Introduction
Marketing in the technology age creates, shares, delivers, and exchanges offerings that benefit customers, clients, partners, and society. Every business needs marketing to establish a connection between clients and the company. With the current technology penetration, reaching and capturing the customer’s attention has become easy and complex. Managing clients who seek personalized services at a great value, reaching out to target groups, and sustaining brand reputation within the budget, are some of the duties of the marketing team.
Every business understands the best way to make money is through leads. 55% of marketers need help to capture and engage leads. To overcome this challenge, understand marketing qualified leads (MQL) clearly. Let’s look at the best approach to marketing qualified leads below. OKRs, or, Objectives and Key Results, are tangible goals and measurements which can be used to focus your marketing and sales strategies. OKRs help individuals, teams, departments, and organizations as a whole determine whether their efforts are having a positive and substantial impact on their company’s bottom line, and can encourage more effective strategy execution.
Many marketing and sales departments are using OKRs to help define their most important goals. While some sales OKRs may have relevance across multiple industries, others are unique to organizations in the Software as a Service (SaaS) space. In this article, we highlight SaaS-specific OKRs and offer guidance on using them to achieve your SaaS marketing goals.
What Is a Marketing Qualified Lead?
An MQL makes a deliberate effort to interact with your brand through:
- Returning to your website frequently
- Filling out your contact forms or emailing for more information
- Subscribing to your newsletter
- Starting a product demo or free trial
- Downloading your ebooks or white papers
MQL Definition
A marketing-qualified lead is a prospect or someone who actively engages with your brand through your digital marketing efforts.
Master the topic, the message, and the delivery.
Why is MQL Important?
Understanding Customer Pain Points
The actions that an MQL takes indicate their needs. For example, a prospect asking for a quotation shows interest but not purchasing power. But if a prospect signs up for a free trial, they may have the budget for your product but need to know if it’s worth purchasing.
Marketing Campaign Optimization
MQL data helps you identify the stages of the prospect’s buying journey. This helps to create marketing strategies to target with the right content to nurture them to conversion.
Polishing Your Sales Pitch
By studying MQL actions, you’ll understand the best sales pitch to convert them into buyers. Remember that putting off a willing prospect with a poor or ill-timed sales pitch is easy.
What Is Not An MQL?
As explained earlier, a marketing-qualified lead is any customer who engages with your marketing content. However, it’s essential to clarify what an MQL is not:
- An MQL Is Not An SQL
A marketing-qualified lead is different from a sales-qualified lead (SQL). An MQL is right at the start of their buying journey, usually looking for a solution to their problems. An SQL already knows about your product and is ready to buy. - An MQL Is Not An Automatic SQL
It takes effort to turn an MQL into an SQL. You must approach an MQL carefully, depending on their position in the sales funnel. Otherwise, you might quickly turn them off your product. - An MQL Is Not A Generic Lead
Generic leads are passive participants in your marketing strategy. They view your ads but don’t click through or know your brand but aren’t willing or able to buy. An MQL actively participates in your marketing strategy. They take actions like filling out web forms or downloading content to see if your product solves their problems. - An MQL Is Not Every Engaged Lead
Plenty of variables determine whether an MQL will close the deal. For example, people may download your content out of curiosity with no intention of purchase. They could also be highly interested in your product but need help to afford it. That’s why you must define your MQL criteria to know these differences.
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Criteria for Marking a Lead As MQL
A marketing-qualified lead meets the following critical criteria:
- Need for your product to solve their problem
- Funds to buy your product
- Decision-making power to choose your product
You’ll quickly identify your MQLs from your generic leads if you run all your leads through these criteria. Use your demographic and firmographic data to find your best-fitting MQLs and nurture them through the sales journey.
FAQs
- What’s the difference between an MQL and an SQL?
A qualified marketing lead (MQL) is a warm lead that gives a positive response to your marketing content, such as clicking through CTAs. A qualified sales lead (SQL) is a hot lead ready to buy your product after engaging with your brand. - What’s a marketing-qualified lead example?
A market-qualified lead example is a prospect who fills out an online form to request a follow-up call about your product. This MQL moves over to the sales team to prepare a pitch and convert them into buyers. - How do you define MQL criteria?
Determine the following factors:- Content types and engagement (e.g., X number of website visits)
- Prospect traits (age, location, income, background, etc.)
- Pain points (specific challenges that the prospect needs to solve)
Conclusion
Successful businesses know how to identify and nurture almost every marketing-qualified lead (MQL) into sales. When your marketing team knows what marketing qualified leads, they’ll pinpoint who needs and can afford to buy your product. For clear MQL criteria, use an OKR solution like Profit.co to improve your sales and marketing strategy. Get in touch to learn more about how Profit.co improves your lead nurturing process today.