97FL (00:00)
Hi, welcome. In this podcast, we talk B2B marketing and what it takes to know your customer, innovate and profit. We're glad you made it. This is the campaign by 97th floor.

Pax (00:20)
Hello everyone. Happy Friday and welcome to The Campaign, a B2B marketing podcast about better knowing your audience, innovating beyond best practice and converting visitors into customers. The Campaign is a weekly conversation with B2B marketing leaders and it's designed to fit as much as possible into a 30 minute segment. You can catch the Campaign live on Fridays at 2 p.m. Eastern and you can find past episodes on YouTube, iTunes, Spotify and at 97thfloor.com.

This week we're gonna be diving into the world of B2B storytelling. NiceM floor, one of our ethos about great marketing and producing stellar campaigns is putting audience before message before channel. So many times in the digital marketing world especially we focus heavily on channel and optimizing for channel and making tweaks and pulling the right levers, pushing the right buttons. However, we found that that mindset produces smaller results.

Instead of going back to audience better understanding them, which dovetails nicely with our episode last week with Rick Alon in audience segmentation and then messaging is another key factor here in in producing game changing marketing. So that's where B2B storytelling comes into play. One of our sales reps pointed out wisely on social media before this podcast that whenever we do pitch when we're talking to a potential client.

We'll pull in all of the competitors and all of their ads and it's remarkable how often you can take those ads, remove the brands and you have no idea who they belong to and they all look the same. So storytelling is a huge factor that a lot of brands in the B2B space especially stand to gain from if they just invest a little bit more into that. So today on the show we've got a really great guest, Tara Ramroop. She's the Director of Content Marketing at Brace.

a leading customer engagement platform and co-founder of Moony Diaries, a blog, podcast, and live storytelling series about all the quirky stuff that happens on public transit in San Francisco. She firmly believes that the best story wins as a former newspaper journalist and uses it as a guiding principle for delivering B2B content that inspires, engages, and converts. She previously led content and social programs and initiatives at Zendesk, Gap, and Levi Strauss.

Tara Ramroop (02:27)
Thank you.

Pax (02:43)
So with that, welcome to the show, Tara.

Tara Ramroop (02:46)
Thanks, Pax. How are you? Thanks for having me.

Pax (02:51)
So great, nice to see you again. Yeah, I am really excited to have you on and I just want to say one thing out the gate. I love working with marketers who have worked in journalism. There's so many skill sets learned in that field. ⁓ huh. Yeah. So anyway, yeah, I'm so excited to hear your take on B2B storytelling. Maybe let's kick off and do let's start broad and I want to start.

Tara Ramroop (03:04)
Me too!

Thank you.

Pax (03:18)
Start broad and kind of high level and then I wanna get by the end of this super down on the weeds into practical actionable items people can take away. So starting broad, talk to us about like what storytelling is in the marketing space.

Tara Ramroop (03:35)
You know, basically, like it's a is a term that gets thrown around a lot. Like I think for good reason, like we all like stories. We all kind of like to hook ourselves to being a storyteller. And we all are in. And I think that that's that's definitely true. But from from a business point of view, I think that the storytelling matters because stories connect like people, people to people, businesses to businesses, businesses to humans in those businesses. And they also inspire.

I think is another like word like connect and inspire are the words that I associate with it. Stories inspire people to do cool or great or better things than what they're doing now basically and that can be you know your personal circumstance or it can be about B2B software. I have been doing this for B2B software for a while and I can assure you that there is an inspiring story to be told there.

Pax (04:26)
I love that. so let's talk a little bit about the benefits of storytelling within the B2B space. ⁓ I'd love to hear your perspective. There's, ⁓ as I was doing research for this and, ⁓ Emma, behind the scenes does a lot of research too. It is shocking to me how much actual research has been done in the B2B storytelling space. Like there are papers, research papers on this.

