Lead Scoring: 13 Criteria You Should Be Using to Grade Leads

Most marketers know about the importance of setting up some sort of lead scoring schematic. It helps improve sales and marketing alignment when both teams can agree on the qualities of a great (and not-so-great) lead -- not to mention it makes the sales organization more efficient by letting them spend time only on the leads that are the most sales-ready.

But just because you know lead scoring is important, doesn't mean you know where to start. I mean, we've written about how to "do" lead scoring, but never about what you're actually supposed to score. What indicates a lead's sales-readiness will change from business to business, but there are some pieces of lead intelligence, lead behaviors, and lead activities that many savvy marketers tend to universally consider in their lead scoring programs that we'd like to share with you. This list should help get the wheels in your brain turning so you can get started with a lead scoring program that actually gives your sales and marketing teams some pertinent information about your leads!

Lead Scoring: 13 Pieces of Lead Intelligence You Can Use

Before we get started, let's remember that you can give positive scores OR negative scores for any of these pieces of information. Depending on the marketing software and CRM you're using, the method of setting this up will differ for everyone -- if you're using HubSpot, simply install the Lead Grader app (aptly named, eh?) to make both positive and negative lead scoring possible.

Alright -- now we're ready to dig into all the ways you could score your leads, whether positively or negatively!

1) Contact Information

Do your forms require visitors to submit just an email address? First name, last name, and email address? Phone number? Street address? All of the above? Depends on the form? You can use the amount of contact information a visitor provides as an indication of how interested they are in completing a purchase with your company, and score leads accordingly. For example, if the only required form fields are first name, last name, and email address, but you make providing a phone number optional, you might want to award some extra points to leads that provide their phone number, anyway.

2) Budget

A lead's budget can be assessed multiple ways -- you could ask for it on your landing page form, a salesperson could inquire about it over the phone or email and input that information into your CRM, or you could even take a guess based on a company's revenue. However you acquire that information, a salesperson probably wants to work leads with the highest budgets first -- so score them accordingly! Likewise, leads below a certain budget threshold may require a negative score so they aren't bubbled up to reps.

3) Organization Size/Type

Are you more interested in B2B organizations, or B2C organizations? Or are you looking to sell to leads that work at a tiny little local business, as opposed to enterprise organizations? Award points to leads that fit the organization size and type you hope to close more deals with, and set up negative lead scoring for those that are the opposite of what you're looking for.

4) Job Type

If you're a B2B organization, you're probably targeting not just organization types, sizes, and industries, but also certain job functions and seniority levels within those organizations. Whether your decision maker is in the C-Suite, or you prefer getting in good with administrators and working your way up to someone in middle management who will make the final call, you should be assigning greater points to those who fit your company's ideal job criteria.

5) Location

Only selling to a certain geographic location? Get those outliers outta your sales team's queue! Anyone that falls outside the proper city, state, zip code, country, whatever it is, should be given a negative lead score. And if you're targeting certain areas for any reason -- perhaps you're expanding (congratulations!) -- you can give those locations a higher lead score than others, too.

6) Events Attended

Live event attendance can be a huge signal of a lead's interest in your company -- after all, they're taking time out of their day to dedicate their physical or virtual presence to you. Keep in mind that an event could mean a conference, sure, but even something like a live webinar, too. You can associate different scores with all of your live events so those highly engaged leads get to sales reps faster. And if you're using HubSpot's webinars app, you could even score leads based on duration of webinar attendance!

7) Pages Visited

What a lead does on your website says a lot about their level of interest in spending money with your company. Is a lead visiting your About Us page? Big whoop ... when you compare it with leads visiting your pricing pages! That's a lead that's interested in your specific solution (and spending money on it), and as such should receive a higher lead score. Similarly, visitors that visit 50 pages are certainly more interested in your company than those that read 5, as are those that check out more high-value page as opposed to clicking away after one look at your homepage. What I'm trying to say is ... consider not just the number of pages a lead visits, but also the types of pages they visit when implementing lead scoring.

8) Downloads

Downloads are one of the most common indicators many marketers use to bump up (or down) a lead's score. And by downloads, I mean that great lead generation content you've created and put behind a landing page to incite conversions and reconversions. But it's also important discern the value behind each lead-gen offer to associate the proper points value to it; remember, certain offer downloads tend to indicate more sales readiness than others.

So a lead that downloads an offer from the orange bubble would likely deserve fewer points than one that downloads an offer from the blue or gray bubble; after all, downloading, say, a free trial certainly indicates more interest in a purchase than a simple checklist!

9) Frequency

How often a lead interacts with your website and its content is another indication of how interested they are in making a purchase with your company. So in addition to scoring a lead based on the content asset he or she downloads, you can also score a lead based on a frequency threshold. Are leads that download 10 pieces of content from your website more likely to close? Bump up their lead score! Are leads that visit your website 15 times within a month more likely to close? Bump up their lead score, too! Any repeat action on behalf of a lead is typically a good indication you've captivated their interest in some way; they probably wouldn't hate talking to someone from your sales team if they're that into you.

