MQL
What is MQL?
An MQL is a lead that has expressed an interest in your product or service but has not converted. This may be as simple as including their email address on your mailing list or downloading an ebook, but it can also include more advanced interactions, like filling out an assessment to see which of your products best suits their needs.
Paying attention to a lead’s behavior is important to figure out whether they qualify as an MQL. A good sign of an MQL is that they’re actively engaging with your content and have the potential to become a customer. For example, someone who downloads one of your ebooks might be more likely to convert than someone who only interacts with you on social media, even though both actions are considered leads.
Benefits of MQL campaigns
MQLs are a significant improvement over the traditional lead generation process because they:
- Increase conversion rates
- Increase sales opportunities
- Improves ROI
- Provide a better quality of marketing data (i.e., understanding which content and channels are generating leads)
- Provide a better quality of sales data (i.e., what happens to MQLs)
- Improve coordination between marketing and sales team
- Provide increased transparency into the sales cycle
- Improves the sales funnel
How to generate MQL?
- Build a well-defined buyer persona. Writing a detailed buyer persona will help you understand your ideal customer better. This is vital for generating MQLs, as the leads will come from proper targeting and understanding of your audience.
- Optimize your website for search. Having a website that’s optimized for search engines will help attract targeted traffic to your site. You can use keywords and identify the most popular terms that are relevant to you and use them to rank higher in searches.
- Use social media to engage your audience. Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube are powerful tools to engage with your target audience at scale. You can update them with the latest content on your blog or let them know about any upcoming events and conferences through these platforms.
- Use email marketing to nurture your leads. Email marketing is an effective tool for nurturing potential customers down the sales funnel until they become high-quality leads or paying customers.
How to convert MQL into SQL?
The moment you’ve got an MQL, your marketing team needs to do everything they can to convert it into SQL.
Here are a few important steps that’ll help you do this successfully:
- Make sure the target audience is the right one. It’s important to get your message across to a targeted set of people who have expressed interest in buying from you. Narrowing down on a specific group of people and sending them personalized content will increase the probability of your leads converting into sales.
- Ensure that the timing is perfect. When you reach out at the right time with relevant content, your chances of turning an MQL into an SQL are much higher—this is especially true for cold emails as open rates tend to drop if you email prospects too many times or too frequently after they’ve expressed interest in buying from you.
- Use the right medium and create a compelling message. While it may tempt you to send out mass emails, creating personalized messages will go a long way in helping you convert more prospects into customers—and therefore, more MQLs into SQLs. Also, make sure that your message resonates with their pain points and offers solutions for those problems through value propositions—this will make them more receptive to buying from you when the time comes because they see how your product/service can help them overcome their challenges.
- Use smart follow-up strategies: One key thing here is to not give up too early—a prospect can turn cold because they aren’t ready yet or have simply been very busy lately and haven’t had time to look at what’s going on in their mailbox lately. Therefore, keep following up regularly with information that’ll keep their attention focused on how buying from you can help solve their problems (but don’t overdo it!).
