Are you struggling to identify which leads are worth pursuing in your B2B sales process? If so, you must look into B2B lead scoring. With lead scoring, businesses can prioritize their leads and focus on prospects with the highest conversion potential. Research shows that 53% of marketers invest half their budgets in generating leads, and nobody wants to miss out on a promising lead.
Truth be told, creating a lead scoring model from scratch can be a challenge. That’s why we’ve put together this blog post. Here, we will discuss how lead scoring works and how your business can generate more qualified leads and increase sales conversions with lead scoring examples. So if you want to learn how lead scoring can impact your B2B sales process, keep reading.
What is B2B lead Scoring?
.jpeg)
B2B lead scoring is a process used by companies to evaluate the potential of prospects as individual customers. It helps prioritize leads to assign resources and streamline sales efforts. B2B lead scoring uses demographic and behavioral data, such as website visits and interactions with marketing materials, to develop scores.
Higher scores indicate a higher potential for a successful customer relationship. Companies use this information to understand better which prospects are more likely to convert into customers, enabling them to focus on the most promising leads first. It saves you from wasting resources on leads who are unlikely to convert, leading to increased efficiency and improved ROI from marketing campaigns.
Benefits of Using Lead Scoring for B2B
Lead scoring for B2B helps marketers better understand their prospects and target them with relevant content. Here’s how lead scoring can benefit your B2B business.
1. Cost Reduction for Marketing and Acquisition
Lead scoring helps marketers assign a numerical value to each prospect, allowing them to prioritize leads that are most likely to convert. This significantly reduces marketing costs associated with engaging prospects less likely to convert.
As a result, businesses can save time and money while reaching their desired target audience more effectively. According to one study, companies that implemented lead scoring saw a 70% increase in lead generation.
2. Improved Conversion Efficiency
Another advantage of lead scoring is improved conversion efficiency. Leads can be evaluated based on various criteria, including the job title, location, industry, etc. This will allow companies to determine which leads are most likely to make a purchase and direct their resources accordingly.
According to Forrester Research, businesses that use lead scoring have seen an increase in conversion rates by as much as 50%.
3. Improved Sales and Marketing Alignment
Lead scoring can also help align sales and marketing teams by providing both departments with the same data-driven insights about prospective customers. This makes it easier for sales reps to identify qualified opportunities quickly to close deals faster. Additionally, marketers gain insight into what strategies are working best so that they can adjust their tactics accordingly to generate higher revenue over time.
Based on a study, this alignment between sales and marketing teams has increased revenue by up to 34%.
4. Maximizing Profitability Through Higher Revenue
By targeting leads more accurately through lead-scoring solutions, businesses can maximize the return on investment of their campaigns. In addition to ensuring that resources are used efficiently, it allows teams within an organization to work together on customer engagement and conversion optimization strategies.
According to the Constant Contact research report, businesses that use lead scoring increased their ROI by 77% from lead generation.
Types of B2B Lead Scoring Models
Various lead-scoring models help businesses prioritize and qualify the best potential customers. Here are a few of the most important.
Demographic Model Lead Scoring
The demographic model considers the leads' personal information, such as age, gender, and location. This data can be gathered from surveys or customer databases and is used to assign a score based on how likely it is for them to purchase your product or service.
Firmographic Model Lead Scoring
The firmographic model looks at characteristics related to the company the lead represents, such as size, industry type, and turnover rate. The score assigned with this model will be determined by how well-matched the company’s profile is with your product or service offering.
Behavioral Model Lead Scoring
Behavioral models look at past actions taken by leads, such as website visits, downloads of content, and interactions with emails or other marketing campaigns. This data can then determine if a lead is interested in what you offer and assign them a score accordingly.
Social Engagement Model Lead Scoring
The social engagement model considers how actively a lead engages with your content across social media platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn. By looking at how often they share content or comment on posts, they can be assigned points that indicate their interest in what you offer.
Spam Detection Model Lead Scoring
Finally, the spam detection model looks out for malicious activity from leads, such as using fake emails or IP addresses when providing contact information. These could be flagged automatically by systems or manually reviewed by human employees to determine their risk level.
Step-by-Step Process for Setting Up a B2B Lead Scoring System
The step-by-step process for setting up a B2B lead scoring system can be broken down into five stages.
1. Gather and Organize Sales and Marketing Data
The first step is to gather and organize data relating to sales and marketing, such as customer interactions, behavior metrics, and other qualifying characteristics. It’s important to capture as much data as possible, including both quantitative (e.g., age) and qualitative (e.g., interests) information.
After the data is collected, it should be interpreted to gain insights into customer behavior and preferences. This helps marketers determine which leads are more likely to convert. A good practice is to use a customer relationship management (CRM) system to store this data organizationally.
For example, 6Sense identifies potential customers with a higher likelihood of conversion. To accomplish this, they began by gathering and organizing sales and marketing data from various sources such as website analytics, customer feedback, and social media interactions.
Once the data was collected, it was interpreted using statistical tools and techniques to gain insights into customer preferences and behaviors. This helped the company identify patterns in customer behavior, which were used to determine which leads were more likely to convert.
