For many B2B businesses, the customer challenges they seek to solve are often complex and their solutions highly technical. The temptation therefore for marketers is to focus on products and services, and to go to great lengths to explain all the benefits.
But while many customers dream of solving complex challenges to achieve their business goals, they are rarely solely seduced by detailed product marketing. In customers’ minds, they are the heroes of their stories, and products are the enablers of their success.
In B2B marketing, to truly engage customers, we must put them at the heart of the stories we tell. When we speak to customers, they don’t talk about products, they talk about themselves. More specifically, they talk about their problems. So, if marketing is about helping solve those problems, the stories we tell must be about the customers. Customer storytelling is king, or rather, customer success stories rule.
Customer success stories do so many important things. They establish common ground, with people seeing themselves reflected in the customers featured in the stories. Customer success stories are relatable, because they are people overcoming challenges, not product features. According to Nielsen, 70% of buyers say recommendations from real people carry more weight. And a massive 97% of B2B customers cited customer success stories and peer recommendations as the most reliable type of content (Demand Gen Report).
Stories of customer success create emotional connections and build trust - 72% of consumers say customer success stories increase their trust in a business (Big Commerce). Customer success stories boost credibility through third-party validation – when people say nice things about you, it carries more weight. And importantly, customer stories are memorable. Just 5% of people remember a single statistic, but 63% remember stories (Heath & Heath).
Clearly, B2B marketing is not all about customer stories, it’s essential to have a broad mix of content. Some marketing content will inevitably be more product focused. But you need to tell human stories to pull people in and make them want to learn more. Outcome and benefit focused stories that put customers at the center and position their products as enablers are simply more effective.
And again, let’s be clear, customer stories in B2B marketing are not just a handful of online reviews. They are about telling a full story with a beginning, middle and end – all through the eyes of the customer. Each story has to be a compelling narrative about how your customer used a product or service to solve a problem.
So, all of this raises the question, what does a good customer success story look like? Many leading B2B companies that we work with at Luxid are adopting advertising and documentary techniques to make their stories more relatable and engaging.
And we’ve developed a method to get the best results from this. Firstly, we use real people; not scripted, real customers in their own words. We are outcome-focused, always asking: what were the benefits to the customer, what did they achieve? Good customer success storytelling has to be clear and concise. So, we don’t try to cover everything, we focus on what’s really important.
We’re ‘dessert first’. This means we get to the challenge quickly. We place great attention on movement. Video is a fantastic moving medium, so we try to minimize talking heads. And, finally, we are always clear about ‘next steps’. Strategic storytelling is purposeful, so we include a relevant call to action (CTA) as we want viewers to act.
Being purposeful is a key way to maximize the impact of a good customer success story. But there are other key aspects of marketing strategy you need to bear in mind to make your story really deliver. Focus on the campaign potential of the customer success. Don’t just focus on a single narrative when you can tell the story in different ways so that it runs as proper marketing campaign.
Importantly, consider the customer journey with your storytelling. While every customer is unique, there is often a shared journey toward modernization or transformation. This journey commonly begins with customers remaining stagnant or maintaining the status quo, followed by a desire for change. Change solutions are investigated and then embraced. Finally, solutions are upgraded and optimized over time until eventually the cycle repeats.
Different types of story assets serve different purposes at different phases of this customer journey. A well-integrated and orchestrated customer story program meets customers where they are and encourages them to take the next step. Imagine what would trigger a customer to take the next step on their journey. In the beginning phases, it might be content that encourages change. As the customer explores change solutions, content that supports their learning would be critical. Content that empowers choice would help trigger their decision-making.
If you pay close attention to all of things with customer success storytelling, it can deliver incredible results. This was certainly the case for AWS with MagellanTV. The documentary streaming service MagellanTV wanted to grow its business globally. However, its content library was largely in English, and the traditional methods for transcribing, translating and dubbing content were prohibitively expensive and time consuming. Working with AWS Partner Mission Cloud, MagellanTV developed a groundbreaking gen AI-driven solution that revolutionized the industry.
We interviewed members of MagellanTV and heard from them in their own words. Nothing was scripted. We focused on the outcomes and benefits and didn’t get bogged down in the solution’s technical details. The story had a clear beginning, middle and end. The MagellanTV founder, Tom, addressed the challenge in the first 20 seconds.
In the first week of being published, the film outperformed 52 previous client stories for engagement. The featured AWS Partner, Mission Cloud, saw increased outreach from customers and AWS contacts, along with more buzz and excitement among employees. MagellanTV has seen increased channel followers and engagement.
Customer success storytelling can be hugely powerful in B2B marketing. Customers should be the heroes of B2B marketing, not the products. These are the enablers, making customer success possible. Customer success stories drive relatability, credibility and they’re memorable – we’re hard-wired to remember stories. And used as part of a full campaign, success stories can play a key role in the customer journey.
If you’d like to find out how you can embrace customer success storytelling in your marketing, then talk to one of our experts at Luxid.
