What Is a Marketing Qualified Lead?
TL;DR
A marketing qualified lead, or MQL, is a contact whose behaviour has crossed a threshold that marketing and sales agreed makes them worth a sales conversation. The threshold is usually a lead score built from actions such as pricing page visits, content downloads and demo requests.
What makes a lead marketing qualified?
Two things together: fit and behaviour. Fit is whether the account matches the ideal customer profile, which is a firmographic check. Behaviour is what the person did, weighted by how much each action predicts a purchase. A pricing page visit and a demo request weigh heavily, a blog visit barely at all.
The threshold has to be agreed with the team receiving the leads, or the label means nothing to them. An MQL definition set by marketing alone becomes a queue sales quietly stops working, and the volume keeps being reported as though it were pipeline.
How is an MQL different from an SQL?
An MQL is qualified by observed behaviour and an SQL is qualified by a conversation. Nobody has spoken to an MQL, so the judgement rests entirely on signals a system recorded. An SQL has been spoken to, and a person has confirmed there is something worth pursuing.
The rate at which MQLs become SQLs is therefore the honest measure of an MQL definition. A low conversion rate means the threshold is too loose, and the fix is in the scoring model rather than in asking sales to work harder through the same queue.
Who owns an MQL?
Marketing owns the definition and the volume, sales owns what happens after the handover, and both own the conversion rate between them. Splitting it any other way puts one team on the hook for a number the other one controls.
The handover needs a response time attached to it as well as a definition. The behaviour that made someone an MQL was current when it happened, and a contact who requested a demo and hears nothing for a week is no longer the person the score described.
Frequently asked questions
It is a proxy for one, and only as good as the model behind it. A score built from actions that correlate with closed deals is useful; a score built from whatever the marketing tools happened to track measures engagement with your content rather than intent to buy.