2. Analyzing Customer Interactions and Behavior Metrics
Once you have gathered the data about your customers, analyze customer interactions and behavior. The importance of each factor should be determined based on how they relate to the desired outcome, i.e., how likely they are to convert into a sale or a customer.
To do this effectively, marketers need to identify their customers' key traits and journeys. For example, userpilot analyzed customer interactions and behavior metrics from several sources, including website activity, email and phone communications, and social media engagement.
The company employed various tools to collect data, such as web analytics. Using this data, they determined the most relevant factors contributing to lead scoring, including the level of engagement with the company's website.
The company created a lead-scoring model by assigning points to each factor in the buying process. This strategy successfully identified the potential customers who exhibited superior engagement and interest in their products and services.
3. Assigning Weighted Values to Qualifying Characteristics
Once the weighting system has been established, the third stage involves automating the lead scoring process. This allows businesses to quickly assess and rate potential leads based on their associated scores rather than manually evaluating each individually every time new leads come in. Automation also makes it easier for marketers to keep track of their lead scores in real-time so that changes can be made quickly if necessary.
HubSpot's lead scoring system assigns point values to a lead's demographic and behavioral characteristics, which are then used to calculate an overall lead score. Once the point values have been assigned, HubSpot's lead scoring system automatically calculates each lead's overall score based on their characteristics and activities. This allowed their sales and marketing teams to focus on the leads with the highest scores, ensuring they spent their time and resources on the most promising opportunities.
4. Automating the Lead Scoring Process
To save time and resources from manually scoring leads one by one each time there is an interaction with them across different channels. Automation can be implemented via tools like marketing automation software or CRM systems, allowing for automated lead scoring across all touchpoints and activities tracked within the system.
RevenueHero can help with lead scoring by providing a data-driven approach to evaluating the quality and potential of leads. Using advanced algorithms and machine learning techniques, RevenueHero can analyze various data points such as lead demographics, behavior, engagement, and historical data to score each lead based on its likelihood of conversion. This scoring system can help prioritize leads and focus sales efforts on the most promising prospects, improving efficiency and ultimately increasing revenue. Additionally, RevenueHero can provide real-time updates and alerts on lead behavior, enabling sales teams to react quickly and effectively to changes in lead behavior and adjust their approach accordingly.
5. Identify the key traits and journey of your customers
Lastly, but most importantly, it’s important to identify what characteristics make up your ideal customer profile, i.e., what kind of people will likely be interested in your product/service? What drives them? What motivates them? How did they initially come across your business? Answering these questions can help you better understand where potential buyers are coming from and what type of content resonates best among them for you to tailor communication accordingly.
For example, Adobe Marketo Engage recognized that their ideal customers were mid-sized to enterprise-level businesses with complex marketing strategies and a high volume of leads. To better understand these ideal customers, the company conducted extensive market research, including surveys and interviews with their current customer base.
They analyzed customers' buying journeys to identify the touchpoints and key decision-making factors. They found that their ideal customers sought solutions to improve their lead generation and nurturing practices. The company used this information to tailor its marketing and sales messaging to address these pain points and provide solutions aligned with its customers' needs.
Common Mistakes to Avoid While Implementing B2b Lead Scoring
Many companies often make mistakes while implementing this process, which hampers their efforts and may result in missed opportunities. Let's look at some common mistakes companies make while implementing B2B lead scoring and how to avoid them.
1. Not Defining Your Ideal Customer Profile Clearly
One of the common mistakes businesses make during B2B lead scoring is not having a clear definition of their ideal customer profile. Without a clear understanding of who your ideal customer is, it becomes challenging to score leads accurately, resulting in missed opportunities. Therefore, you need to identify and document the characteristics of your ideal customer, such as industry, company size, revenue, etc. This will help you rate your leads based on how closely they match your ideal customer profile.
2. Not Aligning Sales and Marketing Teams
Another common mistake businesses make is not aligning their sales and marketing teams. Having effective communication and collaboration between these teams is crucial for successful B2B lead scoring. Both teams work towards the same goal but have different perspectives and methods for achieving it. Therefore, it is essential to bring these teams together and establish a common understanding of how lead scoring works and what factors should be considered.
3. Using too Many Variables in Lead Scoring
Businesses often make the mistake of using too many variables to score leads, resulting in inaccurate scoring of leads. Instead, it is better to focus on a few critical variables that are most relevant to your ideal customer profile. By focusing on these variables, you can score leads more accurately and identify the ones worth pursuing.
4. Neglecting the Need to Review and Update Lead Scoring
Another mistake businesses make is not reviewing and updating their lead-scoring models regularly. As businesses evolve, so do their customers and their preferences. Therefore, regularly reviewing and updating your lead scoring models is essential to ensure they remain relevant and effective. This can help you identify new opportunities and avoid missed ones.
Bottom Line
By determining the worth of a lead, businesses can better understand which ones are most likely to convert and allocate their resources accordingly. It saves time and resources and provides a way to prioritize leads, ensuring that your sales team targets the right prospects.
RevenueHero takes the lead scoring process one step further by providing instant lead qualification automation that simplifies the entire process. You can score form fills directly on your website or landing page to improve your chances of converting leads into sales. So, if you want to streamline your lead generation process and increase sales, schedule a demo now.
.svg)
.png)
