Building Your B2B Lead Scoring Profile
Build a B2B lead scoring profile for your business to standardize lead qualification. The most effective strategy to use when you’re deploying a marketing automation platform for your B2B company is to establish an accurate lead scoring matrix. The scores that are assigned to leads as they proceed through the sales pipeline can be a critical difference between committing a sales agent too early or too late and contacting a marketing lead at the right time in the buying cycle. Building a high-yielding scoring matrix first requires marketing and sales managers to contemplate who is their best customer.
We recommend creating a scoring model that reflects the qualities of your customers. Who are they and what do they do when their company is considering a purchase? Optimally, both sales and marketing staff should be involved in the scoring model development process. There is a process of model development that has been successful for many of our clients (which we can talk with you about). However, there are a few mistakes that companies new to marketing automation should avoid when building a lead scoring model.
First, don’t build a scoring model without first developing an optimal B2B lead profile. Define the most common characteristics of your primary markets and create a profile from that information. If your company has multiple market segments (such as 6-8 year old males and their 35-45 year old parents), create a profile for each segment then build a lead scoring model specific to that profile.
Include an adequate number of parameters for your lead scoring model – but don’t include everything. B2B lead profiles can typically be refined into a dozen or so parameters which will include attributes and behaviors. Roughly half of the parameters should represent demographic and business-graphic details of each lead. The other half should represent online behaviors.
Do not assign the same weight to all scoring parameters. Sure, every activity and job or industry-related attribute is an important component to a good lead profile, but some factors are likely more important than others. We offer a free Lead Scoring Model Designer which helps managers build a suitable scoring profile. Users can test scoring models by applying different weights to the scoring parameters.
Do not score all online activity the same. Engagement levels vary within each activity and across all online activities. Your lead scoring profile should account for the variability in message impact and lead engagement associated with each digital marketing asset. For instance, a lead that visits a static web page multiple times is often less impacted each time the page is visited; however, some marketers consider multiple webpage views as a sign of sales-readiness, therefore, worthy of a higher score for that lead scoring parameter. But consumer behavior studies have shown that the impact the repeated message has on a lead is frequently lower each time the page is viewed. Be sure to consider the impact each activity has on your leads and score online behaviors appropriately.
Lastly, don’t create a rigid profile; allow for lead profile refinement as time goes by. Although the general makeup of your leads may not change substantially over time, new strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) will likely emerge that may change certain aspects of your lead profile. So it’s important for you to be able to tweak your profile as situations develop.
If you’re building a lead profile to use in our Lead Management Automation™ platform, we can help you design an appropriate scoring model. Contact us with any questions you may have.
