Lead Scoring - Is it Worth it?

Is Lead Scoring worth the effort??

I have worked with a number of companies; from those who have an abundance of leads who wade through lead after lead to find the cream, to other companies that are scrapping away to get their hands on any lead!  Each company differs with their approach in handling leads i.e.  Do your sales team generate their own leads, do you buy them in or do you have dedicated internal sales team?  Given that there are so many options when dealing with lead gen, the golden question is how to make the most from your leads without burning them?

Ultimately leads come in a variety of forms and just a small increase in lead quality can result in a huge increase in sales productivity.  These changes are what I’ve found salespeople spending hours and hours looking for by hoping their leads will tell them something!  The beauty of using lead scoring is this information is provided to your sales team on a plate!  They can then focus their time on converting these high quality leads into revenue.

But what is Lead Scoring?

Lead scoring is the process of ascribing a value (points) to the behaviour of your prospects.  This behaviour may be website activity, demographic profiling, email campaign interaction or a form completion and a volunteering of their information.  Different businesses will assign different values to these actions depending on the importance of one or more of the above actions.  The joy of lead scoring is that it is tailored to your business.  This sounds simple enough but many organisations just want to know what others have done and replicate that…you can’t!  For lead scoring to work for your products and your sales team you need to consult with those involved.  Assigning scores to leads moves your leads from being Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL) to Sales Qualified Leads (SQL) therefore communication between these departments is vital.  History will show there has been friction between these departments with marketing throwing quantities of unqualified leads at sales and sales wasting potential leads looking for the ‘quality’!  Lead scoring can solve this!  But first you need to find out what the ideal lead looks like from both a sales and marketing perspective and define these boundaries.  The scoring profiles will evolve and next generation marketing requires flexibility, adaptability and quick changes – adopt this philosophy and you’ll see your business grow.   

Lead scoring doesn’t have to be complicated and next time some tips coming your way…

References –

www.salesforce.com

Growth of Online Advertising Highlights Importance of Internet to Business

According to the BBC, online advertising has broken through the £4bn barrier– growing by 12.8% in 2010.

The Internet now accounts for a quarter of all advertising spending in the UK, according to figures, highlighting the importance of the Internet for both consumers and business alike.

But for businesses in both the B2B and B2C sectors it is building increased understanding of customers that is becoming key – this is what will help not just plan advertising, but it will also drive lead generation and improve conversion rates. Your website is key to this customer insight – who is visiting your website, where they have come from, what they are interested in on your site, where they are in the buying cycle and more – to give you the knowledge you need to maximise sales and marketing performance.

For companies to achieve this, lead generation software through Profunnel can help you nurture for the future, allowing companies to really understand potential business, communicate more effectively with individuals, and manage relationships.

Click here for more information on our marketing automation technology.

Growth of Online Advertising Highlights Importance of Internet to Business

According to the BBC, online advertising has broken through the £4bn barrier– growing by 12.8% in 2010.

The Internet now accounts for a quarter of all advertising spending in the UK, according to figures, highlighting the importance of the Internet for both consumers and business alike.

But for businesses in both the B2B and B2C sectors it is building increased understanding of customers that is becoming key – this is what will help not just plan advertising, but it will also drive lead generation and improve conversion rates. Your website is key to this customer insight – who is visiting your website, where they have come from, what they are interested in on your site, where they are in the buying cycle and more – to give you the knowledge you need to maximise sales and marketing performance.

For companies to achieve this, lead generation software through Profunnel can help you nurture for the future, allowing companies to really understand potential business, communicate more effectively with individuals, and manage relationships.

For more information on the technology available click here.

The Key to Customer Engagement – Your Website

In a competitive B2B world, first impressions of your website are essential in turning prospects into customers. A successful website must engage its audience from the outset.

Information such as white papers and a regularly updated blog provide added value and give a reason for customers to keep visiting the site. But while content attracts visitors, businesses need to understand how to turn this website traffic into new customers.

The key to this is following your website visitors from their first visit through their whole journey - how often a lead visits your site, how long they spend there and what they look at gives companies an incredible insight and understanding of potential customers.