There was one titled the role of narrative transportation in the C-suite and B2B advertising by Layla Borders and Alleria Kemp. They say stories told about buyer-seller experiences is quote, in B2B advertisements were positively related to decision makers and it helps them to trust the supplier, it helps them to increase the ability to form personal connection with the supplier.

and it increases the tendency that they become an advocate for the supplier. And what I found fascinating is that most people think of storytelling as this fluffy thing, but, and it has a little impact on the B2B space, but this study showed that those effects, had, it was stronger for C-level decision makers than non-C-level decision makers. So as you go up the chain,

storytelling becomes even more important according to this research. So I'd love to know, like, what's your experience? What are the benefits of storytelling within the B2B space?

Tara Ramroop (05:55)
You know, I think it's just, it's not as obvious that it is a story. think like even people within B2B, the B2B space are like, well, I mean, unless you're in marketing, are a little bit unsure if story or storytelling is the right word to use there. But I think that it's the best way to describe what we also call the customer journey. Like the customer journey is a story, you know, and we, in B2B marketing, we talk about the customer journey all the time. And if that journey as for B2B brands is often starting,

you know, in these very high, high funnel places, like, you know, marketing spaces that were better known for consumer brands, like digital out of home, bus shelters, bus wraps, like even like Formula One, you know, if you've got you got all the cash, right? Like B2B, B2B companies are showing up in these spaces. And so that suggests to me that that this investment, and it's not a small investment in those higher funnel kind of brand spaces is

is the desire to engage people in a real life context. And I feel like if you're going to kind of make that investment, then you're kind of starting to, to really, you're opening a story and you're not just sort of hard selling into want to buy some software. It's like, let me, let me show you who we are. ⁓ you know, let me give you, give you a little bit of, of some insight into what we believe in, what we do.

and then encourage them to kind of take you through. And storytelling, think, is the way that you move people from the ad to the, or from the content syndicated piece, or to the blog, to the white paper, to the higher value actions further and further down until they eventually become a warmed up enough lead to have a prepared, interesting, relevant conversations, which conversation with a sales rep, because I think that that is also a disconnect is we hear from sales.

leaders all the time, like, we're getting tepid leads from marketing, all of these people ended up in my queue, they were definitely not ready to have a conversation. And so I think that storytelling is important there as well, because then you're, what that feedback, what that tells to me is that the story didn't make sense. Like the chapters were out of place, you know, if we think about it in terms of like, once upon a time kind of stories.

Pax (08:15)
So let's talk a little bit more about that. story, once upon a time kind of story, the typical framework is there's the hero, the hero's journey, there's the climax of that story, the outcome. How does a billboard or a bus wrap, where does that fit in that story? Because you can't tell an entire story, I assume, at least beginning to end on a bus wrap.

Or can you? Like, how do you think about that?

Tara Ramroop (08:44)
Right? It

depends how big the bus rap is. No, I'm just kidding. But I kind of think of those experiences as like the cover to a book or like blurb that you see when you're kind of shopping for something to read. Or maybe you weren't shopping for it at all. It's just an ad that you saw as you went about your life and then there was something about it. You the brand, the tagline, the copywriting, the voice.

Pax (08:49)
No, no, no.

Tara Ramroop (09:14)
that drew you in and you were like, I wonder what that is. And ideally, these are placed in places where the audience would most likely want to take that action. But I think that that's the purpose that that serves. Like that's the coverage of the story. If we're gonna pull this metaphor all the way through Pax. But yeah, that's kind of how I think about those activations as the kind of.

Kickstart to then where you know as a content marketing professional that's kind of where a lot of my work then like a lot of that gets kind of handed handed off to me And there's there's a lot of exciting engagement work that me and my team can do at that point to To like bring you further into the story and keep you reading essentially

Pax (09:59)
Hmm. Interesting. just practically speaking again, what, what do find to be the most effective in terms of getting someone to that next step? There's, ⁓ you know, is it intriguing them with something that they then go to Google and search more? Is it something as practical as a QR code? ⁓ or is it just about, you know, increasing brand awareness so that eventually they attach problem with brands and then find that, ⁓ through search or something like that.

