Lead scoring allows you to implement a commercial marketing strategy based on the maturity of your prospects. This technique consists of calculating and assigning a score to your prospects to know their conversion potential and the interest they have in your company.
This inbound marketing methodology allows you to focus on the most involved prospects and put in place strategies to convert the least interested.
Here we explain how to build a lead scoring calculation model.
What is the definition of lead scoring?
Consists of assigning scores (which can assume a variety of forms) to prospects based on:
The objective of lead scoring is to identify the most "mature" prospects, i.e. ready to make a purchase, and those who are not yet ready, remaining in the lead phase. nursing.
To establish a lead scoring strategy, you must take into account the parameters that allow a lead to pass from one stage to another. The easiest way is to build a lead scoring scenario using marketing automation.
You evaluate lead scoring by considering user information:
For example, when a user opens your email and clicks on a link, this action adds 10 points to their score. The evaluation is also done in the negative direction, it can be a question of a user who unsubscribes from the email list.
1. Adopt a scoring method
To set up your lead scoring, you must first define which points strategy to adopt. Depending on the method chosen, your prospects will be assigned a certain score according to their profile.
Zoom on the 4 most popular lead scoring methods.
The BANT method
The BANT method (for Budget, Authority, Necessity, and Timeline) focuses on 4 key criteria to assess the qualification of a prospect:
- The budget: can the lead (financially) afford to buy your product or service?
- Authority: does the prospect have decision-making power? Can he get his company to allocate funds? (This is especially true for B2B).
- The need: does he really need your item or service? What can trigger this need?
- Planning: when will the prospect be ready to buy? Could a triggering event happen soon?
By looking at these 4 factors, you get a solid foundation to assess the potential of your business leads and assign points to them.
Despite everything, the BANT is dependent on the information you have obtained from your prospect: the less you know about him, the less this method is relevant.
Demographic scoring
Demographic scoring is based on several data that can help you profile your prospect and compare it to your buyer persona, your "ideal customer", to assess its potential.
Among the essential criteria to be analyzed are:
- The profession / socio-professional category: this data says a lot about the financial means of the prospect, his importance within a company, etc.
- The sector of activity: this criterion is particularly important in B2B since your offer must be relevant to the activity of the prospect's company.
- Age, sex: without going into caricature or discrimination, some products are clearly oriented toward a certain age group or towards a particular sex.
Indeed, it is difficult to obtain information from your prospects, and even more to obtain quality information.
This is why there are methods that can circumvent this limitation.
Behavioral scoring
With this method, we will be less interested in the information given directly by the lead than in the implicit information that we can obtain by observing his behavior.
There is indeed a multitude of clues left by your prospects on the web allowing them to be assigned a score:
- A click on a link in a newsletter sent by you;
- A completed form;
- A visit to your site or blog;
- Sharing one of your publications on social networks…
By assigning a certain number of points to each of these actions and by making a few additions, you will quickly be able to discern which leads are qualified and which have less potential.
Refined behavioral scoring
If there are a multitude of behaviors synonymous with interest for your company, not all are at the same level and it is possible to refine the scoring by prioritizing them.
Consider the following example of a marketing email addressed to prospects: Which of the following is correct? actions, in your opinion, have the highest value?
A click on a link that takes you to a blog article.
A link to a white paper is followed by a click.
A product page is accessed with a click.
You probably guessed it, visiting a product page indicates a greater purchase intention than reading a blog post. As for downloading a white paper, it can be considered to be between the two.
2. Assign points throughout the sales cycle
To define a lead scoring model, evaluate your sales cycle, that is to say, the stages through which your prospect goes before making the purchase.
You can then define a scale for each step and then assign points to them. Here are the 4 main steps.
The interest of the visitor
This is the beginning of the sales funnel. It is when the user consults your website, and your social networks or subscribes to the newsletter.
You can award between 5 and 10 points for each action in this step.
The commitment
You find that the user is really interested in your services since he has downloaded your ebook or does not fail to open all your newsletters.
For example, if the prospect has opened three consecutive emails, his interest is real. It can also be about the completion of data, an interested user to give his personal information more easily.
For these different actions, the number of points increases from 10 to 20.
Exploration
The user takes action by requesting a quote or contacting you directly. We are talking about qualified leads here, you can award 30 points for these actions.
The probability of conversion is much higher for the most engaged prospects. This is why the calculation concerns them in priority. Identify and evaluate every lead action to create your lead scoring model.
3. Create dynamic segmentation
Do you know marketing automation? To set up your calculation model, you will need to organize your contacts in specific lists to target them when you set up your marketing campaigns.
You can create dynamic segmentations in different ways, but lead scoring is the most suitable method.
After you've created a lead scoring model, it's time to put it into effect. All you have to do now is use the score you assigned to each visitor to figure out which list they belong to will be added to. It's a great way to conduct targeted and effective emailing campaigns!
4. Set up the lead scoring model.
You can set up your lead scoring model by using a marketing automation agency. This will then use the emailing solution you are using.
All software offers methods to improve your scoring. Some may know the importance of the lead based on the recurrence of visits to the site or the rate of completion of information. While other software is content to linearly measure the progress of a user on a simple automation scenario.
How much do you want to invest to build a lead scoring calculation model? Depending on your objectives, you can set up your lead scoring model in a simple Excel table, use high-performance software, or even be a freelancer.
The objective is therefore to distinguish active leads – which have strong engagement and immediate potential – from latent leads, whose interest is more relative.
Typically, an active lead will perform several very qualifying actions in a short time, while a latent lead will have repetitive behaviors over the long term, without showing a very high commitment.
By refining your scoring, you will be able to really distinguish the “hot” prospects with a strong purchase intention from the leads of lesser value.
Do not hesitate to build a lead scoring calculation model to know your qualified leads and implement a marketing strategy that adapts to the maturity of your prospects.