It’s here that using a quality forensics solution to understand visitor actions comes into its own, giving your team the information it needs to improve communications and ultimately sales. The latest technology goes far beyond just the basic analytics, delivering knowledge that can enhance business performance and put you ahead of the competition.

Tailored Communication - The Future of Sales and Marketing

Sales and marketing are both now realising that having detailed customer information allows them to decrease the time spent in the sales cycle and focus their resources more effectively for more positive results. To achieve this, a more productive process is needed both in terms of capturing and understanding customer insight, and then tailoring communication.

Lead generation technology enables both sales and marketing to engage potential customers by gaining valuable information about their prospect’s key interest and buying behaviour. As a result, communication can be carefully targeted and highly relevant, with a tailored approach ensuring that potential customers are not turned off by irrelevant messages. With the focus now directed on improving communication, this allows companies to stand out from competitors. Get it right and you’ll give your sales team opportunities that they can really work with and put an end to chasing cold leads.

For more information on the tailored approach to communication visit www.profunnel.co.uk.

Search Engines No Longer the Only Priority For Online Business

It has been reported recently that Bing powered searches may be taking market share from Google. Irrespective of the search engine, companies need to change their focus from how visitors get to their website to what visitors are doing when they arrive at their site. This is the most valuable data for companies to gather and understand if they are to turn website visitors into new customers.

Recognising potential customers’ interests while on a website provides companies with a winning edge over competitors. The ability to tag and track website visitors opens up a new world of opportunity, providing insight into prospects’ buying motivations and behaviour throughout the sales cycle. Building knowledge of who wants to buy and when is crucial to sales success, and this is only possible by understanding and driving customer actions on your website.

With the latest lead generation technology companies can build invaluable insight into customer behaviour and use this to successfully nurture prospects. Click here for more information on how to improve your sales through the effective use of your website with Demand Generation.

How To Get Involved in Demand Generation?

With more channels now available for marketers and the targeting of key decision makers becoming more difficult, there is a need for marketers to reassess their activity to ensure it is up-to-date in today’s business environment.

The B2B market has changed dramatically - buyers now have access to your company and your competitors at the click of a button. So how do you stand out from the crowd? It’s all about having the necessary information available – who is your potential buyer, what are their interests and where are they in the buying process.

Lead generation technology provides the intelligence in the new world of B2B marketing. By providing the information about potential customers, their interests and where they are in the buying cycle, it allows marketing and sales to work together to drive forward new business.

Why is it more successful? The importance of relationship building cannot be undervalued. By creating campaigns and nurturing leads, users are able to build relationships and develop trust with potential buyers, which in turn leads to more successful outcomes.


Take a look at the latest lead generation technology - it can achieve far more than you may ever expect.

The Alternative Shift in B2B Marketing

The rapid rise of smartphones is changing the face of B2B marketing. No longer do businesses market to other businesses – instead they market to individuals, as the mix of work and social life coincides.

This change has made personalisation in business key, and knowledge of potential customers essential to winning new business. So how do companies develop this knowledge and is it difficult?

With more potential customers now online, you need to interact with them and nurture them from the start to help win their business - and this is where the latest lead generation technology can really help. Incorporating social media tagging and tracking solutions, together with powerful insights into customer reaction and behaviour over time, you can now build understanding of individuals and communicate far more effectively through email, Twitter, blogs and more, responding quickly to potential interest.

It’s a shift in approach that can work wonders. Tell us your experiences of the changing B2B market…

An Irritating Advert? Surely not…

Marketing magazine’s poll of the most irritating adverts of 2010 is out. Revealed as the most annoying is the GoCompare advert, with other companies in the top 20 including Webuyanycar and Injurylawyers4U.

Depending on the different marketing strategies, companies may see this as a positive - they’ve achieved the brand awareness they crave. It’s all about tailoring the communication to achieve ROI – but be wary of turning off potential customers.

While advertising can be a very effective tool, there are now many different channels to reach your customer in both B2C and B2B marketing – depending on what you want to achieve, and most importantly your budget.

