“Stories act like Engines to the train of our Imaginations.”
An honest convincing story pulls a reader’s attention.
A world without stories can’t be imagined. The entire universe is not made of atoms but tiny bits of stories that keep people connected.
Storytelling has the power to influence conversions, pull in potential clients and enhance visual communication. It’s only possible if you ace the art of it.
Listening and telling stories- tell me who doesn’t like it?? People from all around love storytelling. From antiquated to current day, story narration has consistently evolved through the development of mankind. Stories in various forms have been passed from different generations over various levels in numerous emphases. There are stories considered as simple, straight and rest with rapid complexity and each type continues to hook the audience for more.
Humans tend to be on a constant mission of solving mysteries. And storytelling acts like a catalyst helping unfold the ultimate mysteries. It lets people find out answers to their specific queries. The best stories keep their audience engaged while entirely submerging their interests in the plot of the story. Stories help you gain knowledge on various aspects and justify one’s desire to learn and get entertained.
“The art of storytelling is the number one skill B2B brands need to master”, says Paul Cash, CEO at Rooster Punk.
According to Koozai, many people scan the web content, instead of reading the whole content especially if it’s present on social media channels. People scan the content, looking for something that stands out. If they don’t find it, they’ll simply leave.
A convincing story can change the way people perceive you, either in B2C or B2B branding it applies the same. Their insights on you will decide if they’ll read your incredible content, comment on your blogs, refer others to your blog or on social sites, enlist you or purchase from you. The human brain is designed to recall the significant and visual stories faster.
Storytelling acts like vitamins. When it tends to capture your readers’ attention, it immerses their whole attention and motivates them to become your loyal customers. In short, it’s an amazing secret weapon when it comes to your content marketing strategy.
How important is Storytelling for B2B Success?
When you share a genuine story, your message is seen as authentic. Similarly, when the live occasions get more retweets than general tweets on the social networking channels, your content affects the life of your targeted market, and enhance your validity.
As a fact, effective B2B marketing procedures aren’t just based on being rationale, specialized procedures, and figures. The world has come to understand that it’s tied in with associating with individuals on a psychological and emotional level.
A research by Google in association with Motista and CEB states that half of B2B purchasers will buy only if they can relate emotionally with your brand. It begins with your business’ objectives, accomplishments, vision, and goals. If a B2B purchaser realizes that you share the same ground then they identify your brand; that makes a feeling of trust.
In view of a similar report, 71% of B2B purchasers buy when they see a personalized value. Furthermore, 68.8% of the B2B purchasers are even willing to pay a higher cost to work with a brand they believe in.
But in practice, what does “building personal value” means in B2B advertising?
It’s the extra social, personal and emotional benefits rendered to you along with the actual purchased product.
Basically, feelings raise consumer loyalty and client encounter. Based on a report by The Good Relations Group, the honesty of the seller has a major influence at 93%. In addition, personal suggestions additionally drive purchases at 91%.
Although these aren’t explicit feelings, they are profound feelings that are sufficiently capable to impact decision-making skills. By the day’s end, buying involves risk. You have to believe the vendor that he or she isn’t exploiting you.
Further, positive feelings increase a client’s loyalty, enhancing the probability of them becoming brand advocates. During these times where client reliability is everything, organizations should risk for each opportunity they get.
Why do you think storytelling helps in effective content marketing?
It’s because we as viewers breathe visual stories. Indeed, even in the Stone Age, people used to interpret stories that evoked interest and made that emotional association.
People have mastered the art of storytelling and adore the visual communications. Storytelling relives each moment and adds meaning to each incident may it a feeling of joy, sorrow, ecstasy or provoke and encapsulates the audience. And this is precise thing required to keep your onlookers hooked on social media channels.
As a marketer, it’s important on how you share your success or failure stories with your audience. And it plays a key factor in determining potential customers in the long run and shapes a relation with them.
How does Storytelling affect B2B Customers?
Your customers are humans; they feel before they think to buy.
Ever observed the height of responsibilities burdened on your customer’s??
For B2B buyers, it’s reasonable that the choice will influence not simply them, but rather the whole business, so more exertion goes into the decision-making procedures. This implies B2B purchasers require a higher value of perception compared to their B2C partners.
So as a B2B dealer, you ought to consider this. Tap on feelings that seem to be valuable to them. Will this decision enhance their business’ proficiency? Fortunately, you can make sense of what triggers your intended market just by listening to them.
