Marketing Quality Leads is a prospect that has come through expressing interest in one’s product and then converting into a lead. This fits the qualifications, or standards, that a lead must possess as determined by marketing.
► The traditional definition of a Marketing Quality Leads is flawed and seller-centric. A buyer-centric approach is better for all.
► In B2B marketing, a Marketing Quality Leads (MQL) is typically one that marketing feels is ready to be passed to sales.
► A marketing quality leads is a lead judged more likely to become a customer compared to other leads based on lead intelligence, often informed by closed-loop analytics.
► The term is broadly used across marketing and sales. Marketing teams are judged by the numbers of MQL’s they generate
► “Marketing Quality Leads” is a lead that has met some benchmark that identifies it as having enough potential to warrant attention from your marketing department.
► Marketing Quality Leads have identified themselves as more engaged than other leads, but they’re not quite ready to buy. Depending on your sales cycle, you may have multiple levels of MQL’s. Only very specific, high interest activities should trigger the promotion of a lead to an MQL. These include bottom of the funnel offers such as demos, free trials, detailed buying guides, or additional sales-ready actions.
There are four categories of variables we’ll look at:
1. Profile
2. Channel
3. Actions
4. Undesirables
1. Profile: The all the personal information of the client with company details like first name, last name, title/role, organization, contact info, size and type of organization, perhaps location, etc.
2. Channels: The second thing to recognize is that your potential leads are spending time in multiple channels, and you need to identify those channels for your organization.
3. Actions: In defining MQLs, it’s very important to understand not just the profile and the channel, but the actions that individuals took to become an MQL.
4. Undesirables: For all of the desirable actions, channels, and profile aspects you define, you should also look at the undesirables. Don’t just look at the positive, look at the negative attributes.