4 Storytelling Models You Should Know for Business Development Content

At the 2019 LMASW Region Conference in Houston, legal marketers and business developers gathered to inspire one another as leaders at their respective professional services firms as well as to share ideas and learn.

One excellent afternoon breakout educated attendees about the four storytelling archetypes.

Entitled “The Secret Sauce – Developing Recipes for Powerful Storytelling That Will Enhance Your Content and Drive Differentiation, Brand Identity and New Business Opportunities,” the session was presented by Brian Dare, business development director at Dentons; Jennifer Dezso, vice president at Acritas US; and Marny Lifshen at Marny Lifshen Communications. Using the story arc of cooking using a recipe, the nationally renowned presenters provided tips for applying the archetypes in business development content aimed at bringing in new revenue.

An archetype in literature, as defined by Literary Devices, is a typical character, action or situation that seems to represent universal patterns of human nature. An archetype, also known as “universal symbol,” may be a character, a theme, a symbol, or even a setting.

According to the presenters, you must understand the four-story archetypes in order to determine which one to use:

• Emotional story – I want you to connect;
• Educational story – I want you to learn (very popular in legal content for teaching about the law and about the law firm);
• Influential story – I want you to buy (the legal marketers favorite), and;
• Celebratory story – I want you to be proud.

More tips for legal marketers:

• Sales and marketing professionals should stop to think about what they are cooking. In other words, “What story are you trying to tell?”
• It’s important to focus on one story archetype at a time.
• Using more than one archetype creates an overly long and lengthy work of content.
• Legal storytelling doesn’t need to be about exactly what an attorney does but rather how the work helped his or her client. The same would be true for any professional writing about his or her work.

The lessons provided by Brian, Jennifer and Marny can be applied to professional services and B2B marketers across every industry. Our Poston Content division includes many talented storytellers who can help make your stories stand out. Poston Communications is proud to tell our clients’ stories and to sponsor the LMA Southwest Region Conference, in large part because of the excellent educational components, such as this presentation, provided to our member clients and friends.

Dave Poston is the CEO of Poston Communications. He is a licensed attorney who has held numerous international in-house and agency positions for law and other professional services firms handling international responsibilities from offices in Atlanta, London, New York and San Francisco. Dave has developed media opportunities for his clients and employers in hundreds of important international media and trade publications. He can be reached at [email protected] or (404) 875-3400.