Microsoft’s Miri Rodriguez on How B2B Marketers Are Embracing Empathy For Better Customer Storytelling #B2BMX

How do B2B marketers who fully embrace empathy build stronger relationships?

Miri Rodriguez, storyteller and internship program head at Microsoft, recently presented the opening keynote at the 2021 B2B Marketing Exchange Experience virtual conference, and asked this important question.

Although this pandemic year at #B2BMX won’t see B2B marketers gathered in the event’s usual sunny Scottsdale, Arizona location, plenty of new attendee opportunities were on tap virtually.

Refresh, renew, remix has been the conference’s theme this year, and to help ease the lack of physical networking #B2BMX included a Spotify music playlist, live music performances, and even various charitable elements.

Miri began by looking back at the history of empathy in B2B marketing, to when empathy was new to the B2B space, especially the practice of considering it a leading component of the digital experience.

Storytelling Uses Empathy to Move Past Numbers and Facts

Storytelling is not just the telling of stories, Miri explained, it’s also a design approach to stories that work on the human-to-human level of business marketing.

Telling stories in such compelling and connected ways that your messages are then also easily and willingly transmitted to your audience’s customers is a goal of B2B marketing that infuses genuine empathy, Miri said, and then began exploring empathy’s important role in brand storytelling.

Miri explained how in her role at Microsoft she began an examination of empathy by looking at what storytelling is not, asking industry brand professionals at many different levels for their insight.

Storytelling isn’t so much information, data, facts, or numbers, but the emotional transfer of that information using memorable characters, plots, and conclusions which all foster empathy, she noted.

The emotional transaction is the glue that binds customers to a brand’s message, making them feel connected at the most human level, Miri explained, and mentioned LinkedIn’s January 2020 report which found that empathy was the platform’s top 2019 theme — one that offers strength to both brands and customers.

“Brands want to transact with people who are showing high levels of empathy,” Miri noted.

[bctt tweet=”“Brands want to transact with people who are showing high levels of empathy.” — Miri Rodriguez @MiriRod #B2BMX” username=”toprank”]

Since the pandemic began, empathy has only increased in its importance for B2B brands, and increasingly employees want to work for brands that include high levels of empathy, she noted.

How can you begin leading with empathy?

Miri mentioned the oft-used Bill Gates “content is king” adage as a jumping off point for all that exists beyond content for today’s B2B marketers seeking to infuse greater empathy in their brand storytelling efforts.

One key is finding a universal truth, especially when it’s an actionable emotion that your brand lives by, and Miri suggested that these types of truths often derive from a brand’s mission statement.