This is the face of your marketing team when your lead doesn’t respond or the face of your sales team if the lead provided to them doesn’t convert into a high value buyer.

The point is,

We all want quality leads for our businesses at minimum wasted efforts, whether it is us or you unless (of course!) you are from Mars.

That is why we all have the best marketing and sales team They put in their valuable time in finding suitable quality leads and appealing them with promotional offers or telemarketing calls.

But, did you know that

75% of all the traffic you receive on your website does not want to buy, according to Gleanster

A MarketingSherpa survey found that 79 percent of marketing leads never make it to actual sales

Ouch!

That means, if your team ends up calling a freelancer who downloaded that e-book for research or sends e-mails to a student of marketing who downloaded all the resources for writing a paper, they are wasting their time. Big time!
These are not leads, they will never ever convert!

Must Read: How to Convert Marketing Qualified Leads to Sales Qualified Leads

This is where understanding Marketing Qualified Lead helps you

• Marketing Qualified Lead is a visitor on your web page who has shown repeated interest in your website content (not necessarily your product or services) and is likely to become your customer. For example, they have downloaded an e-book in exchange of their contact details and now they are browsing through the product you offer in the area.
  While this may sound simple, it points towards the problem the visitor might be facing (a pain point of sorts!) which your content may be able to solve.
• A Marketing Qualified Lead may or may not be ready to convert into a paying customer. Such visitors have to be nurtured constantly to help them determine that your product is the solution to their needs. Once they see your product as a possible solution to their problems, they have moved a step further in the sales funnel.
• A Marketing Qualified Lead (or MQL) gets converted into Sales Qualified Lead (or SQL) when the sales team identify that visitor as €œready to buy€ your product or services because they have shown interest and fit your €œbuyer€ profile. This can be identified by the behavior of the MQL. For example, they have indicated that they want you to call them and give information about the product.

Must Read: MQL to SQL conversion rate

That gets us to our next question,

MQL vs. SQL?

•  The basic difference between Marketing Qualified Lead and Sales Qualified Lead (MQL vs SQL) is that an MQL is a visitor who is aware of their problem and SQL is the lead who knows that your product may be the solution to their problem.
• In other words, the intention and readiness to buy your product differentiate them. An MQL may not be ready to buy your product today but a SQL is a lead which can be approached by your sales team immediately.
• SQL desires very specific details and incentives to convert into a customer which can be in terms of discounts, free trials or any other type of promotional offer.

What are the key benefits of implementing Marketing Qualified Lead System?

A Better understanding of the requirements of your ideal client – when you are tracking the behavior of the visitor on your web page, you are aware of their needs. Your marketing teams can then channelize their efforts into converting them to a Sales Qualified Lead and handing them over to sales.

Improves ROI of content marketing – Marketing Qualified Leads lets the marketer know who exactly they need to target with their content. Result is the improved ROI from content marketing.

Improves revenue – If the efforts of your team is focused on MQLs/SQLs and not on that freelancer who is passer-by, it will definitely result in improved revenues.

A more effective Sales Funnel – Your marketing team nurtures the leads in a way where they are now €œsolution aware€ and want to weigh options available in the market including yours. It is now that your sales team can effectively provide them with incentives they requires to convert.

Reduces wastage – A more targeted approach to nurturing Marketing Qualified Leads helps to reduce the wasted efforts of your teams behind visitors who never convert.

Better alignment between marketing and sales team – When there is a formal criterion defining Marketing Qualified Leads and Sales Qualified Leads (i.e. the lead score metrics), there is less space for confusion between marketing and sales team.

According to the €œA sales and marketing love story€ from HubSpot

94% of the sales people feel that marketing hands them over questionable prospects

40% marketers do not even know what MQL or an SQL is

59% of marketers do not have an agreement with sales on who will be considered an SQL or MQL.

Why ONLY B2B?

We at ONLY B2B understand the importance of Marketing Qualified Lead. Hence, we put in efforts in generating Marketing Qualified Leads for your team by:

• nurturing and following up with leads through e-mailing and other social media platforms
• refining your sales funnel to eliminate the leads that won€™t convert
• helping you define lead score metrics (a criterion to identify MQL and SQL) so there is alignment between marketing and sales team
• creating magnetic content for you so your visitors are engaged
• marketing that compelling content
• incentivizing prospects by providing high value opt ins in your content
• developing case studies based on your previous customers experience
• utilizing videos because it converts
• encouraging the visitors to click on the CTAs by carrying out A/B testing and constantly refining it
• optimizing the stages of your sales funnel
• much more…

We will understand your requirements and build strategies that suit your business and drive real results.

Must Read: 5 Ways to Implement MQL Marketing Tactics

Vikas Bhatt

Vikas Bhatt is the Co-Founder of ONLY B2B, a premium B2B lead generation company that specializes in helping businesses achieve their growth objectives through targeted marketing & sales campaigns. With 10+ years of experience in the industry, Vikas has a deep understanding of the challenges faced by businesses today and has developed a unique approach to lead generation that has helped clients across a range of industries around the globe. As a thought leader in the B2B marketing community, ONLY B2B specializes in demand generation, content syndication, database services and more.