Marketing Qualified Leads: Concept, Tools, and strategies to convert

Can you imagine that most b2b companies see their 80% of sales coming from 20% of leads? These are the high-impact leads that are going beyond just knowing your brand and engaging with you. It’s like they’re saying, ‘We’re interested, tell us more’.

Identifying and catering to these leads will help increase your conversion rate. It will also save your resources so that you don’t spend them on the not-so-qualified leads. We have a name for this type of quality lead and that is ‘Marketing Qualified Leads’. 

In this blog, we’ll cover the core concepts of MQLs, how to identify them, and the strategies to convert them into paying customers. 

Stick till the end for your own good!

Concept of MQL

We know that it might be hard to differentiate between a casual visitor of your website and an MQL. On the one hand, you have some people who are just becoming aware of your business through social media. On the other hand, you have a loyal customer base, which is your biggest fan base. The MQLs fall somewhere in between. 

It’s the buyer’s journey that helps us to define MQLs. The Marketing Qualified Leads are the ones, who have moved beyond the awareness stage. They’re engaging and showing genuine interest. 

MQLs are defined by their actions. That signals their interest in your business. Some common signals of interest that MQLs often show: 

Download: Let’s say they’ve downloaded your case study on contact forms, so it’s highly likely that they’ll be interested in your product.

Sign up: They often sign up for your newsletters or webinars for engagement.

Reach out: As they’re highly interested, sometimes they reach out to you asking questions about your product or services. 

Social media interaction: MQLs engage with you on your social media posts, or watch your demo videos, and put a comment there for clarifications.

Visit: Visiting your website repeatedly over a brief timespan is one of the most common signals MQLs provide.

MQL for b2b companies

Finding MQLs is like putting a filter on lead generation. For b2b businesses, it is a highly beneficial approach. Three mentionable benefits are: 

Resource-saving: In the case of allocating resources in a b2b company, generating MQLs saves a lot of time and effort. When you identify MQLs, you can concentrate your resources on them rather than spending on every lead.

Collaboration: Your marketing and sales team can effectively work together to identify and guide MQLs to closing deals. This ensures that both teams focus resources on the most prospective leads.

Impactful steps: MQLs assist you in learning about your target customers. You can analyze their interest and goals; and eventually, customize your content accordingly. 

MQL vs MAL 

Don’t get confused with another term called Marketing Accepted Leads or MALs. MALs meet the minimum criteria of your marketing team. For instance, they might fit your ideal demographics, and psychographics, or visit your website. There are some companies that also track MALs.

So, what’s the exact difference between MQL and MAL? It’s the actions that differentiate them. Both fit your target customer profile, but MAL hasn’t been concretely engaging with your business. That means you’ll need to nurture them more to make them your paying customers.

Some companies also track marketing accepted leads (MALs). This term refers to prospects who meet the minimum criteria your marketing team sets. For example, they may fit your ideal demographics or visit your website.

Identifying and generating MQL

Now, the question is, how do you identify your MQLs? There are no direct prescriptions for it.

It’s the buyer’s persona that might help you set up the criteria. If it’s John from Newark who wants some solution for project management or Rebecca who just wants to grow their knowledge of customer service; you need to step into their shoes and find out.

In this case, it is not one size fits all. If we’re talking about software companies you identify MQLs when someone requests a demo, for e-commerce stores you find those who are abandoning carts. This means that the target audience varies from industry to industry.

Still, we can provide you with some common factors to help you identify your MQLs.

Authority: The first thing you should think about, is the authority of the buyer. If they have the decision-making power to make the purchase.

Budget: You also need to understand their budget. If they have the money to buy your product, only then you can think about going further.

Demographics: A majority of the buying decision depends on the demographics. It can be their age, job title, department, or geographic location. 

Engagement: Actions speak louder than words and it’s also true when you’re trying to set up the criteria for your MQLs. The type of engagement they are having is the clues they’re leaving for you. It’s about whether they are trying to connect with you, asking about your product, or want to learn something from you. All these questions might help you understand them and segregate them according to their actions. 

