MQLs are not the same as SQL leads. MQLs are leads that have been generated through specific marketing activity, qualified as being the right fit and have the potential of converting into a customer. So, what is the best way to generate this type of lead and how do you properly qualify them?
By using content driven marketing techniques you can attract and convert visitors to your website, social media channels, landing pages etc by tailoring content that is relevant to the particular audience you are targeting. In order to do this you need to identify the characteristics of what an ideal customer may look like and then think-through the best way to attract their interest. In other words, you need to know what their buying persona is.
Developing buyer personas should be done over time and look at a variety of areas such a personas role in a business, their challenges and their goals. But, you also need to know how they may have interacted with your marketing in the past, what kind of emails they’ve opened from you and where they’ve looked on your website. Through sophisticated use of analytics, CRM and marketing automation, you can establish the type of information that is likely to draw them in, and then shape your content so that it meets their needs.
Attracting the right customers
The more sophisticated your approach, the better chance you have of attracting the right type of customers. For example, with regards to social media, your buyer personas should identify where your different types of customer go for information and what social networks they use. Once you’ve established this, you should make sure to post links to relevant content on the appropriate social networks in order to gain interest and attract more of the right kind of leads.
Email marketing is also an effective way of tailoring your message. By segmenting your database into the different sectors/buying personas that they possess, you can create content that will be relevant to them and press the right buttons in terms of their potential buyer behaviour. Of course, critical to this is getting the data right in the first place. Data needs to be cleansed, irrelevant and obsolete data discarded, and then you need to make sure that you are hitting the right job titles and the right sectors, always remembering to personalise your message.
Nurturing Leads
When following up a potential customer with a phone call to qualify their interest, the same rules apply to calling as they do to email marketing. You should make sure the data is well segmented and you are talking to the right person. In addition, you should always have some marketing collateral ready to send to them with links to an online landing page so you can track their engagement. This is all part of the nurturing process. Just because a prospect has responded to a piece of your marketing, it doesn’t mean they are ready to buy yet. However, by making that initial contact over the phone, you can send them any additional information they require, diarise them for a future contact, and in the meantime drip feed them with relevant and appropriate content to keep them engaged. By doing this, they are much more likely to come back to you when they are ready to buy.
Asking the right questions
When it comes to qualifying marketing leads, especially through website landing pages, there is a delicate balance between asking for too much information which will put people off filling it in and also having enough information to make an informed contact. If you don’t ask enough, it can limit what you can do in terms of your follow-up strategy. The key information you need to capture as soon as possible is name, email address and persona type; later on you can look up company names, addresses. A phone number would also be great to have but many people are reluctant to include this on web forms because of the fear of being bombarded with sales calls.
Getting the persona type sounds harder than it is, however it is vital. By asking the lead to pick from a list of descriptions about themselves you can get them to select their own persona. Categorising by persona is far better than just asking for someone’s job title for example. Just because someone is a Marketing Director doesn’t mean that they are the key decision maker within the organisation so if you are able to find out more about their job role, and responsibility within the company, you stand a better chance of targeting the right person.
Follow-up strategy
How you handle the follow-up strategy for your MQLs is a crucial element of the overall qualification process. If a prospect has responded to your marketing and has shown genuine interest by filling in a web form then, before you make further contact, it makes sense to follow-up with more background research. If someone looks like a good fit from their details then do a bit more research by checking out their profile on LinkedIn and dig into their company a bit more to see what kind of organisation they are, how big they might be and whether they fit the right criteria for the product or service that you may be offering. Not all of these details can be checked online or via email so another way you can do this is through making a telephone call, either by using an inside sales team or an external agency that specialise in lead qualification.
MQL qualification
Before an MQL is passed to sales to make contact it is important that sales and marketing agree on the approach and ideally, formalise this through a service level agreement. Both parties need to decide what showing interest really means. If someone calls in they are obviously interested but how many web visits or content downloads does it take before you can tell if someone is genuinely interested and ready to pass on to sales? If you can agree this beforehand and determine what qualification process a lead needs to go through, then there should be less conflict between sales and marketing about the overall process.
Sales will usually want marketing to jump through various hoops before passing the lead and conversely, marketing will want sales to follow-up quickly and maximise on the opportunity with whatever information they are provided with. It’s all about striking the right balance and agreeing the best practices….