10) Engagement

On a similar note, a lack of activity on a lead's part can indicate a loss of interest, different needs, or that they've found another solution provider. Has a lead stopped visiting your website? Stopped downloading your content? Spent less and less time on your pages? Stopped engaging with you in any other way? After a certain amount of time -- 10 days, 30 days, 3 months, it all depends on your typical sales cycle -- it may behoove you to assign a negative score to those leads so your sales organization doesn't spend time chasing a ghost.

11) Email Activity

For leads who have opted in to receive email communications from you, their engagement with your emails is a critical measure of their level of interest in making a purchase with your company. If a lead opens every email in your lead nurturing series or clicks through on those awesome email offers like clockwork, you can bet your sales team might want to know. Maybe you could tell them ... by bumping up that lead's score.

12) Off-Site Events

Not everything that indicates how sales-ready a lead is takes place on your website. Nope! There are activities leads can engage in off your website that -- with the help of tracking cookies -- your marketing software can capture, and you should consider scoring. For example, leads that are engaging with your social media presence regularly deserve a little more attention than those that leave your site and vanish into internet oblivion. Give those leads a little boost in their lead score when their off-site activities indicate interest in you!

13) Lead Source

Leads come from all over the place -- Facebook, your blog, PPC, organic search, you name it! Do you know which ones close at a higher rate? Many businesses, for instance, find that leads coming through organic search close at higher rates and for higher average sale prices than those that come through paid search. Wouldn't it make sense to adjust lead scores for any given lead by the source from which they came? We sure think so! Use closed-loop reporting to identify which sources have higher close rates, and assign leads from those sources higher point values.

What activities and intelligence do you consider when scoring your leads?

Image credit: Steve Snodgrass

via HubSpot's Inbound Internet Marketing Blog http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33381/Lead-Scoring-13-Criteria-You-Should-Be-Using-to-Grade-Leads.aspx?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+HubSpot+%28HubSpot%29

How Even 'Boring' Industries Can Create Interesting Content

According to a survey from Corporate Visions via MarketingProfs, 37% of B2B marketers cite content that's neither provocative nor engaging as a barrier to successful demand generation campaigns.

Uh oh.

Does that mean the interwebs are getting even more clogged up with the kind of mindless drivel that makes us want to donate our brains to the zombie apocalypse?

Not necessarily. The "mindless drivel" could actually be really amazing, information-rich content; it's just impossible for anyone to ever know that because, oh my gosh, it's so boring to read. But what are those of us in "boring" industries supposed to do ... not create content? Pshh, no way.

Well, we know a thing or two about boring industries (sorry boss, but software isn't the sexiest topic). Here are some of the tricks we've picked up along the way -- both from our own experimentation, and from reading the content others in our industry pump out -- that helps transform a snoozeworthy topic into an engaging read.

Be Genuinely Helpful

Be genuinely helpful. That's a tip, sure, but it should also convince you that your "boring" content isn't actually boring to the right audience. In other words, if you're writing educational content, it's still interesting to those whose question you're answering -- even without any extra bells and whistles.

If someone needs an answer to a mundane question like how often to change their oil, content that answers that question is incredibly interesting, because it addresses their problem. In fact, remember that Corporate Visions survey of B2B professionals we talked about earlier? The ones who were plagued by boring content? Turns out it was boring for a reason -- 60% of it was focused on their company, product, or services, and only 40% of it was focused on actually solving customer pain points. We don't have the numbers, but we bet ya the 40% of content that actually solved problems got leads and customers reading to the end.

Write With Specificity

Piggybacking off of the whole being helpful "thing" -- you can be more helpful and far more interesting if you avoid the generic, and write with specificity. You'll be able to do this more easily if you have defined personas, because you'll have identified some of their biggest pain points when creating those personas. If you haven't created buyer personas, reference this blog post to get started.

What's the difference between a generic piece of content and a specific, detailed piece of content? It all starts with the topic. Let's take this very blog post as an example. In retrospect, I could have written something like "Best Practices for Blog Copy," or "How to Write Good Blog Content" -- but that's so broad and generic that it applies to everyone, and yet nobody at all. Instead, I generated this topic after hearing time and again from leads and customers that their industry is way too boring to write content about, and nobody would read their blog if they wrote it. So instead of talking generically about what makes good blog content, this post addresses one facet of blogging that has presented itself as a recurring problem to our audience.

So yes, maybe this post excludes a segment of our audience who sells puppies or promotes supermodels -- they probably don't struggle with making their content interesting because it inherently is -- but by addressing a specific problem that hits close to home to our regular readers, this post is far less likely to get glossed over.

Write Like You Talk

You establish professionalism by providing solid advice, not sounding like you got hit in the face with a briefcase. Write naturally, not with business babble that makes it more difficult for readers to understand what you're saying. What do I mean? Let's do a little translation, shall we?

