Who Is Markus Stahlberg?
Markus is the CEO and founder of N.Rich, the company that develops a proprietary ABM advertising & intent data platform trusted by giants such as General Electric Healthcare. Markus has over 10 years of experience in the industry, combining a strong data analytics background, great people management skills, and a sharp eye for detail.
Account-based marketing (ABM) is taking the digital marketing industry by storm, offering a detail-oriented alternative to casting a wide net over a large audience.
Instead, ABM's targeted approach treats customer accounts as their own market opening the door toward high-value and more personalized campaigns.
N.Rich aims to fill the ABM gap and pave the way for self-sufficient marketing. With its data-driven solutions, N.Rich targets accounts with proven buyer intent and works to activate them through cross-channel digital ads. The result - sales.
In our interview, the CEO and founder of N.Rich Markus Stahlberg explores the AMB initiatives that set the company apart, bridging the gap between sales and marketing, and what we can do to get it all right.
Integrating ABM initiatives with existing marketing infrastructure can be complex. What are some of the challenges that marketers face in this regard?
Markus Stahlberg: Implementing ABM is a cultural and fundamental shift in process and strategy. People are generally scared of change. Also, most organizations don’t undertake change in a psychologically safe way.
Based on our experience, here are the four common pitfalls of ABM:
- We don't understand what it is
In most companies, ABM is a buzzword with no science behind it. Typically, a static list of target accounts will be uploaded into the CRM, and the SDRs are let loose on it. In the meantime, marketing continues to run top-of-funnel campaigns with no connection to SDR activities.
How to fix it? Ensure that your organization is aligned on the overall goal, the strategy, and the milestones.
- We set ourselves the wrong KPIs
ABM is a demand generation approach and shouldn’t be measured by the number of leads - it’s a long-term game.
How to fix it? Make sure you have a timeline adjusted to your sales cycle and focus on measuring the right leading indicators.
- We set it and forget it
ABM is a go-to-market strategy, not a project. If your ICP is a static list and you don’t review your ABM efforts regularly, the project is most likely doomed.
How to fix it? The economy shifts and changes, and so should your strategy and messaging.
- Our sales teams are not part of the process
Without sales buy-in and participation, ABM is just another marketing campaign. On the other hand, when we try to get sales on board for an ABM campaign, it’s a cultural shift and a big change. Naturally, there will be hesitation and fear.
How to make sure we get buy-in visibility is important, you need to be able to show sales that their wins are heavily supported by marketing campaigns. Map out the buyer journey together, define the main stages, the needs and objections at each stage, and sales and marketing actions at each stage.
Put together the list of content assets for every stage and segment. Have the service level agreements in place for high-intent accounts and what each team needs to do with them. Work iteratively. This is a culture shift, meaning you’ll need to revise your workflow step by step. But the result will be worth it.
How can ABM strategies help bridge the gap between sales and marketing teams?
ABM is a great way to get marketing and sales to work on common goals. Based on our experience, when we started to set up ABM campaigns for N.Rich, it sparked up a lot of conversations about:
- ICP definition - Who are our ideal buyers? We needed to define it based on hard data and not just the gut feel of leadership
- Buyer journey - How do we define if a certain account is in the Cold, In-Market, or Hot stage? What is each team supposed to do when the account moves from one stage to another
- Measurement and attribution - The “inbound vs. outbound” model was flawed, but we had to ask ourselves what we measure instead
As a result, we have:
- A documented ICP all the teams are aware of - not only sales and marketing, but also operations, CS, and even product
- Buyer journey stages designed and agreed upon
- Content that works with the most common customers’ objections at every stage and provides the right social proof
- Dashboards and reports that help us track marketing and sales influence on our target accounts. Also, we moved away from “binary” inbound vs. outbound attribution - a huge step forward
How can automation and technology help marketers scale their ABM efforts effectively?
Here’s what we’re using at N.Rich and as a result, seeing a positive impact on the number of meetings booked:
Intent-based account scoring - Most intent data providers have scoring models that allow them to identify target companies with surging intent towards your product or category. At N.Rich, we monitor both first-party intent signals (website visits, engagement with your ads) and third-party intent signals (topics and keywords our target accounts are looking for on other websites).
Alerts (e.g. email, Slack, in-app) - This is an effective way to integrate ABM into the daily routine of sales reps. When they’re notified about a certain account having an interest in your category, they can instantly get in touch with this account with customized value propositions.
CRM and ad platform integrations - Having your CRM as the only source of truth for all engagement data, sales and marketing touches, and pipeline stages will help your sales and marketing teams be much more aligned.
Integration with other advertising tools - Platforms like LinkedIn allow account-based targeting and can be an integral part of your ABM strategy. If your account list has at least 5000 accounts, then you can use a programmatic ABM tool to create initial engagement at a lower cost through display ads and to retarget the engaged accounts through LinkedIn.
How N.Rich facilitates seamless integration with clients' existing marketing tools and platforms?
N.Rich integrates with HubSpot and Salesforce, allowing marketers and sales reps to get most of the data on their ABM strategy without leaving their CRM. Our own sales team gets the following data from N.Rich pushed into HubSpot:
- ICP score - The higher it is, the better the account fits the organization’s ideal customer profile
- Intent score - The higher it is, the more actively this account engages with your content assets
- ABM engagement - You can see exactly which content this target account engaged with and customize talking points accordingly
Additionally, we have email alerts set up for accounts with surging intent. What we’re also extensively using ourselves is N.Rich and LinkedIn integration.
With N.Rich, we generate initial engagement at a lower cost per click and then we push the engaged accounts as a LinkedIn-matched audience.
This allows us to lower cost per click and cost per lead, but most importantly, to only appear on LinkedIn in front of our ICP accounts at the right time.
