What Is Qualified Lead Generation in Digital Marketing?
Modern buyers conduct research online before they ever speak to a sales representative, rendering cold calls, conferences, and word-of-mouth increasingly ineffective at filling the sales pipeline. For this reason, businesses find that they need to utilise digital marketing to attract, engage, and qualify new buyers.
What Constitutes a Digital Marketing Qualified Lead?
A qualified lead is a prospect who fits the ICP, displays interest in the business’s products/services, and has the potential to become a paying customer. A Digital Marketing and Advertising Company can provide businesses with the tools to develop systems that help them identify these prospects, rather than simply attracting thousands of visitors to a website.
Why Are Qualified Leads Important for Businesses?
Not every website visitor or form completion has purchasing intent and will end up on a sales team’s radar regardless.
Qualified leads are important for businesses because they generally have three characteristics:
- Ideal Fit: The prospect fits the business’s ICP, including specific industries, company sizes, locations, revenues, job roles, and other criteria.
- Demonstrated Intent: The prospect has demonstrated interest in the business’s industry or products by taking meaningful actions, for example, downloading resources, requesting pricing, visiting certain web pages, watching a webinar, or attending an event.
- Viable Opportunity: The prospect has a need, budget, and authority to make or influence a buying decision
By taking these factors into account, businesses can ensure that their sales efforts are focused on prospects who have displayed stronger intent to buy.
What Is an MQL?
A marketing qualified lead is a prospect who has engaged with the business’s marketing and fits some of the above criteria, but is not yet sales-ready.
An MQL might have:
- Downloaded an industry report
- Subscribed to the business’s newsletter
- Watched an online webinar
- Taken an online assessment
- Engaged multiple times with educational content
- MQLs are likely to be in the awareness or consideration stage of the funnel and may need more nurturing before sales engages.
What Is an SQL?
An SQL is a prospect who has engaged further with the business’s marketing, fits the ICP, and has clearly stated buying intent and/or timeframe.
An SQL might have:
- Requested a product demonstration
- Requested a personalised quotation
- Contacted the sales team
- Visited pricing/webinar pages multiple times
- Clearly stated their buying need/timeframe
The transition from MQL → SQL helps marketing and sales teams to set a baseline for what constitutes a viable opportunity.
How Does Digital Marketing Generate Qualified Leads?
Digital marketing leads are generated by following the steps below:
ATTRACT → CAPTURE → QUALIFY → NURTURE → CONVERT
How Do You Attract the Right Prospects?
Businesses should aim to attract the attention of those who are interested in the problems the business can solve
This can be achieved via a mix of:
- SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
- Educational content marketing
- Search engine marketing
- LinkedIn and other social platforms
- Thought leadership
- Targeted digital advertising
Rather than chasing leads, businesses should focus on attracting specific industries, roles, locations, search terms, and buyer personas.
How Do You Capture Potential Leads?
Once businesses have attracted the attention of a potential lead, the next challenge is to convert an anonymous website visitor into a known and qualified lead. Businesses can entice website visitors with valuable resources in exchange for their business information, for example:
Industry reports:
- Whitepapers
- ROI calculators
- Business templates
- Free consultations
- Website audits
- Product demonstrations
- Free trials
The objective should be to provide enough value that an interested visitor is willing to share their details.
How Do You Qualify Digital Marketing Leads?
Businesses must be able to qualify captured leads and decide whether or not they represent a viable sales opportunity
Factors to take into account when qualifying digital marketing leads may include:
- Industry
- Company size
- Job title/level
- Location
- Technology requirements
- Website behaviour
- Content engagement
- Pricing-page visits
- Demo requests
- Buying timeframe
Lead scoring systems can be implemented to help qualify leads, where points are assigned to characteristics and behaviours; for example, repeated visits to high-intent pages may be worth more than casual engagement with a blog post.
Why Is SEO Effective for Generating Qualified Leads?
SEO can help attract qualified leads by appealing to those looking for information, products, or services related to a business’s industry. While businesses might have traditionally optimised for informational queries, it is also possible to target commercial search terms that reflect user intent.
For example, someone searching for “enterprise ERP implementation agency” clearly has different intent from someone searching for “what is ERP?”
What Type of Content Should Businesses Create?
