What is Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)?

A Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) is a lead who has shown interest in a company's products or services based on their marketing interactions (e.g., downloading an ebook, attending a webinar) and is deemed more likely to become a customer compared to other leads.

For Startups: The MQL concept is crucial for aligning the marketing and sales teams. It defines the "hand-off" point where a lead generated by marketing is considered ready to be passed to the sales team for follow-up.

For B2B/SaaS: The specific criteria for what constitutes an MQL should be clearly defined and agreed upon by both sales and marketing (e.g., a lead from a target industry with a certain company size who requested a demo). This is often managed through lead scoring in a CRM.

Example: A person who downloads a whitepaper from your website might be a lead, but if they also visit the pricing page and have a job title of "Director," they might be classified as an MQL and routed to a sales representative.