Your Lead Scoring Blind Spot: The Internet

Marketers have a huge blind spot when it comes to nurturing and lead scoring. It does not matter if you have built a sophisticated lead management and nurturing system, driven by content consumption, engagement and response. Your blind spot is there.

The problem is, you only see how people respond to your content and your offers. You only see what is happening on your own properties. Your blind spot is all the time potential prospects spend on competitor sites, on editorial properties, on topical blogs or discussing with peers.

When you score prospects based on activity, your scoring is biased towards prospects that are considering your solution or view your products favorably. These are the prospects that have identified you and are spending time researching you already.

Furthermore, your scoring is biased against potential prospects that are looking for a solution but predisposed to purchasing from one of your competitors. The potential of these prospects is not reflected in your lead score. Their research activity and purchase indicators are all happening in your blind spot.

Today, the blind spot is a reality, and one that marketers simply must cope with. But it is also an opportunity to improve, an opportunity to accurately identify a greater portion of potential prospects.

Here are three methods I see in the market today or on the horizon that address this blind spot.

Social Media Scoring

If your potential prospects are active in social media, their conversations and discussions can be an additional indication of their level of activity in the category. This is the most obvious solution to some, but solutions to automate and support monitoring identified prospects for intensity of product or category discussion are not yet mainstream.

Appending Data

Traditional data appends can capture areas of buying influence and sometimes even buying intent. In addition, some B2B publishers are considering selling data about content consumption on their properties. Purchasing data can fill in a slice of your current blind spot with activity from one or more major category publications.

Publishing

Hubspot is a great example of a company becoming an information source in a category. Today, it would be challenging to seriously research inbound marketing and not spend a significant amount of time on Hubspot’s website, even if you are not interested in Hubspot’s offerings. By effectively becoming a media company in the category, Hubspot has filled in part of their blindspot.

Your Turn

What ways have you found to check your blind spot? What other opportunities do you see in the market today to check your blind spot? Share your thoughts in the comments below or with me on Twitter (@wittlake).

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