3 Reasons Why Storytelling is The Future of B2B Marketing
Chances are, you’ve heard of the old adage:
“People buy with emotion and justify it with logic.”
This statement applies to more than just a typical B2C impulse purchase that you might make at the grocery store or while shopping for online deals on your lunch break during Cyber Monday.
It also applies to how influential and relevant your offer is to potential B2B clients.
At the end of the day, whether it’s in their job or in their personal life, people are still people, even when they are doing business. People want to connect with and communicate with people just like them.
And fundamentally, people want to do business with people they trust.
Stories are one of the most effective bridges to building trust with your prospects, especially when done through the perspective of past clients (similar to your prospects) who benefited from your offer.
Matter of fact, only 9% of B2B buyers rate vendor content as trustworthy.
If you’re looking for a way to drive more revenue by increasing trust in your B2B prospects, here are 3 reasons why stories are an effective way to do that:
1. Stories Sell Better Futures, NOT Features.
Which of these appeals more to you: Making more money for your business? Or, making more money from your business so that you can have: more free time and the ability to provide for your family?
Here are a few more unrelated examples to consider:
Do you want to go to a restaurant to eat a meal? Or, do you want to share a 5-star culinary experience with your loved ones?
Do you go to a party to drink and talk with people? Or, do you want to have a fun night to remember with your friends?
Do you buy a workout program and personal training sessions? Or, do you buy the confidence of being able to take your shirt off and feel attractive in your own body?
Do you buy a camera? Or, do you buy the ability to capture memories of a lifetime with those you love that you can reflect back on as you grow older?
Chances are, what people are really buying isn’t the face value of the product, service, or whatever it is you’re selling. They’re buying the tangible or emotional benefits they experience as a result of buying. The product, service, or whatever you are selling is just the bridge or mechanism to the end feeling or tangible benefit your client wants to experience in the near (and foreseeable) future.
The better future is the story they want to experience in their world. They want to be there, but they are not yet there.
How can you bridge the value your B2B company offers with the better future they desire?
Telling a relatable and emotional story is one effective way to do this because they can envision their better future on a more visceral level when they can feel how another business owner just like them used your B2B offer to reach a similarly desired better future.
It’s easy for a competitor to copy your features and state how they can
2. Stories drive emotional engagement
Stories are how we make sense of the world and bond with those just like us.
Ever see one of those “viral” videos on social media telling an emotional story of tragedy or someone overcoming adversity to achieve a magnificent feat? (Maybe your friends even tagged you in one of these types of posts.)
Remember. Every B2B prospect is still a person with real emotions and real desires unique to them.
Your competitors can likely offer and state similar results, features, and benefits as you can.
But what will make your customers care to pay attention and engage with your offering in a sea of seemingly undifferentiated offers that focus on selling with the same value propositions?
Story. And specifically, a compelling story that resonates with your prospects.
Just as we connect with friends and family members who we share similar stories and experiences with, your prospects will more likely care to pay attention to you when you can engage them emotionally with clients who have overcome the same problems that your prospect faces.
Those feelings of connectedness can further build desire in your B2B prospects to work with you over competitors who do not humanize their offering.
3. Stories Build Trust
Stories show, words tell.
While words strung together nicely without a coherent story do convey emotions as well, a story (especially if told on camera) is specific.
Specific stories from real people (i.e. your past clients) can rarely be faked. And even better, they build strong clarity and credibility around your offer.
Prospects need something to grasp onto to trust that your offer is viable and applicable to their business’ specific needs and goals. Without a specific concrete example (which comes from stories of your past clients) demonstrating how your offer clearly benefits them, your promises will likely fall flat.
There will be more friction in your prospect’s mind to justify doing business with you without that sense of trust.
Furthermore, each unique story from your past clients offers a distinct and potentially unique perspective that can appeal to different segments of your B2B offer’s market.
For example:
One specific story might focus on how helping their business freed up more time for the clients family to spend away from the business.
Another specific story might focus on how helping their business helped another client stay in business instead of closing doors.
The story that provides the most relevant angle or perspective to a prospect’s situation is likely to be the story that instills the most trust. So, it pays to have multiple stories from different clients telling how your B2B offer benefited them for their unique situation.
Once trust is established, it becomes easier to lead your prospects to conclude that doing business with you is a comfortably sound decision for their business.
Conclusion:
As you can see, telling stories to sell is an effective way to convey the unique value and impact your offer can provide to your B2B clients. While not every story will relate to each client, collecting more unique stories can increase the likelihood that one will hook your prospect on a meaningful level that can lead to them working with you.
Remember, stories aren’t things that you only share with your friends and family. Stories are a powerful tool way to help prospects: realize a better future, engage with your B2B business on a more personal level, and instill trust in your offer.
They are also a way to differentiate your business in the marketplace and give prospects clarity on how they can benefit from you in a manner that is both unique and relatable.
If you’re looking for a way to effortlessly tell your clients’ stories effectively on camera via video testimonials (without the need to pay expensive agency fees), feel free to reach out to me directly or check us out at: testimonialhero.com to see how we can help you accelerate your business’s revenue growth this year.
-David