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There have been various discoveries of methods that support lead conversion. But the most effective and efficient way to make conversions in B2B is storytelling. B2B storytelling might sound an overrated statement until you get to know the whole story.
Significance of B2B Storytelling
Since stories have the power to influence the audience, it also holds the power to make conversions.
Humanizes the brand
What makes humans human?
Emotions!
Hence, when you are drafting your brand story ensure that you include as many emotions in it to make it more human. Treat your brand as a human and build your story around it by including all possible emotions.
That helps your audience to connect with your brand more closely.
Customer loyalty
The right kind of storytelling in the B2B market helps brands to build trust and hence attracts customer loyalty. Earning customer loyalty, of course, takes time, but storytelling definitely acts as a catalyst and speeds up the process.
Medium of communication
Word of mouth, advertising, and recently social media have become prime mediums of communication between you and your audience. By telling a valuable brand story you make the strategy of B2B storytelling a strong medium of communication.
How Can You Build an Effective B2B Brand Story?
Brands need to present an emotional and true brand story talking about the brand. Along with giving them new conversions, it also connects their existing audience to their brand emotionally and helps build long term loyalty.
Following are some tips to build an effective brand story in 2022.
Consider Your Customer As a Hero
The products or services that you are offering are primarily for your customers. So, considering them as the nucleus of your actions, you should plan campaigns, and other changes around the needs and requirements of your customer base. As a matter of fact, in your brand story, your brand is not the real hero, but your customer is!
Act as a Guide, Not as a Hero
Ideal situations look good only in books. Because when your customers are approaching your brand they are looking for solutions that are real and practical that could be applied in real time.
Guidance should involve showing them an appropriate route, things that should be done, and how it should be done. Tell people about your journey, the struggles you faced, the solutions you found for them, and how it turned out for you.
If something you thought would work but didn’t, then you should share that story. This shows that you’re being transparent with your audience.
Present Practical Plans
Real time solutions are more appreciated rather than the guidelines. Likewise, instead of giving ideal solutions, give real time plans, assuming two-three situations and the expected output.
When you provide a realistic plan you portray that your brand is not only honest but also transparent.
Also, your plan should talk about the best practises that you follow and how it works for your brand.
Initiate Action
Guiding and providing action plans is a good way to shape your storytelling strategy but initiating actions is something that will lead to conversions, And when it comes to actions, it means adding as many call to actions in your story and making it easy for your audience to reach you.
Give Solutions Not Suggestions
Giving solutions should include providing strategies that worked for you. Providing real time solutions reflect your understanding of the problem and the industry, in general.
Highlight Your USPs
This is one of the essential elements of your story. Your USPs are unique to your brand and they should be highlighted in every way possible.
Also, specifying USPs of your brand clearly states the intent of your offering. Your USPs could be highlighted in various forms like, written, verbal or even visual.
Elements of Storytelling
When you are out in the market building an interesting brand story for your audience, you are obviously looking for productive outcomes. That is why you need to consider some of the basic elements in your B2B storytelling strategy.
Define Your Target Audience
Your target audience should be well defined while building the story of your brand. Because it helps you to focus on the outcome that you are expecting out of the entire storytelling strategy.
Storytelling Platform
To reach the right audience and gain their trust you should select a platform that is used by most of your audiences. This could primarily include social media platforms. While the way you tell your story does matter, how and where you tell your story is crucial too.
Value Addition
Another important element of your B2B storytelling needs to be the value that you are offering to your audience through your brand story.
Your brand story should be useful in some way, it should be inspiring, emotive, believable, and most importantly it should be easy to understand for your audience.
Top B2B Brand Storytelling Formats
B2B storytelling can be done in many ways. But you need to decide what suits your brand and how you want to present your story. Check out some popular formats below.
Audio Slideshows
One way to enhance your B2B storytelling process in 2021 is to present it in an audio slideshow format. Using this format helps you recite your story in the way you want it to reflect providing images and graphics that are suitable to your story.
Infographics
Infographics are another storytelling format that could come in handy if it suits your business requirement. This format in general is popular for showcasing the progress made, strategies used, and market trends. Infographics give you a chance to present your brand story in a short yet informative manner.
Testimonial Videos
The effect of storytelling is much higher when you use the testimonial video format. This presentation is crucial as it backs all the good things you say about your brand since your past customers are there to testify it. Testimonial videos are undoubtedly one of the most popular B2B storytelling formats.
Increase Lead Conversions Through Storytelling
Generating leads and converting them into customers is easy provided how well you tell your brand’s story.
Apart from numerous intangible elements, these are few things that will guide you to make your brand story legitimate.
- Have real characters in your brand success story.
- Build different stories according to different buyer’s persona.
- Present real-time case studies to support the built-up story.
- Tell stories that highlight your USPs.
- Share the ‘why’ of your brand to connect with the audience.
- Narrate the brand story in an impressive voiceover and music in the background.
Another successful example of B2B brand storytelling could be Google.
Most B2B marketers are already familiar with the web advertising service of Google Ads. A small video series was created by Google named AdWords Stories where they talked about small businesses. It highlighted how small businesses used the platform and various interesting stories were shared through it.
This fulfilled the purpose of connecting with the masses and making more engagements and conversions through this storytelling strategy.
As it is said, it doesn’t depend on whether your story has a hero or not; your story should be the hero!
The success of B2B brand storytelling won’t be completed if Microsoft is not mentioned. Back in 2010, Microsoft hired a guy who changed their content marketing inside out. He launched a campaign on all the social media platforms called, ‘Microsoft Stories’ making the company fall in customers’ good grace. The plan was to show off the star employee of the company.
This story was so successful that Microsoft launched a platform called, ‘Microsoft Story Labs’, to highlight employees from every department of the company right from developers, artists, and researchers.
Summing up, although storytelling is an art; art could be learned. Specifically for converting leads.
Storytelling is an art that is followed since years now. And what makes it special is that the same story could be told newly at different times. So make your brand story talk about your product, services, and the success that your brand could bring to your customers.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is storytelling important for B2B in 2022?
B2B storytelling is going to gain a lot of importance in 2022. Some of the significances include:
- Builds familiarity with The brand
- Customer loyalty
- Distinguishes your business
- Medium of communication
- Humanizes brand stories
- Opportunity to connect and collaborate
- Improves imagination
- Affects thoughts
- Directs decision making
Why does storytelling matter in business?
B2B storytelling helps businesses connect with their audience on a deeper level. It helps brands to showcase their business story, history, and customer experiences in the most natural and real form.
What is the value of storytelling in 2022?
The significance of storytelling in 2022 is going to be much more. Because businesses have changed their way of functioning and reaching out to their audiences. Hence, the way they communicate with their audience through storytelling will offer a new value.