SQL vs. MQL: optimizing lead quality through advertising campaigns

What are MQLs?

Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) are in the awareness or consideration phase of the marketing funnel. They show interest in your product, service, or company, perhaps by downloading a whitepaper or subscribing to a newsletter, but are not yet ready to make a purchase. This doesn't mean these leads do not need initial contact with your company, but they do require further nurturing. Beware: a conversation with the sales department can be counterproductive at this stage.

What are SQLs?

Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs), on the other hand, are ready for a sales conversation. These leads are in the decision phase of the purchasing process and show interest in your product or service by requesting prices or product demos, indicating a higher purchase intent. The timing of sales qualification depends on your target audience, product, or service, and the market your company operates in. Based on these, you decide the timing to follow up and make contact via phone, email, or other methods.

The importance of qualitative conversions

Although the number of conversions is often high, the quality of the leads can be lacking. By focusing on SQLs, you make a strategic shift within performance marketing that prioritizes quality over quantity. This approach not only helps you utilize your budget optimally but also significantly increases the ROI of your marketing campaigns.

Optimizing lead quality in practice

If you want to optimize the quality of your leads, there are several strategies you can implement. Here are the main strategies:

1. Define clear criteria for SQLs

Start by defining criteria that a lead must meet to be considered an SQL. These criteria depend on your company and industry but can also be based on demographic data, interest in specific products or services, budget, and buying intent.

2. Use lead scoring

Implement a lead scoring system that quantitatively evaluates the potential of each lead. Prioritize leads likely to make a purchase based on predefined criteria such as demographic data, behavior, and engagement.

3. Optimize your campaign strategy

Adjust your marketing actions to target the audience likely to generate SQLs. For example, refine your advertising campaigns to target your ideal SQL profile by adjusting targeting and optimizing the campaigns for the most qualitative leads.

4. Implement lead nurturing

Develop a lead nurturing strategy to warm up leads that are not yet ready to make a decision or purchase. This can be done with automated emails, targeted content, and personalized follow-ups to potentially convert more MQLs into SQLs.

Measuring other steps in the purchasing process in advertising platforms

Contrary to popular belief, you can make actions of leads through advertising campaigns that do not take place on the website measurable. Previously, you only had insights into views, clicks, and website conversions, such as form submissions, but now it's also possible to determine the number of physical appointments or actual customers through campaigns.

For example, when a business uses campaigns via Google Ads and utilizes HubSpot as a CRM platform, you can also optimize campaigns based on actual sales from the sales team. Moreover, by using the 'Maximize Conversion Value' bidding strategy instead of 'Maximize Conversions', you ensure that advertising campaigns focus more on generating the highest quality leads.

Why is that beneficial for your ad campaigns?

By measuring end-of-funnel conversions within your CRM system and seamlessly communicating this back, platforms like Google Ads can make more precise decisions about bidding. This results in more targeted campaigns, which leads to an increase in quality leads and ultimately more SQLs. Google Ads can be trained to focus on actual sales or deals rather than just leads from contact forms or brochure downloads, a strategy that supports your sales team more effectively from a marketing perspective.

Huh, but how does it work?

Here’s how it functions: a user clicks on your Google advertisement and lands on your website. After the user fills out a form to download an interesting e-book, HubSpot saves the lead information, including the Google Click ID, which identifies the campaign and passes on details you can link to the advertisement.

If the lead completes a purchase later, possibly after a customer meeting between you and the company, your sales team updates HubSpot with the correct details and values, converting the lead into a customer. This conversion can then be synchronized with Google Ads, allowing you to see it in your campaign results and to compare Google's media budget with your actual sales results, giving a true measure of your campaign's ROI.

Outcome MQL vs. SQL

Thanks to the measurement from HubSpot and integration with Google Ads, you can also optimize campaigns based on actual sales from the sales team. Like with website conversions, you can assign a value to various end-of-funnel conversions so that Google understands which actions are most important for you. A sale, for instance, might be assigned a higher value than a contact request on the website.

By using the bidding strategy 'Maximize Conversion Value' rather than 'Maximize Conversions', you ensure that your advertising campaigns focus more on generating the highest quality leads.

Conclusion

In the world of performance marketing, many are fixated on lowering the cost per conversion without considering the quality of the leads and thus the actual ROI of your advertising campaigns. Making a clear distinction between MQLs and SQLs allows you to make more accurate decisions that relate to the bottom line profit in your business. Therefore, it is crucial to have a good measurement of the various actions in the purchasing process and to link these back to the advertising platforms used.

If you haven't made a clear distinction between MQLs and SQLs yet, or if don't know how to do this, feel free to contact one of our experienced performance marketers. They are happy to answer your questions and explore the possibilities tailored to your company.

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