Too often, firms fall into a “fire, ready, aim” trap—moving quickly, prioritizing visible activity and the appearance of productivity without building a strategic foundation that actually drives performance. Leadership teams and stakeholders may feel energized by a new visual identity or a bold messaging campaign. But if those efforts aren’t grounded in a clear understanding of what their audiences actually value, the ROI will fall short.

The good news? Strategic marketing doesn’t have to be slow and rigid. The highest-performing professional services firms are learning how to move with both speed and precision. They coordinate research, technology, and creative execution to create momentum without sacrificing focus.
Here are seven ways professional services firms can balance speed and marketing performance more effectively.

1. Use Existing Benchmarking Data to Accelerate Insights

You don’t have to wait until your custom research is finished to begin generating impact. Some of the fastest-moving firms start with high-quality secondary and benchmarking data to uncover actionable intelligence immediately.

Using third-party research can give you reasonably accurate insights into buyer behavior, industry trends, positioning gaps, and competitive opportunities long before your custom research project is complete. This allows you to begin refining your strategy and messaging as you gather deeper, more perfectly tuned intelligence. The key is recognizing that research is not a one-time event—it’s an ongoing exercise.

2. Think “Strategy,” not “Activity”

In professional services marketing, there’s often intense pressure to “do something: launch the campaign, redesign the website, post more content, increase visibility—often on a tight budget and with limited team support. Without strategic alignment, speed just creates waste.

The most successful firms take time to clarify their positioning, messaging, audience priorities, and go-to-market focus before executing. Develop a coherent strategy and focus before launching your campaign. That will reduce rework and give the marketing and business development teams time to coordinate their plan of attack.

3. Translate Expertise into Language Buyers Understand

Professional services firms often assume expertise speaks for itself. But deep technical knowledge won’t drive growth if your audiences can’t understand you.

The firms gaining traction today are the ones that can translate complex ideas into clear, engaging, easy-to-understand language. When they write and speak, they give their audience a peek at their expertise and what it might be like to work with them. They focus on real-world problems and practical outcomes that buyers can immediately connect with.

For example, a CEO for a technical consulting firm, worked with a dedicated writer to explain the company’s expertise in finite element analysis by explaining how refrigerators work. While the approach may seem simplistic to an expert in his field, it resonated with decision-makers at Fortune 50 firms—and was a key factor in landing a handful of lucrative contracts.

That’s a powerful lesson for professional services marketers. Buyers often disregard industry jargon. The most important target audiences are typically not the peers of a subject matter expert. Firms that explain complex ideas in accessible ways often outperform competitors with equally strong expertise, but less effective communication.

4. Build Adaptive, Non-Linear Marketing Workflows

Many organizations still approach marketing strategy as a rigid sequence of steps. But modern growth strategies are increasingly iterative, and they take advantage of systems that allow them to test, refine, optimize, and scale continuously.

By using data early in the process to understand your audience, you can launch marketing initiatives that are more focused and relevant.

The result is a more responsive marketing engine that can integrate online and offline marketing activities and connect them to business performance.

5. Use Advanced Tools to Understand Audiences Faster

Today’s firms have access to more market intelligence than ever before—but extracting meaningful insights still requires the right tools and expertise.

Advanced research platforms, AI-assisted analysis, digital scraping technologies, and licensed data resources can help firms uncover audience behaviors, market conversations, and buying patterns at remarkable speed. The challenge is not getting access to information, it’s making sense of it all.

The most successful professional services firms are combining advanced tools with the expert insight to separate useful signals from the noise. That includes understanding how AI-generated summaries, search behavior, and secondary research influence how buyers evaluate service providers long before they ever contact a firm directly.

6. Adopt a Growth-Oriented Mindset

Historically, professional services firms have operated with conservative growth models and limited marketing budgets. Driven in part by private equity investment, this mindset is changing. Firms that operate this way are more focused on measurable outcomes, operational efficiency, and speed-to-performance.

This doesn’t mean firms should abandon thoughtful strategy in favor of short-term tactics. But it does mean that marketing and business development efforts must demonstrate quantifiable impact. It means acknowledging the difference between subject matter expertise and business expertise and leveraging the strengths of both.

The firms best positioned for this new environment are those that adapt to these changing expectations, embracing the need for more sophisticated tools, a clear strategy, and operational agility.

7. Create Early Wins That Build Internal Momentum

Not every leadership team will embrace a research-driven or systematic marketing approach right off the bat. Skepticism is common, especially when organizations are under pressure to grow quickly.
One of the most effective ways to build buy-in is to set up small pilot initiatives that generate visible early wins.

A tangible success story—a measurable improvement in visibility, lead quality, engagement, or business development outcomes—can quickly shift leadership’s perceptions. Former skeptics become strong advocates. Small strategic wins can create the organizational confidence to propel broader transformation initiatives.

The Bottom Line: Strategic Marketing Doesn’t Have to Be Slow

Professional services firms no longer have to choose between speed and strategy. The most effective organizations are learning how to combine thoughtful positioning, audience intelligence, adaptive execution, and performance measurement into a faster, smarter marketing and business development model.