Tara Ramroop (10:29)
say it's more of the last one. And the way I describe that is taking an audience focused approach rather than like content focused approach to the storytelling because companies always have something to say, right? But I think that it doesn't do service to the story that is connective or inspiring to lead with yourself, you know, where you're just like, approaching all marketing activations, whether they're

content oriented or not with the feeling that I have something to tell you and I'm just going to keep saying it to you until you buy something. And I think that that's like a mistake a lot of people make. And I think the solution to that is taking an audience focused approach where, and what I mean by that is like, can you demonstrate that you understand what keeps these people up at night? why, how are you suggesting that they partner with you so that they

can work better, live better, operate as a leader better. And so I think leading with that and answering that problem comes before any of the outputs. Another thing that I always say is that content can tend to be like you think about the output first, where you're just like, well, I need a blog post or I need a gated asset. I say it too, I still say it. But it's like the, what is the rest of that sentence? Like I need a gated asset too.

Ideally, the end of the sentence isn't because I need people to fill out a lead gen form. Like we do need them to do that. But then the like spirit of the gated asset is I need to demonstrate to these people who then gave me their information that I really understand their pain points. And these are the solutions that I am offering and would love to continue that conversation. Like approaching it that way, I think is part and parcel of

of storytelling and just really kind of making that emotional connection with customers and prospects.

Pax (12:28)
Yeah, I love that effectively demonstrating through the marketing that we really understand you and we know your problems so that we are interested in solving them.

Tara Ramroop (12:33)
Yeah, because marketing.

Yeah, marketing isn't effective if you don't do that. then I feel like a lot, we've all been there where you feel like you're sort of like running into a brick wall, just like, why aren't they, why aren't they getting it? Like, why are the leads tepid? Like, why, why isn't this happening? And like for us, right? You know, in some of these like later deal, later parts of the deal cycle. And I think, I think a lot of it has to do with, did the customer journey, IE did the storyline, did it, did it make sense? Like has.

What was the customer prospect kind of taken on the right journey and was the right content surfaced at the right time that encouraged, inspired them to go that next step with you? Or was it just like a grabbed them and like dragged them into the car and then drove all the way to the sales cycle and then everybody involved is just like, I don't know if I like this story.

Pax (13:35)
All right. All right. So I find that storytelling, especially, and let's maybe just focus on the B2B space. Storytelling often takes a backseat to optimizing tweaking for conversions in pursuit of growing the bottom line, which I think the pursuit of that goal is worthy, admirable. However, you know, at the end of the day, we're all people.

Tara Ramroop (13:51)
Yum.

Pax (14:03)
and we understand the world in stories, which is the power of the anecdote. And so investing in B2B storytelling is one of the biggest opportunities for B2B brands to grow, and it seems to be one of the most neglected opportunities for brands to grow. Why do you feel like a lot of B2B companies fall short when it comes to storytelling in their marketing?

Tara Ramroop (14:31)
You know, I think it's a lot of just legacy behavior, a lot of go with what you know, like the B2B space has always been like, ⁓ you know, we have a company blog, there's a CTA, there's a gated asset, you know, download the gated asset, end up in our sales funnel, let's have a conversation. And that works to a degree. Like I've been in places where that worked for a while. But I think kind of it's not.

necessarily a scalable approach to encouraging people to simmer in your story, say. So I think that really engaging people in that in-between space is generally a miss, where we have the top of funnel activities and we start the story and then we cut to the chase. And then there's that sort of like squishy middle where we could.

engage them more in our value proposition, in demonstrating that we understand what keeps them up at night. And so I think that spending more time in the middle, really, it's not necessarily the top, it's like that sort of top middle. Like how do you really flesh that out so that people don't feel like they got dragged into the car and driven to the end and then placed in front of a salesperson.

Pax (15:47)
You had mentioned, speaking to the, to those audiences and getting to know them better. ⁓ one thing that we have found it nice and floor we've been experimenting with over the past couple of years is, ⁓ building audiences and said, instead of based off of the normal things like demographics, their title, ⁓ I don't know, the company size, firm, or graphics, things like that. We've been trying to push more toward, ⁓ behavior and desires and.

