It was the last Friday of the month—the kind where you’re up late into the night in front of your MacBook, coffee in hand, ready to review the month’s business metrics. Except this time, there wasn’t much to review. VEC Studio had just two inbound sales calls the whole month. Just two. 

I could’ve just closed my laptop and called it a night, but curiosity got the better of me. What drove those few inbound calls? I pulled up the data, traced the paths prospects took before booking calls the entire quarter, and that’s when... 

I saw a striking pattern. 

All 11 inbound sales calls we had in Q1 2022 had one thing in common: Prospects who booked those calls all read the same sets of content pieces.  

Specifically, prospects with ‘SaaS Founder’ and ‘Head of Marketing/CMO’ in their titles read the same 2–3 articles before booking, respectively. At first, this reminded me of the Pareto Principle. I thought, “20% of our content driving  80% of biz outcomes?” But reflecting deeper validated how we’d begun creating ‘great’ B2B content in 2021. 

How Do You Create ‘Great’ B2B Content? 

I’ve been on the buyer side plenty of times too. Signed up for many B2B SaaS products, booked demos, and bought software just by reading content. But let’s be real—most B2B content? 

• It’s forgettable.  
• Too generic.  
• Too fluffy.  

Too obviously written for an audience rather than speaking to the needs of specific decision-makers. But the content that actually moves me?  

It’s the kind that makes me pause mid-scroll and think, “Damn, this SaaS startup truly gets me.” The kind that doesn’t just inform—it resonates deeply. It speaks to the exact problem I’m trying to solve. The problem that made me open the content. And whenever that happens? I don’t just read. 

I recall the brand behind the content and how its product can uniquely solve my problem. I take action. I start a free trial. I book a sales call.  

Reflecting on this is when it clicked. 

Creating great B2B content required more than personas or jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) theories. It needed a more precise framework. One that guided using stories to create what connected deeply and resonated with target buyers.  

We had been refining that at VEC Studio. So that Friday night, staring at those numbers, I realized our framework wasn’t just theory anymore.  

It was working.  

The framework?

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Introducing ICP StoryScripts

Back in 2021, we used buyer personas or JTBD to create content at VEC Studio. They worked—sort of. Traffic went up, but those visitors? Just skimming. Not booking calls. Not converting. Whenever I looked at ours or clients’ growing traffic numbers in 2021, one question nagged at me: How can we turn these site visitors into pipeline directly from the pieces we created?

That is what made the pattern I saw that faithful Friday I reviewed VEC Studio’s month-end metrics in Q1 2022 a lightbulb moment. 

Let me explain. 

I coined Product-Led Storytelling mid-2020, as you can see in the first piece I wrote about it here:

About a year later, I’d consumed every book on product storytelling execution I could lay my hands on. From these readings, I had a hypothesis. What if I merged buyer personas and the JTBD theory, then modeled it after Donald Miller’s BrandScript framework that I found in his amazing StoryBrand book? Could it guide us in using stories to craft B2B content that is so resonant, it connects deeply with target buyers and nudges them to convert? 

Miller’s framework has seven steps: 

Examining this led me to two thoughts:

1. Isn’t this what all B2B decision-makers crave when they invest 5–15+ minutes reading content marketing pieces?
2. Don’t we all crave content crafted with resonant stories that show (not just tell) how to solve problems and call us to action, so we can avoid failure and transform our lives? 

We all do.  

But Miller’s BrandScript is for overarching brand messaging. It doesn’t cater to creating individual content marketing pieces with storytelling. So for my purpose, I summarized it into these: 

• A character (say, your ICP) has a pain point, 
• They meet a guide (your content piece) with information addressing that pain point, 
• The guide (your content) uses resonant storytelling to connect deeply, hold their attention, and compel readership while leading them to action,
• The guide (your content piece) shows (not just tells) them how they could transform their lives if they act (with your product): 

This made sense, so I acted at once.

I merged what we were already using (buyer personas and JTBD), slightly modeling it against Donald’s concept. 

And the result? 

ICP StoryScripts: 

Paired with our StoryBriefs & Outlines framework, ICP StoryScripts guided us in using stories to craft more resonant B2B content pieces that didn’t just drive traffic, but began to convert.

Since then, the results we’ve gotten for ourselves—like the pattern I spotted that Friday night—and our clients speak for themselves: 

Read HoneyCart’s success story. 

What Makes ICP StoryScripts So Potent?

I’ll start with buyer personas. 

Done well, personas give you a snapshot of your ideal customers—their demographics, attitudes, and personalities. But they fall short in telling you the specific jobs target buyers want to get done. 

Take King Charles and Ozzy Osbourne: 

As shown, King Charles and Ozzy Osbourne might share the same demographic details—status, age, location, etc. But the jobs they want to get done to achieve their desires and goals? Worlds apart. 

This is why relying on demographics (i.e., buyer personas) for crafting B2B content with stories misses the mark. It won’t be compelling.

Enter the jobs-to-be-done theory. 

Instead of who prospects are, JTBD zeros in on what they want to do—the problems they need to solve and the outcomes they crave. Sounds perfect, right? But, again, here’s the twist. 

If you focus solely on what your prospects want to do without first connecting to who they are (i.e., their person), you risk losing their attention altogether because you won’t resonate. 

To illustrate, let’s stick with our example. 

Both King Charles and Ozzy Osbourne might want to take a private jet to Switzerland. JTBD tells us they have the same “job” of traveling. But who exactly is making the trip and why are they traveling? Totally different. 