While it’s possible to build this expertise in-house, firms don’t have to go it alone. Many organizations hire outside experts and agencies to provide the proven methodologies, advanced tools, and objective guidance they need to thrive—especially with the arrival of LLMs, agentic AI and the rapid, continual changes that come with these technologies. That external perspective can help firms avoid costly missteps, accelerate learning curves, and execute more confidently in rapidly changing markets. Finding a resource that knows your industry, too, is important, as they will already have a solid understanding of your marketplace.

What’s your firm’s growth strategy?

The post 7 Ways to Balance Speed and Performance in Professional Services Marketing appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

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But there is a natural force that is always working against this approach: the billable hour.

Professionals are trained then hired to solve specific business problems. They cultivate a mindset that they are most valuable when they are performing client work. And there is a very real logic to that mentality.

Even if your firm doesn’t bill by the hour, profits are higher when your highly paid professionals are working on client projects rather than focused on other things.

The problem, of course, is if everyone at your firm were busy all the time doing the work, you would soon run out of work to do. Projects run their course and most clients don’t last forever.

That’s why running a successful firm requires balancing work and marketing (which, for the sake of convenience, we will say includes business development and sales).

In last week’s article, I explored this tension. I am writing again on the topic because it is such a frustrating challenge for many marketers and professionals that it deserves more attention. Most experts struggle to find the time to plan and produce a single piece of content, much less multiple blog posts, videos or webinars.

In both of the articles I’ve linked to I suggest some general strategies you can use to get past this roadblock—and on with your professionals’ Visible Expert^® journeys.

Now, I want to lay out a more tactical plan—or set of suggestions—to help your marketing team make the most of your experts’ limited time. While the assumption is that the expert will write the piece (though ghost writing is a viable option, too), marketing can significantly lighten the expert’s burden by taking on components of the process.

So let’s dive in!

Come to the kickoff with a menu of topics. Sometimes just figuring out what to write about is hard. So bring a list of four to six topics or preliminary titles to the initial meeting. This gives your expert options—and tangible ideas to react to. If they don’t ultimately choose a topic from the list, they are likely to think of a different one instead. In a matter of minutes, you have identified your starting point! Make sure your list sits at the intersection of what your experts know and what your audience actually cares about.

Interview the expert. If your expert needs help organizing their thoughts, conduct a short half-hour interview. Be sure to record it. Here are some questions you might ask your expert:

• Explain the issue or challenge in simple, easy-to-understand terms.
• What are some real-world examples of this problem?
• What do you consider when trying to solve it?
• What is the thing you enjoy most about tackling challenges like this?
• What can go wrong? How do you keep that from happening?
• What would happen if a business ignored this problem?
• What does success look like at the end of the engagement?
• What are some things a potential buyer might be interested in learning about this issue or the way you solve it? Can you think of any questions you’ve heard from real clients?

Offer to draft an outline. This is where AI can be very helpful. Convert your interview recording to a transcript and load it into your favorite LLM. Next, ask the LLM to create a blog post outline based on the interview. Rarely is the outline perfect, so expect to make some changes. But AI can be a real time saver here. Then give the expert the outline to work from. If you have a keyword in mind, this would be a good time to supply it to them.

Offer to proofread or edit the draft. Writing is usually better when it is a team effort. Additional eyes catch embarrassing errors. If you can afford a professional editor—or if you have one in-house—so much the better. They can smooth out any awkward phrasing, improve the structure and make the piece more readable.

Offer to draft a social media post. Whenever an expert publishes a blog post, we recommend they promote it on social media. This signals to their network that they are engaged in thought leadership. It can also generate conversations that lead to new business. To simplify this task, draft a brief social media post for the author that describes the article and why they are excited to share it. Make it clear to the expert that they are free to change any or all of the language. Also supply an image, or a selection of image options, to give the post some visual impact.

Shoot a video. After the post is written, or even after it has been published, ask the expert if they would be willing to shoot a video on the topic. With the information freshly in mind, many experts find this is an easy way to convert all that hard work into a fresh new format. The marketing team can interview the expert or the expert can work from an outline or script. When done, add the video to both the blog post and your YouTube channel. You can even chop it up into snippets to share on social media. In fact, if your expert is more comfortable in front of a camera than a computer keyboard, they can do the entire blog post as a video instead of text.

Is your marketing team struggling to engage your experts in a consistent content marketing program? You aren’t alone, my friend. I hope the steps I outlined above, as well as in the two previous articles (here and here), equip you with a new set of tools to change the way your organization thinks about and delivers valuable content.

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But what if your experts say they don’t have time to write, speak or record videos? They are, after all, generating the revenue that keeps your firm afloat and doing the work that makes your clients happy.

When I hear that a firm’s subject matter experts are too busy to participate in marketing, first, to be completely honest, I have flashbacks because, well, I’ve been there. But I also hear that they don’t believe they have anything of value to contribute. Or, that marketing is someone else’s job.

