They’re only three letters, but what’s behind them is so much more. You’ve probably seen MQL somewhere before, but what if we get to understand it?

A marketing qualified lead (MQL) is a lead who has expressed interest in your products or services, more generally it is about people who interacted with the content provided by your company. A type of content specifically designed to attract people who have a need or interest in your products. The prospect has demonstrated some level of interest or engagement that tells marketing this is a genuine lead. MQL is the point at which marketing determines that a lead is ready to be handed to sales. However, marketing 

qualified leads in the company pipeline have not yet been identified as customers or sales qualified leads. After identifying & qualifying them, they’re ready to be Sales Qualified Leads.

The Characteristics of a Marketing Qualified Lead

If you’re wondering, what distinguishes MQL from other leads? Don’t worry; we have the answers. Many characteristics can identify a qualified marketing lead, some of them are listed below:

1- Get the content

A marketing qualified lead can download e-books or guides from your website and give you their email address.

2- Fill out forms

Most websites have sign-up forms to help collect email addresses from visitors for nurturing purposes. If a visitor comes to your website and fills out your form, it indicates that they are interested in what you have to offer. As a result, they are marketing qualified leads.

3- Devote time to your website

A marketing qualified lead will spend time on your website, researching your products and content. This demonstrates that they are interested in your company and may become customers in the near future.

4- Repeated visits

Do you get a lot of repeat visitors to your website? It demonstrates their interest in your offerings and desire to get to know and trust you better. This is yet another characteristic of a marketing qualified lead.

How to qualify marketing leads?

As a business owner, you should understand how to qualify marketing leads. As shown in a Marketing Sherpa study, more than 60% of b2b marketers send all of their leads to sales, even though only 27% are qualified. This is because they lacked a well-defined process for qualifying marketing leads. 

If you are asking yourself “Now I can understand how important MQLs are but how do I qualify them?” Don’t worry, we have the answers. Here are some simple tips to help you qualify them.

1- Track and define content consumption patterns

To qualify marketing leads, the first step is to track and qualify content consumption patterns. Visitors and users of websites leave digital footprints that reveal what they like and want. You can learn about the actions that help to qualify a lead by tracking their content consumption patterns.

For example, a visitor who downloads an e-book attends a webinar, spends significant time on a pricing page, and returns to check the page a day later has demonstrated an interest in your company and can be classified as a marketing qualified lead based on their content consumption patterns.

2- Keep track of customer feedback

Monitoring your customers’ feedback is another way to qualify marketing leads. This includes feedback and comments left on the website. Even if not all comments and feedback are constructive, they will be received on your products or content. Feedback on how to improve your product’s features or make it more user-friendly is welcome. Others may comment on their positive experience with your website. Pay attention to them and repair what needs to be repaired. This will assist you in converting more visitors into marketing leads.

3- Check your main competitors’ marketing KPIs

Find the elements and indicators that can qualify visitors as leads better than your visitors as end-user. Check to see if they have a better user interface, a better lead capture process, a stronger social media presence, and other similar indicators. Improve your marketing touchpoints to convert visitors into MQL leads.

You’ve heard about MQL, but what is SQL?

A marketing qualified lead differs from a sales qualified lead. To begin, a marketing qualified lead is someone who has expressed interest in your product or service by reading your content, attending your webinar, downloading your content, requesting product demos, and so on. A sales qualified lead, on the other hand, is a lead that has progressed beyond website engagement and has been certified by the marketing team for the sales department to contact and convert to a customer.

The distinction is that marketing qualified leads are leads in large quantities, whereas sales qualified leads are higher quality leads. The sales team sifted through them to eliminate unqualified leads.

Marketing qualified leads have shown interest in your content and, with proper nurturing, can become customers. Sales qualified leads, additionally, are ready to be sold. They need little to no nurturing to become customers. All they probably need is a call from a sales representative to close the deal.

Conclusion 

To generate the most marketing qualified leads, organizations must implement a system that consistently monitors and improves lead quality. In order to achieve this goal, processes that are tailored to your organization’s specific needs must be implemented. Working collaboratively, marketing and sales teams can ensure that only high-quality leads enter the funnel, resulting in more closed deals and increased revenue. 

Have you had any success generating marketing qualified leads on your own? Tell us about it, if not, we hope this article helped you!