Your marketing automation software is installed and ready to go. Now, it’s time to create your tripwire or lead magnet. Where do you start, however?
That’s a question that largely depends your goals, who your target audience is and vigorous A/B testing; however, it’s been shown that the best type of lead magnets are things people can use and share right away and have great value. Some of the best types of lead magnets include:
- Webinars
- eBooks
- Checklists
- Audits
- Templates
- Toolkits
- How-To’s
Your lead magnet should be simple and succinct. Your customer should have only 1 message and 1 option to respond.
Figuring Out Your Leads
The ultimate goal of a lead marketing campaign is to build an email list and determine who is ready to move further down into the funnel to the sales process. Leads enter your funnel at different stages of the buying cycle. For example, some consumers may have already been in the research stage of identifying which brands to consider for a specific product. While other prospects may not be aware of your product or service and therefore need more nurturing before being placed in front of the sales opportunity. Average response rates in any digital campaign is .05% (.005), just to manage expectations.
Determining who can advance to sales and who needs more nurturing is your next priority.
Why You Need to Rank Your Leads
The best way to sort out your leads? Lead scoring.
While you might have heard of this term before, are you using it? If you are, you’re one of the elite businesses that are. Only 21 % of B2B businesses make use of lead scoring; the rest are missing out.
So what is lead scoring? Exactly as the name implies: It’s a system that scores your leads. You can score your leads on any number of factors, including age, demographics, job titles, etc. In a way, lead scoring is a lot like customer segmentation, except your goal is to figure out where they are in the sales process.
Unfortunately, many companies skip this crucial step, instead immediately sending unqualified leads down the pipeline. What if that lead needed more nurturing? You may lose a customer for life by being quick to jump the gun.
Creating an Effective Lead Score System
There are two types of lead scoring: Explicit lead scoring and implicit lead scoring. You need a combination of both to determine how to rank someone in your system; separate, each only gives you a small picture of your customer.
Explicit lead scoring: This is information your customer tells you: their job title, their company, their company size. Even this small amount information can tell you a lot, specifically two aspects of their BANT, or Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline. Authority you can figure out based on their job title and typically, the larger the company, the more of a budget they have.
Implicit lead scoring: This type of system is based on your potential lead’s behavior. Behaviors can include clicking on links on your email or clicking on your ad.
Once you have a better idea of who your lead is and what behaviors they’re exhibiting, it’s time to create your scoring system.
Lead Scoring
So how do you score your leads? The scoring system is largely based on your goals and target audience. For explicit information, you can immediately score people with your target job title, company size, etc, with higher scores. Someone who isn’t your ideal customer shouldn’t be written off, however; you can give them a lower score and keep them in the funnel for later. You will find yourself having segments of prospects with different score ranges. Typical segment breakout would be 10 segments with 10 point ranges in each segment.
With your implicit information, you need to assign values based on behaviors your leads exhibit. That requires determining your active and latent behaviors. Your active lead can be someone who clicked on your ad and went to your product page. That’s versus your latent lead is someone who signed up for your emails and read some blog posts. The latent lead needs more nurturing, while your active lead might immediately need a call from sales.
Create a list of behaviors and assign each a value, typically a point-based system. The more points a lead has, the further along they are in your funnel.
Lead Scoring Software
Thankfully, you don’t have to keep Excel files full of leads and their various points. (Unless you’re into that kind of thing, of course.) There are plenty of software options out there that can make your lead scoring system as automatic as your marketing.
- Velocify: This software is easy-to-use, and provides options for your sales team that you can make use of too. Specifically, text messages, which are another great marketing too. Velocify specializes in the mortgage, insurance, education and technology industries, but can be used by any company.
- Lean Data: Lean Data’s features are a bit limited; however, their customer service is extraordinary. They actively work with you to help make the most of your software.
- Infer: An easy-to-use interface system with great customer support make infer a great tool for marketers everywhere.
- Hubspot: This company is a leader in the industry for good reason, and their marketing automation software comes with lead scoring. This can create a system that smoothly transitions leads from one part of the funnel to another.
- Marketo: Much like Hubspot, Marketo’s marketing automation software can effectively score your leads. Best of all, Marketo has a number of resources and guides that can help you create a great scoring system for your business.
Are you on of the 21% of people that has a great lead scoring system? Let us know in the comments if you do, or if you have created one and what your results have been.