Marketing leads are frequently everyone’s first choice. You'd make it a habit to peruse the internet, newspapers, television, flyers, and other forms of media to see if there are any lucrative marketing opportunities available.
What lies ahead, however, isn't always a happy ending! It's difficult to generate quality leads. Often we come back with a great marketing lead, and other times we come back empty-handed.
We will cover the following:
- What is a Marketing Qualified Lead?
- Where MQLs Fit into the Customer Lifecycle?
- Why MQL Stage is Important?
- How to Identify Marketing Qualified Lead?
- Conclusion
What is a Marketing Qualified Lead? 🤔
A Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) is a lead who has shown interest in what a brand has to give or who, as a result of marketing activities, is more likely to become a customer than other leads. An MQL is typically a lead who has willingly engaged with your brand by sending contact details, opting into a program, adding e-commerce products to a shopping cart, downloading materials, or visiting a website multiple times.
There are promising leads that are interested in learning more about you but haven't yet taken the next step into a sales conversation. They'll be more open to a sales pitch than a standard lead. If you think about your own buying process, you're unlikely to give out your real email address unless you're ready to start a conversation. An MQL has been determined to be interested in your goods and/or services, and you may be able to provide a solution to their problem.
An MQL has taken the first steps toward becoming a customer and is ready for more communication. In a nutshell, Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) become Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs), who then become customers.
Marketing Qualified Leads has shown an interest in purchasing. They're interested in an offer and have taken the first step toward interacting with your business without purchasing something. Although marketing efforts can generate leads, it is the behaviour of those leads that prompt marketers to classify them as MQLs.
Where MQLs Fit into the Customer Lifecycle? 😥
The stages of the consumer lifecycle are as follows:
- Visitor
The term "site user" is self-explanatory: it refers to anyone who visits your website. Understanding how many people are visiting your website is a significant first step in digital marketing. - Lead
Leads are generated when a visitor expresses an interest in your business by sharing their contact details. You've offered them something of value in the form of a gated piece of content or a similar bid, and they're willing to share information about themselves. - Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)
An MQL is created when a company confirms a lead is a good match and shows return interest by selling to them. When a lead becomes an MQL, the organization proceeds to research and nurture the contact down the funnel. - Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)
When sales and marketing agree that the contact has enough interest and is a good match for a discovery call to start a sales conversation, an MQL is referred to as a sales-eligible lead. - Opportunity
When they confirm that your business can have a feasible solution to their dilemma and plan to continue the sales process by learning more about your goods and services, a SQL becomes an opportunity. - Customer
When a consumer opportunity signs a contract, they become a customer.
Why MQL Stage is Important? 😇
MQLs are important because they can show you how contacts are moving through your funnel. Looking up the funnel from the MQL level, you can see that if you're getting a lot of MQLs, you're getting a lot of high-fit visitors to your site. If you're having trouble turning leads into MQLs, you can try to create leads that are more suitable.
The MQL stage is usually the last one where marketing is still in charge of moving leads forward. Sales will be involved after this point when MQLs become SQLs. Of course, this does not absolve marketing of responsibility; rather, sales assistant in the progression of leads down the funnel after the MQL point.
How to Identify Marketing Qualified Lead? 🙄
The majority of MQL detection techniques depend on the consumer journey on a company's website. However, in order to avoid any misunderstanding, we should not limit MQL to the customer journey alone. Here are some of the commonly used methods for identifying marketing qualified leads:
#1 Examining Previous Actions
Use this data to uncover your customers' path if you have a website with a lot of users, some of whom become customers. All those who have purchased your goods or fallen out of the loop for different reasons are included here.
#2 Getting Customer Feedback
Visitors often leave suggestions and comments on the website. Although some of them might be spam, others may assist you in improving your website. Some of your guests will tell you what needs to be done, and others will tell you about their good times.
These visitors can be classified as potential customers because they took the time to tell you about your product. Although product-targeted feedback may be more useful in identifying MQLs, content-targeted comments should not be overlooked.
#3 Looking for Trends
Another way to find your MQL is to look at how well your sites, advertisements, and links are doing.
#4 Identifying Your Competitive Advantage
Some customers prefer you over your rivals. Make an honest assessment of yourself and list all of your good attributes. The key is to maintain as much objectivity as possible.
#5 Dig Deeper with Intent Data
Marketers may create interest by personalizing the content they show leads using data-based insights.
You may, for example, group leads based on a common complaint (versus your basic demographics and firmographics). This approach gives you the chance to show prospects how your product will help them solve their business problems. When SDRs call MQLs, they can customize the conversation based on data cues, such as the company's most recent round of funding or a recent tech-stack update.
Conclusion
The word MQL was coined to help marketers figure out who wants their product, who can afford it, and who has the authority to buy it. Furthermore, as marketing and sales teams work together, marketing will qualify leads that sales love to close. When you bring all of these MQL pieces together, you'll be able to generate a steady stream of high-quality leads that will blow your marketing plan out of the ocean.
So share your thoughts about the Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) with us at LeadMine.