The problem is not really their lack of time. It’s that they, and firm leadership, misunderstand how professional services marketing works.

A while back, I wrote a short piece titled All Experts Are Marketers, in which I argued that because expertise is what your clients are buying, it has to be the central component of your marketing. And by central component, I mean giving away some of that expertise as free content.

Content—whether it’s a blog post, an article, a YouTube video, a webinar or a speech at a conference—is the way we expose our audiences to our expertise. And when you give someone who is interested in learning about a topic multiple opportunities to sample your expertise, the way they perceive you starts to change.

They begin to understand how your firm approaches problems. They begin to recognize that the experts at your firm not only have deep knowledge, but that they have solved business problems like theirs before. Your followers begin to trust you and view you as a top authority.

And when they are ready to buy, they think of your firm first.

But for all this to work you have to get those reluctant marketers to recognize that they have something crucial to offer.

In my previous article I discussed one strategy to encourage your experts to become more involved. Specifically, they could offload the heavy lifting to professional writers who can produce high-quality pieces based on a short interview or outline.

But while that approach can be very useful in many situations, it can mask a larger problem. If there isn’t buy-in from top leadership, including a commitment to set aside time for at least the firm’s most talented experts to write and speak, then it becomes all too easy for your professionals to deprioritize those activities. If nobody with clout is talking to the team about the importance of content marketing, then guess what people are going to focus on first? That’s right: client work.

Firm leadership must embrace content marketing for this approach to work. After all, these experts are the firm’s most valuable assets. But value isn’t just about how much money a person commands from the client. It’s also about how much new business they can attract.

The marketing team can help, too. For instance, they can lighten the load by setting up and managing a content calendar, researching keywords, providing editing support, helping to promote the content, and seeking out and arranging speaking gigs. That’s less time the expert has to spend on those things.

The key is that the professional team must know they are essential elements in the firm’s marketing strategy. Most firms don’t provide this clarity. As a result, they struggle to produce a steady flow of expert content—and they suffer from lower visibility and slower growth.

So how do you change?

If you are a top leader at your firm, you know what you need to do: set expectations for your experts and support them with the time and resources they need to produce high-quality content.

If you are lower down in your organization, the path can be more complicated. Different firms have different structures and power dynamics. It could be as simple as forwarding an article or two to the CEO along with a well-reasoned case for changing the culture. In other firms, you might have to find a sympathetic superior and work the message up the chain of command. Or it could involve bringing in an outside consultant to make the case directly to top management.

However you do it, if you want to market your firm like a top performer, this leadership is a critical first step. And a giant leap for your firm’s future prospects.

The post You Need Content. Your Experts Are Busy. Now What? appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

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Yet, for too many firms, the approach is less like an event strategy and more like a fire drill.

You leave planning to the last minute. You make decisions on the fly. In the worst-case scenarios marketing leaders only find out a partner had a speaking engagement after they’ve already stepped off the stage. The opportunity to promote it? Gone.

It’s a stressful, chaotic cycle that always traces back to a single point of failure: lots of effort, zero strategy.

Key Takeaways:

• A professional services event strategy creates a repeatable framework for maximizing business development impact at conferences.
• Effective event planning involves a structured four-phase cycle.
• You must research target events and integrate CRM data early to accurately measure event marketing ROI.
• Multi-channel promotion and proactive outreach are essential to establish authority before an event even begins.
• Documenting event processes reduces reliance on individuals and ensures consistent execution across all firm-wide activities.

In professional services, you can’t afford to treat conferences as passive networking mixers. You need to view them as environments where industry conversations are intentionally created. In our 2026 High Growth Study, “networking at an event” and “hosting a conference” tied for the highest-impact marketing tactics of the year. High-growth firms aren’t just attending the party, they’re setting the agenda and positioning their subject matter experts as industry authorities.

To remain competitive, your firm needs to move from accidental attendance to a repeatable, four-phase management cycle: planning, promotion, execution, and follow-up.

Here is how to stop marketing on the fly, and build an event strategy that turns visibility into quantifiable ROI.

Defining a Professional Services Event Strategy

Professional services firms often struggle to measure conference and event ROI because event planning, promotion, and follow-up are handled inconsistently across teams. A repeatable event marketing strategy helps firms improve lead generation, strengthen business development, increase visibility, and create a scalable process for conferences and networking events. Understanding how to build a professional services event strategy allows teams to transition from an approach where they react to situations in the moment to a thoughtful, proactive, revenue-generating model.

The Risks of Ad Hoc Event Planning

• Haphazard, last-minute activities
• Unquantifiable ROI and poor lead generation
• Over-reliance on a few key individuals

The Benefits of a Structured Event Marketing Strategy

• Consistent execution across the whole team
• A repeatable process that doesn’t start from scratch every time
• A formal, four-phase management cycle

The goal is to stop treating events as isolated occurrences and start treating them as a repeatable business process. Any successful strategy requires a procedural document that can flex to meet the needs of every event. You reduce dependency on any single person and ensure the team can execute consistently every time.

