Drop the features, focus on the impact
After spending many months developing and refining a software product, your focus is naturally going to be on the cool and innovative features that your product has. However, the end-customer doesn’t find this appealing or convincing. Customers are often not the experts.
They rely on you to have the expertise – it’s what they pay for. So they don’t care so much about ‘specs’ as you might imagine. At least not at the beginning. What the customer needs to know to make a buying decision is what your product does, and how it solves their problems.
Once they’re already convinced, you can make the technical details available (if they want to dive deeper). However, you should never rely on these to do the job of selling for you – they are only there to reassure the customer after they have already made the buying decision.
To get the customer to that point – to decide to buy – they need to understand the real world impact, and that is an area where digital storytelling excels. With a versatile digital storytelling software solution, it is much easier to hone this message and target it to specific groups.
It’s even possible to use the digital storytelling software to re-use the same content in different ways and formats. But you still need to create stories that reach the customer’s heart.
Think about your customer. Really think about them. Who are they? What are their struggles and challenges? What is the impact of your software product?
Make your digital story shine with digital storytelling software
Your digital stories should always be based on answering these kinds of questions. You may notice that there’s no single answer to these questions because your software has applications across multiple, diverse industries.
This is when it becomes prudent to segment your audiences, so you can target your messaging more effectively. You can even aggregate these distinct stories, to create a ‘montage’ of different ways your software has impacted real life situations in the running of those businesses.
Using the Hyro digital storytelling software, you can create multiple versions of stories and combine them in distinct ways.
Leverage immersive experience based selling to communicate value
You should consider how to tackle the intangible aspect of your product, and try to make it less intangible with experience-based selling. Taking this approach as a priority will help you to focus your digital stories on how your software can have a real impact.
The most powerful way to persuade customers is to use an immersive experience. This can be deployed as an immersive experience room, or conducted using a virtual studio. And it can provide an immersive experience without devoting so much budget or space to a dedicated immersive experience room.
The value of these solutions is that they can transport your customer into a world that you create. This gives you the ability to generate a controlled environment where your brand, your vision and your solution can truly come to life. When your customer can actually experience your software as a tool that makes their life easier, the value is much clearer. This means the customer can experience this value for themselves.
How to target your corporate storytelling
Software has a lot to prove up-front, and no easy way to demonstrate it. In this way it’s like trying to sell magic beans. You can’t always rely on the customer trusting that your magic beans will work, based solely on the promise of ‘plant them and see’.
This is a major reason why the ‘freemium’ software sales model is so prolific. In this case the customer doesn’t need to pay for the beans to plant them, and they can start to experience the value before upgrading to a paid version. However, there are limitations to this – specifically in the sectors where freemium models just don’t work. For enterprise-grade software, you need to show the value another way.
Demonstrate value with digital storytelling and immersive demos
For selling enterprise-grade software, you need to be able to use corporate storytelling effectively. Moreover, you need to communicate value to different levels within your corporate customer. Keep in mind, B2B buyer journeys are complex, and often involve multiple rounds of meetings and questions from different levels.
Each level has a distinct way of thinking, too. Your corporate storytelling will be most successful when you take a targeted approach that addresses the needs of each level of customer.
- For the C-suite, the priorities will be strategic so you need to communicate strategic values like sustainability, cost-efficiency, or digital advancement.
- For the departmental level, customers will need to experience the value in terms of departmental targets. This is often the richest area for developing digital stories, and where versatile digital storytelling software can be most impactful. Departmental heads will have a wide range of priorities, from safety, to operational efficiencies. So your stories need to show the impacts in those areas. User testimonials can be a valuable tool here.
- The last level to target is the end-user of the software themselves. These can also be quite personal impact driven, but there can be more room to include facts about performance, UX and technical specifications – because the end-user will find these more applicable. Only do this if your core story is strong, however – do not rely on technical specifications to ‘sell’. Demos (or demonstrations) are particularly effective for this audience segment, because they enable you to interact with the end-user.
By taking note of the reactions, questions, and feedback from these sessions, you can refine your corporate storytelling and brand experience even further. Not only will the customer get to experience the software in a test-run, they are also exposed to your on-point digital storytelling that will show them the real-world value.
This kind of extended experience is a way to guide their perceptions, so they can link your software product with problems in their own world – and see how they are solved. Once you have demonstrated this, you’ll be much closer to sealing a deal.
Digital Storytelling Software FAQs
How can I target my digital storytelling more accurately?
There are two sides to this. On one side, you need to produce stories that reach the right audiences. On the other side, you need a way to deploy those stories at the right time, to the right audiences. That’s where digital storytelling software comes in.
Do I need special training to use digital storytelling software?
There’s no qualification necessary. Anyone can use the Hyro digital storytelling software, with just a few simple training sessions. It’s made to be as intuitive as possible.
Can Immersive Experiences be used to demonstrate other products or services?
Yes. The best thing about an immersive experience is the way it can transport your audience to anywhere you choose. This means you can demonstrate anything or show any digital story you want. You can be sure the audience will follow you every step of the way.
What is Corporate Storytelling?
Corporate Storytelling is what we call storytelling when it’s used for delivering business value in a corporate setting. It is often found in the form of brand stories, but it can also be about something more specific, like a single product, service, or a happy customer.
What’s the best Digital Storytelling Software?
If you want a smooth UX and amazing results, use Hyro. It’s the best digital storytelling software for flexibility and compatibility. It can work with literally any AV setup, and deploy targeted, audience-specific digital stories.
