When your marketing strategy starts paying off, leads are going to be generated. How will you know which leads are enthusiastic and which ones come and go now and again?
If you want to boost your ROI, you don't need to stop at the stage of generating leads. You should also note which leads are ready to buy.
So, how do you put your effective lead-scoring strategy in place? A digital marketing agency in Houston has an effective strategy that maximizes your sales effort. Before setting up a useful lead strategy, let's know what lead scoring is.
Lead scoring is a type of grading system that helps you assign numbers to your leads and rank them from least likely to most likely. Scoring or categorizing your lead data in this way will help you maximize the sales effort. So that you can evaluate which leads need more progress and which ones are better alone.
Let's take an example of Pareto's principle. It illustrates that 20% of leads bring 80% of revenue to your business. These are likely to be your highest paying customers, people loyal to you, and ready to spend on your business.
To make a count on your marketing efforts, you need to identify the unique group of leads and convert them fast, and this is what lead scoring will help you achieve. Lead scoring also saves you time and effort and saves you money. It is a great opportunity for a small company to grow their organization online. With these, you know three broad categories of your customers:
It is important to remember that lead scoring is not a one size one-size-fits-all strategy. If your strategy is lacking in implementation, efforts could fail after implementing lead scoring. You should personalize your lead-scoring strategy to suit the dynamics of your business. Keep in mind that the wrong implementation of strategy could lead to a potential disaster.
A competitor with a better lead-scoring strategy might expose these leads to your disadvantage. This is why the lead scoring process needs constant modification until you can determine what works best for your business. Houston marketing agency will help you find the perfect process for your business.
Let's see which actionable steps you need to implement in your lead-scoring strategy.
This step includes defining your buyer's personas to know if this or that person is perfect for your products or services. The goal should be to determine the exact criteria for your targets. Ask questions like:
Suppose you are a marketing agency in Houston that provides SEO services. Then your ideal target will be businesses looking for SEO services. You will determine the criteria that meet your expectations, and then you create the buyer's persona. Things you will do while creating a strategy are: examine the customer's data, perform online research, and do a survey among them.
Your ideal customer means the one you believe is most likely to make a purchase. This customer will score 4 or 5 on a five-point scale. You should be able to identify the customer by scaling their behavior against certain criteria.
Explicit criteria: It means that the information which directly informs you about the leads and their behavior. It includes demographics, purchasing power, purchase history, etc.
Implicit criteria: This means that the information shows the interest from a lead, which can usually be concluded from client behavior. Implicit measures include social media interactions, website behavior, phone calls, email queries, and so on.
Negative criteria: It excludes leads based on criteria that can help you identify leads likely to turn into clients. It can be determined based on criteria such as subscription from email campaigns, low interaction in social media, fewer website visits, or a high bounce rate. While negative criteria are wrong but offer valuable insight into why you are wasting your resources.
After understanding the leads, you can decide based on the grading system who your best and worst potential leads are. Usually, a 5-point range tends to work well with marketers. Where 5 is likely to convert the most and 1 is least likely to convert. This small grading system makes the lead scoring easy to interpret and can be passed for easy follow-up.
A successful lead-scoring strategy has the potential to transform your efforts in marketing and sales. As a result, it will use your time and money less as marketing will target leads with the highest potential. They are most likely to convert into sales and place you ahead of the competition. If you consult a digital marketing agency in Houston, you might have the best in-house algorithm for lead scoring.