What is Fit in Lead Scoring? 

DEFINITION
Fit in lead scoring defines how well a potential contact aligns with your ideal customer profile (ICP) or other high-value audience segments, often focusing heavily on firmographic data like industry, annual revenue, or company size. 

💡Understanding the Role Fit Plays in Lead Scoring

Fit plays a vital role in reliable lead scoring models, as it helps you determine how closely aligned an individual contact is with your ideal customer profile (ICP). 

Most B2B and SaaS brands either have a single ICP that they’re targeting or, more likely, several high-value audiences that they’re trying to reach. Each of these audiences will have a series of traits that identifies them. 

You may have an ICP of contacts in B2B services (like law, business consulting, marketing agencies, and design agencies) with at least 20 employees and over 500k in annual revenue. That’s still a pretty wide net to cast, but also one that’s defined enough that your sales team can quickly give you an understanding of how likely the lead is to convert based on fit alone. 

The challenge with determining the fit criteria you use to create your lead scoring model is that it may be difficult to determine which traits to focus on or how to score them. 

🖋 Takeaway

Fit isn’t the only thing that you’ll need to account for in your lead scoring model— activity is just as important to creating a lead scoring model that actually gives your sales team actionable information. It is, however, half of the equation—and that shouldn’t be discounted.

This is why fit is one half of the equation with our lead scoring system here at Breadcrumbs, which uses a co-dynamic approach to give you a holistic look at every contact. 

Firmographic data will be the central part of setting your fit criteria for your lead scoring models, as it gives you a clear understanding of what your different audience segments look like. 

When you’re determining which traits you should value most highly in your lead-scoring models, the following strategies can help you find shared traits from high-value customer segments:

• Ask your sales team what their shared customers have in common; they may know better than anyone else on the team and may have an enormous amount of insight into which traits matter and which may just be a coincidence
• Look at your audience segments in your CRM; look for firmographic traits that they have in common 
• Use an ICP-discovery tool like Reveal, which will compare a high-value audience segment to your entire audience to help you find your current ICP

We typically recommend starting with 3-5 data points for fit, so choose what seems to be the most obvious and impactful. You can always split-test different models with additional data points once the foundation is established.

What is fit in lead scoring? 

Fit in lead scoring assesses firmographic and demographic data to see how closely a contact aligns with your ideal customer profile (ICP). Certain firmographic traits will be linked to higher-value clients or those that are more likely to convert. Traits that align with your ICP can increase the lead’s score, while those that indicate that they aren’t a fit can lower the lead score.

What is firmographic data? 

Firmographic data is a collection of a business’s key characteristics, like their annual revenue, years in operation, or the number of employees, that can be used to identify high-value leads and clients.  

Why are firmographics important? 

Firmographic data is important because it can help you quickly identify how closely an individual contact is aligned with your ideal customer profile (ICP) and thus impact which leads your sales team follows most aggressively.

It can help your sales team realize the difference between someone using your graphic design software to create featured images for their blogs and a CMO who is considering the tool for their social media marketing team. 

What is the difference between demographic and firmographic data? 

Demographic data focuses on the information of individual people, like their location, level of education, and, potentially, what are the languages spoken. Firmographic data, on the other hand, looks at traits of a business, like its industry or the number of employees. 

Where can I find firmographic data? 

If you want to get firmographic data from your contacts, it’s a good idea to start with your lead forms. You can often collect basic qualifying information through lead forms, and your sales team can narrow down any more information they need during their interactions with the customers.

If you need to find firmographic data on potential leads from third-party sources, you can consider data enrichment tools. These tools often feature databases with lead information, like their position at a company, how large the business is, and whether it’s public or private.   

What are examples of firmographics? 

Examples of firmographic data include:

• Industry the business belongs to
• Size of the company
• Type of business (B2B or B2C, SaaS, and product vs. service based)
• Company structure
• Annual revenue
• Annual ad spend
• Geographic data
• Number of employees
• Annual or quarterly revenue 
• Business credit rating
• Sales numbers

What is structured vs. unstructured data? 

You can collect lead information from both structured and unstructured data. Structured data utilizes a standardized format and may include data through your CRM, product databases, and invoicing systems.

Unstructured data, on the other hand, may include information that comes from rich media, from audio files, emails, and posts on social media.