Think about the effort required to plan a wedding: six months of work for a one-day event. Now imagine doing that multiple times a year. For firms of a certain size, hiring a dedicated event planner can be invaluable to lead and deliver an efficient, measurable system.

This event marketing guide outlines a four-phase playbook including detailed checklists and five critical optimizations to ensure your next conference is a business-driving success rather than just an expensive trip. Rejoice fellow marketers, as we dive head-first into event planning!

Phase 1: Strategic Planning and Event Logistics

The success of your event marketing is determined during the planning phase, months before the actual conference begins. This phase is about defining goals and locking in long-lead logistics.

Research and target the specific events your clients actually attend. Don’t just pick events because they’re popular. Build target lists segmented by who is attending, who is speaking, and which sessions are sponsored. This ensures you are in the right room with the right people.

Determine which individuals or teams should attend based on specific business goals. Do you need a closer to sign deals or a subject-matter expert to handle technical inquiries? What size team is going to create the level of impact you’re aiming for?

Stay ahead of deadlines, starting with logistics and CRM integration. Map out everything, from marketing collateral to travel. Most importantly, integrate the event into your CRM immediately. If you aren’t tracking registration metrics and lead data before the event, you can’t accurately measure success afterward.

Phase 2: Multi-Channel Event Promotion and Outreach

Multi-channel promotion ensures that a firm’s target audience is aware the firm will be in attendance before the event starts. It is also a great opportunity to educate audiences unfamiliar with the firm about its expertise. You need a multi-channel campaign to maximize your reach well in advance.

The marketing department should manage the event LinkedIn strategy to ensure that the team delivers a consistent brand message. LinkedIn management includes providing the team with a clear social media strategy and specific training. A high-impact tactic is to provide staff with direct links to speaker profiles and company pages, making it easy for them to warm up leads before meeting in person.

Direct outreach helps you book one-on-one meetings before calendars fill up. Execute personalized email campaigns to existing contacts and high-priority targets rather than hoping to meet specific individuals on the conference floor.

Content must be aligned with your on-site presence to establish authority. Finalize your presentation decks and coordinate related content, such as articles or webinars, to reinforce the topics you’ll discuss during the event.

Phase 3: On-Site Engagement and Digital Amplification

Digital amplification, including real-time social media updates, allows a firm’s reach to extend beyond the physical conference room.

Aim for at least three social updates a day. These shouldn’t just be generic updates—post selfies at landmarks, share session takeaways, and capture photos of event highlights. Always tag speakers and fellow attendees (and don’t forget the conference #hashtag!). Event hosts love the extra promotion, and it keeps you visible to those who couldn’t attend.

Professional booth etiquette is essential for maintaining an approachable presence. Stay active and avoid hiding behind the table or huddling with your own team. Encourage everyone on your team to read the room and remain approachable. When team members have extended conversations with a single attendee, prospects can feel like they’re interrupting, which kills potential conversations.

Don’t just be in the moment, capture the moment. Actively track interactions with prospects to ensure no high-value connections are overlooked. Log all new leads and potential business opportunities immediately. Gather quotes, funny moments, and insights. After the event is over, you can publish these in a blog post.

Phase 4: Post-Event Lead Nurturing and ROI Analysis

Post-event follow-up is the process of converting event momentum into revenue through structured lead nurturing and CRM integration.

Start with the end in mind: How will you report on success?

Immediate CRM entry and expressions of gratitude. Upload attendee lists and lead data right away. Send personal thank-you notes to event hosts and coordinators. It’s a simple gesture of gratitude that can strengthen a partnership and may even lead to better speaking slots or sponsorships in the future.

Summarize the event in a blog post and share your expert takeaways. Publish a recap detailing key insights from the sessions. Describe what you found most interesting and how it supports or changes your expert thinking. This kind of post demonstrates your value to firm leadership, provides useful information to internal teams, and educates new prospects who weren’t able to attend the event.

Compare your results against your initial goals. Analyze your lead counts and engagement levels to determine true ROI. Then ask, would we do this again next year?

Five Critical Optimizations for Professional Services Event Strategies

Even a strong playbook has gaps. To truly mature your event operations, consider adding these five elements to your procedural document. Knowing how to build a professional services event strategy involves using these tactical optimizations to improve over time.

1. Establish a Dedicated Events Budget: Within the larger marketing budget, Conferences and Events should be a dedicated line item. This allows you to report costs and ROI.
2. Conduct a Competitive Landscape Analysis: Don’t just look at clients. Analyze competitor booths, on-site messaging, and marketing materials. Study the overall impact others are creating to find areas for differentiation.
3. Develop Unplanned Emergency Protocols: Identify scenarios that require a contingency plan. What happens in the event of travel disruptions, lost shipments, or technology glitches? Having a plan lowers anxiety and sets you up for success even when things don’t go as expected.
4. Facilitate Internal Knowledge Transfer: Following the “Team Debrief,” determine if an internal educational session, such as a “Lunch & Learn,” could benefit the wider firm. This allows the attendees to share what they learned with the broader team.
5. Manage Personal Logistics: To address a common pain point for staff members, offer clear instructions on per diem policies, approved payment methods, and helpful packing lists. When staff aren’t worried about expenses, they can focus on selling.

