How to estimate the value of your leads
Is every lead of the same value to your company? The answer is definitely no! Some leads are simply warmer and more ready to convert than others. Do Google the difference between MQLs and SQLs ;) But even leads that are defined as MQL can differ from each other, as well as SQLs. How do you create a clear overview of this, and more importantly, how can you estimate the value of the lead given the information you have from this person? That’s where lead scoring might help you out!
Lead scoring is a commonly used method by marketers to estimate the value of a lead. Most of the time, the leads are given a score between 0 and 100. The higher the score you assign to the lead, the greater the chance that they will buy your product or service. By accurately estimating the value of a lead, marketing, and acquisition costs can be reduced, higher conversion rates can be achieved, and, ultimately, sales can be increased.
Here’s what you need to do to make a good start with your lead-scoring process.
1. Do: Make sure to make it easier to gather clean data
The success of your lead scoring depends largely on your data. The cleaner it is, the better you can make predictions, and the more accurate your scoring will ultimately be.
In order to get your data ‘clean’ it's important to first separate converted leads from?dead leads. Next, using the list of converted leads, you're going to figure out the most common behaviors (and possibly attributes) of your leads. You'll add these to your?buyer persona. A buyer persona is a fictionalized characterization of your best customer. **These personas are based on the information you already gathered about them, like how and why they use your product, their job title, their interests, etc. You can find a lot of buyer persona templates online that can make this step easier for you to undertake. Generally, your lead scoring will be more accurate when you make your?buyer persona?more detailed.
2. Do: Map out your customer journey
With the insights you gathered in the previous step, you can take it to the next step by detailing the customer journey your customer takes. What touch points do customers have with your company before, during, and after they buy your product or service? Once again, Google can provide you with a lot of templates that can help you out in creating your customer journey.
Bonus to do: In case necessary, you can further modify the?buyer persona?based on insights you continuously gain.
领英推荐
3. Do: Attach a score to the found behaviors and characteristic
After you created this overview with the most important behaviors and characteristics, it is time to attach a score to these behaviors. This score is based on how valuable it is for you when a lead possesses it. When giving the score, remember the following: the higher the score you give, the more likely it is that a person with this behavior or characteristic will actually become a lead and buy something from you.
Examples are:
Keep in mind that some of these behaviors or characteristics can change over time. A good example is the open rate of emails. When you send new emails to a lead, but they stop opening them, the open rate for this lead changes. This means you should have more than one single score attached to these types of behaviors and characteristics.
4. Do: Check with sales
Discuss your buyer persona?and scores with your sales team and ask if they miss any characteristics or see any other gaps. After all, they are the ones who are the closest touch-point for the real customer and they have more insight into when I client could really convert ;)
5. Do: Automate this process
Once you've completed the entire process, you can use lead-scoring tools to start scoring your leads in an automated way. Examples of tools you could use for this are ActiveCampaign and the 6sense ABM/ABX platform.