In the challenging task of lead generation and converting leads, did you ever regret abandoning a lead you thought was too weak to pursue? Did you wish you had a dynamic lead scoring model to save you from wasting time on the wrong tasks and the wrong leads? We’ve all had these thoughts. In this article, we offer some answers.
1) Weak Leads Are Not All the Same
Firstly, let’s get the jargon straight: What are weak leads? If strong leads or good leads are the ones that have shown interest in buying your services or products, weak leads are the ones that haven’t shown interest or readiness yet. Often we only rank leads by urgency, but there’s a lot more to it! What about engagement? And what about long-term intent? If we don’t pay attention to other factors, our “leads” number dwindles. As a result, we leave money on the table.
When they visit your website, weak leads may not have landed on the landing page; they may not have filled in a form or downloaded any content asset. Instead, they may have looked at services, or read some blog posts or white papers. However, while you pursue strong leads, you cannot ignore these “weak” leads. They are choosing to engage with your brand, and that’s great! They are a key piece of the lead generation puzzle! You may not know who they are, but you want them to come back, and engage more deeply over time. Consequently, you need to help them choose to engage again, and help them develop an emotional connection with your brand.
How to Keep Them Engaged
In other words, you need to give them a reason to come back. Provide internal links to related content. Add a “contact us” button to the end of your articles, and on every web page. Additionally, make sure they can sign up for your newsletter easily.
Prioritize your weak leads by generating entry level content that matches with the needs of these leads. If you do, some of them will self-select by coming back. Those leads will then ripen. They are usually looking for educational content like how a product works, or pricing or implementation information. Sometimes they want background information – simple actionable takeaways that ease them into understanding the subject, service, or product. Check your content: do you have information for entry, mid, and high level users? Using a blend of all three will enhance the chances of converting these weak leads by your brand becoming a trusted source of information. They’ll come back again and again until they are ready to engage more formally.
2) Keep Up with the Customer Journey
Keep up with the pace and path of the customer journey. Today’s journey is dynamic and digital. Customers have ample options to learn and engage. Give your customers the opportunity to bump into you where they are – for example if they are avid Reddit users, post and advertise there. If they love LinkedIn, post and advertise there.
Competitors want to help your prospects make up their minds to buy their products. Additionally, they want to change the prospect’s mind if the prospect has chosen someone else. You’re not the only one trying to engage these people! Your prospects could be going in your website front door, and being sold by someone else out the back!
Customer buying journeys and their patterns provide invaluable data to you about your customers and prospects. Understanding it and tracking it for your industry is vital. It changes over time, and if you’re not tracking it, you risk being left behind.
Meet the customer where they are. Where do they shop? Where do they play? Which sites do they go to to learn? What news do they follow? Be there with content that engages them at entry, mid, and high knowledge levels. Further, use a mix of tools – pre-roll video, banner ads, tile ads, and retargeting. Be easy to find. Specifically, the leads generated this way take time to grow, but the longer engagement it creates steadily drives qualified leads to you. And these nurtured leads spend, on average, 14% more than average! (AdWeek)
3) Standard Lead Scoring
It’s very important that your lead scoring model matches your business objectives. You don’t just want to identify what leads will close – you need to identify what leads are most important to your goals. Similarly, you’ll want to consider: What is your client census like? Is it reliant on one industry, or many? Is it mostly large businesses, or a mix? What type of business are you looking for? Are you expanding in new areas, or trying to move away from a product or service? Certainly once you know this, you can create goals for the balance that’s ideal for your company.
Standard lead scoring is static. That is to say, it doesn’t change. You define your scores, and you go about your business. It’s effective if all your reps have the same goals, and your business sales goals don’t change or evolve.
What is lead scoring, exactly? It’s a group of values assigned to different lead information. Subsequently, leads with scores above a certain number are prioritized, or handled in a specific way. Some businesses have different management plans for different lead levels. For example, you might use a metric like this:
| Lead Type | Inbound = 3 | Referral = 2 | Cold Call/List = 1 |
| Business Type | Lg B2B = 3 | SM B2B = 2 | B2C = 1 |
| Market Type | Tier 1 = 3 | Tier 2 = 2 | Tier 3 + = 1 |
| Potential Spend | High ticket = 3 | Med ticket = 2 | Low ticket = 1 |
This simple matrix can create a variety of scores from 4-12. Some scoring plans measure up to 20 characteristics. Most scoring plans update scores as a lead moves through the pipeline. During this process, many CRMs will update themselves based on inputs and values assigned by the user IT team.
Dynamic Lead Scoring
Dynamic lead scoring is when you adjust your plan to evolve as your needs and goals change. Therefore, you can even adjust your scores by rep to help them learn to create a balanced pipeline, or score well in new business initiatives. Different CRMs allow for assigning different scores to different fields by the individual rep, while others have one value set for the whole team. If your CRM doesn’t score for you, it’s easy to create a system that your reps can use. They can place the score in the opportunity notes.
Lead scoring can be a game-changer when it comes to focusing on leads you might consider weak at first glance. Significantly, low scoring leads often make it through to closing more consistently than those leads that come in in the middle of the pack! In addition, dynamic lead scoring models can also allow you to identify successful ad campaigns and content streams. Putting the right efforts into marketing gives you greater control of your message and your market.
Conclusion
To sum up, lead generation and optimization goals need a strategy to achieve them. Digging through lists of suspects, hoping to find prospects to turn into leads, is outdated and wastes time. Lead generation and optimization is tough enough! So, use these hacks to make it easier.
Want more guidance on lead generation and management? Contact us today!