King Charles is likely heading to Davos for the WEF Summit, while Ozzy is flying in for a rock concert. Same job, different people, different motivations—and if your content doesn’t first tap into these, the story used to craft it falls flat.

That’s why Page Laubheimer, a Senior UX Specialist at the Global Consultancy, NN Group, advised against ditching personas:

Paul’s take touts what makes ICP StoryScripts so potent. For when designing it, I didn’t ditch one approach for the other. Instead, I fused both buyer personas and JTBD to yield scripts for crafting B2B content with stories that: 

• Resonate with WHO your ideal buyers are—so you’ll earn and hold their attention,
• Address WHAT jobs they want to do that made them to read your content, and
• Make engaged readers see WHY they should act (ideally, with your product). 

Again, as illustrated: 

How to Create ICP StoryScripts

Ultimately, per the above illustration, you create excellent, results-yielding ICP StoryScripts by: 

• Identifying the WHO: Who exactly are your ideal customer personas (ICPs)–their demographics, titles, beliefs, etc,? 
• Understanding the WHAT: What pain points and struggles stop each of your ICPs from doing their jobs or achieving their goals? 
• Visualizing the WHY: Can you visualize the desired outcomes and life transformations that’ll compel each target ICP to read your marketing piece and buy your product?

Think of it this way. Every element has an atom and every atom has a nucleus. Likewise, ICP StoryScripts are built with factual insights gleaned from your best customers—that is, the nucleus of each customer segment. 

Specifically, you want to strategically choose your best customers first. Then, drill deeper to identify narratives, contexts, and words to use in your marketing pieces so that it resonates with more customers like them. 

As Peep Laja recommends: 

Based on these, the steps to creating solid ICP StoryScripts documents are as follows: 

1. Split your customer base into segments with similar or overlapping titles or job functions,
2. Examine, research, and observe patterns of the customers in each segment, 
3. Identify and outline 5–10 of your best customers in each segment, 
4. Research and interview your identified 5–10 best customers for in-depth insights,
5. Build your ICP StoryScripts Doc with insights gleaned from steps 1–4, particularly step 4. 

A lot goes into each step. 

And you can find a step-by-step walkthrough of each step in my first online course. But for those who’ll only read this article, the goal is having story-worthy scripts grouped under each ICPs:’ 

• Beliefs, 
• Internal pains, 
• External struggles, & 
• Desired transformation. 

Below is a working sample:

Creating and using ICP StoryScripts has been the difference between writing B2B content that only drove traffic and using stories to craft resonant pieces that actually moved the business needle. 

So much so that immediately after we started using them to craft content for clients in 2022, we began getting raving testimonials like these: 

Using ICP StoryScripts to Craft Content

Casts, scripts, and plots shape the stories in movies. ICP StoryScripts, when paired with StoryBriefs & Outlines, essentially models that for crafting B2B SaaS content with resonant stories. 

As in movies, think of ICP StoryScripts as your casting director and scriptwriting guide. They help you define who you’re writing for and the script (what you’ll anchor a content piece’s storytelling on). StoryBriefs & Outlines, on the other hand, handles the plot—strategic alignment to business goals, target keyword and relevant queries to be addressed, and the content outline. 

Per this illustration: 

As illustrated, using ICP StoryScripts to write compelling content pieces starts and ends with StoryBriefs & Outlines. Specifically, it falls into the 2nd—out of the four—section of StoryBriefs and Outlines called Target Reader Resonance. 

The first StoryBriefs & Outlines’ step guides you in aligning a piece to be created with a business goal, target keyword, topic cluster it falls into, why the piece even needs to be created, and its intended CTA. The second step, Target Reader Resonance, is where you leverage insights assembled in your ICP StoryScripts document to outline: 

• Who exactly you’re writing for
• The journey stage they’ll likely be in
• Why they’ll even read the piece, and
• The beliefs, internal pains, external struggles, or desired transformations to anchor the piece’s storytelling on. 

Below is a sample: 

Another humble—but honest—brag.

When we started using ICP StoryScripts and StoryBriefs & Outlines to craft B2B content, we began seeing movements in pipeline metrics influenced directly from prospects who read our content pieces. For instance, remember the pattern I saw that fateful Friday night? 

It wasn’t just us. Our clients witnessed the same, too. That explains why they began requesting that I teach them how we research and craft content. 

Case in point, Jamie:

Learn to Create—and Use—ICP StoryScripts

At first, I brushed it aside until other VEC Studio clients requested the same. As Jamie did above, they wanted me to teach how we use stories to craft the business-driving B2B content we were delivering to them, using our 9-step Product-Led Storytelling approach:

Over time, it wasn’t only our existing clients. 

Marketing Leaders at B2B SaaS companies I didn’t even know existed also reached out to me on LinkedIn requesting the same. 

Here’s one of such: 

From the request above, I ended up hosting a webinar session to train RD Station’s content teams on executing B2B content marketing with Product-Led Storytelling. 

More of such requests motivated me to create my first online course. Taking cues from the StoryBrand concept, this hands-on video course walks you through how to model how movies use casts, scripts, and plots to tell compelling stories. Specifically, you’ll learn how to create and use ICP StoryScripts step-by-step. This, as mentioned, replaces the casts and scripts in movies. 

But that’s not all. 

Also, you’ll learn via live walkthroughs how to pair them with strategically-built StoryBriefs & Outlines. Think of this like the plots needed to align with business goals while using resonant stories to craft B2B content that is compelling and are more likely to convert. 

Students who have taken the course have had nothing but praise. Particularly, for how it helped them think and execute content pieces with the right kind of storytelling for B2B audiences. 

But don’t just take it from me: 

Get lifetime access to the course here.