The Elements of Storytelling that B2B Can Learn from B2C

There's a lot that B2B can learn from B2C when it comes to storytelling. After all, the same basic principles of good storytelling apply no matter what your audience is. But there are some specific things that B2B can take away from the way B2C marketers tell their stories - and vice versa.

In this post, we'll take a look at some of the key elements of successful storytelling, and see how they play out in both B2B and B2C contexts. So whether you're a marketer looking to up your game, or just curious about what makes good stories work, read on!

The Elements of Storytelling that B2B Can Learn from B2C

Importance of storytelling in B2B marketing world

Storytelling is a powerful way to connect with potential customers and clients. It allows businesses to humanize their brand and create an emotional connection with their audience. When done correctly, storytelling can help businesses to build trust and credibility with potential customers.

Stories also provide a way for businesses to share their unique perspective and differentiate themselves from their competitors. By sharing stories that are relevant to their audience, businesses can help potential customers understand what makes them different and why they should choose them over the competition.

In short, storytelling is a vitally important tool for B2B advertising and marketing because it allows businesses to connect with their audience on an emotional level, build trust and credibility, and differentiate themselves from the competition.

Let’s take the example of Hubspot and Hotjar!

The authors of the Hubspot and Hotjar case studies have a vested interest in making their websites look as helpful and reliable as possible, so they exaggerate some claims.

Hubspot and Hotjar publish multiple case studies - in order to show all aspects of their services. Their storytelling is so good that it clearly shows how their products/services work when applied and make you feel like you are learning about their product instead of being sold something.

Read this one: Happy Marketer increases leads by 200% with HubSpot

The way Hubspot has described the whole challenges faced by a company and how their experts offered multiple solutions to tackle those challenges is amazing.

5 reasons why you should focus more on storytelling

By telling a story about a customer or client who has successfully used your product or service, you can create a powerful emotional connection with your audience and help them understand what you do and how it can benefit them. Let’s see some of the advantages of storytelling in the B2B world.

1. Give your brand a human touch

Storytelling in B2B can humanize the brand and convey personality by telling stories about the people behind the company, its products, or its services.

For example, a software company could tell the story of how its CEO got interested in programming at a young age, or how a team of engineers overcame a technical challenge to create a new product. These types of stories can help connect customers with the people and ideas behind the company, making it feel more relatable and personable.

In addition, storytelling can also be used to convey the personality of a company. For instance, if a company wants to come across as innovative and cutting-edge, it could tell stories that reflect that image.

2. Build strong emotional connections

The use of storytelling in B2B communications can be an extremely effective way to create emotional connections with audiences. By sharing personal stories that illustrate how your product or service has helped customers achieve success, you can create an emotional connection with potential buyers and persuade them to consider your offering.

In this case, brands like Dove, Zendesk and Levi’s bring stories and run campaigns that build strong emotional connections with their audiences. They write stories on women empowerment, LGBT rights, and gender equality in workplaces etc.

For example, this campaign by Dove shows how societal beauty standards start affecting the life of a girl from a very young age.

For B2B brands, the best way to use storytelling is by providing a narrative and developing anecdotes that give context for how and where your product can be used.

We often advise using video as a powerful tool for engaging an audience. Videos show things about someone or something that we cannot see with just text or images, and they help us go deeper into a story as well as make it more interactive. In other words, videos bring stories to life.

3. Enhance customer retention

There is a reason storytelling has been used for centuries to entertain and engage audiences: it works. A well-told story can help people understand complex topics, make emotional connections with characters, and even learn new information.

In the business world, storytelling can be used in a number of ways to engage customers and build relationships. For example, businesses can use customer stories (success stories and failure stories) to humanize their brand, share best practices, and even create new marketing content. Additionally, businesses can use case studies to illustrate the effectiveness of their products or services.

4. Makes your content more appealing to consume

In the business world, storytelling can be a powerful tool for creating connections with clients and potential customers. It can help you build trust and credibility, and it can also help you create a more personal connection with your audience.

So if you're looking for a way to make your content stand out from the crowd, storytelling is definitely worth considering.

Advanced, a B2B software company in the UK started a “right the first time” campaign to improve brand visibility, they seriously twisted some fairytale elements from old tales like “Goldilocks story” & “Jack and the Beanstalk”.

5. Shows that you’re not just hard selling

Through storytelling, you're able to share a personal experience or connect with the buyer on a more human level, which can help to break down some of the barriers that are often present during the buying process.

When buyers feel like they know and trust you, they're more likely to be willing to listen to what you have to say and less likely to see you as someone who's just trying to sell them something.

Marketing storytelling techniques B2B can learn from B2C

There are five core marketing storytelling techniques that B2B can learn from B2C:

  1. Create a persona for your brand.
  2. Give every piece of content a personal touch.
  3. Tell a story about how your product or service has helped someone achieve their goals.
  4. Use emotion to evoke an emotional response from your audience.
  5. Try to address your corporate social responsibilities.

In addition, it's important to be creative and use a variety of storytelling methods to engage potential buyers. This could include using videos, infographics, social media posts, etc. as well as incorporating interactive elements like quizzes or surveys into your content.

To sum up:

All of these approaches rely on creating a connection with your audience and sparking an emotional reaction. When you can do that, you've successfully engaged them in your story and given them a reason to care about what you have to say.

How compelling is your storytelling?

Just like Penny helps Sheldon or Pheobe helps Ross to look at problems from a different perspective. That's how we work with our clients too - helping them come up with new ideas.

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