Ep 60. Storytelling in B2B - How boring is your 'About' page?

When was the last time you updated your about page on your website? This week, which is National Storytelling Week, is an excellent opportunity to think about how to incorporate storytelling into your business strategy.

Storytelling is an essential part of modern business strategy. The human brain processes stories much deeper than facts and figures, making them a powerful tool for communicating complex ideas and building customer trust.

The businesses winning right now are using storytelling to build their brand reputations to provide helpful information and build a human connection with their customers.

Today I share how you can restart your about page during National Storytelling Week by sharing some tips and insights and examples of how it's well-executed in B2B.

Let's dive in!

Resources and links from this episode:

https://henbe.co.uk/2021/06/10/ep-27-telling-your-story-when-you-work-in-a-technical-industry/

https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/storytelling

https://extance.co.uk/

My consulting business About page

https://henbe.co.uk/about-henbe/

What to do next:

Get my FREE roadmap to get more strategic with communication activity in your business (also here: https://bit.ly/SevenSteps2Success )

 

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Full Transcript (unedited):

When was the last time you updated your about page on your website? This week, which is National Storytelling Week, is a great opportunity to think about how to incorporate storytelling into your business strategy.

Storytelling is an essential part of modern business strategy. The human brain processes stories in a much deeper way than facts and figures, making them a powerful tool for communicating complex ideas and building customer trust. The best businesses are using storytelling to build their brand reputations, not only to provide helpful information but also to build a human connection with their customers. 

Today I share how you can restart your about page during National Storytelling Week by sharing some tips and insights and also some examples of how it’s well-executed in B2B.

Let's dive in

Intro

People often think of storytelling as a way to capture the attention of an audience, but the benefits of storytelling go far beyond the punchline.

It’s a proven method for humanizing your brand and establishing a trustworthy reputation that makes customers feel good about doing business with you. When you tell a story, your customers can feel like they know you better, and that makes them more comfortable in doing business with you. That’s why it’s so important to use storytelling in your business.

We like to think that storytelling has been with us since time began, but the truth is that it has evolved and changed over time. In many ways, today’s modern style of storytelling is a far cry from the way tales were told by our ancestors. For example, our oral traditions and the art of storytelling have evolved significantly since the days when storytellers would weave tales around campfires. Today, we tend to be far more concerned with the content of our storytelling, rather than the style and delivery.

And for good reason.

We’ve all heard the saying, “Don’t tell me the facts, tell me a story.” Today, we’re surrounded by facts and figures, data and statistics – but these aren’t the best way to communicate complex ideas and help people understand the world around them. In fact, storytelling is one of the most powerful tools to help people understand the world and the people and places within it, and to build a sense of trust and rapport with your brand and customers.

But when it comes to building a brand reputation, most business owners focus on the big, flashy marketing campaigns. But there’s a whole world of communication out there that doesn’t require a single dollar. It’s called storytelling. The beauty of storytelling is that it’s an opportunity to connect with your customers on a deeper level.

However, stuffy copywriting often cripples B2B brands in particular and they seem remote and impersonal, too corporate.

When looking to learn more about a company, we often head straight to the “About” page.

A good About page should contain the following information:

• The story of how you got started and why the business exists in the first place
• Your company’s mission, and what you want to achieve
• Information on your team, what they do and perhaps their interests
• How they can get involved and join your cause

If you have a story of why and how you started your business, then the About page is the place to share it. It humanises your brand, providing context and meaning around why it exists.

But how do you actually go about telling a story? especially if you work in B2B

Here are a few simple tips you can take to get started telling your business story, whether it’s your personal story or the story of your business.

The first step is to set a clear, actionable goal. What do you want your business to look like in the future? What do you want your customers to think of you?

Next ask yourself why you think your customers care about your story?

This helps to develop the right story and one that your customers will want to hear

Be open and honest about the story you want to tell.

What do you hope to communicate to your customers? Do you believe your story reflects the real you? Are you proud of your company, its products and services?

Make sure your story is true.

Don’t embellish, or just make it up. Make sure it’s relatable to your customers and that it feels real and authentic.

What’s your core purpose in business?

What are your values, beliefs, and values? What are your customers values and beliefs? make sure your story rings true with all these things.

 

Start by telling the story as you would if you were telling a friend.

 

And, reiterate your story and purpose often, pepper it into what you say on social media and in your communication, its not a campaign, it should be embedded so remind customers why they should buy from you and that you have deph and meaning to your brand and why yo are on the planet.

 

Microsoft do this really well on a large corporate scale in B2B thier https://news.microsoft.com/stories/ StoryLabs showcase examples of how their people's skills are helping the world.

On a smaller scale UK architecture Practice Stride Treglown do a similar thing with their people stories and showcasing the people that live in the buildings they create, demonstrating a depth of understanding of end customer need and how important it is for them. I'd love to hear your example.

Case-study led examples of practising what you preach as a brand works really well. Rather than talking about yourself. Google Ads does this well too showcasing smaller businesses and how google ads have helped them become successful.

Formats are a really important tool so a mix of video and words can help communicate how you feel, and your outlook by combining some of these elements.

Finally, when we start to tell our story as a business, it’s really, really easy to jump into the technical speak. We’ve all done it. If you work in a very technical area, you might need to explain quite a lot of the technical issues associated with your product or service.

However, to the person who’s not really working in your business, including your customers, the technical aspect is not the most compelling part of your story.

Being too technical with your content can also mean that there’s no really compelling reason for people to engage with that content or connect with your product, service or business, and more importantly, to take action from reading it or hearing about it.

Now there are exceptions to this of course, say you work in medical device R&D and your customers are highly informed, for example. But your story then needs to still communicate trust and track record and you need to stand out from the competition. Regardless, we need to be telling people the why behind what we do and why does it matter to them. So we need to dig a little deeper. We need to give them that thing that they really need. Why should they buy from you? Why should they invest in you? Or why should they work with you and not another company?

Find a way this week and revisit that About page. I have this week, I'd love to know what you think?