There are different channels that can be used to research on your audiences like surveys, email questionnaire, and social media. By researching, you can get valuable insights into your customers’ behavior. Nobody knows your clients better than themselves; so try accessing to information provided by them on social sites.
Effective listening is critical for successful storytelling. Try not to overlook what your clients are saying. Or maybe, hear them out prior and then afterward implement it. Backpedal to the planning phase after each assessment and mark the possible points where you can improve.
Storytelling adapts to your business. Doubtlessly, you can distribute many investigations and whitepapers about how wonderful your item or administration is, however in the event that there’s a distinction inwardly, you will kill your clients.
The conventional perspective of B2B advertising plans to keep things proficient in an extremely sterile way. If you competently inject some emotions into your communications, that’ll help your brand with a better stand than most of your competitors.
Segments of Successful B2B Storytelling
How would you flawlessly fit in Storytelling into the B2B marketing techniques? Here are three basic aspects that each story needs:
CONFLICT
You can plan on any differences in opinion with your customer based on the customer journey that been created.
Recognize their pain points and utilize it as a motivation for a convincing B2B story. Introduce their issues and problems in an innovative and attention-seeking approach. Ensure that your actions don’t outrage them in the due process.
Take as much time as required while researching as one misinterpretation on your client’s contention can ruin your B2B storytelling efforts. Moreover, knowing their genuine issues and problems will give you a strong comprehension of what influences them to tick.
CLIMAX
After ascertaining your client’s contention, it’s time to coordinate it with the set of solutions presented by your services or products. All the times it is an incredible moment to address to any client’s problems. This is the place where your business turns out to be the hero in the story by resolving the story’s conflicts.
Don’t be reluctant to include emotions and feelings in B2Bstorytelling.Even though the customer base focused by the B2B industry has a stern ambiance as compared to B2C; storytelling merely works without poignant resonance.
RESOLUTION
Predictably, you ought to have an ideal curtain fall to your own story. Depict how your client’s life changed subsequently by using your services or products. Don’t hesitate to furnish details. Demonstrate numbers or figures to quantify the value you adhered to your customers.
These three key points make a much more immersive client experience. It uplifts the conventional process of engagement to your brand to be an enriching and memorable one.
You can share a convincing story using which the keynote speakers use to persuade people. But, there is another storytelling method that will supercharge your content: visuals stories.
Stories with visual interpretation (e.g. videos, infographics, memes or screenshots) get widely shared on major social media platforms.
B2B Storytelling Success Stories
These success stories of some of the reputed organizations are incredible cases of how the power of B2B storytelling helped them to reshape their brand image:
LinkedIn, popularly known as the professional networking site, used the power of narrative in their “Picture Yourself” campaign to make influencing stories about some of their in-house members.
They created this creative campaign to leverage the knowledge, skill, and experience of successful professionals which helped to tell a story for the audience. Eventually, this helped the brand to create an image entrusted with a portal of potential business insights.
INTEL
Intel paved a path to make technology more applicable. This tech tyrant has made innovation more human than ever before.
The short film series called “The Beauty Inside” was a next-generation storytelling, in collaboration with Toshiba. The intuitive idea of the film allowed the audience to play a lead part in the story, making it pretty clear on gaining more than 70 million views since its release.
MICROSOFT
While different organizations search for stories outer to their organization, Microsoft glimpsed within, and it worked. In the year 2010, they employed a person that as the ace of storytelling as Head Storyteller. They entirely revamped the content marketing approaches and circulated on various social networking platforms in a series entitled as “Microsoft Stories.”
By portraying a superb business culture and engagement, different organizations eventually observed Microsoft as the brand they can trust and work with. This worked out so well that they transformed their media focus into a portal called Microsoft Story Labs.
ZENDESK
If you believe that B2B storytelling is just for real stories and genuine stories, then reconsider your thoughts. Zendesk took an alternate way when they made this fake band named “Zendesk Alternative,” which is a semi-grungy band, and went with this fake band with their very own site.
It got people’s consideration, without a doubt, and Zendesk resembled to be a genius by thinking out of the box and turning on to be really unexpected.
B2B storytelling helps you become real for your audience. It acts as a bridge in gaping the distance between a brand and its customers. If you are really successful in citing a convincing story in front of your audience, they start relating to you as an inspiration
It improves the customer experience and gains you productive marketing strategy as well.
Go out; start connecting to your customers on an emotional level with an amazing story. All the best!
