Getting more leads is clearly a good thing. It shows that your company is getting attention, which ideally means getting more customers. A significant increase in leads, however, doesn’t always turn into a comparable increase in customers. To get more customers out of your leads, implement a lead scoring process that allows you to rank leads based on their engagement and propensity to buy.

Lead scoring is founded on the idea that certain leads become customers more readily than others and should, therefore, be “weighted” more in your overall marketing plan. After all, they’re ultimately more valuable for your business. Their interest shows actual potential – unlike those on the other extreme, who show interest but never follow through in the end.
 

In essence, all leads are not created equal. Your interest in a lead should depend on that lead’s predicted value, rather than its mere existence.
 

If lead scoring isn’t already part of your strategy, here are three reasons why you should include it as soon as possible

1) Lead scoring can be simple.

Assigning values to your leads doesn’t have to be a strict, numerically based process at first. You can start small and assign general labels, such as “hot,” “warm,” and “cold.” Hot leads, for example, could mean leads that need immediate human follow-up because they want to move right now. Warm leads could be the right type of contact who is interested, but might need six months before moving. Cold leads would be contacts who need nurturing but no human follow-up at the moment.

You can determine these labels by looking at the lead’s online behavior, first and foremost. Consider all channels of behavior (emails, website, and social media). Did they hit multiple pages before coming to you? Have they been to your site before? Did they fill out a form from your best conversion page, such as floor plans?

If you’ve already tackled Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), you probably have more data about who your customers are and where they’re coming from. This information can help you refine your lead scoring, as well, since certain leads might fit a trend among your customers.

Lead scoring can certainly be detailed, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s up to you to decide how complex you want your lead scoring to be. You can assign numerical values or you can begin with a more basic system. Either way, lead scoring will benefit your business.

2) Lead scoring gives you a better return on investment.

If your team pursues every lead with equal tenacity, you end up spending unnecessary resources on leads that were unlikely customers to begin with. Attributing different scores to different behaviors means that you’re focusing your resources where they matter most, resulting in greater efficiency and productivity. With lead scoring, you can ensure that your highest quality (and often most expensive) leads are receiving the star treatment they deserve to get the best conversion rate possible.

3) Lead scoring closely aligns marketing with sales.

Lead scoring addresses the age-old problem of sales and marketing disagreeing on the quality of leads. If you’re simply sending over all leads without any indication as to which your sales team should prioritize, you can easily condition your sales team to think poorly of the leads they are getting – which will cause them to spend less effort on all leads, including the really great ones. By using demographic and behavior-based triggers to stack rank highly qualified leads, you’re giving them the right cues to know exactly where to focus their efforts.

Let’s say, for instance, you just created a great call to action on your homepage – advertising 50% off the first month’s rent for new customers. At the same time, you post a new blog post on an unrelated topic, such as “Top 10 Ways to Make Your Move-In Stress-Free.” The 50% offer is clearly more important, but without lead scoring, leads generated from both sources will reach your sales team at the same time with the same importance. Your sales team will have no idea which leads to focus their full attention on.

With lead scoring, you could immediately score the leads from the 50% deal much higher, while leads from the blog post may only receive a few points. Then, your sales team would know exactly which leads deserve the majority of their attention. Their time would be spent on the strongest leads, instead of being stretched out and wasted on weaker ones.

If you want to dive deeper into leading scoring, you can contact the G5 team at 1.800.409.2298 or info@GetG5.com for individual help with your business.