Problems that they're facing and then segmenting audiences based off that I don't think that's necessarily a perfect solution either But we find that it is it helps us get closer to being able to speak to them in a way that compels them to action I'm wondering any tips or tricks you have or how do you think about how do you? Select and segment those audiences so that you can tell them a story that's gonna be more compelling to them

Tara Ramroop (16:22)
No.

think doing a lot of front end like audience, like cam sam, some analysis, for example, like really understanding because that's how you understand what those pain points are. And it's not really just the pain points. It's just like, who are these buyers? Because they're, know, B2B buyers, they're often a part of like a buyer group in an enterprise, depending on the size of the company. And they have different concerns. And so I think really doing that analysis at the front end of, who

What, is their role? What, do they collaborate with other people within, within their team and within the business and within the buyer group, I think is a big one. Because for example, like if you're creating a story, you know, a customer journey for a big retail enterprise client, and then there's like an IT person there, there's a marketing person there. There's probably like a finance or legal person there.

All of those people are representing the same company and like ultimately have the same goal, right? But then the analysis at the front end tells you like, well, you know, like somebody at a legal team in an enterprise retail company is kind of up against these kinds of challenges. And those are different from the person who sits on the marketing team and is evaluating it from a different lens. And so I think.

really, and this requires, you know, lot of kind of front end investment and collaboration, which can be the hardest part to telling a story, you know, at the at the at this level. But I think that it ends up paying dividends in the end if you have that front end alignment, because then you're all telling the same story with toward a common toward the same goal. But understanding that there are different people in that audience that you're

Pax (18:26)
Yeah.

Tara Ramroop (18:29)
that you're speaking to. They all showed up to the event, but they're different people with kind of different perspectives and want to get different things out of it is how I would think about it. So front end analysis and cross-functional partnership, you're going to need to lean on more than just your team and probably then just your org in order to make this happen.

Pax (18:49)
Let's talk about that. Let's get into kind of brass tacks because I think a lot of people get frustrated in the marketing world. Just everyone talking high level about what is ideal and what is best practice and what we should and should it do. But then we'll talk about like, what do I actually do? So like, how, so how do we actually do this now? Like, okay, we're bought off on this. What, like, what's my step one? If I feel like I need to revamp my storytelling.

Tara Ramroop (18:58)
Stories!

You know, and it's as a storyteller at heart, it pains me to use the word operationalize, but I think like everybody has to operationalize their storytelling when you're doing it. Like you just have to have storytelling operations. And so that involves standing up processes around content creation and campaign creation, even if you have to do it in parallel with creating stuff and going to market with it. And I think that this is where a lot of us get stuck is that

We don't have time to stand up the processes and we have to feed the beast like we have to go into market with something and that's fine. Like crawl, walk, run. You'll get to a place where you'll have your process and it like runs like clockwork and it enables you to create in the most efficient way possible and then you can tweak that process as you go. Not all of us are there all of the time. I would argue that most of us aren't there right now, but

the spirit of standing up those processes, I think is important. Like I strongly believe in a centralized content team to ensure that a dedicated function is looking after, you know, just from the content perspective on the story, like the content is the story output. I think that that that helps a lot in in being the people who own that process. Like I never thought in a million years, I would say I love owning that process. But I actually I actually do. I think that that's an important

component of the storytelling success. And another thing that I like to do and I encourage people to do is to advocate for shared tools and processes for planning. This is a rough one. Like it can be really hard to get everyone under the tent and say like, we're all using, you know, this tool and these sheets and we're doing it in the same way and we're doing it at this time and we'll all do it together so that.

the story that we tell externally, the campaign is going to make sense. And so I think just really, even if it doesn't come true right away, and this is another kind of difficult cross functional thing to turn around, it's approaching it in that spirit. think even if you don't get all of the shared tools and templates and processes lined up, approaching it with that spirit of

