Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)

What is MQL?

An MQL (marketing qualified lead) is a prospect whose profile and engagement (content downloads, pricing-page visits, webinar attendance) show enough buying intent for marketing to pass them toward sales.

An MQL is a lead marketing thinks is ready to talk to sales, judged on who the person is and what they’ve done. Good criteria need both: a fit with your ideal customer profile and signs of buying intent, like a pricing-page visit or a demo request. Activity alone won’t do it. A single ebook download produces leads sales will reject.

Also known as: Marketing Qualified Lead

How to use it

1. Define fit: the company size, industry and job roles of customers who buy and stay. A lead that does not fit is not an MQL, however active it is.
2. Define intent: the actions that precede a purchase in your own funnel, such as pricing-page visits, a demo request or repeat visits to product pages. Score or list them, and set the threshold that makes a lead an MQL.
3. Agree the handoff with sales: how fast MQLs get contacted and how rejected ones are reported back. Each quarter, check the criteria against which MQLs went on to become SQLs and customers.

Worked example

Same-month rate vs cohort rate

Sales rarely accepts a lead in the month it became an MQL. In this fictional funnel, 40% of each month's eventual SQLs are accepted that month and the rest the following month. In March a webinar brings in an unusually large batch of MQLs.

The same-month rate, SQLs accepted in a month ÷ MQLs created in that month, says March collapsed to 8.8% and April was the best month at 23%. Neither is true. April's jump is March's webinar leads arriving a month late. The cohort rate, which follows each month's MQLs to the SQLs they produced, shows what actually happened: the webinar leads converted at 10%, half the usual rate, and April was an ordinary month.

Report the cohort rate once enough time has passed for most leads to be reviewed, and say how many weeks that takes in your funnel.

What the result tells you

An MQL count on its own says little. MQL-to-SQL conversion is what tells you whether the criteria pick the right leads. If MQLs rise while SQLs stay flat, either the definition has loosened or a channel is bringing in the wrong audience. Before you compare rates between periods, compare the definitions.

Assumptions and common mistakes

• Pay marketing on MQL volume and you’ll get loose criteria. Measure marketing on SQLs or pipeline too.
• In product-led companies, many buyers never fill in a form. Track PQLs alongside MQLs so product-sourced demand is not missed.

Frequently asked questions