Lead scoring and lead nurturing are marketing automation techniques that allow us to classify leads and identify those that are closest to making a purchase, and to deliver automated content to those leads so that they can learn about our products or services at each stage of the buying process.
what is lead nurturing?
This is another marketing automation technique that serves to prepare and accompany leads throughout the entire buying process, from the first contact until they become loyal customers. Lead nurturing literally means lead nurturing, which means that, during the buying process, leads are offered content, actions and interactions, articles or incentives that are personalised according to their interests.
In other words, through lead nurturing, the relationship with the customer is nurtured in order to contact them with relevant and tempting offers at every moment. From the moment a company can collect information directly from users and create a database, it is able to do lead nurturing. There are many ways to do it, for example, phone calls are the most traditional way to reach customers. Then, we have the postal mail or sending magazines to the customer's home, among others.
With the passage of time and technological advances, through online marketing campaigns, we have the ability to collect information directly from users and create a more scalable digital database, with thousands or even millions of people. By having a large number of contacts to process, we can not do this manually, so we use lead nurturing tools to make the most of the data obtained.
Advantages of lead nurturing
- It is a filter so that only the right leads reach your sales team.
- It is based on content and content personalisation in order to provide leads with the information they need according to the stage of the buying process they are in.
- It is a multi-channel strategy, although the use of email is very important.
Steps in the lead nurturing process
- Define your objectives: we recommend that your objectives are SMART, i.e. specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.
- Decide who you are going to target: Create your buyer persona, i.e. your ideal customer. Remember that the most important thing is not the demographic information, but their needs and problems ("pain points").
- Select your tools: Lead nurturing will only make sense if it is automated, so select the tool you will work with, for example, you can choose from email marketing solutions such as MailChimp to more complete ones such as Hubspot.
- Offer value: the content you offer is the basis of lead nurturing. Through these communications you will create a relationship with the user to understand their needs and let them know that we can help them at each stage of decision making before they make a purchase.
- Adapt the content to each stage: users go through different stages before deciding to buy. Therefore, the content you offer them must be adapted to each of these stages. For example, at the beginning the user wants to know in a general way the product or service they are looking for. However, when they are ready to buy, you can offer them offers or free trials.
- Coordinate with sales: Once the lead nurturing process has worked, it is time to pass the lead to the sales department to listen to the offers that your sales team has for them.
what is lead scoring?
Thanks to this tool we can qualify our leads in an automated way in a database. This tool also takes into account certain parameters such as characteristics with our buyer persona, user behaviour in relation to our blog, website, social networks, etc. This tool allows us to classify more specifically in order to establish appropriate relationships according to the profile of each client.
This procedure can be customised and is very useful because it can be adapted to specific situations. To talk about lead scoring, we need to know what a lead is. Leads are those customers who are interesting for our business, i.e. those we want to capture and take to the point of purchase.
In other words, they are our potential customers. Once we get a good volume of leads, the lead scoring tools will classify them. In this way, we will be able to assign a value to each customer and give them a score through different factors.
Advantages of lead scoring
- This is a methodology managed by the sales and marketing team facilitating the flow of potential customers towards the sale.
- It increases the effectiveness of the sales team, as it focuses on the most qualified leads.
- It serves to analyse the number of leads and to know which ones are closer to purchase.
- It allows you to segment your database, as well as classify the new users that arrive thanks to the lead generation strategy that you have put in place.
Steps in the lead scoring process
- Define your lead: determine your target audience. Create your buyer persona, as this ideal lead, it is essential the alignment of marketing and sales, as both must agree.
- Make a list of all the variables: assign points to the variables you have considered. For example, you can assign points to demographic variables or explicit data such as age, gender, origin, position held, etc. Also, to behavioural variables or implicit data such as web pages your lead visits, frequency with which they return to them, emails they open, clicks they make. In other words, find out how interesting our brand is to our lead.
- Both lead scoring and lead nurturing are part of a 360º marketing strategy. While one classifies users according to their interest in your product or service, the other focuses on creating campaigns to increase user interaction and interest in your brand until they buy.
have you already implemented these tools?
