Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)
A prospect who has been evaluated by marketing and determined to meet specific criteria indicating they are likely to become a customer.
Definition
A marketing qualified lead is a prospect that has demonstrated sufficient interest and fit to be considered a promising sales opportunity based on criteria defined collaboratively by marketing and sales teams. MQLs have typically engaged with marketing content beyond casual browsing — they may have downloaded multiple resources, attended a webinar, visited high-intent pages, or met demographic criteria that match the ideal customer profile.
The MQL designation represents a critical handoff point in the marketing-to-sales pipeline. Once a lead achieves MQL status, it is either passed directly to sales or enters a further qualification stage before becoming a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL).
Why It Matters
The MQL framework provides a common language between marketing and sales teams for evaluating lead quality. Without agreed-upon MQL criteria, marketing may celebrate high lead volume while sales complains about poor lead quality, creating organizational friction.
Clearly defined MQL criteria also help marketing teams measure the true business impact of their campaigns beyond vanity metrics like traffic and form fills, focusing instead on generating leads that actually progress through the sales pipeline.
Examples in Practice
A technology company defines MQLs as contacts who have a director-level or above title at companies with 200+ employees AND have completed at least two high-value actions (demo request, pricing page visit, or case study download).
A marketing team tracks their MQL-to-customer conversion rate at 8% and uses this data to calculate the true cost per acquisition of their content marketing program.
An agency reviews their client MQL criteria quarterly, adjusting the scoring thresholds after discovering that webinar attendees convert at twice the rate originally estimated.