These are promising leads who are curious and considering you, but they haven’t quite made the step into a sales conversation yet. However, they’re more likely to be open to a sales pitch than a normal lead.

How to Identify Marketing Qualified Leads
One of the most common ways to identify Marketing Qualified Leads is examining the buyer journeys and existing customer behaviors. It is important to develop a definition for your own business needs because all Marketing Qualified Leads are not the same, even within the same industry. To define your specific Marketing Qualified Lead criteria you need to analyze how they act compared to other leads who have successfully become customers. It can be done by: • Examining historical behavior • Getting customer feedback • Looking for trends • Identifying competitive edge

Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) Vs. Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)
The main difference between a Marketing Qualified Lead and Sales Qualified Lead is the lead’s willingness to make a purchase. Marketing Qualified Leads are very curious, while Sales Qualified Leads are leads handed off to Sales because they are considering a purchase.

An MQL is not a guarantee of sale So how to convert a MQL to a SQL is the main question. Not every lead is at the same stage. Meaning, you need to know where they are if you want to take any action. Action includes content that you share, send or make available to these leads using any medium. The more targeted your content is, higher are the chances of them converting. You can share content with your leads depending upon where they are in their journey (Top, Middle or Bottom of the sales funnel).

Creating a Lead Nurturing Workflow
It is time to set up your lead nurturing workflow to effectively convert marketing qualified leads to sales qualified leads.

Step 1: Have a Solid Understanding of Your Sales Cycle

Step 2: Determine Which Persona You’re Targeting

Step 3: Set Goals for the Campaign

Step 4: Map Your Content

Step 5: Write Lead Nurturing Messages Using the Best Practices

Step 6: Build Your Lead Nurturing Workflow

Step 7: Test the Campaign before Launching

Step 8: Make the Workflow Live and Start Collecting Data

Step 9: Analyze the Results and Tweak Emails Accordingly