Lead scoring and customer scoring are essential in marketing and sales. Both are key strategies for accelerating the customer journey through the conversion funnel. This article explores what lead scoring is, what it is for, the key concepts and how it differs from customer scoring.
If you work in marketing or sales, you probably know that the conversion funnel is one of the pillars of most digital marketing strategies today.
Both customer scoring and lead scoring are techniques used to drive the customer through the conversion funnel and to the next stage. These types of techniques fall under customer nurturing strategies, which consist of "nurturing" consumers with information related to their interests and the product or service we want to sell.
Although they are similar strategies, lead scoring and customer scoring are slightly different.
What is lead scoring and what is it for?
In order to understand what lead scoring is, we must first learn about other concepts.
The key concepts of lead scoring: conversion funnel and lead nurturing
Conversion funnel
The conversion funnel is a funnel-shaped diagram that represents the different stages a person goes through before becoming a customer. In other words, the conversion funnel explores all the stages an individual goes through, from the moment they discover a brand until after they have become customers.
Although it may seem similar to customer journey, the conversion funnel focuses on the user's level of willingness to make a purchase.
There are different versions of the conversion funnel, but it usually has 3 or 4 stages. The most common are: Awareness, Consideration and Decision.
Source: Hubspot
Lead
A lead is a person who has shown interest in our brand and therefore has a good chance of becoming a customer. One of marketing's main objectives capturing leads.
Customer conversion
Customer conversion is the set of techniques used to convert people on one of the initial stages of the funnel into customers. To convert a customer is, precisely, to make them advance through the funnel until they reach the end by purchasing a product or service.
Lead nurturing
Lead nurturing is one of the techniques used to convert leads into customers by guiding and preparing them throughout the whole process until they make a purchase.
Once we are clear about these concepts, we can start exploring lead scoring.
What is lead scoring?
Lead scoring is a marketing technique that consists of classifying leads according to their probability of becoming customers. The technique analyses each lead level of interest in our brand. This way we can establish how ready they are to become customers.
Lead scoring's goal is to know where leads are so that we can design appropriate strategies for each user.
Obviously, not all leads end up becoming customers. For a lead to end up making a purchase, it is essential for the marketing team to offer optimal assistance. If we communicate too directly and persuasively with a lead who has just followed us on social media, it is quite likely that we will scare him and lose him forever. On the other hand, if we do not provide the right information to a user whose actions indicate that he is very close to making a purchase, it is possible that he will end up opting for another company that has done so.
Just like customers, leads require personalized attention. This is why lead scoring is so important in an increasingly digitalized and diversified market. Not only does it help companies get to know their customers better, but it also promotes the implementation of marketing actions tailored to each customer's needs.
What is the difference between lead scoring and customer scoring?
If you have come this far, you have probably already guessed the difference between them. Basically, lead scoring classifies leads and customer scoring classifies those who are already our customers.
Customer scoring segments customers according to criteria related to each customer's level of profit contribution, customer loyalty or level of satisfaction.
Lead scoring, on the other hand, explores an individual's probability of becoming a consumer or, in other words, of making a purchase.
Therefore, customer scoring and lead scoring have their differences. Obviously, we will not communicate in the same way with a regular customer as with someone who has just discovered what we do, as they have different needs.
However, both lead scoring and customer scoring are marketing techniques focused on offering a better service and personalized attention, either to our leads or to our customers.
Lead scoring: from leads to customers
Lead scoring is an essential technique to build an effective digital marketing strategy that helps us nurturing leads in the right way to transform them into customers.
Thus, it is important to emphasize that the nurturing process should start the moment a lead enters our database and never end. Even with regular customers, paying attention to their needs and offering them personalized attention is a must if we want to avoid losing customers.
