Change Marketing from a
Cost Center to a Growth Driver

Building a healthy pipeline and supporting revenue growth are critical for business success. Across industries, the same nine steps can yield consistently strong results, helping you achieve predictable pipeline and accelerate growth.

Step 5: Track Engagement

Building pipeline starts with building relationships. Before a prospect will consider buying from you, you need to gain their attention and earn their trust. Sharing relevant, valuable content (see steps 3-4) can help raise awareness and establish credibility, but how will you know if it’s working?

It’s critical to encourage and track engagement so you can see when and how prospects are consuming your content. You can encourage engagement by making it easy to click through an email to a landing page, access related content after reading an article, request a demo on product information pages, etc. Tracking engagement is all about monitoring and measuring this activity, so you know who is clicking on what and when.

Basic engagement tracking metrics are often integrated with any digital communication. For example, your email platform likely offer ready access to measures like opens, clicks, click-to-open rates, bounces, unsubscribes, and more. Visitor activity on landing pages or websites is typically trackable through tools included in your CMS (e.g., HubSpot, WordPress, Wix, SquareSpace), but it's also valuable to add Google Analytics and take advantage of the detailed metrics and reporting they offer.

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Step 6: Score Leads 

The point of measuring engagement is to know when it makes sense to transition from Marketing to Sales. Once prospects demonstrate enough interest and/or signal that they may be open to a purchase, it’s time to alert Sales so they can reach out.

Lead scoring makes this process quantifiable by assigning point values to key engagement activities, such as opening an email, clicking a link, downloading a piece of content, spending a certain amount of time on your website, etc. Once these points add up to a designated level (whether immediately or over the course of weeks or months), a prospect is considered a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) and ready for handoff to Sales.

Establishing an effective lead scoring model depends on the kinds of engagement opportunities you can offer and measure, as well as what they suggest about an individual's interest and intentions. Clicking on a social post or display ad may signal idle curiosity or early exploration. Downloading an ebook, case study, or infographic implies more significant interest, as does spending a lot of time on multiple website pages or viewing several videos. Taking repeated action over time (e.g., click through multiple emails or return to the website several times) or attending a webinar or event could mean a prospect is seriously considering your company or offerings.

 In general , there is no fixed timeframe or rigid path for a customer journey, and lead scoring accounts for this variability. A prospect who fits your ideal customer profile (ICP) and engages strongly on their first visit could score up and become an MQL right away. Someone who is a less obvious prospect and is just beginning to explore options may take more time to engage and ultimately demonstrate that they're worth the attention of your Sales team.

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