Lead Scoring EXPLAINED: Master the Art of Prioritizing Prospects and Closing More Sales

Lead scoring is a way you can decide which  leads to prioritize in your marketing and sales. 
It’s like if you’re planning a wedding — you’re  gonna invite your closest friends before you start  
inviting acquaintances. You can prioritize  your leads by assigning numerical values to  
each one based on how likely they are to  convert. But how exactly does that work? 
Lucky for you, that’s just what we’re here to talk  about. Keep watching to learn how you can use lead  
scoring in your marketing and sales. How to get started with lead scoring 
Lead scoring basically works like a checklist.  You have a list of traits that define what a  
good lead looks like for your company. The  more of those traits apply to a given lead,  
the higher that lead’s score will be, and the more  valuable they are to your company in the long run. 
Of course, which traits should be on your  list? Well, that’s ultimately up to you. It  
depends on what your unique customer  base looks like. But the idea is for  
the lead score to show the likelihood  that someone will be a great customer.  
So, you could base your scoring system on  characteristics of your existing customers,  
including demographics and specific behaviors. Let’s say your best customers are mostly people  
who work at businesses with 20 to 40  employees. That means any leads that  
fit that description would probably score higher  than people from companies with 50+ employees.  
Your score calculation could also include the way  leads interact with your marketing, like how often  
they visit a certain page on your website. Leads  that seem more engaged would be scored higher. 
You can come up with whatever model you want for  lead scoring. Every business does it differently.  
As long as it helps you identify the leads  who are most likely to become customers,  
it’s doing its job. You can also use tools  to automate the lead scoring process so  
you don’t have to do it all yourself! Why use lead scoring in your marketing? 
You might not be sure if you need lead scoring for  your company. What’s the benefit of it, anyway? 
Well, picture this. You have a couple of different  leads come in, and you need to pick one of them to  
engage with first. So you pick one at random,  and you spend forever trying to convert them.  
But it turns out they were a pretty weak  lead, so they never end up converting. 
Meanwhile, the other lead was actually a really  strong lead. They were ready to convert right then  
and there. But because you took so long to engage  with them, they went with a different company. So,  
in the end, neither of them becomes a customer. All that could have been avoided if you’d just  
known to prioritize that second lead. With lead  scoring, you can identify the leads that are most  
likely to convert quickly, so you can avoid  wasting time chasing after people who aren’t  
a good fit for your business. 4 lead scoring best practices 
Now that we’ve explained the basics of lead  scoring, let’s talk about some specific ways  
you can use it in your marketing. Here  are four lead scoring best practices. 
1. Segment your audience One of the first things  
to consider doing is segmenting your audience.  There’s a good chance your business sells more  
than one product or service, and your audience  may have a variety of needs and interests.  
If that’s the case, you don’t want to use the  exact same lead scoring model for all of them. 
It’s already a good idea to segment  your audience so you can personalize  
your marketing to each one. But segmentation  also helps you create different lead scoring  
models for each group of leads. Different  groups will have different characteristics,  
so it’s helpful to score them differently. Of course, if you only sell to one group  
of people, you don’t necessarily need  to do this. But most businesses have  
at least a few different audiences. 2. Get input from your sales team 
Even if your marketing team is the one working  on your lead scoring, you’ll want to include  
your sales team in the process. After all, no one  knows your customers better than your sales reps.  
They can help you figure out what sorts of people  are the easiest to convert, plus what those people  
like best about your products or services. Not only can you use that info to improve  
your marketing, but you can also use it  to help you create a lead scoring model.  
For example, maybe your sales team points to a  particular page on your website that they say is  
really good at converting leads. In that case, you  could prioritize leads who have viewed that page. 
You can also connect data from your  sales tools to your lead scoring tools  
so that each sale you drive helps  improve your lead scoring data,  
letting you drive even more sales later on.  That approach is called closed-loop marketing. 
3. Use negative lead scoring A lot of the points you give out during  
your lead scoring will be based on the way people  interact with your website and online marketing.  
If someone visits a particular product  page, for example, you might assign them  
some points for that. But be careful, because  your leads aren’t the only people on your site. 
Keep in mind that your employees,  particularly your marketing team,  
will be constantly interacting with your  website and marketing materials as well. 
So, of course, you don’t want to include  them in your lead scoring models. The same  
goes for spam traffic, and even people who  just don’t live in the area you service. 
The best way to manage this is to use  negative lead scoring. You can assign  
negative scores that ensure you don’t factor  them into your sales or marketing process. 
4. Get feedback from your customers Finally, you can learn how to score your  
leads by just asking your existing customers.  Your customers have already gone through the  
whole sales process, so they can give you  the best insights into why they converted  
and what helped get them there the fastest. By interviewing customers or sending out surveys,  
you can learn a lot about the type of  characteristics and behaviors that make  
someone most likely to convert. Then you  can apply that to your lead scoring model  
by assigning points based on common traits  you discover among your best customers. 
Now that you know how to score your leads, you can  go develop a lead scoring model for your business. 
If you want to learn more about lead  nurturing, or digital marketing in general,  
you can always subscribe to our YouTube channel  — or to our email newsletter, Revenue Weekly.  
That’s it for this video, though. Thanks so  much for watching, and I’ll see ya next time!