By documenting these phases and optimizations, you move your firm away from ad hoc chaos and toward a predictable, high-ROI event strategy. Much of this is highly tactical. Much of it can also be developed in advance and repurposed for future events. Start building (or expanding) your playbook today and take command of your events!

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the most effective way to build a professional services event strategy?

Learning how to build a professional services event strategy requires implementing a four-phase management cycle that covers planning, promotion, on-site execution, and post-event analysis. This structured approach ensures that firms move beyond ad hoc activities, allowing for consistent lead generation, improved ROI tracking, and scalable business development processes across conferences.

How do professional services firms measure event ROI?

Professional services firms measure event ROI by tracking specific metrics such as meetings booked, qualified leads generated, and sales opportunities created. Firms also analyze the impact of speaking engagements and referral relationships, ensuring that every event contributes to long-term business development goals rather than just immediate, short-term visibility.

What is the best way to follow up after a conference?

The best conference follow-up strategies include immediate CRM entry, personalized outreach, and active LinkedIn engagement. Firms should also publish recap content, such as blog posts, to share expert takeaways. This process ensures that momentum is converted into revenue through structured lead nurturing and continuous education for potential new prospects.

Why is event marketing important for professional services firms?

Events are vital for professional services firms because they provide a platform to build authority, strengthen client relationships, and increase market visibility. By hosting or attending industry conferences, firms can position subject matter experts as trusted industry authorities, which accelerates business development and creates high-impact environments for essential industry conversations.

The post How to Build a Professional Services Event Strategy appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

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While there is always going to be a great deal of overlap in these concepts, it’s useful to distinguish between them. Once you separate them, it’s easier to see how each has a unique function and how they are part of an interdependent system.

Or at least they should be. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case.

Here are the sorts of things I hear from some firm leaders:

• “We get most of our leads from referrals, so marketing’s not a priority.”
• “We need to invest in marketing, not our brand.”
• “We rely on our firm’s partners to bring in the business.”

The problem with statements like these is that they misunderstand how new prospects discover, become familiar with and learn to trust a firm. It’s not one thing that builds familiarity and trust, but a whole ecosystem. Also this kind of thinking can severely constrain a firm’s ability to grow.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Let me start by explaining what I mean by marketing, business development and branding.

Marketing is the process of positioning, pricing and promoting a service or product—and by extension your firm. You use a variety of tools, channels and techniques to expose the offering to your target audience, many of whom will never have heard of you before. Through careful messaging and repeated exposure, you build familiarity and trust.

With very few exceptions (such as ABM), a marketing campaign reaches a multitude of people who might buy from your firm. In the marketing funnel analogy, it focuses primarily (though not exclusively) on the top and middle sections of the funnel.

Business development (BD) is the equivalent of a traditional sales function at a company. If marketing’s objective is to attract leads and nurture them into opportunities, BD’s goal is to make the relationship personal and close the sale. This is typically a one-on-one activity.

Branding is the process of building a distinctive and positive perception of your firm in the minds of your target audience. Your brand includes a wide range of elements, including your name, logo, messages, imagery, colors, graphic devices, even sounds. The collective result is both an understanding of your firm, largely conveyed through words, and an impression, conveyed by everything else.

Every brand exists in a marketplace of competitors. And a well-conceived brand is designed to not only appeal to its target audience, but to differentiate itself from those competitors.

So let’s return to those quotes at the beginning of this article. What they all have in common is the belief that it only takes one thing to drive new clients. They may disagree about what that one thing is, but they believe if they keep doing it—or start doing it—they will be fine.

If a prospect receives a referral, they are going to check out your website. If the quality of your brand doesn’t match their expectations, they might look elsewhere. Or at the very least, it may raise doubts in their minds. A marketing campaign alone is going to suffer from the same problem. Similarly, a great brand that nobody knows about isn’t going to grow your business.

There’s one more problem these firms will face. If you expect a marketing campaign or referrals or partner business development alone to drive your business, you are narrowing your opportunities. People encounter service providers in so many ways. But if you rely on finding only people one way, your ability to grow is severely limited. In addition, if the market slows down, your ability to weather the slump is worse because you have lower visibility or credibility.

To make great music requires putting the band together. Each part needs to work in concert—brand, marketing, business development—each supporting the expectations set by the other components.

That sounds great, but how do you pull it off? It starts with strong positioning and a detailed plan. If your brand is weak or if your marketing program isn’t delivering the performance you expect, you may need to work with an agency to explore your competitive environment, build a differentiated brand identity and develop a marketing strategy that reaches more of your target audience.

At the same time, make sure that your marketing and business development teams are talking to each other. Set up regular meetings to discuss how marketing can support BD. Ask BD to share what they are hearing on the front lines, so that marketing can address those questions in their campaigns.
If you take care of your marketing, brand and business development, they will take care of you.