Knowing your customer and what they are interested in is paramount to sales success, having that knowledge will ultimately win companies more business. A marketing automation technology will be able to identify, track and nurture customers, building stronger relationships and strengthening the brand.

Why not tell us which is your most annoying advert?

Positive Signs for Stock Market

With the stock market showing positive signs coming into the New Year, how are companies to excel in the competitive yet still recovering economy?

Maintaining the customers you have is as essential as bringing in new business, and to achieve both you need to really understand those you are selling to and communicate more effectively with them.

For marketing and sales this means using customer knowledge to target the right people, at the right time, to win new business and keep existing clients. This is where demand generation technology comes in; delivering a valuable insight into what motivates your customers, when and how. Building a more in-depth understanding of each customer is key – from their response to e-letters, social media activity and more you can develop a digital fingerprint that enables you to tailor your communication and focus on hot prospects.

Why not find out more about how lead generation technology can help grow your business?

UK Economic Growth Positive for Business

This week’s news that the UK economy has grown at 0.8% between July and September, faster than expected by analysts, is a welcome boost for business of all size. Positive news such as this gives us all a feel good factor.

But no one can sit back and expect this announcement to mean new business will simply land in their laps. If a company is going to grow and flourish, you need to be targeting new opportunities and taking advantage of the boost this economic announcement offers.

For marketing and sales this means taking advantage of the customer knowledge they have -targeting the right people, at the right time, to win business. Building a more in-depth understanding of each customer is key – from their reactions to e-letters, social media activity, historical data and more. This is where lead generation technology comes into its own, delivering a more powerful insight into what motivates your customers and achieving far higher conversion rates.

With a more positive feeling about the economy, why not find out more about how marketing automation technology can help grow your business?

How to move forward when the B2B sales environment changes

The B2B sales environment has changed drastically in recent years and marketing teams are now seeking out new ways to generate business in difficult economic times.

When money is tight, people are less inclined to buy, which can result in companies finding it difficult to reach potential prospects. Many organisations are now altering their sales and marketing tactics to reflect this change and many are choosing to integrate marketing automation systems into their strategy.

How can marketing automation help your business? By addressing situations such as decreased sales engagement, the lead generation technology allows marketing to turn cold prospects into warm prospects before passing these to sales - ensuring a more efficient and intelligent solution.

Why is it more successful? The importance of relationship building is not to be undervalued. By creating campaigns and nurturing leads, users are able to build relationships and develop trust with potential buyers, which in turn leads to more successful outcomes.

Marketing automation takes e-marketing to the next level and helps companies to adjust to the new sales environment. For more information on marketing automation solutions and how they can help your business visit www.profunnel.co.uk.

Predicted Increase Of Digital Marketing For 2011

Over two thirds of marketers believe that there will be an increase in digital marketing budgets in 2011 (according to research by LinkShare), resulting in greater scope for more targeted, creative and measured campaigns in the coming year.

Add to this the growth of the Internet and social media and it means that there are a growing number of options available for maximising your business potential online. The speed at which the online arena is developing is incredible, giving sales people the ability to target and highly personalise communication to achieve a demonstrable return on their investment. With marketing automation technology companies will be able to identify, track and nurture customers, building stronger relationships and strengthening the brand.

With online marketing playing an increasing role in business success, take a look at the latest lead generation technology - it can achieve far more than you may ever expect.

EU Forecasts Growth

Amid all the talk of spending cuts, the latest news that the European Commission has raised its forecast for growth in the EU this year is a shot of positivity.

After what has been referred to as "particularly strong" growth in the second quarter, the Commission is now predicting growth in 2010 of 1.8% in the EU, up from an earlier estimate of 1%. For the UK it is now projecting expansion of 1.7%, up from 1.2%.

For British business this should boost optimism for the future, and encourage business to look for the sales opportunities – both in the UK and overseas – that exist. Having an effective lead generation system is crucial to support this, enabling companies to gain an enviable insight into the motivations of potential customers, and communicate with them when they are actually ready to buy.

With the future looking brighter, why not make the most of the latest lead generation technology and be part of the growth?