People need to trust that you can deliver the services and knowledge that you’re selling. So, B2B marketing storytelling has become increasingly important within content marketing. While following tech B2B long-form content trends can help you stand out, sometimes putting pen to paper, or in this case, fingers to keys, can lead to hard selling rather than an engaging narrative – and that’s where storytelling can make a stark difference.
According to Stanford Marketing Professor Jennifer Aaker’s research, stories are remembered up to 22 times more than facts alone. B2B marketing storytelling allows you to be creative and have fun while creating relatable and engaging content for your customers, which can have huge upsides for lead generation and new business.
Now, we’re not saying that you have to be a marketing Stephen King or Jane Austen to create meaningful content. But maybe there’s something you can borrow from every author on the bestseller list.
There are five key elements in creating a good story: theme, character, setting, conflict and plot. By keeping these five key elements in mind, you can tell your company’s story in every piece of content you create and connect with your audience.
1. Theme
In literature, every story explores several themes. This can range from love and war to good versus evil and family. It’s the underlying message or the core idea that permeates the whole story.
B2B content very rarely deals with such big concepts, although hats off to you if you manage to weave one in! More commonly though, in B2B marketing, the theme is the broader takeaway you want your audience to grasp and remember, the value proposition or belief that you want to reinforce throughout the customer journey.
The theme acts as the guiding principle that shapes not only a single piece of content but also the larger brand narrative. In B2B tech, themes are often tied to key values like innovation, efficiency, transformation, or customer-centricity. For example, if your company’s mission centres on empowering businesses to thrive in an increasingly connected world, then the theme of empowerment through connectivity might weave through all your marketing materials.
Your themes or topics give purpose to your content and serve as a unifying thread, allowing you to create marketing campaigns on a variety of topics, whilst making them all feel like a part of a single goal or subject.
2. Character
A good story has a relatable character at its centre. In the case of B2B content, the main character is your customer. In other words, you need to connect with who your clients are, what they are searching for, and what a success story looks like for them. And they must see themselves in the story you’re trying to tell, or they won’t connect with what you’re trying to say.
Use your understanding of your target audience to build the ‘character’ that your content is created around. Our top tip? The classic 5 W’s, beloved by journalists and writers for hundreds of years, can give you a great starting point:
- Who? – Who is your customer (age, gender, job title, etc)?
- What? – What are they searching for? What do they need? What can this content show or teach them?
- Where? – Where do they work? Which industry are you trying to appeal to?
- When? – When did they join this industry? When is your content going to be most useful?
- Why? – Why would this piece of content interest them?
3. Setting
Imagine if a caveman showed up in your favourite science-fiction story. You’d be very confused, and rightly so. Whether it’s a galaxy far away or an innocuous street in the suburbs, a story’s setting establishes the tone and the challenges your character might face.
The setting for your content relates to the industry or audience you’re trying to engage with. Someone in the retail industry will have wildly different priorities than someone working in aerospace.
Make sure you tailor your content to your customers, considering the various priorities and risks that define their industry.
This should colour everything, including the wording you use. For instance, if your audience is technically savvy, don’t worry about avoiding well-known terms in their industry.
But if you are tackling ideas they are not likely to have encountered, make sure you explain them in terms they’ll understand.
4. Conflict
A compelling story needs conflict, usually in the form of an obstacle that prevents the characters from continuing their journey or achieving their goals. There’s no story without conflict.
In traditional storytelling, conflict is often about the tension or struggle that the character faces – it’s what keeps the story engaging and what ultimately drives the character toward growth or change. Similarly, in B2B marketing, conflict is what drives the narrative forward, highlighting the gap between where the reader is now and where they want to be. Use conflict as an opportunity to show how you can help your customers continue their path or, better yet, improve their chances of achieving or surpassing their goals.
Your approach to each piece of content should be shaped by the obstacle you’ve identified your customer is facing. This is where knowing your character and your customer inside out pays dividends. It’s time to put all your knowledge about their challenges, pain points, and frustrations to work! In the tech B2B world, conflict often comes in the form of operational inefficiencies, compliance issues, technology limitations, or even competitive threats. When done well, addressing these conflicts shows that you understand your audience’s world.
The conflict gives you the right cue to position your product or service as the hero that can resolve these conflicts. So, the obstacle could be a problem that your product or service can fix, or it could be something external that is out of everyone’s control that you can provide insights for.
5. Plot
With your character and setting well-defined, it’s time to turn to the story you need to tell. Basically, the plot is the backbone of your story – it’s what guides your readers from one point to another, keeping them engaged and invested in what you have to say.
Traditional storytelling focuses on a protagonist’s journey, often taking on the archetype of the hero’s journey. B2B marketing can take a page out of this and outline the customer’s journey toward transformation. Often, in this case, plot unfolds as a sequence of events that takes the reader from understanding their problem to exploring potential solutions and ultimately discovering how your product or service can meet their needs.
The main question to ask is: why should our audience care about this? Your content should speak to something that affects them directly and explain why following your advice or using your services will benefit their business. Two common B2B marketing storytelling approaches are:
Approach 1
Present a problem that your customers might be facing and provide a solution by showcasing your expertise. This is a great approach for soft selling, as you can point your readers to a specific product or solution that could solve the problem you’ve presented.
But make sure you avoid hard selling at this stage. How would you feel if the author of your favourite novel tried to sell you something at the end of a chapter?
Approach 2
Comment on or analyse a broader trend or piece of news that will directly affect or interest your customers. People are more likely to engage with and share this type of content with their peers, as it helps to shape their views and start conversations.
Both approaches show existing and prospective customers that you are knowledgeable and empathetic to the needs and worries of your business.
B2B marketing storytelling takeaways
B2B marketing is all about grabbing people’s attention (especially C-suite attention) so you can tell them something they didn’t already know.
Storytelling has become a cornerstone of digital marketing because it allows companies to be creative while demonstrating their expertise, knowledge, and insight into their customers.
If you remember to incorporate theme, character, setting, conflict and plot into your content, you will never lose sight of your audience and will soon be creating relatable, bestseller content.
The marketer closed the blog and opened a new word document.
“Now comes the hard part,” they thought, as a wealth of exciting ideas flooded their mind.
If you would like to find out how Isoline can assist you with storytelling, please contact us at hello@isolinecomms.com
