Leads. Marketing wants more. Sales wants more. And we all know the big bosses want more!
So how do you make locating and communicating with more qualified leads faster? Lead scoring, of course. For HubSpot users, getting started takes a few steps.
If you’re new to lead scoring, you might have a puzzled look on your face. Lead scoring is the process of assigning values, often as numbers referred to internally as “points,” to every lead you generate. Your marketing and sales teams can score leads to multiple contact information and contact activity attributes.
Actions you deem more valuable, like repeatedly visiting a pricing page, for instance, should be marked with a higher numerical value. Less relevant information, like someone with a junior-level job role, should be marked with slightly lower numerical values. No matter what you decide, your sales and marketing teams should be on the same page, because you’ll need to nail down what scores someone as a marketing qualified lead (MQL) and as a sales qualified lead (SQL).
Every lead scoring model will be different for every company, but generally speaking, MQLs and SQLs are the same things – but how someone reaches those levels may vary. Generally speaking, an MQL is a contact who’s engaged in a certain amount of marketing activities on your site that would deem them worthy of being nurtured more contextually and personally by marketing. An SQL is someone who has surpassed MQL status and is ready for sales to communicate with directly. SQLs are typically the closest to becoming customers, so doing the proper work to get them there is crucial – as is scoring your leads so sales is aware!
You can score leads in HubSpot in two ways -- manually or using their Predictive Lead Scoring tool. Their lead scoring tool automates qualifying and prioritizing your leads by scoring them across thousands of data points. When used in tandem with manual, or traditional scoring techniques, you can build the criteria that HubSpot’s machine learning will base their qualifications on.
So, what are examples of these “thousands of data points?” As that phrase suggests, there’s a bevy of instances (which you can see in their entirety here). The categories include contact information, email information, conversation information, HubSpot sales properties, contact calculated information, ads properties, web analytics history, and private content access properties. If you have a Professional or Enterprise account, you can have a developer create custom score properties if you don’t see an action or demographic fact you need in your model.
Another critical aspect to consider when building your lead scoring criteria in HubSpot is whether or not an action or information is a “Positive Attribute” or a “Negative Attribute.” As mentioned earlier, visiting the pricing page on your website is a positive attribute, which means you add points to that lead’s score. On the flip side, a negative attribute removes points from a lead’s score. Something like that could include a contact unsubscribing from your newsletter or someone whose job is outside your ideal buyer profile.
Once departments are on the same page, you can log in to your HubSpot account and get cracking:
Need a little help? Reach out to the experts at Lynton for help determining point values, positive or negative attributes, or any other aspect of lead scoring. Be sure to look out for an upcoming Lynton Cast episode on lead scoring as well!