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Let’s say you are a consultant who wants to work with top leadership at a particular business. You check their website, but there is no individual email address, phone number or other means to contact them directly. So you look them up on LinkedIn—knowing that you can use the platform’s InMail feature to reach them. Only they aren’t on LinkedIn! Nor are they on X, Facebook or any other social platform.

You call the company’s main line (not hoping for much, but it’s something). You’re directed to an assistant who takes a message but won’t commit to a callback. Of course, you hear nothing. You consider sending an email through the website’s main contact form, but you know that’s going to be a dead letter. What do you do?

Eventually, you give up in frustration. You never even got a glimpse, much less a shot.

Now, I’ve worked with some of these unattainable leaders. They tell me they don’t have the time to engage on LinkedIn or deal with unsolicited email. They don’t want marketing or sales pitches. The won’t ever download a piece of content. That’s not how they operate. Being inaccessible allows them to focus on the important things.

Do you throw up your hands? Are they simply unreachable?

Not at all.

You see, just below the top leaders are a cadre of executives and upper management who interact with them every day. Leaders rely on these individuals to implement key decisions, supply insights into the company’s performance and provide a wide range of advice.

In short, this penultimate tier of management is highly influential. If you can catch their attention, you have a pathway to the top. And chances are, these folks are far more accessible.

But to reach your ultimate goal—the top executives—you need a change in strategy. You need to convince these one-rung-down executives that you or your firm has something special to offer.
Whether you are using marketing to target specific executives or to reach a particular role or segment (for example, VPs of Technology and CIOs), you can use a quiver of familiar techniques to nurture them, such as social media, email, advertising and networking.

The most fruitful path to your destination, however, is to establish familiarity and trust in your firm. That means exposing your (recalibrated) audience repeatedly to your expertise. Look for opportunities to speak to them about business challenges that your firm can solve. Write expert educational articles, blog posts and guides. Use the principles of SEO, AEO and GEO to make your content and firm findable online.

As you write, however, keep in mind that your ultimate audience is a busy leader, not a technical professional. The goal is to produce content that can easily be shared up the food chain and that the CEO you want to reach (or whoever you are targeting) will find insightful.

An equally important goal is to turn the one-rung-down executives into fans—people who will readily recommend your firm to the top executives when they need to hire an outside resource to solve the kinds of problems you deal with every day. Repeated exposure to content is an important component. Video, webinars, podcasts and speaking engagements can be great ways to put a human face on your firm and build a personal connection that is more challenging with the written word alone.

At the end of the day, marketing to ivory-tower CEOs is not that different from the kind of marketing I’ve written about countless times before in this newsletter. All it takes is a simple shift in your target audience—and the patience for the strategy to bear fruit.

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This chart compares the proportion of revenue that high-growth and no-growth firms dedicate to marketing.

In this article, however, I want to dig a little deeper and share some comparative data from the four professional services industries we studied in depth this year:

• Accounting & Financial Services (A&FS)
• Architecture, Engineering & Construction (AEC)
• Consulting
• Technology & Software

While there is a great deal you can learn from the aggregated professional services executive summary, there are many differences between industries. Below is a breakdown by industry of marketing spend as a percentage of revenue, not including staff compensation costs.

What a different story this data tells than the all-industry chart I shared above!

Before I go further, I have to point out that these two charts compare different cohorts. The baseline in the top chart is “no growth” firms—firms that either did not grow or shrank over a three-year evaluation period. In the second chart, the baseline is high-growth firms—those that grow at a compound annual rate of 20% for three consecutive years.

Why the difference? In our study, we sometimes compare the two extremes (high growth vs no growth) to contrast the behaviors, approaches or results between top performers and low performers. If you would like to compare apples to apples, however, the all-industry median percent of revenue dedicated to marketing is 8%.

Why Marketing Budgets Vary by Industry

Looking at the second chart above, I notice one thing right off the bat. The technology & software industry’s marketing spend runs twice as hot as the accounting & financial services industry’s. That’s true of the high growth cohort as well as the industry as a whole.

There may be a couple of reasons for this. First, and we experience this first hand with our own clients in this vertical, they are more prone to invest in marketing tech earlier and use its most sophisticated features. Of all the industries we studied, technology & software had the highest scores for digital maturity and proficiency in using marketing metrics.

Second, the accounting & financial services sector is among the most conservative when it comes to marketing. Historically, the industry has lagged others in marketing spend. Dive deeper and separate accounting from the rest of financial services, and our research with the Association for Accounting Marketing shows budget spending is significantly more conservative than this. And it gets the highest proportion of its leads from referrals (48%) of any other industry. That’s twice as many as technology & software (24%).

The consulting industry has the least separation between the two categories (high growth vs all professional services)—and is the industry that most closely matches the all-industry numbers. This is because consulting not only represented the largest proportion of the study sample (35.8%), a wide range of subindustries roll up under it, from management consulting to HR to staffing services. It is a broad and diverse world unto itself.

