With a growing business, you might know that having leads is half the battle, as the real work is to know which leads are really willing to become sales worthy, which ones need a little hand holding, and which ones may never close out at all despite the number of emails being sent or ads being shown.
That is where HubSpot lead scoring silently transforms into one of those back-of-the-scene tools that can revolutionize the way your marketing and sales teams operate in unison without turning things too complex and technical.
With simple rules, lead scoring will make you prioritize your leads based on their likelihood of becoming a paying customer, rather than blindly making those calls or broadcast the same message to all, prioritize your time, energy, and money on those who are interested in what you are offering and most likely to purchase.
What is Lead Scoring In HubSpot?
You can think of the lead scoring as a point system of your contacts / site visitors, where each action they take is worth points, such as downloading an ebook, visiting a pricing page, opening your email messages, filling out as a contact form, or as simple as taking a lot of time browsing your blog.
All these actions are automatically tracked in the background by HubSpot and can also be given a value so that when someone has demonstrated strong buying behaviours, their score will increase and when someone appears less interested or not a good match, their score remains at or even decreases.
To illustrate, a person who just subscribed to your newsletter may receive a low score, whereas a person who requested a demo, has visited your pricing page three times and opened several emails would earn a much better score, which would instantly imply that he or she is closer to a decision.
Why Lead Scoring Matters So Much For Growing Businesses
You are in the growth mode, things happen in a hurry, your volume of leads grows, your sales team is busy and you have difficulties keeping up with who truly needs urgent focus and who can wait a little.
In the absence of solid lead scoring, sales teams end up using valuable time to pursue cold leads who are not even in the process of being ready to make a purchase, and the hot leads slip through the cracks when no-one thought how interested they were.
Lead scoring HubSpot resolves this issue by alignment of marketing and sales as both departments can now agree on the definition of a qualified lead based on actual behaviour and data rather than assumptions or preferences.
How HubSpot Lead Scoring Actually Works Behind The Scenes
HubSpot lets you develop lead scoring criteria in two primary categories: engagement and fit.
The concept of engagement scoring is about the actions taken by a lead, including visiting particular pages, clicking links, downloading content, participating in webinars or responding to emails, which informs you about how much they are interested in your brand.
Fit scoring examines who the leader is, their job title, company size, industry, location or budget range, which will show you how well they match your ideal customer profile.
Any action or attribute can be assigned different point values, meaning that high-intent actions such as requesting a quote may award more points than low-intent actions such as reading a blog post, and decision-makers may receive more points than interns or students.
Setting Up HubSpot Lead Scoring Without Overthinking It
Among the largest mistakes that businesses commit is attempting to create a perfect lead scoring system as early as possible and this typically results in confusion, delays, and complicated rules that nobody really follows or believes in.
Instead, start simple and build as you learn.
- Start by listing several major behaviours that are a clear sign of buying intent like demo requests, visiting pricing pages, booking consultation, and filling out contact forms, and giving them a higher score.
- Then add some simple fit filters, such as job title, company size or industry, so that you are not sending your sales team leads which never fit in the first place.
- When your system is operational, track the flow of leads through your funnel, which scores really turn into customers, and slowly tweak your scoring rules using real performance information and not guesses.
How HubSpot Lead Scoring Improves Sales And Marketing Alignment
Probably among the greatest non-obvious advantages of HubSpot lead scoring is that it automatically pulls your sales and marketing departments toward common ground, as everybody is operating based on the same definition of a qualified lead.
Marketing is able to create and sell leads to a specified score, and sales are able to follow-ups and be confident that the leads they are getting have already expressed legitimate interest and are a good fit.
This leads to less friction, better communication and healthier feedback loop of both teams obsessively optimizing campaigns, content and messaging based on something actually converting.
In the case of emergent businesses, in particular, this type of alignment can save time, frustration, and allow teams to grow.
Using Lead Scoring To Personalize Your Marketing
In addition to assisting sales priority leads, HubSpot lead scoring also allows you to do smarter, more personal marketing, since you can segment your audience by their score and messenger accordingly.
Low score leads could get educational content to create awareness and trust, mid-score leads could get comparison guides, case studies, or webinars and high score leads could get more direct sales offers or invitations to demos.
This makes your marketing seem more human and relevant rather than spammy and generic which makes marketing more engaging and creates stronger relationships as time passes.
Final Thoughts
HubSpot Lead scoring has nothing to do with super-weird automation, or complex formulas, but with just getting to know your audience better, acting on actual buying signals, and spending your time wiser as your business expands.
When properly done, it enables you to not only quit your guessing, but also to begin prioritizing smarter and make the process of your customers, as well as those within your teams, less painful.