We all have to tell the same story in the same way and getting like speaking, going again back to that front front end alignment. That's how you get front end alignment because then otherwise it's just the we've all been there, right? The mess of Google spreadsheets and this person's spreadsheet has different columns in that person's spreadsheet. Then that team wasn't read in and they're not in a sauna, but we are. ⁓ but

Yeah, so to brass tacks, also just kind of before I start talking about my favorite tools and the way that I like to organize, it doesn't matter what you use, you can use scratch paper and crayon. Like it really doesn't matter as long as everyone agrees that that's the thing that you're going to use. But it's a tech company, we should not be using scratch paper and crayon. That is not a scalable solution. But I'm a big fan of Asana for, for because I think it could just do

Pax (22:10)
Thanks.

Tara Ramroop (22:25)
a lot to operationalize the storytelling and the content outputs to support that story. You know, we use it, I have used it, use it now for intake, you know, via a form for like triage, for our editorial calendar, for collaboration with our other marketing teammates, and then honestly, for keeping myself on track, like it's very clear when something is stuck and I admittedly need that kind of reminder. So the editorial calendar in Asana is basically

the story in operational format. Like if you open it and you look at it and you're like, web post, right. And then there's like a report coming out about the trends. And then I feel like when I can see it in that view, it tells me what the story is just from that cut of the outputs. So plus one to Asana. Google Suite, I'm a big Google Suite person. I've been in environments where

Docs and sheets and drives was the norm. But I would also like to highlight the importance of a dam, like a digital asset management system, like a binder, where I've seen a lot of instances where Google Drive has to operate like a dam, and it can just be really difficult to enable people with.

You know, your docs and your ideas and to collaborate like it becomes more of a like storehouse than a place that's kind of intuitive to like grab and take what you need. So a little, a little bit of, of a, ⁓ a plug for that. And also just an internal enablement and amplification tool. Like an intranet, a confluence, a high spot because internal enablement on the story, I think is just another.

Pax (24:01)
Okay.

Tara Ramroop (24:13)
another way to just make sure everybody is saying the same thing in the same way. And of course, metrics, you know, I dig into GA4, you know, and, and try not to lose my mind, but I dig into GA4 and, and Tableau, which I'm also fairly new to, because I think that those pulse points tell you, tell you what's happening. Like, is your story landing? Like, is it these outputs? Is it the story? Is the, the narrative actually not make sense? And I think

Finding the time to pause and ask those questions with cross-functional teammates is the way that you, your story operation serves the business. Cause then it's not just the sort of floaty thing of like, people like stories. Let's just call it a story. Like this is how I think all teams, know, content team, but not limited to content team from my perspective is, are held accountable for the storytelling. And it sounds a little bit like,

gnarly to say to be held accountable for the storytelling when I opened with, you know, connection and inspiration. But it like you have to you have to hold both of these at the same time.

Pax (25:23)
I love that. And I want to dive into that actually. So we're, we're going from this high level touchy feely storytelling. want to connect with you. And then we need to get at some point, we need to get to bottom line and conversions. And right now it's difficult for a lot of marketers, you know, we're talking to lots of different people about it's difficult to get buy-in and every action needs to be very closely tied to ROI. And I'm sure there's a lot of marketers listening right now that are thinking.

This sounds great, I wanna do this. No way am I gonna get buy-in enough to spend months learning about this audience, to get this software, to enable this, to build a whole thing that may take six months, 12 months to start showing value. What would you say to that person? How would you build that in those circumstances?

Tara Ramroop (26:13)
You I think just getting scrappy as, like I said, I'd be very surprised if people are enabled at that level with budget, with resources, with buy-in, you know.

But I think really just taking stock of what is moving the needle and doing more of it.

Because you can do that. You can look in GA4, you could look in Tableau and

Tara Ramroop (26:36)
you can see how many people downloaded a report or you can see kind of how well like your top what what you believe your top five assets were for Legion say and then you could just sort of use that as a small sample size and then just say, you know what?

