How do I write a great B2B story?
The complete guide to creating a clear story for your B2B business.
4 simple steps to create your B2B brand story
Humans love stories. From ancient times to the modern day, they've been used to capture readers' attention and evoke strong emotions. Brand storytelling isn't any different. By presenting mere numbers, data, and features without inviting customers to your story, you risk losing those customers before they even consider engaging with you.
Grow your business by connecting with customers emotionally and using narratives to share company values. Brand storytelling is a vital part of any good B2B content marketing strategy.
While storytelling may feel harder to nail in the B2B space, it can be the most effective way to reach prospects and generate loyalty. 50% of B2B buyers are more likely to part with their money if they feel an emotional connection to a brand. Allowing customers to see the personal side of your business helps in various ways:
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Stories have a specific structure, aligning them with your B2B customer journey.
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Storytelling removes the need to pitch or a hard sell.
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Storytelling brings out the emotional side involved in B2B sales.
Why storytelling is a crucial marketing strategy for B2B marketers
Do you ever feel like you are losing customers because they don't understand your offering? We know how you feel, we spent years perfecting good narratives and blueprints to keep customers engaged and we want to share them with you.
Storytelling is the art of narrating good stories that captivate audiences. In a B2B environment, you need to learn to create stories around customers, find the problems they have, and empathetically show how your products and services solve those problems and help them achieve their goals. Become a leader in your field by inviting customers into your story and giving them the right path to success.
To deliver stories that build an emotional connection between the brand and the customer, B2B businesses must look beyond presenting the product features or service capabilities. You need to create a connection and show how your solution can help solve their problems. How do you incorporate storytelling into your B2B marketing strategies? Here's how to write a B2B story and the essential parts that every story needs:
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Introduce your character
Every story begins when we meet the main character, the hero, and discover what they want. One of the main mistakes that many brands make when thinking about a brand story is to put themselves in this role. The hero of your brand story is not you. The hero is your customer.
This hero needs help. They need a guide to help them find the way to success, right? You are the guide. Your brand message, and your story, must centre on the hero and what your hero wants. If you talk only about yourself, your company and how great you are, the customer will lose interest.
To help you build your brand story, we have released a special podcast series, "My brand story in 15 minutes a day." In this episode, I will show you how to identify your hero.
Find a problem that is creating conflict
Now the story introduces the problem, This is something that is keeping our hero from getting what they want. Now, the customer is wondering whether or not we can help them solve their problem and offer a breakthrough resolution.
The problem is one of the most crucial parts of building your story. The hero has many obstacles to overcome before they find success, but what is that single main problem that you can help to solve? It might sound very complicated, and we have prepared a guide to identifying your customer's problem.
If you need more guidance, listen to our podcast episode on how you can uncover and define the problem that your customers struggle with in just 15 minutes.
Propose a plan
Your hero now needs help to solve the problem. Now it is time for you to step up and offer the solution to your hero's problem and become a trusted guide in the story.
Present them with 3 simple steps that outline how they can start working with you and what their expectations should be. Your plan becomes the bridge that your prospects must cross in order to reach success.
Your sales process may have 12 smaller steps in between, but the point is that your customer doesn't need to know every step to get started. If you confuse your customer, you lose them, so keep it simple. Here is an easy way to create your 3-step plan.
Finale results in success... but could it be a failure?
Finally, at this point, the hero of the story makes proactive decisions to resolve the main conflict. What will success look like if they finally get the thing they want? As a brand, you must paint a clear vision of the future for your customer. Remind them of their happy ending and why they need to choose you.
Unless we tell our customers what can be won or lost based on whether or not they do business with us, the story has no stakes. And a story with no stakes isn't interesting. Customers want us to cast a vision of what their lives could look like once they have followed our advice. But it doesn't end here...
We must also show our customers the consequences of not doing business with us. What happens if they fail to solve their problems? They won't grow or get what they want, which in the B2B space typically looks like wasted money, lost time, increased stress, and a constant feeling of being overwhelmed.
If nothing can be lost in a story, there is no story.
Download a template that shows you exactly how to create your story
By using a story-based approach to sales and marketing, you can create prospects that trust your company and understand the value you deliver, enabling you to increase your conversion rates and profits.
Stop wasting time and download the worksheet now.
Start implementing storytelling into your B2B marketing strategy
B2B storytelling makes a brand real to its audience. If you want to engage with your customers the way forward is using storytelling, there are great examples of good storytelling transforming the brands and bringing successful campaigns. A good story lets customers know your brand and what it stands for. It connects your business and your consumers. Storytelling is something that EVERY business should be using to clarify their message and get customers to engage.
To find out more about how you could use it in your own organization book a consultation with us and we will illustrate to you how it can work within your business. We will provide you a step-by-step plan to improve your brand story, so you can watch your conversion rates and profits increase as customers uncover your true value.