Lead scoring is a methodology to rank prospects that allows you to assign a score based on the perceived value of the leads or proximity to a desired goal. Many people will assign a lead score based on how close the prospect is to a conversion or purchase. However, you can also adjust a lead score based on their professional information and/or behavior they have shown on your site.

For instance, you may assign a prospect a higher score if they visited your contact page or cart. You may also find leads more valuable if they have specific job titles like director or purchasing manager. Lead scoring is essential to prioritize your leads into your funnel in a fast and efficient manner.

• Purchase size
• How likely the leads are going to purchase (ie: pages visited)
• Purchasing timeline

• Increase in Sales – One of the benefits of lead scoring is the opportunity to effectively assess the ROI of your marketing attempts. It will also allow you to monitor which programs and channels produce the highest quality leads. Using this method will make it easier for you to make better decisions in your marketing investments and assess incoming revenue.
• Enhanced Sales and Marketing Alignment – Using lead scoring can improve the collaboration between the marketing and sales teams. It’s easier to identify leads that are most likely to convert. This ability makes it clear when sales should get involved and how. This brings additional transparency and accountability to each team as you now can quantify the value of each team’s work. Additionally, marketing teams can formulate targeted programs for their prospects to help further development or improve the number of qualified opportunities.
• Increased Revenue – Identifying hot leads is very useful because you can project estimated revenue based on the number of leads you have at a specific stage. Using this information with your average customer lifecycle and average customer value will allow you to guess how much money will be coming in and when. Using lead scoring makes it easier to get the profit you need for your marketing to be more efficient.

Even though lead scoring can be a tool to help most companies, it may not be as simple as it sounds to put into practice. To begin, you’ll need to have a firm grasp on your customer journey. The customer journey is the path a prospect takes from the time they become aware of your company until they have paid you. Depending on your current marketing efforts, sales cycle and access to marketing data, defining your customer journey may take time.

Next, you’ll need to establish processes for different lead scores. This could involve systems for follow up using emails, phone calls or other means. Regardless of the methods, if these systems are currently in place they’ll need to be adapted in order to make your marketing more effective. If they’re not established, you’ll need to put them in place with the help of a skilled digital marketing agency.

If you want to make sure if lead scoring is ideal for you, consulting an expert marketer can be helpful. They can help you assess your situation then they will advise you on establishing lead scoring is one of the tools or methods that you can use.