Pain points: It’s the pain points that make your customers reach out to you. So, you need to understand and classify their problems. Identify which stage they are and try to provide solutions accordingly. Identify and differentiate the pain points of every other prospect and see if you can really provide the solutions they want. 

It’s like puzzle pieces; when you join them together, you get the quality MQLs.

MQL vs SQL

At this point, you might ask how to distinguish between MQL and SQL (Sales Qualified Lead). 

Although MQLs are showing interest in your business, they might not yet be ready to buy. Hitting an MQL with a sales pitch might go wrong. That’s why you need to differentiate between MQL and SQL.

SQLs are further down the funnel. It means that you’ve nurtured them well enough. They’re more engaged than the MQLs, showing buying signals like- requesting demos. 

Recognize the clues your SQLs are giving and guide them to the sales process. This can save your marketing efforts a lot.

6 strategies to convert MQL

1. Set up your criteria

As mentioned earlier, setting up your criteria for MQLs is the first thing you need to do. 

Start with your existing customers, analyze their behavior, and what guided them to become your customers. This includes demographic data, online behavior, or engagement with specific marketing content. Reverse engineer their customer journey. 

You should also talk to your sales team, so you can gain insight and refine your MQL criteria. 

2. Segment wisely

By segmentation, we mean you classify the different customer profiles. See where they fit in. Understand the buyer’s persona. Ask yourself if your prospects fit the existing customer profile.

Thus you can allocate your resources as per need, enrich personalization, and improve conversion rates.

3. Leverage AI and automation tools

Gathering chunks of data can help you a lot. Utilize automation tools to collect data on the high-intent actions, what kind of content they consume, their common queries, do they want demos or free versions.

Though it might seem overwhelming in the beginning, when you start spotting trends, you’ll see the magic. 

With predictive analytics tools and AI, you can easily identify the patterns. You can use CRM and automation tools to grow your list and for segmentation.

For example, if you provide online courses for professional development, check who is joining your webinar or downloading your guide – these are high-level interests. Keep track of them with automation tools and stay in touch.

4. Personalize contents

You’re doing your business with humans, right? And everyone loves a personal touch. It influences them to take the further step. 

The key to personalizing content is to know your customers first. Understand their position in the buyer’s journey, what they want to know, and how they would want to know it. 

Personalized content speaks directly to potential customers, making them feel understood and valued. This strengthens their bond with your business and it leads to boost conversions.

5. Marketing x sales 

MQLs generally evolve into SQLs so it’s important for your marketing and sales team to work closely. The sales team knows what is working and what is not. 

When sales and marketing teams work together, optimizing the sales funnels gets easier. Eventually, it boosts conversion rates. 

Schedule regular meetings between the teams to discuss lead quality, feedback, and strategies. Remember that, it’s always quality over quantity. This collaboration helps to ensure the quality of the leads.

Setting some common KPIs for both departments can fuel this collaboration. Also, with the sales team providing feedback on lead quality, the marketing efforts can be improved.

6. Measure and adjust

Don’t get relaxed if you have done with the previous steps. Generating MQLs is a continuous process. 

Review the KPIs and objectives every quarter. Check which efforts aren’t working. Dig into the nuances to resolve any issue. 

Always prioritize quality over quantity. Don’t put all your efforts into generating a lot of MQLs, rather optimize your strategy only to find quality leads.

Moving forward

To be honest, we both know that not every strategy will end up being successful, don’t we? But think of this process as a marathon, where you need to keep running till the end while evolving your strategies.

Don’t get caught up in the overwhelming data, scrutinize them properly by using effective tools. Automate the processes that you can. Saving time will also bring money.

And lastly, set realistic expectations. Your KPIs should be well thought out and achievable. Keep touching the little milestones and you’ll surely see the end. But sadly, there’s no end to generating MQLs, because it’s a cycle. 

Hope you have learned something helpful from this blog. Let us know the MQL generation strategies that worked best for you in the comments below!