{"id":21194,"date":"2022-12-06T02:50:36","date_gmt":"2022-12-06T02:50:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/12\/06\/why-lead-scoring-doesnt-work-and-what-to-do-instead\/"},"modified":"2022-12-06T02:50:36","modified_gmt":"2022-12-06T02:50:36","slug":"why-lead-scoring-doesnt-work-and-what-to-do-instead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/12\/06\/why-lead-scoring-doesnt-work-and-what-to-do-instead\/","title":{"rendered":"Why lead scoring doesn\u2019t work, and what to do instead"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Lead scoring often fails to deliver results because the behaviours that get scored do not correlate with intent to purchase, and buyers are avoiding doing the things that would result in them being scored in the first place.<\/p>\n

If you are frustrated with the fruits of your lead scoring labour, you are not alone. For many B2Bs, lead scoring never delivers its promise of higher lead to customer conversion rates, and most end up gaming their own systems, rendering them pointless. Buy why doesn\u2019t lead scoring work so much of the time?<\/p>\n

\"Read<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Behaviour doesn\u2019t correlate with intent or ability to purchase<\/h2>\n

The often-held hope for lead scoring is that it will help marketing to identify the leads that are more likely to purchase. It is hoped that these leads, when passed to sales, will be easier or more willing to close than the others, despite them not having explicitly expressed the desire to purchase.<\/p>\n

The problem with this approach, as I am sure most marketers will attest, is that the behaviours that are most often scored, and our approach to scoring them, rarely, if ever, correlates with intent, or even need, to purchase.<\/p>\n

Frustratingly, leads that never can or will purchase are incredibly adept at performing the actions that we marketers think only buyers will.<\/p>\n

Even if behaviour did consistently correlate with intent or need, most approaches to creating scoring systems are spectacularly flawed. In the absence of any statistical analysis, scores that ‘feel right’ are assigned, of course with the intention to improve them later<\/span><\/p>\n

When Guy Marion was Head of Online Sales for Zendesk, he put lead scoring to the test. His sales team were given an equal number of qualified leads that had met their lead scoring target and of random, non-qualified leads, to see how much easier it was to close the scored leads. They found they were no better at closing the scored leads than the randomly selected ones<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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“Despite our best efforts, we found no statistical difference in our ability to connect with, re-engage, or win the \u201cready for sales\u201d leads compared to randomized, non-scored leads. Admittedly, we only dedicated one quarter to the experiment, but the experience confirmed anecdotally what many report”<\/p>\n

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Guy Marion<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In The Sales Acceleration Formula<\/a>, Mark Roberge, former Chief Revenue Officer at HubSpot, wrote about how he quickly ditched traditional lead scoring and searched for a more reliable way to support sales.<\/p>\n

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“At HubSpot, we tried the lead scoring approach, but ran into [problems]. We evolved to implement an alternative approach”<\/p>\n

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Mark Roberge<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Buyers don\u2019t become leads in the first place<\/h2>\n

Over the years that we’ve specialised in inbound demand generation<\/a>, there’s one trend that’s always been present and has grown in recent years.<\/p>\n

While marketing teams work hard to generate, nurture, and score leads that sales ultimately struggle to close, buyers still appear and raise their hand without first becoming leads and being nurtured or scored.<\/p>\n

The effort that goes into generating more leads often correlates with moderate increases in the number of buyers appearing, but they remain two almost totally distinct cohorts.<\/p>\n

Buyers increasingly do not want to receive automated emails as a result of downloading content – content that they’ve learned rarely contains enough value to warrant what inevitably comes after. Lead nurturing email is viewed as little more the spam these days.<\/p>\n

And they do not to want to take your phone call or read your ‘inmail’ pitch either.<\/p>\n

Buyers would rather leave the gated content alone and remain anonymous until they are ready to talk to sales.<\/p>\n

If you can provide enough information to satisfy your buyer’s needs, you might capture their demand and generate a high-intent, highly qualified lead. If not, they will probably go and look elsewhere.<\/p>\n

What to do instead of lead scoring<\/h2>\n

If buyers are generally not converting into leads before raising their hands, and lead scoring doesn’t help you to convert more leads into customers, how can you align your inbound marketing<\/a> to your growth?<\/p>\n

The answer is to shift your inbound from a lead generation strategy to a demand generation one.<\/p>\n

Inbound demand generation takes all the best bits of inbound marketing and aligns them to the way your buyer wants to research and buy.<\/p>\n

Inbound demand generation eschews the universal gating of content, followed up with lead nurturing email and scoring, for an approach that helps buyers on their journey all the way from discovery to decision while remaining anonymous, with their privacy and inbox intact.<\/p>\n

Inbound demand generation prioritises the free consumption of content – on your website, in Google search results, or in feed on social media – to generate demand for your offering and affinity with your brand.<\/p>\n

It favours a holistic and integrated approach to the content that generates demand and the website user experience that captures it.<\/p>\n

Inbound demand generation aligns marketing vectors so that more buyers discover your brand, more buyers consume your content and understand your expertise, and more buyers navigate your site and take a conversion action that benefits both them and you.<\/p>\n

\"Inbound<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n