B2B Storytelling that Reaches Customers and Marketing Goals | andweekly

In this article, we show marketing managers how they can use storytelling to make complex topics more accessible to their B2B customers without losing sight of their marketing objectives.

The product or service your company is offering has great added value – as a good marketing team, that's something you are already convinced of. You want to pass this enthusiasm on through your content marketing, so you publish elaborate content about technical features in the hope that the details will speak for themselves. The idea behind this: if I explain exactly what my offer can do, the customer will undeniably want to have it. Unfortunately, this is (usually) not the case.

A buying decision is a complex matter:

• Researchers such as Alistair Rennie and Jonny Protheroe from Google's behavioural economics department have been investigating the factors that influence it for many years.
• They have still not been able to completely unravel the intricate paths of decision-making.The study Decoding Decisions: Marketing in the messy middle calls the non-transparent area between incentives and purchasing the "messy middle".
• However, it’s undisputed that, alongside other aspects, a customer's connection to a brand is decisive for sales success.

Creating a connection – this is possible with the help of stories or overarching thematic structures, known as narratives. People love all kinds of stories because stories evoke emotions. They make us feel joy, sadness, tension or relief.

Narratives appeal to readers in a way that goes beyond basic comprehension. They feel personally affected by the information being told, and they recognise themselves and their challenges in it. This emotional resonance can lead to the content being perceived as more meaningful or relevant and therefore being better remembered.

What is storytelling for content marketing?

Storytelling is a technique in which information about a product or service is embedded within a narrative framework. The aim is to communicate a central message to potential customers in the form of a story.