Businesses should use a mix of content types to engage with different buyer personas at different stages in the journey:
Top-of-Funnel (TOFU):
- Guides
- Industry insights
- Problem-focused content
- Beginner’s guides
Middle-of-Funnel (MOFU):
- Comparison guides
- Feature-focused content
- ROI calculators
- Buying guides
- Solution-focused content
Bottom-of-Funnel (BOFU):
- Case studies
- Product/service pages
- Implementation guides
- Pricing information
- Demonstration pages
A strategic SEO approach will appeal to buyers at different levels of intent.
How Does Paid Advertising Generate High-Intent Leads?
Paid advertising can be used to target audiences at different levels of intent.
Search advertising can target people actively searching for a particular product/service, while social advertising can be used to target those with specific job roles, industries, company sizes, and interests. Creating dedicated landing pages for each advert can help to streamline the sales process and ensure that each page has a clear CTA. Retargeting can also be used to remarket to website visitors who have not completed a desired action, for example, filling out an enquiry form.
What Role Does LinkedIn Play in B2B Lead Generation?
For B2B organisations, LinkedIn is an invaluable tool for reaching out to potential buyers. Executives and subject matter experts within the business can publish articles, comment on posts, and utilise LinkedIn’s native tools to share valuable content, such as:
- Industry insights
- Business tips
- Mini case studies
- Data insights
- Expert commentary
- Educational videos and carousels
Why Does Thought Leadership Matter?
B2B sales cycles are typically long and require buyers to complete extensive research before making a decision. By consistently publishing informative content, businesses can demonstrate their expertise and support buyers throughout their research process. A Digital Marketing Agency in Ilford UK can combine organic and paid social media with targeted landing pages to create a joined-up lead generation strategy.
How Does Email Marketing Nurture Leads?
Not all leads are ready to buy immediately, and businesses can use automated emails to continue to engage with interested prospects. For example, if a lead downloads a cybersecurity whitepaper, a series of follow-up emails can be sent that provide more information on that particular topic. For example, a sequence could cover the following topics:
- Common cybersecurity threats
- Ways to improve cybersecurity
- Considerations for implementation
- Cost and ROI considerations
- Relevant consultation/demo option
This allows businesses to continue to provide information based on the lead’s expressed interest rather than sending the same message to everyone indiscriminately.
When Should a Lead Be Passed to Sales?
Prospects should be passed to the sales team if their actions and details suggest they represent a viable opportunity.
- Important indicators may include:
- Requesting a demonstration
- Asking for pricing
- Completing a consultation form
- Repeated visits to commercial webpages
- Engagement with nurturing campaigns
- Providing information which suggests a relevant need
Marketing and sales teams must have clearly defined criteria for what constitutes an MQL and SQL and how leads pass between the two.
Which Digital Marketing Metrics Should Businesses Track?
Generating leads is only one part of the equation, and businesses must also consider which aspects of their digital marketing campaigns are responsible for genuine opportunities. Key performance indicators include:
- Website visitor-to-lead conversion rate
- Cost per lead
- MQL-to-SQL conversion rate
- SQL-to-customer conversion rate
- Customer acquisition cost
- Landing-page conversion rate
- Email engagement
- Pipeline generated by marketing
- Revenue attributed to marketing channels
These metrics must be tracked to identify which areas of digital marketing are responsible for viable leads/generating revenue.
Who Can Help Businesses Build a Qualified Lead Generation System?
Businesses that do not have the time or expertise to manage SEO, paid advertising, content creation, social media, email marketing automation, analytics, and conversion rate optimisation may want to invest in a Digital Marketing and Advertising Company to help. An effective digital marketing partner will be able to help a business to build an integrated lead generation system which covers audience research, SEO, content marketing, paid search, social advertising, landing-page optimisation, lead scoring, email automation, and marketing analytics. For businesses searching for a Digital Marketing Agency in Ilford UK, the key consideration is that the agency can tie marketing activity to business outcomes rather than simply focussing on vanity metrics.
Why Does Digital Marketing Generate Better-Qualified Opportunities?
Digital marketing is capable of generating qualified opportunities because it combines targeting, intent, engagement data, content, automation, and conversion points in a way that allows businesses to create a joined-up approach that enables them to:
- Appeal to the right people
- Understand their interests
- Identify their engagement level
- Measure their buying intent
- Consider their reasons for buying
When these factors are combined, businesses can create a solid sales pipeline that builds on initial engagement.
Conclusion
Digital marketing can help businesses to attract the right people and convert that engagement into sales. With SEO, paid advertising, content, and automation, businesses can build a sustainable pipeline that contributes to revenue growth. A Digital Marketing Agency in Ilford, UK, or a digital marketing and Advertising Company can assist by turning these opportunities into long-term customers.
