact with the brand until a sale is finalized.
Conclution
Concluding with today's article, we are sure that Lead Scoring is going to become an essential tool for your brand. Its advantages are numerous, since it offers you the possibility of having a clean, organized database ready for use by your marketing team.
So, if you want your future advertising campaign to be successful and boost your company, you should consider Lead Scoring as a technique to score for your lead and transform it into a client in the future.