HubSpot Lifecycle Stage Vs Lead Status: A Beginners Guide

As a marketing manager or business owner, it's likely you know the importance of tracking and nurturing leads throughout their journey to becoming customers.

If you use HubSpot, then you’ll have access to some powerful tools to help manage this process - two of those being Lifecycle Stages and Lead Status. 

While using these tools can seem overwhelming and complicated at first glance, we promise that they can help increase the ROI your business sees from its HubSpot portal. In this guide, we’re going to explore the different purposes of these two tools, and how they can work together to enhance your marketing and sales efforts.

We’ll break down the differences between HubSpot’s Lifecycle Stage and Lead Status, explain how each works, and show you how to use them effectively to maximize your HubSpot investment.

What is HubSpot’s Lifecycle Stage?

Lifecycle Stage in HubSpot refers to the specific stages a contact goes through in their journey - from the first interaction with your business to becoming a customer and beyond.

It’s essentially a label that helps your business track where contacts are in the sales funnel, enabling you to understand how close a contact is to making a purchase.

HubSpot provides default Lifecycle Stages that range from Subscriber to Evangelist. Each stage is designed to give your marketing and sales teams insight into how a contact interacts with your brand, allowing you to tailor your engagement strategy accordingly.

Here are the key stages in HubSpot’s Lifecycle Stage model:

• Subscriber: Someone who has signed up to receive your content but hasn’t engaged further.
• Lead: A contact who has shown some interest in your product or service but hasn’t engaged with sales.
• Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL): A lead that has engaged with your marketing efforts and is more likely to become a customer.
• Sales Qualified Lead (SQL): A lead that has been deemed ready for sales outreach.
• Opportunity: A lead that has entered the sales pipeline and is actively considering your product or service.
• Customer: A contact who has made a purchase.
• Evangelist: A happy customer who promotes your product or service to others.

What is the Importance of the Lifecycle Stage?

Understanding the Lifecycle Stage of your contacts is critical for aligning your marketing and sales teams, ensuring that each lead receives the right content and engagement at the right time.

Here’s why it’s important:

1. Segmenting Your Database: By assigning Lifecycle Stages, you can easily segment your database and target specific groups of leads with tailored messaging.
2. Tracking Progress: Lifecycle Stages allow you to track how leads move through your funnel and identify where leads are getting stuck or falling off.
3. Aligning Marketing and Sales: Lifecycle Stages provide a common framework for marketing and sales teams to work together more effectively.
4. Measuring Success: Lifecycle Stages help measure the performance of your Inbound Marketing efforts by tracking the flow of leads through the funnel.

What is HubSpot’s Lead Status?

While Lifecycle Stage tracks a contact’s progression through the sales funnel, Lead Status provides more granular detail about the status of a lead within a specific stage - usually the Lead or Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) stage.

Lead Status is primarily used by sales teams to categorize and manage leads more effectively based on their engagement and potential.

HubSpot offers default Lead Statuses, but you can also customize them to match your sales process. Here’s an example of common Lead Statuses:

• New: A fresh lead that hasn’t been contacted yet.
• In Progress: A lead that the sales team is actively working on.
• Open: A lead that has been contacted but hasn’t responded.
• Replied: A lead that has responded to initial outreach and is being engaged by sales.
• Unqualified: A lead that has been deemed not a good fit for your product or service.
• Bad Timing: A lead that is interested but not ready to make a decision right now. 

What is the Importance of Lead Status?

Lead Status is crucial for maintaining organization within the sales process. It provides visibility into where each lead stands in terms of outreach and engagement, helping sales reps prioritize their efforts.

1. Streamline Sales Workflow: By assigning a Lead Status, sales teams can easily track which leads need follow-up, which are unqualified, and which are ready to move forward.
2. Sales Prioritization: Lead Status helps sales reps prioritize their tasks by focusing on the most engaged or promising leads.
3. Improving Follow-Up: Lead Statuses ensure that no lead is left behind by allowing sales teams to monitor the progress of each lead and follow up accordingly.
4. Better Sales Reporting: By using Lead Status, you can generate more detailed reports on sales activities, making it easier to identify bottlenecks in the sales process.

What’s the Difference Between Lifecycle Stage and Lead Status?

The key difference between Lifecycle Stage and Lead Status is that Lifecycle Stage is a broader categorization of where a contact is in the overall sales funnel, while Lead Status provides a more detailed, action-oriented view of where a lead stands within a specific stage of that funnel - primarily within the lead or sales stage.

Here’s a quick breakdown:

• Lifecycle Stage is used to categorize contacts based on their position in the marketing and sales funnel.
• Lead Status is a more detailed way to manage leads within specific Lifecycle Stages, particularly when they are in the sales pipeline.

Think of Lifecycle Stage as the macro-level view, and Lead Status as the micro-level view that helps manage day-to-day sales activities.

How Lifecycle Stages and Lead Status Work Together

While they serve different purposes, Lifecycle Stages and Lead Statuses work together to provide a comprehensive picture of your leads and customers. Together, they help both marketing and sales teams understand exactly where a contact is in the buyer’s journey and what actions need to be taken.

Here’s how they complement each other:

1 - Unified Tracking

While the marketing team tracks Lifecycle Stages to see where contacts are in the funnel, the sales team can use Lead Status to understand how to handle leads once they’ve entered the sales process.

2 - Seamless Handoff from Marketing to Sales

When a lead moves from an MQL to an SQL, Lifecycle Stage tracks this transition. At the same time, Lead Status can provide more detailed insights, such as whether that SQL has been contacted or is in progress. 

3 - Efficient Lead Management

Combining Lifecycle Stages and Lead Statuses ensures that leads are nurtured appropriately. For example, if a lead’s status is marked as “bad timing” but their Lifecycle Stage is still “Lead,” marketing automation can be triggered to continue nurturing that contact until they’re ready to make a purchase.

5 - Improved Sales Reporting and Analytics

By using both Lifecycle Stages and Lead Statuses, you can generate detailed reports that show not just where your leads are in the funnel, but also how they’re being handled by the sales team. This data can help you identify trends, bottlenecks, and opportunities for improvement.

Not sure how to use HubSpot's Lifecycle Stage, Lead Status or simply maximize the ROI of your HubSpot investment? Get in touch with SummitBound today. Our team of Inbound Marketing and HubSpot experts would love to help.