Finding the best leads for your business is an important part of being successful. Lead scoring is a way to organize your sales and marketing activities by assessing which leads are most likely to be fruitful for a company's marketing efforts but What is lead scoring and how does it work? In this article, we'll cover a lot of the basics of lead scoring so that you can understand what it takes to build your own system.
What is lead scoring? Lead scoring is just a fancy term for the process of ranking your customers. It's used to determine which leads are most valuable and where you should spend your marketing dollars.
With lead scoring, you can also better understand how your website visitors are finding their way to your business - what type of content they're browsing, what channels they're coming from and when they're visiting.
This article explains what is lead scoring and how you can use lead scoring in order to improve your online marketing strategy!
Lead scoring is a method of assigning value to leads. It's generally used in lead generation and can be applied to any type of marketing campaign, including email campaigns, social media ads or web banner ads.
Lead scoring allows you to assign points based on the quality and quantity of each individual lead that your company receives through various channels (such as website visitors).
The more qualified leads you receive from different sources — such as emails versus phone calls — the higher your score will be when it comes time for payment.
Now that you know what is lead scoring let’s understand how it works. Lead scoring is based on a number of factors, including the type of channel through which you received your leads (e.g., website visitors versus phone calls), and the quality or quantity of each individual lead that you receive from different sources.
For example, if your company receives more qualified leads via email than it gets inbound inquiries by phone call, then its score will be higher for those who respond to an email ad than they would have been had they responded directly to one's voicemail system.
The same goes for other channels: If you get many more qualified leads via your website than you do through a Facebook ad, then your score will be higher for those who respond to an email campaign versus those who responded directly to that Facebook ad.
Now that you understand what is lead scoring let’s understand some basics of it. Lead scoring is a way of ranking your website’s pages.
The process involves assigning points to each page based on the amount that visitors find useful and engaging, as well as other factors such as how easy they are to get around (visited vs unvisited), which sections are more popular than others and so forth.
The idea behind lead scoring is simple: if you have an active audience using your site regularly then you should be rewarded for this activity with higher rankings in search engines like Google or Bing because these searches will generate revenue from advertising clicks etc.
However, if you are not getting enough traffic to your website or if visitors don’t find it useful then this activity will be ignored and lead scoring can make a difference.
The main problem with using lead scoring as the sole ranking method is that there's no way of knowing how many visits each page has had, so we have to rely on other factors such as bounce rate (the percentage of time users stay on a given site) for an estimate.
Unfortunately, bounce rates do vary considerably between different websites: some sites have low bounce rates while others have extremely high ones – in fact most sites seem to have a bounce rate of around 20% or so.
So, if you are using lead scoring and your site has high bounce rates then it’s very likely that the page ranks highly for this reason alone – but what about other factors such as engagement?
If visitors don’t find your pages useful then they won't stay on them long enough to get any benefit from this activity and will quickly move onto another website with better content where they can potentially be converted into customers.
This is why we need to use our analytics data in order to see how many visits each page gets and how long they stay on the site for and then use this information to make an informed decision about whether or not we should continue using lead scoring.
The easiest way of doing this is by looking at your bounce rate in order to see how many visits each page gets, although you can also look at other factors such as time spent on pages etc.
If a particular page has a high bounce rate then it’s very likely that there are too few visitors coming onto the website which means that most of these users will quickly leave after seeing only one or two pages – so if our goal is to get as many visitors to the site as possible, then we need to take action.
The second type of visitor who is most likely not a good fit for lead scoring are those users who have dealt with your company in the past and have already been given some sort of discount or offer.
These people will be more than happy to receive further discounts from you again so it’s unlikely that they would leave their current website unless there was something wrong with what they were looking at on this page.
This means that if our goal is simply getting new customers through email marketing campaigns then lead scoring probably isn ’t the best way to go about it.
However, if our goal is to convert more of these visitors into customers then lead scoring can be a very useful tool as you will have an idea of how many people are visiting your website and therefore whether or not there's something on this page that would make them leave after seeing only one or two pages.
