Website Ideas & Internet Marketing Solutions Blog

A Marketing Qualified Lead, commonly referred to as MQL, is a contact who is more deeply engaged than a typical lead, but requires additional nurturing before becoming sales ready. It is important to keep MQLs warm, so to speak, by continuing to foster interest in your products or services until they are ready to make a purchase decision.

A sales qualified lead (SQL) is a prospective customer who has displayed intent to buy your company's products or services and has met lead qualification criteria. Once a prospect reaches the SQL stage, they are ready to be contacted by your sales department. In order to effectively qualify contacts as they move through the buyer’s journey, sales and marketing teams within your organization need to identify and agree upon qualities a prospect must have and actions they must take in order to advance to the next lifecycle stage.

In the internet world, when two businesses make an exchange of either services, information or products, this is considered B2B, or Business to Business. This is different from a business interacting with consumers. An example of this would be the manufacturing of a certain product. If one business contacts another business for specific parts or information related to the process of creating the product, this is B2B. The final product can then go on to be sold to consumers.

Blogging has evolved over the years. At one time it was used solely as a personal site where personal experiences and personal opinions could be logged. Blogging then evolved into a marketing tool and can even be used as a business in and of itself. Different from a traditional website, a blog is updated on a very frequent basis and has followers that frequent the page for updated information.

In today’s digital world, the potential customers are under a huge number of stimuli which makes harder the job of standing out and being able to reach them successfully. Potential customers are not a passive element in the buying process. Nowadays, they make well researched and well thought purchases, using the elements that the Internet provides them. If your product was not part of that process, you were out of it before it started.

Negative buyer personas, also known as exclusionary personas, are profiles of individuals who may initially appear to be a potential buyer but who are ultimately not a fit for your organization. Negative buyer personas are important because they will help you save time and money by not marketing to individuals who are unlikely to become customers.

A Buyer Persona is a semi-fictional profile of your ideal customer base on actual research (preferably actual data from potential buyers, actual or previous customers). The buyer persona should included demographic, background, motivations, challenges, needs and goals.

An inbound customer is a customer that arrived at your website, became aware of you and purchased from your company as result of your inbound marketing efforts. Inbound customers are important to your business because they demonstrate the effectiveness of your inbound marketing strategy and in general, cost much less to convert than customers gained via traditional marketing methods.

A hard bounce occurs when an email isn’t delivered because the receiving address is either invalid or doesn’t exist. Hard bounce is an important email metric to track because it shows, along with the soft bounce metric, how many of your emails are being delivered, and additionally, provides insight on the quality and health of your email lists.

Content can be used effectively as a great marketing tool, and without it there would be a great deal of difficulty when it comes to generating leads and following through. What you can offer your clients in the way of content offer can include checklist, white papers, eBooks, web tools, guides and much more.