I’m incredibly grateful for the love on the first edition of my newsletter, The Africa Startup Festival 2024: Insights on Driving Innovation and Growth in Africa.
Today’s topic is close to my heart because it combines my passions and addresses a question I often get asked, along with being a key focus of many consultations I offer: How to incorporate creativity and storytelling in B2B marketing.
From experience, selling a product or service to a group of business executives and entrepreneurs often involves using specific terms and core concepts to help them understand the seriousness or expertise of the team behind your product. But here’s the good news: selling your product creatively to business leaders and clients isn’t just possible, it’s also effective. When done right, it can distinguish your brand and show excellence.
At the core of every business decision is a human being, making human-centered choices. Behind every procurement decision or SaaS subscription is a person who wants to feel confident, inspired, and assured they’re making the right choice.
Every purchase decision is driven by emotion. For business owners, emotions like curiosity, desperation, fear, or trust (often based on recommendations) are usually at the forefront when making decisions. Can you see how some of your own decisions align with these emotions?
To sell a B2B product creatively, you need to tap into these human emotions. You need to shift from product-focused marketing to people-focused marketing.
What Is Product-Focused Marketing?
Let’s start here: product-focused marketing is exactly what it sounds like, a strategy centered on highlighting the features, specs, and functionalities of a product. Think sleek brochures, detailed datasheets, and content that screams, Look at what this product can do!
But here’s the thing. That approach, while informative, doesn’t always resonate with people. Users, whether consumers or business decision-makers, are less interested in what your product does and more focused on how it solves their specific problems.
This realisation has sparked a shift, especially in B2B marketing, from product-focused to people-focused (or customer-focused) marketing.
The Shift From Product-Focused to People-Focused Marketing
At its core, people-focused marketing puts the customer’s experience, challenges, and emotions at the centre of your strategy. It’s about understanding the why behind their needs, not just presenting the what of your product.
Here’s why this matters: Business decisions are made by humans. And humans, no matter how analytical, are influenced by emotions, stories, and connections.
I’ll borrow a line from one of my favourite books, The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel:
“You’re not a spreadsheet. You’re a person. A screwed up, emotional person.” (p.113)
Digitalisation has only accelerated this shift. With endless access to data, automation, and digital platforms, companies can now create personalised, human-centric stories in ways that weren’t possible before. These can make businesses feel approachable, authentic, and trustworthy, traits that are relevant in traditionally rigid B2B sectors.
How Digitalisation Encourages Creativity in B2B
Digitalisation has democratised creativity in industries once perceived as “too formal or traditional” for storytelling. Platforms like LinkedIn, interactive tools, and data-driven personalisation allow even B2B companies to innovate how they communicate their value.
For example:
- Using dynamic storytelling through data visualizations.
- Interactive campaigns are designed per specific business pain points.
- Social media is a medium for showing company culture, customer success stories, and thought leadership.
Even LinkedIn is adopting a strategy from the Creative B2B Marketing playbook by recently adding the Video Feature.
Case Study: How Zendesk Mastered B2B Storytelling
Zendesk is a poster child for creative storytelling in B2B. They took a traditionally dry sector (customer service software) and turned it into a brand that connects with its audience on a deeply human level.
What Zendesk Did Right:
- Commitment to Simplicity: The brand strives to reduce complexity across all touchpoints, from its website to its product interfaces. They use simplicity as a litmus test for quality, ensuring their solutions and messaging are easy to understand and navigate.
- Told Relatable Stories: They built campaigns around customer success stories, showing how real people use Zendesk to solve real problems.
- Put People First: Instead of focusing solely on product features, they communicated how Zendesk made life easier for both businesses and their customers.
This approach humanised Zendesk, positioning them as a solution that understood their audience’s challenges, not just software with impressive features.
What This Means for You
If Zendesk can inject creativity into selling customer service software, there’s no excuse for overlooking storytelling in your own B2B marketing. Creativity helped Zendesk differentiate itself in the customer service software market and it wasn’t just about their creative campaigns; it was also about embracing a tone, personality, and ethos that made them relatable, trustworthy, and memorable.
For B2B companies, creative storytelling is a way to shift the conversation from, “Here’s what our product can do” to, “Here’s how our product transforms your business and your day-to-day life.”
So my question is: how are you telling stories that connect with the people behind the business decisions?
Creativity is the secret ingredient for making a real impact. It helps in connecting with the human decision-makers behind the spreadsheets.
Creativity And Data Give A Perfect Pair
Creativity doesn’t mean abandoning data and spreadsheets. It’s about merging those insights with human-centered storytelling. Data tells you what your audience needs, but creativity brings it to life in a way that sticks.
For example:
- Use analytics to identify customer pain points, then build a story that addresses them directly.
- Incorporate testimonials or case studies to give the data a human face.
- Use audience segmentation to deliver relatable stories that feel personal, not generic.
Creativity without data is blind, and data without creativity is cold.
The Building Blocks of Creative B2B Marketing
Creativity B2B marketing means balancing creativity, strategy, and technology to create campaigns that resonate, inspire, and deliver measurable results. These components work together to drive attention and build connections with your audience. Here’s how:
- Storytelling: At the heart of creative B2B marketing is a story that resonates with decision-makers and the end users. This will turn your product from a list of features into a solution to someone’s problem. It answers the question: Why does this matter to me?
- Visual Identity: Consistent branding and visual identity refer to logos, website layouts and presentation decks that should reflect innovation and credibility. A cohesive visual identity is memorable, and it communicates your brand’s personality and reinforces its value proposition.
- Engaging Content: Blogs, videos, case studies, and interactive tools like quizzes are content formats that help meet your audience’s preferences and challenges. A detailed whitepaper might speak to C-suite executives, while a concise explainer video could be the hook that draws mid-level managers. Each content should be purposeful, aligning with your narrative and driving action.
- Technology and Analytics: Creativity thrives when it’s powered by insight. Using predictive analytics allows B2B marketers to refine campaigns and deliver personalised messages at scale. Technology is a force multiplier that helps marketers test ideas, adapt strategies, and ensure their efforts are data-informed without losing the human touch.
Common Obstacles in Highly Regulated or Technical Industries
In industries with strict regulations or highly technical offerings, creativity may feel like an uphill battle. The challenges are real, but not impossible. Here are my solutions:
- Obstacle: Compliance concerns stifling creative freedom. Solution: Work closely with legal teams from the start to establish clear boundaries. Then, find creative ways to innovate within those parameters.
- Obstacle: Perception that creativity undermines credibility. Solution: Focus on clarity and professionalism in design and messaging. Highlight how creativity can improve understanding without compromising your brand’s authority.
- Obstacle: Difficulty in translating technical jargon into engaging content. Solution: Partner with subject matter experts to ensure accuracy, then collaborate with creative professionals to make the content accessible and engaging for your target audience.
By prioritising human-centered storytelling and balancing creativity with ROI, B2B businesses can reach new levels of growth, differentiation, and connection. Startups and established businesses need to invest in creative marketing strategies that align with their vision and audience needs.
I hope you found this newsletter edition insightful. If it resonated with you, I’d love to hear your thoughts (please drop a comment).
Ready to transform your B2B marketing strategy? Let’s collaborate and infuse creativity into your campaigns to build stronger connections with your audience.
With Love,
#TheVictoriaO
