Introduction
Acquiring leads may be a simple task, but generating leads that are more likely to purchase is complex.
However, generating more marketing qualified leads is a must goal to increase your company’s customer base and overall revenue.
You may be wondering, “Why should I focus on generating qualified rather than quantity leads?”
Interestingly, 80% of new leads never translate into sales.
That’s why it’s crucial to achieve qualified leads so that you can increase the conversion rate.
In this guide, we’ll see the top hacks to get more marketing qualified leads for your sales funnel.
Keep reading!
Introduction to Marketing Qualified Leads
A Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) is a lead who is more likely to become a customer based on your marketing efforts.
These leads have already shown interest in your brand, but they haven’t come into your sales funnel yet.
You’ve to keep in mind, marketing qualified lead’s definition may vary according to the industry or even a particular company.
So, you need to define the criteria for the same and start converting MQLs to sales-qualified leads.
Specific actions are taken by prospects that can be considered as MQL, such as:
- Requesting a product demo or a free trial
- Add products to the wishlist or favorites
- Filling up the forms without any ads
- Subscribing to your newsletters
And more.
Strategies to Get More Marketing Qualified Leads-
- Align Your Sales and Marketing Team
- Content Marketing
- Introduce Lead Scoring Methodology
- Take Advantage of Account-Based Marketing
- Use Paid Ads to Generate MQLs
- Leverage Marketing Automation
If you’re just starting to generate MQLs, you need to work on various strategies to identify which one suits best for your niche.
Below are some of the techniques that’ll help you get more qualified leads.
Align Your Sales and Marketing Team
87% of sales and marketing leaders admit collaboration between sales and marketing teams enables critical business growth.
Marketing and sales are the two departments directly responsible for your ROI, so you must align them properly.
And to align both teams, you first need to introspect the sales team about how an ideal customer looks like?
The marketing team can carry out various strategies and generate marketing qualified leads for the sales team based on the outcomes.
Additionally, you can also ask the marketing team to nurture the lead before forwarding them to the sales pitch.
However, you should not forget the core functions of both teams, i.e.,
- Marketing Team – Finding qualified leads.
- Sales Team – Converting the leads into paying customers.
Moreover, if you’re generating qualified leads, but your sales and marketing teams are misaligned, then even the best strategies will fall apart.
You may not know that the HCL sales team made $500 million worth of deals by creating more substantial alignment among the groups.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is crucial as it decides whether the prospect will be a one-time subscriber or a long-term customer.
A defined content marketing strategy can help you get more marketing-qualified leads throughout the buyer’s journey.
However, you need to create content according to every possible interpretation a buyer can make.
Some of the content types you can create are:
- Podcasts and videos
- White papers and webinars
- Product and service documentation
- Blogs related to tips, guides, tutorials, and more
- Case studies and client testimonials
I’d recommend choosing the content type after consulting with the sales team on which content types contribute to conversions the most.
As soon as you create content, it’s crucial to roll it out on various channels such as Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and more.
Consistently producing compelling content will let your prospects progress in the sales funnel quickly and efficiently.
For instance, Hubspot uses content marketing as one of its strategies for lead generation.
In addition to blogs, they also provide ebooks, guides, free courses, and more educational purposes.
However, they include CTA at the end of the content so that you can try their free tools.
Source : Hubspot
Introduce Lead Scoring Methodology
Lead scoring is a strategy used by marketing and sales teams to identify the effectiveness of leads in the buyer’s journey.
An effective lead scoring model lets you boost sales, increase revenue, and align your sales and marketing team.
However, there’s no universal score, so you need to assign lead scores based on how they’ve engaged with your website and ads.
Technically, there are two ways to classify scores, i.e., explicit and implicit.
Explicit scores target job title, company size, and geographic location. While implicit scores are based on behavior like website visit, CTR, etc.
It’s crucial to talk to your sales team, customers, and look into the analytics, so you can assign points accordingly.
You’ve to keep in mind as the customer increases and you expand to new products, the lead scores will change.
Moreover, you can create multiple lead-scoring systems using marketing platforms such as Sendinblue, ActiveCampaign, and more.
If implemented successfully, lead scoring can generate qualified leads for your business.
Take Advantage of Account-Based Marketing
Account-based marketing is always better than any other marketing in the hope of qualified leads to respond.
According to a study, 86% of marketers say ABM improves win rates, so you should involve the approach in your marketing strategy.
Traditionally, marketers generate as many leads as possible and then progress them in the sales funnel.
Instead of generating more leads, ABM focuses on highly targeted accounts that can make an actual purchase.
With account-based marketing, you can target new and existing audiences with a personalized approach, which ultimately increases the conversion ratio.
In a nutshell, ABM lets your sales team engage with qualified leads only instead of picking up random prospects.
Account-based marketing can help you in various ways, such as:
- Easy to measure the conversion rate and ROI
- Align your marketing goals with your sales goals
- Amplify lead nurturing process with valuable insights
Use Paid Ads to Generate MQLs
Paid ads have various performance metrics, so you can easily measure which ads generate marketing qualified leads.
You can use lead magnets for your ads, such as ebooks, toolkits, worksheets, checklists, courses, reports, etc.
For instance, Facebook has an ocean of data about people like personal information, hobbies, average income, buying habits, and more.
So, you can leverage Facebook ads by running targeted ads to generate MQLs.
However, you need to choose the platform according to the interest of your targeted audience.
Unlike social media platforms, people searching on Google are more likely interested in your long-form content than image-based content.
At that time, you need to focus on your blog posts and even run Google Ads for some specific keywords.
For example, Datorama, a salesforce company, used Facebook ads to target marketing professionals like us.
Once you click on the ad, you’ll be redirected to the landing page having the video demonstration of their service.
They also used a gated form with two drop-down fields to collect the data.
Takeaway: After watching the video, you will be considered a qualified lead if you fill-up the form.
Source : Taboola
Leverage Marketing Automation
Marketing automation lets you automate the process of lead nurturing and bring prospects one step closer to sales.
You might be wondering, “Why should I make an overhead by subscribing to marketing automation software?”
Automating the process will give your marketing team more time to focus on overall tactics.
Additionally, you may know that 77% of users experienced increased lead conversions using marketing automation.
You can use automation for various things such as lead nurturing, lead scoring, marketing analysis, platform integration, and more.
Personally, I practice marketing automation for email marketing to send automated emails and take follow-ups.
Ready to Get More Marketing Qualified Leads for Your Sales Funnel?
When your sales funnel has many steps, then it becomes crucial to generate MQLs; otherwise, you’ll end up losing a potential customer.
Nurturing the prospects throughout the buyer’s journey and integrating the above tactics will help you get more marketing qualified leads.
There’s no single hack that can give you guaranteed results, you need to apply and optimize according to the results.
Are you gonna implement the above strategy to generate marketing qualified leads? Tell us in the comment section below.
Gaurav Roy
26 May 2021
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