In the world of digital marketing, we use a technique that is used to identify the importance of a prospect or lead for a given company and we call this technique lead scoring.
what does lead qualification consist of?
It consists of dividing the contacts in your database to determine which are most likely to close a deal with your company. This technique creates an automatic and personalised system that allows you to assign "one to one" marketing actions, applying a marketing or sales objective to each lead depending on how they interact with your company. The objective is to have a more efficient sales process, so that salespeople approach the leads that are most prepared or ready to buy.
what is a lead?
A lead is any user who has deposited their data in a company's database through online surveys or physically and, consequently, becomes part of the company's database so that it can interact with this new user. Thanks to the lead conversion it is possible to contact this user and offer them content related to a product or service in a personalised way. Generally, most leads are online and can be obtained either by organic search, social networks, direct traffic depending on the actions and strategies to be developed.
A lead is a person who is clearly interested in your product or service (that's why they have left you their details), but has not yet decided. And here comes inbound marketing and you may be wondering what this has to do with leads. EVERYTHING. Leads are the basis of an inbound marketing strategy and through this we have to convince our leads that our products or services are ideal to solve their concerns and needs.
To capture a lead, it is not only necessary to obtain their data. Once we have them, it is time to use content offers. That is, incentives that we will use as bait for our leads to become qualified leads. If they download the content offered, it means that we have done our job well. Otherwise, we have only reached an audience that is not interested in us. Most of the people who come to us are in the initial stages of the buying process and in reality, we are interested in attracting those who are about to buy. Therefore, it is important to accompany our leads throughout the decision-making process until they make a purchase.
Advantages of having a lead qualification system
- Optimise the resources of the commercial area by prioritising leads and business opportunities according to business and lead suitability criteria.
- Take advantage of all important business opportunities.
- Having a sales forecasting system that can calculate the volume of visits and leads and applying conversion ratios.
how to automate lead qualification?
When handling a certain volume of business opportunities, it is necessary to have an automatic lead qualification system. Otherwise, this process can be done manually. There are two essential tools to automate lead qualification:
1. The lead qualification matrix
First, it is important to define our buyer persona(s). Once defined, we can create a lead qualification matrix with which we can identify and order business opportunities according to business and suitability criteria. A lead qualification matrix is a Word or Excel document in which we consider a series of criteria to which we assign degrees of potential according to their fulfilment. In addition, this matrix is used from the capture of contacts until the moment of their conversion.
In order to elaborate a lead scoring matrix, it is recommended that both the marketing and sales teams cross-reference as much information as possible in order to determine the compatibility of the user or prospect with the company's service or product. In other words, this matrix must be elaborated by both teams: marketing and sales. The marketing team will create the strategies to capture quality leads and the sales team to prioritise those that are potential customers.
2. Lead scoring
This technique helps to have information about the level of interest of the leads. It also consists of assigning a series of points to each of the users that interact with our website or with different campaigns and digital assets. The system of assigning points is the key to the lead scoring technique, as it helps to have a lead qualification system that is aligned with our commercial objectives. The more points, the more interested the lead will be and the closer to conversion.
Knowing this, let's look at some interactions or events for which we will assign points. Firstly, we can assign points for each visit a user makes to our website, in addition to assigning points per page visited. For example, if he only visits our page and leaves, we will know he is not that interested, but if he reached the page to request a quote, we know he is a potential buyer. Secondly, if a user downloads a success story, it means he may be interested in achieving the same for your company. Thirdly, if a user reads a post on our blog because he is looking for a recommendation or help on some topic, we will assign him more or less points depending on the type of content that brings us the sales target service. Finally, users who see our emails show interest to continue receiving them and we should increase their scoring.
By following these steps, you will have an automatic lead capture system and you will be able to identify your potential leads more quickly. Apply these techniques and you will see how you boost your company's growth.