I don't have the 360 view yet, but based on the slice, I think that this is the kind of formula for gated assets. And then going to GA and looking at blog performance, how are people consuming this content? Did they click on it in an email? Did they click on it from, was it direct traffic? Was it organic? And then just really kind of even at the highest level starting to diagnose, how did people enter your ecosystem?

And again, it's going to be difficult to get that 360 view, but a pastiche of the view is, I think, directionally enough to kind of get into that habit of making more data-informed decisions. So it's not just like throwing storytelling spaghetti at the wall. Like you're actually kind of identifying like, okay, well, we built out this journey, this story. Let's see if it makes sense. Does it float?

Pax (27:58)
That's Tara.

okay. Tara's internet looks like it got cut out. That's okay. We're going to keep going. ⁓ I did actually want to talk about, she's back. Hey, you're back. Awesome.

Tara Ramroop (28:14)
Here I am. Sorry. The internet

does this thing when I'm like, I have to talk and have something intelligent to say. it's just like, ⁓ you know what? It's Friday, though. Apologies.

Pax (28:30)
You're right on the

great point about getting buy off and getting scrappy.

Tara Ramroop (28:39)
Yeah,

Pax (28:41)
I love that. Something I've talked a lot about with my marketers here at Nice and Floor is closing that feedback loop. It's impossible to grow and get better if you don't have a solid and reliable feedback loop, especially one that's frequent. And so as an agency, we're often on the outside often when it comes to post sale or post lead and sale and all that. so

I'm always pushing my team to get as much data post-lead as possible so we can really understand what's happening with these leads, is the messaging heading home, like closing that feedback loop. And so I love that. so to wrap up here, I wanna end with some of my takeaways and see if there's any final thoughts from you, Tara. So some takeaways that I've got on our end here is number one, operationalize your storytelling.

two very different words that often never go together, but they both need each other to be successful. And number two, build as you go. Don't wait. Yeah. Operationalized story, I love it. Number two, build as you go. Don't wait to get all the investment. You're not going to get the perfect setup, but just you need to go and build that story as you go. And oftentimes in my experiences, you learn more about that story as you build.

Tara Ramroop (29:42)
That'll be my brand now, is that Noxie Moron?

YouTube.

Pax (30:03)
And then finally, utilize your analytics, analyze that story as you go, get the data in to create that strong feedback loop as you're kind of building out your scrappy storytelling plan. Any other final thoughts on B2B storytelling that you think the audience needs to know, Tara?

Tara Ramroop (30:21)
Just listen carefully, make connections between everything you hear in meetings, things that you see on social. And we're all actively telling the company story, whether we want to or not. And ultimately, we all want to make sure that we all like what we hear internally, which is the best way to identify whether people outside of the tent will care and be inspired to connect with us.

Pax (30:47)
I love that. Listen carefully, make connections, listen to what you hear internally, and use all of that information to build that story. That's awesome. Tara, thank you so much for joining us today. What would you like to send people to? How can they find you? What would you like to send them to?

Tara Ramroop (31:07)
You know, am, MuniDiaries.com is my pet project that I feel like was the center of my storytelling experience after my experience as a journalist. It is still alive and it has been going strong for going on 17 years actually. And so I think if anybody kind of wants to.

To understand my philosophy around storytelling, I would love for people to just kind of check out some weird stories about stuff that happens on the bus. Nice stuff too, people meet their spouses and everything, but that would be my little plug and probably the best way to find me. And it's probably the thing that shows up when you Google me. So see you there.

Pax (31:50)
Okay,

all right. Okay, sounds great. We'll get we'll get a link in our show notes to thank you everybody for joining today. Tune in for next week. Same time same day on Friday. Until then take care. Have a great weekend.

Tara Ramroop (31:56)
Nice.

Thanks, Tux.

97FL (32:07)
Thanks for listening. The campaign is produced by 97th Floor, a 20-year-old marketing agency that helps companies like McKinsey, Pluralsight, and Checkpoint know their customers, execute innovative campaigns, and drive profitable growth. If you have an allocated growth budget and product market fit, we'd love to do research and build a proposal for you. Visit us at 97thFloor.com. And if you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe. See you next time.