The difference between traditional and predictive leads

Wouldn’t it be nice if a bell rang every time a qualified lead visited your website? It would certainly make things easier. You wouldn’t have to work hard on leads that weren’t qualified, and you wouldn’t have to lose time and money in the process. You could focus solely on your qualified leads, maximizing your resources and making your company more profitable. Unfortunately, things don’t work this way. Part of the thrill of sales is never knowing who you’re going to sell to.

A Predictable Algorithm in an Unpredictable Selling World

Even though sales is hardly predictable, your algorithm may be. If you’re still spending equal time on your leads even though your business is experiencing growth, you’re not making good use of your time or budget. What you need to do is adjust your algorithm so that you’re spending the most time on qualified leads. This is the only way that you can allow your business to grow and experience success while also ensuring that the right leads get the right attention.

But how do you know which leads are considered qualified and which are not? Can you tell the difference between traditional and predictive leads?

You will by the time you read this article.

Let’s dig deeper.

In an ideal world, you would be handed the key factors that make someone a qualified lead on a silver platter. With ice cream for dessert. By knowing what these factors are, you could create content around them and deliver it at the right time to move your leads further down the funnel. Once your framework was fully established, you would be able to move qualified leads through the buying funnel rather quickly. Leads would be prioritized, and sales would be generated from them.

Though you won’t be able to create this idealistic framework, it is something to strive for. To help you make the most of your leads, lead scoring is a handy tool to get acquainted with.

How Lead Scoring Works

The Traditional Way

Lead scoring simplifies the way businesses identify the best leads for their sales team to connect with. It relies on a strategic scoring system that prioritizes the best leads. Based on this system, you know which leads are worth spending some time on and which ones are not. Over time, you’ll learn which factors to look for in visitors that make them qualified leads.

For instance, if you’re a B2B business, you’ll want to look for leads that submit a business email on your lead forms. Emails that end in @yahoo or @gmail may not be qualified. You may also find that leads in the technology or software industry are the best fit for your product. You will need to identify the different factors that are used to rank the quality of your leads.

The second part to lead scoring is determining how important or unimportant these factors are. You may want to deduct a few points from leads who have an @yahoo email address, but you don’t want to omit them entirely. It’s possible that they could be using their personal email to ask questions. If the lead is part of the technology industry, you may want to add points to their score because this is what makes them a good candidate for your product.

As you add and subtract points from your leads using lead scoring, you’ll find that some leads end up with higher scores that indicate they are more lucrative to pursue.

The Predictive Way

Predictive lead scoring is another handy tool that uses an algorithm to predict whether your database is qualified or not. There is different information that is taken into account when determining this information such as property information, behavioral data, social information, demographics and media written about your business.

Unlike the nitty-gritties of traditional lead scoring, you don’t have to worry about what properties should be included and how much they should be weighed with predictive lead scoring. Instead, this system relies on what information your customers and non-converting leads have in common. Using this information, a formula is constructed that separates your qualified leads from your non-qualified ones.

Which is Better: Traditional or Predictive?

The benefit to using predictive lead scoring is obvious: you get a large amount of leads and you don’t have to rely on the guess and check method. B2B organizations are just beginning to use this method, so many still have a lot to learn. It’s certainly worth exploring, as predictive lead scoring is highly beneficial for B2B sales and marketing. Here are a few reasons why.

  • Analyzes lead behavioral patterns

  • Determines which actions can improve the quality of leads

  • Encourages content creation based on the leads’ interests

  • Allows for personalized content and targeted messages

  • Identifies leads that are likely to leave as well as those likely to convert

Conclusion

Lead scoring has gotten easier thanks to the predictive approach. Rather than being an oversimplified model, predictive lead scoring is precise and adaptive. It allows you to move along with the trends while delivering accurate data to the sales team that they can capitalize on. This is highly important in an industry where marketing databases get outdated quickly.

Overall, lead scoring is an excellent way to help you better understand what makes one lead qualified and another one not. With this ranking system, you can put your time and energy into the customers who will likely close the deal and generate revenue for your company.

Ashley Rodriguez
Lead SEO Strategist

Ashley Rodriguez is a SEO Strategist with a degree in Marketing from Sam Houston State University. With a passion for top of funnel awareness, she is able to provide insight and direction regarding strategic planning and initiatives, while driving improved results and organic visibility for all web properties. In her free time, you can find her at the beach or watching sports.