What is Lead Scoring and Why Does it Matter?
Lead scoring is based on the actions a user takes such as reading a blog post, downloading a whitepaper, or filling out a form. It is a crucial component of digital marketing and sales, as it allows us to understand how prospects are interacting with the company, what is resonating with them, how close they are to becoming leads, and what steps are needed to make it happen.
When Tech Heads and Obility started working together Tech Heads did not have lead scoring or lead lifecycle tracking implemented, which means it made it difficult and time consuming to see where prospects fell in the sales funnel.
What Steps Did Obility Take to Implement Lead Scoring?
In order to implement lead scoring, Obility and Tech Heads had several working sessions to discuss what actions (such as content downloads, form fills, link clicks) needed to be tracked and how many points were to be assigned to every interaction a prospect could take. Each interaction was weighted differently based on the intent behind the action.
This process allowed Tech Heads to be able to accurately track the intent of the prospect at each stage of the lead lifecycle.
A few points were assigned to low-engagement actions such as clicking on internal links, reading blog posts, signing up for the newsletter, downloading an ungated asset, or reading solutions pages on the website.
Interactions such as filling out a form, registering for a webinar, or downloading a gated asset were assigned a medium-to-high number of points, with registering for a live event being granted the highest number of points.
Other interactions receive 0 points or negative scores. For example, an email open was worth zero points. Many bots open emails so email opens are not a good indicator of someone’s level of engagement.
Actions such as unsubscribing from the newsletter, email bounces, and inactivity for 90 days were assigned negative points (with an incremental -5 points added for an additional 90 days of inactivity). Tech Heads employees’ email addresses and competitors’ email addresses were also assigned negative points to ensure they weren’t being included in the lead lifecycle reporting and skewing results.
Once a prospect reached 100 points, they would be auto converted to an MQL, then automatically passed as a quality lead to the sales team that would qualify them into an SQL.
How Does Obility Keep the Lead Scoring Process Updated?
Obility works closely with Tech Heads’ marketing and sales teams to make sure the points assigned to each interaction fit their internal strategy. Obility also reviews MQLs on a quarterly basis to ensure the quality of the leads are what Tech Heads is looking for and Obility also updates the lead qualification scoring as new assets and/or new forms are added to Tech Heads’ website and/or on LinkedIn.
What Were the Results of the Lead Scoring Implementation?
Implementing lead scoring for Tech Heads allowed Obility to make smarter decisions about what to optimize on the website and where to allocate budget for Paid Social. For example, if, based on reporting, a specific asset appeared to be helping prospects convert into MQLs, Obility would allocate more budget to driving traffic to that landing page. Additionally, Obility was able to implement and optimize lead lifecycle stages to track how people are flowing through the funnel starting as prospects converted to customers. Ensuring that an accurate lead lifecycle is implemented allows you to see all of your contacts at a glance and can help you identify the stages where the progression rate through the funnel may be low, where leads are getting stuck and where optimization can be made to assist with closing deals.
Obility also built a marketing dashboard and with a compilation of reports so Tech Heads could have a granular view of the entire lead lifecycle.
About Tech Heads
Tech Heads is a full-service IT consultancy offering expertise in all areas of digital transformation from Cloud to Networking to Datacenter design. Tech Heads also offers a suite of security-first Managed IT Services based on the framework of the CIS 20 Controls to help alleviate the cost of complexity of IT and cybersecurity operations, and partners with the best vendors in the industry to procure cutting-edge IT solutions.
About Obility
Obility is a B2B digital marketing company with a core in revenue operations. We help B2B companies improve lead quality and increase pipeline through paid search, paid social, and SEO campaigns. Based in Portland, Oregon, we’re a fast-growing agency with a global client base ranging from early-stage start-ups to multinational enterprises.