According to Gartner, “By converting segmentation criteria into business rules how leads are rated, or scored, providers see an immediate boost in lead volume and lead quality.”
Lead scoring is an essential part of the lead generation process. Lead scoring helps measure sales readiness aspects for potential prospects and assists sales and marketing automation teams across B2B enterprises in judging their prospects’ stage in the buying lifecycle.
Using robust marketing automation applications, leads can now be automatically scored and prioritized based on their activity, interest and intent. It helps marketing teams to differentiate between leads that are sales ready and those that are not. Accordingly they can pass on the sales ready leads to Sales and focus their efforts on lead nurturing for the others. Also, lead Scoring makes Sales more efficient by helping them focus on the hottest leads first and get to them with a relevant solution in real time.
Using robust marketing automation software, lead scoring process is easy and simple to execute.
- It allows Sales and Marketing teams to define the parameters for a 'good' lead in advance, based on which it then classifies all leads.
- It monitors every click and keystroke, to understand where the visitors are in their buying cycle and which of them are exhibiting key buying indicators.
- It determines their identity and quality. This data when accumulated over a period of time and when combined with a company level view, becomes a powerful tool in qualifying leads.
- Uses of lead scoring tools.
- B2B lead scoring tools are widely used by companies as they can now directly gauge the actual effectiveness of what is working with their potential clients and what fails to create an impact.
- With the help of real time updates, sales reaction time has become faster.
- Automated lead scoring techniques employed by enterprises these days come with the additional focus on enhanced analysis of prospects.
- Scoring analysis helps to nurture leads effectively.
Lead scoring model should use both implicit and explicit behavior of the leads. Explicit information throws light on the “fit” of a prospect to a product. Explicit scores are primarily based on the information about the prospect like company size, industry segment, job title or geographic location. Implicit scores are more realistic and are derived from monitoring the prospect’s online body language like the type of whitepaper downloads, email activities, number of website visits, webinars, blogs, article, virtual shows etc.
By implementing the right lead scoring model and using a robust marketing automation system B2B marketing companies can enhance the effectiveness of the lead generation process.
Also read on - lead management, lead nurturing
The surge in Internet usage and the overdose of digital information have brought about a huge transformation is the B2B selling process. It has been researched and found out that most buyers prefer to do their research about what they want to buy before reaching out to the company’s hotline.
It is important for sellers to also be informed about their prospect’s wishes. So, there is a need for sales teams to be aware of all the activities that the prospects are doing on the site.
Most company websites have online information filling forms. They know what to do when someone responds to an RFP, or fills up a Contact Us form. Companies are also potential prospects and are reaching out to marketers even if they are not choosing to identify themselves by filling out a form. Therefore, it is crucial to have a platform where both types of visitors are identified – those that choose to identify themselves and those that remain anonymous.
Most analytics tools (like Google Analytics) are more very useful to B2C audiences and hence the talk of summary metrics (number of visit to a page) and Goal completes (who is buying, where are they dropping out etc) which are not quite as relevant from a B2B standpoint. For a B2B environment the marketing automation software used has to be relevant to both Sales and Marketing teams.
When it comes to B2B selling, companies need lead data that is actionable and provides consistent information to all sales teams. This data should help to identify potential prospects, provide some background information to determine if they are qualified and in turn help in reaching out to them.
By using marketing automation solutions for lead generation, marketers can expect the following:
1. Trace Online Activity
Marketing automation tools help in tracking information such as visits made to important pages, downloading content, attending a Webinar, responding to an email sent out, copying content on the site, visiting site from a 3rd party review publisher site, etc. This can be very useful for B2B lead generation.
2. Identify Lead Background Information
Marketing automation solutions help B2B companies to identify the name of the company. Structured data like company size, location, industry can also be identified and be used to determine if the corporate visitor is in the target segment or not and help marketing teams to make a quick decision.
3. Choose Warm Leads Only
There is a lot of data that can be gathered from the interactions of the website visitors with the site. Users can set proactive alerts based on important criteria such as first time visitor from a company, a person from a named account visiting the pricing page, etc can be very useful to a B2B marketer.
4. Identify Target Segment Buyer
There are many people involved in the decision making process, information on their interaction should also be considered to track what the customers are doing. If the contacted person has delegated the responsibility then, it is important to be able to track both individuals and also the company behavior over time to gauge interest levels and qualify them.
Also read on - Lead management, Lead nurturing best practices
