We hear a lot about how businesses can benefit from lead scoring. In fact, some marketing automation platforms go so far as to say it’s a “must” for any inbound marketing program. However, our friends at Hubspot tell us that there are certain instances where lead scoring is actually a waste of a marketer’s time, and we tend to agree.
This is certainly the case for startups and small businesses that fail to get enough leads. If your sales team is not getting fed with enough leads, then your marketing team needs to be focused on generating more of them (not scoring the few that you already have). The general idea behind lead scoring is that you should prioritize your leads so that you can focus on the hottest prospects first. If you only have a handful of people interested in your product or services, though, you should be working all of them.
Businesses that are either still in their infancy should (aside from maintaining a constant focus on conversions) instead be working on gathering the right type of lead data so that when they are finally large enough to require the use of a lead scoring system, they will already have a good understanding of their prospective customers. Lead data that is useful for the scoring process falls into one of two categories:
- Demographic Data – Information about the company or consumer that you are selling to
- Lead Intelligence – Information gathered about how users behave when using your website
Once you have begun to generate a higher volume of leads and have collected enough useful data about those prospective buyers, you can then begin to implement a lead scoring system in your own business. Until then, the best thing that you can do for your company’s bottom line is to use the basic principles of inbound methodology to attract, convert, close, and delight.
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Image courtesy of Hubspot. Used with permission.