The AEC industry falls somewhere in the middle. The industry as a whole spends the second least on marketing (though well ahead of accounting & financial services). However, its high-growth firms spend the second most on marketing (though well below their tech peers). To me, this says the AEC industry—once an industry not known for trying new things when it comes to marketing (because they didn’t have to—their referral game has always been strong)—is beginning to change and embrace new marketing technologies and perhaps a broader array of techniques.

As I point out in my original article on this topic, new AI-driven technologies may be driving some of the increase in marketing spending at high-growth firms. While these investments can be expensive, the potential payoff is great. As firms learn to use them and as the products mature, they will deliver greater efficiency and deeper insights. Precisely what it takes to outperform the field!

I’ve assembled the data above specifically for you, my dear reader, and made it available for the first time. Use it to benchmark your own firm against your industry as a whole and against the top performers.

Way back in 2008 when we first started studying high-growth firms, they actually spent less on marketing than their slower-growing competitors. They were simply using their budgets more efficiently. Today, that’s not enough. Firms that want to achieve top performance are investing heavily to get there. It’s possible that this dynamic will change in the future, but in the current marketplace it appears to take money—and a smart strategy—to distance yourself from the pack.

The post What Does Your Industry Spend on Marketing? appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

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With the rise of AI and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) the search landscape is changing. Not gradually, but fundamentally. Today, AI-driven search is reshaping how buyers discover expertise, evaluate firms, and make decisions. And in this new environment, many of the metrics and assumptions firms have relied on are becoming less meaningful or even misleading.

The shift isn’t just technological. It’s strategic, and it demands a new way of thinking about visibility, authority, and growth.

The Search Landscape Isn’t What It Used to Be

If your analytics feel harder to interpret lately, you’re not alone.

Many professional service firms are seeing:

• Decreased website traffic and engagement
• Increasing (but harder to attribute) leads
• Unclear conversion paths

At the same time, AI adoption is introducing new challenges. Nearly half of the firms we surveyed in the last year have reported difficulty integrating AI into their operations. Nearly a third say AI is actively disrupting their business. And bot traffic (like AI agents and “scrapers”) now account for more than fifty percent of all online traffic.

Add to that landscape, a more defensive buying audience that actively avoids unsolicited outreach and increasingly aggressive and “personalized” sales tactics. The result is a marketing environment that operates very differently than it did even a few years ago.

The Paradigm Shift: From SEO to GEO

Understanding the shift from traditional search to GEO-first strategies is a key to maintaining your firm’s competitive edge (or an opportunity to create one). Here are some practical adaptations to consider:

1. Moving from a focus on traffic to a focus on trust.

Traditional SEO is built around traffic and patterns of user behavior. It measures success based on organic leads and measurements of direct human engagement, such as opens, clicks, bounce rates and even heat maps.

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is built around trust and validation. AI systems don’t rank content the way search engines do. They read it. They interpret it. They decide what is credible enough to include in an answer.

That means your visibility no longer depends solely on how well you rank. It depends on whether you are referenced.

In a GEO-driven world, success looks different:

• Not just website visits, but citation frequency
• Not just engagement, but share of model
• Not just rankings, but influence over AI-generated answers

Traditional search measured success by position, while AI uses inclusion as its key performance indicator (KPI). Traffic and high-quality content remain relevant, but firms will realize the payoff in different ways.

2. Moving from keywords to natural language and intent.

SEO trained us to think in keywords. AI operates through interactive conversation.

Users can now ask layered, nuanced questions and refine them in real time. That means your content must:

• Reflect how real people speak across audiences and industries
• Account for machine reading (“retrievability”) and relevant context
• Address specific questions directly
• Prioritize clarity and structure (answer first, explain second)

The good news is that content structured in this way often reads more naturally (for humans) than content optimized for search engine ranking.

3. Moving from backlinks to validation and mentions.

Owned media is on the decline as an indicator of credibility and a driver of search visibility. In the age of AI, digital PR is a rising trust signal. Backlinks still matter, but they’re no longer the dominant signal. Instead, AI models look for consensus to assess trustworthiness, including mentions in reputable publications, citations in industry research, and consistent third-party validation.

In other words, your reputation is no longer defined primarily by what you publish. It’s defined by what others say about you and how consistent it is with your own messaging.

4. Moving from content volume to differentiation and actionable insights.

Faced with waves of content being pushed into relevant channels, buyers of professional services are quick to shut out noise. They want to find and validate those answers themselves, and they’re increasingly using generative AI engines to do it.

AI is trained on existing content. That creates a problem. If your content simply repeats widely available ideas, it blends into what can only be described as a sea of beige. Generic thought leadership is no longer enough. In fact, it only compounds the problem.

To stand out and be cited, you’ll need to bring something new to the table. Original data, unique or contrarian perspectives, research-driven insights, and clearly attributed expertise are key differentiators when it comes to AI search.

Where Do We Go From Here?

The shift from SEO to GEO can feel abstract. It isn’t. There are clear, practical steps firms can take to adapt.

