Marketing automation software has countless advantages to the marketing process for the companies that use it. One of the biggest benefits is lead scoring. Now we have a much more precised way to measure the warmth of the leads before they are passed from marketing to the sales. But this still is one area of marketing automation implementation. It has lot of where marketers stuck. Here are three ways to smooth the lead scoring process and ultimately equate to the higher conversion rate.
1. Decide for between the interest and Lead:
So let’s step back and ask, what is the purpose of lead scoring exactly? It designs the judge interest of prospects and prioritizes leads, what does it actually means to be interested. It is a harder question to answer and one that every person in organization will have a different answer for. Interest is simply surfing that can not be judge by one dimensional look at demographics, phonographic behavior, it needs to be a combination of all the above and that seems to be lapped out next the notion of need.
2. The notion of need
Need is the hardest element to measure and it requires the marketers work deeper into the outer demographic layer of their buyers. For this reason it is important to start any lead scoring exercise that we call buyers persona establishment. At the end of the day people will be just people and they buy same basic needs as we exhibit in our own personal lives. The absolute best way to build customer personas is to survey those, who have purchased in the past and ask them questions about their decision making process.
Once you have worked through that buyer persona process don’t let that slip away for more traditional target, it will get you right back your old scoring process. Marketers get very excited about their reliable lead scoring matrix that has quadrants and acronyms, that corresponds the combination of title and behaviors. The scoring models do not necessarily scale:
1. Rhey are confusing and
2. If there is turn over within the marketing department we see very difficult passive information from one generation with in marketing to the next.
What to do?
i. Simplify, Just start with the small base line demographic developments that correspond with the personas that you develop.
ii. Every new prospect gets categorized into a likely persona.
iii. It moves up and down based upon that track.
3. Extending the customer Cycle:
Our third tip is to extend scoring beyond the sales cycle into the customer’s cycle. Calling it lead scoring if some is misleading, after sales are made those customers should move into a post conversion activity pocket. In it you can focus continuingly in nurturing customer’s accounts, just like we did in the lead side of the house.
Once these steps are implemented you will notice fewer leads are sent immediately over to sales. This the hard thing for both marketers and sales professionals to embrace, but it is also important to shift away from those old scoring models to a newer model that truly supports lead score and buyer interest. They are not just someone who downloaded white paper and should be scored nurture based on that behavior. We are truly getting a full picture of buyer interest. A stronger lead scoring process will not only improve your conversion rate it will also help you get to know your buyer better in your organically developed systems that scales easily and engross your business. Marketing and sales department will conclusively become revenue driven and not numbers driven. You may actually see rise in actual leads but you will definitely see an impact on your buyer line.
