Inbound marketers focus on attracting, capturing, and engaging with the highest volume of leads possible, growing an organization’s marketable database. The challenge however, is determining the quality of leads. This is where lead scoring becomes a valuable tool in any marketer’s toolbox.
A score can be made up of behaviours, demographic attributes, and custom activities (increasing in the Spring 2016 Marketo Release). Lead scoring represents one of the core pillars in the lead management component in Marketing Automation and is leveraged when developing other strategies (like nurture and lead lifecycle).
Collaboration between Sales and Marketing
Sales and marketing may have their own ideas about the indicators that make up a customer/buying behaviour, and therefore, which attributes/behaviours should be used in scoring. Looking at a simple funnel, we can see how lead scoring is crucial in the relationship between sales and marketing and how it relates to the transition of lead ownership.
Keep It Simple
Instead of trying to account for every possible behaviour and demographic attribute, lead scoring should start with a core set of scores that make up what an ideal buyer looks like to your organization. The tendency to overcomplicate scoring will make analytics a nightmare and will make updating/adding new attributes to the program very difficult.
Organizing a Lead Scoring Program
There are many moving parts that make up a lead scoring program, so maintaining an organized set of documents is critical to a successful deployment.
Inside Marketo
Using tokens within a lead scoring program is the best way to keep the scoring values centralized and organized (read more about using program tokens). Maintaining the same naming convention for tokens, campaigns, and folders will ensure that the correct score is assigned to the correct attribute every time.
For Marketo Sales Insight subscribers, complimenting your your Lead Scoring program with Interesting Moments will allow for more information to be shared with members of your sales team at the right time (for those who do not subscribe to Marketo Sales Insight or use Interesting Moments, the same logic can be used with Alert Emails or CRM Task Creation), it all comes down to the preferences of your sales team.
Outside of Marketo
A good starting point is to build a lead scoring matrix. The matrix is a grid containing all of the information related to the lead scoring program you plan to build: campaigns, scores, interesting moments, etc. Dedicate time to creating the matrix prior to building your lead scoring program, as the matrix is essentially a blueprint you will follow when building out your lead scoring program within Marketo. Ensuring that this matrix is updated as changes occur is crucial in ensuring that the ship continues to sail smoothly.
Follow Up
It is important to analyze how lead scoring relates to reality; ensuring that the highest score leads are in fact the ones who are actually converting into customers. A successful lead scoring deployment relies on the information fed into it, so re-engineering the program as business needs change will ensure that scoring is an accurate representation of lead temperature.
As leads continue to score, flow through the funnel, and convert; you will recognize the power of lead scoring and the increased representation you have about leads. For some additional readings, Marketo offers a huge library of resources:
- The Definitive Guide to Lead Scoring
- Lead Scoring Cheat Sheet
- The Big List of Lead Scoring Rules
- Playing for Keeps: Expert Ideas for Effective Lead Scoring
