Businesses are continually evolving their key performance indicators (KPIs). And as digital marketing establishes its prominence, this picture keeps changing. Although marketing channels grow and multiply, the primary objective of most marketing campaigns remains the same, that is, generating leads.

The early form of Lead Scoring

Leads are usually categorised into three categories – Hot, Warm, and Cold:

• A hot lead is someone very close to the buying stage of the consumer journey. An example of such a lead would be someone who is aware of your brand and searches for your particular product on Google.
• A warm lead is someone who has shown interest in your brand. An example of such a lead would be someone who has liked your brand’s post on social media.
• A cold lead is someone who has consciously had absolutely no interaction with your brand.

As the number of leads keeps increasing every day, this categorisation fails to give brands quality information. Out of the thousands of people who liked one particular social media post, not everyone would want to buy your product. And so, to further effectively filter and categorise leads, digital marketers now use the concept of ‘Lead Scoring’.

New to the concept of Lead Scoring? Find out more about this technique below:

Based on a predetermined criterion, every lead is assigned a numerical value (or points) for every parameter in the criteria that they match. The summation of these points gives you a final score, for every lead. This score determines how close to conversion your lead is.

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Creating Customer Personas

First things first, for lead scoring, you need to create different personas of ideal customers. This means listing down all the characteristics that would make a lead the perfect match for your brand.

Based on how important each characteristic is to conversion, assign it a value. Spend some time deciding the value of each parameter. For example, for a home finance company, ‘age’ and ‘geography’ are two demographics that can be considered. Between the two, if ‘geography’ is a more important parameter than ‘age’, then, in this case, the age bracket will have lesser weight (points) as compared to the location.

While deciding these criteria, don’t just consider the basic demographics. Also, try to incorporate the important touch-points in a typical user’s journey that lead to conversion. For example, a consumer reading the reviews and ratings of your brand can be a touch-point. A study by Podium found that 93% of consumers said online reviews impact their purchasing decisions.

Last but not least, determine a range to understand the threshold score above which you classify a lead as ‘sales-ready’. Determining this threshold value will require a few iterations of testing and analysing. So be patient and open to tweaking the rules you set.

How feasible is it?

Coming to the feasibility of this method, performing the task of lead scoring manually is next to impossible. Even if you miraculously manage to do it manually, you will end up spending a lot of time trying to accomplish the task. Additionally, after going through this elaborate and time-consuming process, your data won’t be 100% accurate, and you will have to account for human error.

Automation is the solution to all these problems. Tools like LeadSquared map your entire lead management process, right from when it is captured till a lead is converted. These tools track lead actions and notify sales representatives when the prospects complete essential actions. Since automated tools integrate the data from different sources, you can also gain insights pertaining to the best-performing channel or device.

Considering how vital leads are to a business, this efficient system to categorise leads should be adopted by all businesses. With the help of automated tools, you can identify the right leads faster and at the same time significantly increase your conversion rate.