If you’re in the business of generating leads, then you know how important it is to score them. A lead scoring matrix helps you do just that – by considering various factors such as demographics, interests, and behavior, it assigns a numerical value to each lead. This way, you can prioritize your sales efforts and focus on those leads that are most likely to convert. Here are the reasons why the lead scoring matrix is important:

Lead Scoring Explained

Lead Scoring is just what it’s called.

A lead scoring system is where you assign points to each prospect based on certain criteria, like their demographic, to determine their likelihood of purchasing from you.

There are two main components of your lead scoring – the fit and the engagement. These two categories both contribute to your total score.

Most businesses have heard about lead scoring, but very few have actually implemented it. In fact, 40% of companies report a higher conversion rate after implementing it.

Most lead scoring templates only take into account one or the other when calculating a lead score. This can often result in lost sales conversions, as important data may be overlooked. To get the most accurate picture of a lead, it’s important to consider both demographics and activity data when creating a lead scoring template.

The path to higher conversion rates is just a few sentences – so let’s begin!

Fit Model 

The Fit Model is a great way to prioritize your leads, as it takes into account their fit into your ideal customer profile. This is information that most companies already track, so it’s easy to use in your lead scoring system.

These can include the job title, company size, annual company revenue, number of employees, and industry of the person you are considering hiring. This information can help you make a more informed decision about whether or not they are a good fit for your company.

This type of data is easy to track and can come from lead forms on your website. This makes it simple to get the information you need to score leads accurately.

While there are plenty of ways to score your leads into different categories, it’s important to only focus on the ones that matter the most to your business.

One of the best ways to determine your lead score template is to look at your most successful customers and determine which characteristics they share. You will most likely notice that certain industries and companies tend to purchase from you more than others. This can help you decide which demographic factors are the most important to your business.

If your lead demographics match those of your customers, this indicates that your marketing efforts are aligned with your market. This way, you can be sure that you’re investing your time and resources into attracting the right kind of leads for your business.

After you’ve determined which factors should make up each of your models, you’ll need to determine how much each factor should weigh out of a total possible score of 100.

Activity Model 

The activity model can be a bit tricky, but it’s still important to include in your Lead Scoring template.

The Activity Model is a great way to score leads based on their engagement with you and your business. This can be done by tracking typical actions, such as:

The activity model measures your prospect’s level of engagement. These are the typical actions that indicate how interested they are, such as visiting your website (or specific pages of your website), downloading an eBook, submitting a query through your contact form, purchase activity, trial signups, and email activity (opens, clicks, etc).

Since demographic targeting can be harder to merge into other platforms than actions, it’s no wonder that businesses often leave this out of their campaigns.

In order to accurately measure the success of your marketing efforts, it’s crucial that you track your conversions.

Most CRM systems come with a built-in lead scoring system that assigns points to different activities, such as opening an email or clicking a link. This is extremely helpful when trying to prioritize your leads.

Lead Scoring Matrix

The final step is the score – the result of your combined fit model and engagement model.

When looking at your fit and activity models, you usually do so on a scale of 1-100. By looking at the score for both the fit and activity, you come to a co-dynamic. This is where we can see how well a lead meets the criteria for both models.

A perfect prospect is one who meets the top score criteria for both the Fit (A) and Activity (1) models.

(Source)

In this example, the score of the Fit model is represented by A-E, and the score of our Activity model is represented by 1-5. A perfect prospect meets the top score criteria for both models (A for Fit and 1 for Activity).

Those leads that are high-scoring should be your priority and forwarded to the sales department right away. Low-scored ones can wait to be contacted until their scores indicate they’re ready to buy or show more interest.

When combining your fit and lead activity models, you can come up with a number of different scores for a lead.

If you want your sales team to be more efficient and close more deals, then focus on the leads with the higher score. This will help them prioritize their time and efforts, leading to more successful outcomes.

How to Create A Lead Scoring Matrix 

A lead scoring matrix is a table that sales and marketing teams use to rate and score leads based on their likelihood of becoming customers. The matrix helps teams prioritize leads so they can focus their time and resources on the most promising prospects.

Before you assign any scores to your prospect, you should establish the criteria for how you will calculate those scores. A normal way to do this is to rank your leads into categories based on demographics(explicit) or activity(implicit) criteria.

Many lead generation companies use an explicit scoring system to assign grades to contacts. These scores can be used to tell which of these potential sales opportunities are most relevant to your business. There are several types of demographic grading criteria that should be used and they should include:

• Company’s Name
• Location
• Industry
• Revenue
• Title
• Products purchased
• Number of employees
• Competitors
• Lead Source
• Relationship
• Partners
• Timeframe
• Email Type (professional, personal).
• Environment Technologies (ERP, CRM, etc)

Implicit criteria are used for scoring activities that a lead has done that are relevant to your company. Implicit criteria are usually 0-10 points. Most lead scoring programs will give points for these implicit criteria. A lead scoring matrix should contain:

• Website traffic: The frequency of website visits, pages viewed, and duration of each view/visit.
• Phone calls: Number of phone contacts with representatives, and length of conversations
• Views of press releases – Article type, number of views, and article sharing activity.
• Books/eBooks Requests – View, order, or download publications.
• Content requests White papers, infographics, and product manuals can be viewed or downloaded.
• Content Subscriptions – Requests to receive newsletters, updates or other ongoing content.
• Video views Viewing frequency, video tag search, and viewing duration.
• Webinars attended. This includes the number of webinars, duration, and most recent event.

Negative criteria should be included. Decremented Scoring is a method of adjusting a lead’s rating to account for aspects that make them less desirable, such as a lack of response to your marketing messages.

Negative scoring criteria include:

• Unsubscribe from an email list
• Inadequacy of product pages on websites
• Request to be added to the Do Not Contact List
• Inactivity period

While there is no one right way to prioritize your leads into categories, it is important to be able to identify which of your contacts are hot and which are cold and act accordingly. Our advanced lead generation and marketing automation tools allow you to do this.

Conclusion

If you’re looking to create a lead scoring matrix, this blog post has shown you why having one is essential for your business. By taking into account various factors such as demographics, interests, and behavior, a lead scoring matrix allows you to prioritize your sales efforts and focus on those leads that are most likely to convert. So if you want to increase efficiency and productivity among your sales team, and get deeper insights into your customers – then creating a lead scoring matrix should be at the top of your list!