Image by Guangyi Li
Consider the cloud.
It’s one of the most effective metaphors in tech marketing. Distributed infrastructure isn’t exactly intuitive, but “cloud” computing is. It doesn’t explain how the technology works, but it captures how it feels. Accessible. Airy. Always there.
That kind of clarity doesn’t happen by accident. It results from deliberate storytelling, like we do at 2A. In B2B marketing, especially cloud and infrastructure, the actual products are often dense. Think architecture diagrams and latency benchmarks. But we speak from experience when we say that behind the specs is often a simpler story of a team solving a problem that mattered.
For example, take our work with a major cloud provider. In a recent case study, a financial infrastructure firm re-engineered core systems, cutting total cost of ownership and reducing latency across its index engine. On paper, this is a story about compute instances and architecture. But in practice, it’s about innovation in a market where milliseconds matter.
How did we get there? Here’s our approach to working with technical and business stakeholders to create work that a broader B2B audience can follow.
Start with the problem, not just the product
Product messaging is a great place to start with a new project, but we prefer to go one step further.
Our process typically starts with a structured intake to establish the baseline, followed by conversations with the people closest to the work. Engineers bring the implementation details—the tradeoffs, constraints, and things that didn’t work the first time.
Sometimes the technical details can be a bit hard to grasp, but that’s to be expected. (We’re marketers, not developers!) We ask questions to encourage translation: What surprised you about the solution? What changed once this was live? Those answers tend to surface what actually matters to a broader business audience.
Decide what matters, skip the rest
Good technical storytelling isn’t simplification. What we’re trying to do is prioritize. What actually moves the story forward? What belongs in a diagram versus a headline? What’s critical for a developer audience versus what resonates with a CTO evaluating infrastructure investments?
A lot of technical content breaks down when it tries to say everything. Detailed architectures, full timelines, every feature and workload—all of it might be true, but not all of it will be useful in a marketing context.
Part of our job at 2A is shaping the narrative by being selective. When it works, the result earns engagement from both crowds, the technical experts and the business decision makers. Because the goal isn’t to make complex technology simple. It’s to make it clear.