Who doesn’t love a good story? Stories have always been an integral part of human life; they told life lessons, carried history, and put kids to bed. Now stories are used as a key element in B2G marketing strategies.
What makes good storytelling so successful in content marketing?
Done right, storytelling in marketing creates empathy (I relate to that!), shares pain points (I have that exact problem!), and provides a happy ending (wow, I didn’t know that S2G could do that!). It also motivates action (I’d better get in touch ASAP to solve my problems!) and because good stories are interesting, they help buyers remember data better than if it were presented as dry stats.
Trust in Storytelling
Authentic storytelling in marketing establishes your credibility and assures contacting authorities that you can be trusted to help manage and overcome their challenges.
Given that government bodies are naturally risk-averse, trust is critical when it comes to winning government contracts.
We’re going to look at why storytelling is so effective in marketing and how you can boost your overall marketing strategy with storytelling in your toolbox.
The Key Elements Of An Effective Storytelling Strategy
This isn’t Once-Upon-A-Time storytelling that you can just wing. It’s a strategy and like all strategies, it needs planning and preparation.
For a start, your story must reflect your brand values and priorities. But, it also needs to align with the government’s values and priorities. This requires research into the government’s procurement goals.
Keep authenticity in mind at all times. Don’t try to shoehorn your way in if your services or products aren’t a good fit for a particular contract.
Key elements of compelling stories
Brush off your storytelling skills and incorporate the key features below. Remember that your story doesn’t need to contain all the elements, but you should mix and match to tell your own story creatively.
- Entertaining: Hook them and keep them curious.
- Believable: Always be authentic (this comes up a lot) and engaging.
- Educational: A curious audience is willing to learn.
- Relatable: Your audience feels empathy because they’re in a similar situation.
- Organised: Stories must flow logically if they’re to keep target audiences engaged.
- Memorable: Whatever your storytelling process, you must ensure it will live on in your audience’s mind. (In a good way. You don’t want to be remembered for being a twit.)
Social Value & Long-Term Impact
Social value plays a significant role in government contracts. What better way to incorporate social value than in your marketing story? Not only can you solve contracting authorities’ challenges, but you can solve problems in the local community at the same time.
This is great because you can demonstrate the impact of your social value initiative long after the contract is over. Public bodies like the gift that keeps on giving. It helps them reach their social value goals, makes them look good in the public eye, and they don’t need to spend a cent.
The result is a good supplier-buyer relationship that will stand you in good stead when more contracts roll around.
Real World Results
The proof is in the pudding, as they say, and government bodies are very fond of pudding.
Weave relevant data into the marketing story to back up claims and include relevant case studies to demonstrate your success in similar scenarios.
Case studies must match the contract. They don’t need to be an exact match, but they must demonstrate your ability to project manage, trouble-shoot, and pull off contracts with positive results.
Crafting Authentic & Compelling Stories
We mentioned trust above, but what goes into establishing trustworthiness?
Trustworthy data must be accurate, no omissions that skew results or distort the context. It must be transparent so buyers know where, when, and how data was obtained and what methodologies were used to analyse it.
Data must also be objective. Yes, you’re going to use data to tell your story, but you’re going to use it so it supports your story as it stands. There’s no fact-twisting to suit your purposes.
Authenticity is born of accurate, transparent, and ethical use of data.
Crafting the Marketing Story
Storytelling in marketing uses the same principles as other marketing campaigns.
Identify pain points
What are the primary challenges? Got them? Now solve them and back up your strategy with authentic data.
To avoid muddying the waters, tackle one pain point at a time. Otherwise, it becomes difficult to maintain clarity. The last thing you want is a confused target audience. It’s the best way to lose friends and alienate people.
It’s about the story
Data is important, but so is the narrative that shows government bodies how data can be used to overcome their challenges.
Use visuals
There’s a caveat, visuals should serve a purpose. They’re not there to look pretty (no stock images) or plonk in a chunk of dry data. They must support the narrative structure. Use graphs, by all means, but use them to enhance the story, not just because you can.
Be human
Being human engenders empathy. It’s difficult to relate to robotic writing, so don’t be afraid to inject some personality into your story. Also, be careful of losing your audience with complex language and jargon.
The trick to a cohesive narrative is simplicity.
5 Tips for Effective Storytelling
Optimise your storytelling with these five tips.
1) Know your audience
This is the basis for all marketing strategies and includes defining your buyer persona, understanding their pain points (on a deep level), and knowing where to find your audience, for example, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, etc.
2) Stick to a traditional story structure
There are three components to a good story.
Start – middle – end.
For example:
Life could be better – how it can be better – see, we told you it could be better.
Avoid obvious sales spiel at all costs.
3) Be consistent
Your core message must be consistent across all marketing channels, and while you can tweak your content to suit the purpose, context, and relevant social channels, your tone should also be consistent.
4) Be relatable
Again, you must understand your audience, where they’re coming from, their challenges, their available resources, and obstacles to overcoming challenges. Then, pay attention to how you tell your story. A patronising or condescending tone will put noses out of joint and cost you contracts.
Words have power. Use your words carefully.
5) Speak to your audience
As in actually speaking to them. Call them, visit them, chat in Zoom and talk to them about their challenges. Information straight from the horse’s mouth is far better than educated assumptions based on research alone.
You can contact existing buyers to ask them:
- How the product/service helped them
- Could they go back to life without the product/service?
- What was the deciding factor in choosing your product/service?
- How did they find out about you?
Using Storytelling to Build Relationships with Government Buyers
Storytelling in B2G marketing works. Here are some stats that show you how good stories can be used to deepen your connections to government buyers.
Good stories stick:
- Facts are 22 times more likely to be remembered if they are in stories.
- Stories help buyers remember 65% to 70% of data.
Earning trust
- 74% of customers believe brands should use storytelling marketing methods.
- 92% of customers want ads to feel like stories.
Converting leads
- Storytelling helps increase conversion rates by 30%.
- Stories increase the value of products by up to 2.7%.
- Stories in blogs result in approximately 300% more people scrolling to the bottom. The average time on pages is more than five times higher than the original post.
Elicit Emotions in B2G Marketing
An emotional connection is a hook that catches contracting authorities’ attention and keeps their attention throughout a compelling story. Here are some real-life examples of successful storytelling campaigns that connect on an emotional level.
1) Apple
Apple advertises its products by promoting user experiences, specifically how they can enrich our lives, for example, the joy of parents recording their children’s milestones using their iPhone’s camera.
2) Dove
Dove’s Real Beauty campaign is a great real-life example because real women (not actors) shared true stories of body positivity. Women related to others who, like them, didn’t conform to conventional beauty standards. It was inspiring and established Dove as a brand that understands women.
3) Old Spice
Old Spice didn’t tug at the heartstrings. Instead, it went for humour in its The Man Your Man Could Smell Like campaign. It was tongue-in-cheek and increased sales by 107% in just 24 hours.
4) Nike
Nike hit the jackpot with its Just Do It campaign. It continues to be successful, even decades after it was first launched. Its secret is absolute simplicity that gets straight to the point. Stop lollygagging, get up and do the intimidating thing you’ve been considering. It elicits a strong emotional response that is motivational and inspirational.
Winning B2G Marketing Strategies
B2G marketing is a specialised form of marketing that requires an expert touch. Telling stories is just one of the marketing tools available. The most important thing is that strategies are tailored to fit your needs as told in your unique voice.
Cadence Marketing specialises in the public sector and can help you craft a winning storytelling strategy that will put you exactly where you need to be: In front of contracting authorities and their decision-makers.
Contact us to book a free consultation to discuss your needs and give your business a running start in public sector procurement.