Look for a provider who delivers scalable marketing software solutions to adapt to the diverse and evolving needs of organizations from SMB to enterprise across all industry verticals.

Say what? How about ...

Look for a marketing software provider that addresses the needs of companies of all sizes, and that serves all industries.

Ultimately, those two statements both say the same thing; but isn't the second statement more straightforward and easier to read? Why make life harder on your readers?

Use Humor

Infusing a light, humorous tone throughout your content can help add some life to an otherwise snoozeworthy topic. And it can make it more fun for you to write, too. Don't be afraid to crack a joke, be a little colloquial, draw upon silly pop culture references, or even incorporate funny internet memes into your content. If it's natural and doesn't detract from your content's meaning, being lighthearted and silly can set you apart from your competitors and keep your audience's attention for much longer.

Find a Relatable Angle

Remember in elementary school when your teacher explained complex concepts in analogies? We do that here -- for example, we like to say that blogging is like jogging so that our customers understand they won't get results from their blog unless they publish consistently. Taking a similar angle in your content can help make a dull concept a little more interesting, too. For example, remember last year when everyone and their mother was baking cupcakes, there were 20 new reality shows about cupcakes and the people who bake them, and everyone left their jobs to pursue their lifelong dream of baking cupcakes? Yeah, we jumped right on that gravy train and wrote a blog post called "Marketing Lessons From the Cupcake." It did insanely well. I mean, who doesn't like cupcakes?

This is the concept behind newsjacking, and it's something any company can do. If something interesting is blowing up in the news, it's because almost everyone finds it fascinating. So look for a way to ride the popularity wave of that story by tying it in to your company or industry. For example, the London Fire Brigade was able to ride the coattails of Kate Winslet's heroic rescue of Sir Richard Branson's mother from a burning building by offering the actress fire safety lessons at their station after the story broke. Who knew the fire department would be hobnobbing with the rich and famous?

Make Written Content Visually Digestible

Part of not boring your audience is simply not overwhelming them. That means any written content -- no matter how interestingly you write it -- also has to look easy to read. Use the power of your WYSIWYG editor to break up your text into smaller, more easily digestible chunks. For example, I used big, bold headings in this post because it lets readers scan over each section and read just the content that interests them. You should also make use of bullets, numbered lists, and images to help already dense content (in subject matter, at least) look less overwhelming for readers.

Tell Your Story Visually

Instead of words, many content creators rely on visuals to tell a ho-hum story. For example, we've written entire blog posts and an ebook about closed-loop marketing. Riveting, I know. But sometimes, a picture is worth a thousand words, which is why we developed this visual to help explain it.

You can apply this concept to other types of visual content, too, like how-to videos and infographics that explain your point in a more succinct and entertaining manner than mere text.

Interview Interesting People

Who wants to hear a talking head spout facts? Not many, which is why broadcast news has used the interview for years to grab their audience's attention. Bring on an authority figure or celebrity who can speak to a particular subject matter, and you'll have more eyes and ears than if you tackled the subject matter yourself. We use this in our blog posts from time to time, too -- not just because we know our audience likes to hear from people other than us, but because other people know things that we don't. So, does your industry have a superstar that would strike your audience's fancy? Get them on the horn so their celebrity can help add some spice to your content.

Solicit Audience Opinion

Similarly, your audience likes to be referenced for their expertise. After all, if they're reading industry content like yours, they're probably pretty well versed in the subjects about which you're writing. As such, it's nice to solicit their opinion to help feed your content, show appreciation for their participation in your community, and because, hey, people love to see their name in lights. The easiest way to do this is to tap into your social networks to crowdsource answers to questions you'd like to feature in your marketing content -- just make sure to publicize the content once it's written, and let your contributors know when their answers will be featured!

Shock Them

You know what's only mildly interesting (unless you're a marketing geek, in which case it's awesome)? Lead generation via social media. You know what's way more interesting? Knowing that LinkedIn is 277% more effective at generating leads than any other social network. You guys, that is way more effective. If you can take a relatively "blah" topic but can find a surprising facet of it around which to center your content, your audience will be hooked.

You don't need to rely solely on data points to shock people, either. If you have the stomach for it, you could take on a bit of controversy, too. We do this every once in a while -- ever read our blog post telling the USPS to stop encouraging direct mail? Yeah, readers came down on all sides of that issue, and not all of them were HubSpot's side. That's alright! At least people were reading about and interested in inbound marketing issues, which is the whole point of creating all this marketing content, anyway.

Are you a marketer in a "boring" industry? How do you make your content interesting?

Image credit: TRF_Mr_Hyde

via HubSpot's Inbound Internet Marketing Blog http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33330/How-Even-Boring-Industries-Can-Create-Interesting-Content.aspx?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+HubSpot+%28HubSpot%29