This means we can take action in order to improve the experience for all users who visit our site – such as by adding relevant content, improving search engine rankings etc., which may result in even more conversions down the line!
The main drawback with lead scoring is that it can be very time consuming and difficult to implement – you will have to spend a lot of time manually tracking down which users are likely candidates for new customers, so there's no point in having the system set up if most of your visitors aren't going to benefit from this.
If we're using Google Analytics then we should also look at other factors such as how long they stay on our site by looking at bounce rate or average session duration (the amount of time spent on each page) etc.
This means that even though lead scoring may not be useful for every website, it may be a useful tool for some.
The purpose of a lead score is to help your sales or marketing team prioritize their response. Different companies offer different types of scores, so you'll need to use the criteria that make sense for your company's needs.
1. Text-Only Score : A text-only score simply gives you the bare minimum information about a lead in order to determine which type of follow up you should conduct with them (e.g., email campaign, social media promotion).
The goal here is not necessarily scoring leads but getting more timely responses from existing customers and thus avoiding additional follow ups.
2. Numeric Score: An numeric score gives you more information about a lead, including the name and email address of the person who submitted it. This is especially useful if your company has multiple sales reps.
3. Full Score: A full score includes everything that's in a numeric score plus additional details such as phone number, job title and industry type (e.g., B2B/C2C).
The purpose of this extra info is to give you more context for each lead so that your follow up can be tailored to their specific needs.
Here are the best tools that will help you boost your email marketing campaigns.
1. AdRoll Lead Magnet Builder – $99/month (Free Trial) – The only lead magnet builder we recommend, this tool allows you to create high-quality email sequences and landing pages that convert at a very high rate.
It’s also incredibly easy to use, with an intuitive drag-and-drop interface that makes it simple for any marketer or business owner to get started quickly.
You can choose from over 50 pre built templates in their library as well as the ability to build your own custom page layouts if you prefer not using one of their templates.
It also allows you to import your own images and links, which is a huge plus if you have your own website or blog that needs promoting.
2. LeadPages – $29/month (Free Trial) – For those who prefer more of an all-inclusive solution for lead generation, we recommend Leadpages , which gives you access to everything from landing pages and squeeze pages with opt-ins down the line, as well as email autoresponders.
They offer their services on a monthly subscription basis where they give out 100 free leads per month before charging any fees , which makes it a great option for those who want to test the waters before committing.
3. LeadPages Squeeze Pages – $29/month (Free Trial) -Leadpages has also created an amazing squeeze page builder that is perfect for building lead magnet pages, as well as opt-in forms and more!
You can choose from over 30 pre-built templates or build your own custom layouts if you are someone who likes to customize things on their site.
The only downside of this tool is that they don’t offer any free trials at all, so make sure you factor in the cost if you are someone who is interested in trying out the tool before committing.
4. MailChimp – Free ($19/mo after first month) -Mailchimp is a great tool for those who want to build an email list and send out updates, offers, or information on your blog posts.
It is completely free up until the first month you sign up for it , so there is no reason not to give this service a try if you are interested in growing your mailing list!
5. AWeber – Free ($19/mo after first month) -Aweber is another great tool for building a list and sending out emails, as well as automating blog posts based on certain triggers or actions in the email subscribers receive.
It also has some of the best integrations with WordPress so that there are no problems when it comes time to get started!
6. GetResponse – Free ($19/mo after first month) -Getresponse has some amazing features when it comes to email marketing tools, including their autoresponder system which allows subscribers who haven't received an email from you to be added back on your list.
It also has a ton of integrations with WordPress, allowing you to easily create automated emails and even schedule them in the future!
7. MailChimp Marketing Suite – $5/month ($95/year) -The last tool I want to mention is the marketing suite that comes with all Mailchimp tools!
This allows for some incredibly powerful automation features , including email templates, Aweber integration, lead generation forms, and more . The best part is that it's only $5 a month (or just over $100 annually), and it's a great way to get started on your marketing journey!
