{"id":530530135,"date":"2022-10-06T08:00:08","date_gmt":"2022-10-06T12:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/contently.com\/?p=530530135"},"modified":"2022-10-11T09:23:04","modified_gmt":"2022-10-11T13:23:04","slug":"how-storytelling-can-build-an-emotional-connection-with-a-b2b-audience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/contently.com\/2022\/10\/06\/how-storytelling-can-build-an-emotional-connection-with-a-b2b-audience\/","title":{"rendered":"How Storytelling Can Build an Emotional Connection with a B2B Audience"},"content":{"rendered":"

B2B SaaS content is often very technical, which can be a bit dry for readers. But integrating storytelling into your content allows your target audience to build an emotional connection with your brand.<\/p>\n

Typically, turning a sales prospect into a customer takes much longer<\/a> in B2B marketing than in B2C. Why? Because there are generally many stakeholders involved in purchases for businesses. Plus, the purchase is usually more costly, requires extensive onboarding and rollout, and involves many end users.<\/p>\n

Why Is B2B Storytelling Important\u2014and Challenging?<\/h2>\n

With so much at stake in a B2B purchase, you can understand the importance of creating content that allows SaaS buyers to connect with your brand personally. In fact, research has shown<\/a> that in comparison to consumers, B2B customers, on average, feel much more emotionally connected to their vendors and service providers.<\/p>\n

Despite all the talk about storytelling<\/a>, many B2B content marketers focus more on promoting the product or service rather than how it can change a potential customer’s life personally or professionally. Many don’t know where to start or don’t have the right tools to execute storytelling properly, said Mark Evans, principal at Marketing Spark<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Evans says storytelling can be challenging to execute in reality. But once you have the right resources to make it happen, it can be a key brand differentiator.<\/p>\n

Individual pieces of content\u2014whether blog posts, videos, webinars, infographics, and so on\u2014can be presented as a narrative, but the larger customer journey can also be viewed as such. In other words, each piece of B2B content you create can be viewed as a small piece of a larger story that guides a reader from the brand awareness stage through the sale (and beyond).<\/p>\n

So, what does storytelling in SaaS content marketing entail, and how can you integrate it into your strategy?<\/p>\n

The Customer as “Hero”<\/h2>\n

\u201cGreat stories are ones where there’s a narrative, there’s a hero, there’s some kind of drama,” Evans said. \u201cThe audience can completely relate to them because (they reflect) their interests, their needs, their problems, their challenges.”<\/p>\n

The format of a B2B story is similar to what you would read in a work of fiction. The potential customer\u2014not your company\u2014should serve as the \u201chero” of your story, said Ardath Albee, CEO and B2B marketing strategist for her firm Marketing Interactions<\/a>. You also have an antagonist, which is the problem they need to solve. Finally, the vendor (your company) is the \u201cmentor” or guide who assists the hero in reaching their ultimate destination\u2014like Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings <\/em>or the fairy godmother in Cinderella<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Take customer success stories as an example. Many B2B content marketers structure these as follows: Company X works with Company Y and sees Z results<\/em>, said Tommy Walker, founder of The Content Studio<\/a> and former Global Editor-in-Chief of Quickbooks. But this format is missing the human element of why<\/em> the problem exists and matters to the audience.<\/p>\n

When Walker worked at Shopify Plus as the company’s first marketing hire, they published this case study<\/a>, which Walker feels is a good example of storytelling in action. You can see how the story begins\u2014not only did the co-founder of an online T-shirt company have to deal with a crashed website at 2 a.m., but this happened on the night of his bachelor party, which he had to put on hold. This added a human element that made for a much more relatable story.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, the co-founders chose Shopify Plus as an eCommerce platform that would keep up with the company’s rapid growth. According to the case study, Shopify Plus alleviated the stresses the co-founders encountered with technology and allowed them to focus more on the business.<\/p>\n

The Customer Journey as Narrative<\/h2>\n

In SaaS content marketing, storytelling also means providing a seamless narrative that spans the entire customer journey through multiple pieces of content and easily directs the reader from one point to the next. Think of every piece of content in the customer journey as a chapter in a book, Albee said, all the while remembering that a B2B tech sale can take months or even years.<\/p>\n

Albee said that the buyer should be able to access the different pieces of a larger narrative to meet them where they are in their current situation. And they may find these pieces in a variety of places.<\/p>\n

Good B2B storytelling means showing you understand the buyer well enough to help them resolve the challenges they face and ultimately get the outcome they want.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cWe have to think about how do we let (the buyer) drive but still put those guardrails around that experience, that story, so we get them all the information they need to get from A to Z in whatever manner that looks like,” Albee said.<\/p>\n

Content for Each Stage of the Marketing Funnel<\/h3>\n

Once you understand the basic framework of a story, you can map the different parts of your content strategy to a character’s journey:<\/p>\n