How to convert a lead into an MQL?
For anyone embarking on the adventure of marketing automation, the set of terms to master can quickly become a bit scary:
Wondering how to convert a lead into an MQL? Sales Lead gives you some answers in our article.
What is an MQL?
An MQL is a prospect resulting from a company's marketing actions. Based on his behavior on your website and the information that the marketing team has about him (need, function, industry...) he also appears interested in your solution.
Indeed, a visitor setting foot on your website or blog for the first time is an unknown. You know nothing about him, his company, his intentions or what he is looking for. A large part of your visitors probably stay at this stage, and that's completely normal.
Some visitors, however, stand out by their behavior: they read several of your articles, spend time on your pages, and, suddenly, subscribe to your newsletter, ask for a white paper... and leave you, in passing, their email addresses.
Vous venez de faire de la Outsourced prospecting ou par vos propres moyens et avez donc devant vous ce que l’on appelle un “lead”.
To turn this "lead" into a “marketing-qualified lead” (or in other words, a "prospect validated by the marketing department"), it is the marketing team that comes into play. Its role is to evaluate the prospect's appetite for the product and its potential to become a customer in order to know if it is the right time for the marketing teams to pass on its profile to the sales teams.
How to recognize an MQL?
The two signs to watch for:
We'll come back to this, but keep in mind that the definition of an MQL can vary greatly from one company to another, especially in B2B. This is normal: depending on your target or industry, certain criteria may be more or less important.
Several techniques are possible to properly identify your MQLs. For our part, we prefer personas, which allow us to identify our potential customers in advance and to create content likely to attract and retain them. By designing landing pages, articles and webinars that answer their questions, you are likely to bring interested prospects to you quickly..
Whatever your technique, these two signs should give you a heads up:
- the prospect corresponds to your persona: his company is among your targets, his job title is one of the ones you are aiming at... (he may have given you this information, or you may have found it thanks to Linkedin for example, but that remains our secret)
- their behavior indicates an interest: the visitor has signed up for your newsletter, your webinars, follows your articles, likes some of your posts on social networks ... bingo!
However, be careful if one condition is met but not the other.
If your visitor seems to check all the boxes of your persona but still seems a bit shy, it might be more prudent to continue to offer him content because he won't be ready to receive a phone call from a salesperson..
If not, he might just be a visitor who wants your content but is not interested in your solution, and this variable should be integrated in your CRM, so as not to damage this precious relationship.
Our vision at Sales leads France:
Each definition of MQL (and each criterion) is, again, very specific to your context. In our case, for example, an MQL is someone who:
- Left us a current phone number ;
- Gave us a company name in addition to their contact information;
- Reached a certain score by performing certain actions (related to our content) in our lead scoring strategy.
The differences between MQL and SQL :
MQL status is just one step in the buying cycle. After the MQL, we have the SQL.
a SQL (Sales Qualified Lead) is a prospect whose need and behavior have been evaluated and identified as relevant by the marketing team and the sales team. It is therefore in the next phase of the sales cycle, designed to guide them to the purchase of the product.
A SQL has demonstrated a more mature plan by requesting a quote or demo, or by downloading content further down the conversion funnel. The qualification criteria for sales teams will therefore be different. At this point, they will try to gather information about their budget, authority, project timeline, etc.
An SQL is theoretically ready to meet with a sales person, start a buying process and become a customer.
How to generate more MQL, thanks to outsourced prospecting?
Moving your contacts from lead to qualified lead through marketing is one of the biggest challenges your team faces in accelerating your sales cycle. We've identified a few best practices and tips to make sure you're on track across all prospecting channels.
Disseminate internally a definition of the MQL shared with the sales force.
The first and crucial step is the definition.
You can't do it alone: your sales people must be aware of it and help you build it. The alignment between marketing and sales teams is vital for the success of your marketing campaigns.
A shared repository will be as valuable a tool as your customer database in transmitting qualified leads to sales and will reduce the friction of this process.
By synchronizing your marketing automation tool with your CRM, you will be able to qualify and identify the most interesting leads very quickly according to their level, and not let the hottest leads fall through the cracks by automatically moving them to the next level, until they are ready for the sale.
Setting up such a qualification process also ensures that little by little, your lead gives you more and more information and qualifies almost by itself: this is the principle of "progressive profiling".
With a marketing automation tool, you can ask for a different piece of information with each completed form, for shorter forms, a better knowledge of your target and more information-rich lead profiles.
Lead nurturing, lead generation, CRM synchronization and definition of the buying journey stages: there are many tricks to transform your marketing conversion rate. Without making an exhaustive list here, keep in mind that comparison is not fundamentally necessary! Instead, keep an eye on your performance and how to adjust it.