1. Start with your foundation.

To assess your readiness for GEO, ask yourself:

• Where does your website currently receive referral traffic from LLMs? Is that traffic going up, down, or sideways?
• Do you have the right tools to monitor how AI compares your firm to key competitors?
• Is your company cited when asked non-branded questions about your capabilities?
• Are you clear on where you need to close gaps in content types or relevant topics (like videos, case stories and proof points on performance outcomes)?

Despite all the changes, the fundamentals still matter: high-quality audience research, clear positioning, and strong alignment between marketing and business development. Core strategic principles like knowing your audience, delivering real value, and building credibility over time, still apply. SEO isn’t dead, and GEO isn’t the only game in town. They’re two very complimentary tools in your kit and it’s important to use both.

2. Rethink how you measure success.

If you’re only tracking traffic and rankings, you’re missing the bigger picture. AI is designed to tailor results to individual users. It contextualizes information based on past conversations with other users, geographic location, and a host of other factors. Instead of focusing on traffic, begin monitoring:

• Whether your firm appears in AI-generated responses
• How often you’re cited and by whom
• What AI says when measuring you against competitors
• Whether you show up in bottom-of-funnel / high intent prompts (“best firm for X”)

Critically, it isn’t enough to do this once. Patterns and adaptability matter more than snapshots. Tracking trends and understanding how your visibility develops as you take action in response to them is an ongoing exercise.

3. Invest in earned media.

Use earned media to support narratives. That includes media coverage, awards and recognitions, customer reviews, and press releases distributed through credible channels.

Awards act as high-signal consensus points AI uses to verify your firm’s reputation and influences the story it tells about your brand. Coverage in trade journals or high-quality publications helps to provide the citations necessary for greater “entity authority” (which could apply to brands, practices, experts or all-of-the-above). Customer reviews often influence the tone of auto-generated summaries and the perceived trustworthiness of your firm. Press releases provide up-to-date information on your latest innovations and expert hires, keeping your overall “share of model” higher.

These signals don’t just influence buyers, they influence the AI systems those buyers rely on.

4. Expand into video.

Video has become a major driver and one of the strongest predictors of AI visibility. Video-based thought leadership is one of the highest impact marketing techniques reported by high-growth firms. But why?

• Human connection in an AI era: As AI search reduces traditional traffic, video provides a way to build deep, human trust that a text interface cannot replicate.
• Differentiated insights: Video allows experts to share “signature content” Unique, data-backed perspectives that stand out from derivative, AI-generated noise.

Some examples of impactful video formats used by high-growth firms include stand-alone video blogs, video podcast episodes, longform interviews, creative shorts, employee spotlights, and customer testimonials.

Key Takeaways

1. Content can be designed to influence AI-based answers. Prioritizing formats and practices that send high value signals to generative engines improves the chance that your firm will be recommended to qualified human audiences, whether or not they engage much with your website.
2. Think in terms of Q&A, users’ evaluation behavior, and addressing specific buyer issues rather than broad keywords.
3. Earned media (citations in third-party text) is becoming more important relative to owned media (content on the firm’s website) and the more engagement, intent, and other signals corroborate an answer, the more likely it is that a favorable narrative will be conveyed to human users. Strategic consistency matters more than ever.
4. Thought leadership must evolve beyond general advice to specific, expert-driven insights that AI models view as unique, relevant, and reputable.

Final Thoughts

AI isn’t creating entirely new trends. It’s accelerating existing ones and rewarding firms that acknowledge, understand, and adapt to them. Firms that treat AI as a gimmick or a shortcut will struggle. Firms that understand it as a shift in how trust is established and distributed will have a significant advantage.

The question isn’t whether or not to adapt. It’s how quickly, and how thoughtfully, you do it.

The post From Traffic to Trust: How GEO is Changing the Shape of Online Search appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

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It was in that middle ground that I truly began to understand how professional authority is built. It wasn’t just about mastering new tools; it was about adopting a new way to see the world. Looking back, these are the four lessons that have most deeply shaped my perspective from my time at Hinge.

1. Data is the best storyteller

My time at Hinge was a masterclass in the quiet power of intentionality. I learned that most powerful strategies aren’t built on guesses but on the quiet, steady truth of evidence. Seeing how Hinge utilizes the High Growth Study to decode the success of top-performing firms was a revelation to me. As I dove into research across multiple sectors, I saw how Hinge was uncovering the ‘why’ behind a firm’s growth. I learned that the most meaningful way to connect is through the clarity of a purposeful, data-driven roadmap.

My biggest takeaway is that rigorous analysis is actually an act of empathy. By doing the hard work of research, we’re showing the client that we truly see them and their challenges. I learned that leading with evidence changes the entire chemistry of the room. It turns a pitch into a conversation between two people looking at the same map. I’m walking away with the conviction that true creativity is about having the most honest foundation, using real-world truth to give our wildest ideas the legs they need to actually run.

2. Discovery is the foundation of trust

My time at Hinge validated a core belief I’ve long held: the most critical work happens long before a single pixel is moved. Discovery reinforces the principle that you cannot prescribe a cure until you have truly listened to the heartbeat of the firm. In its most sophisticated form, this isn’t just a preliminary step; it is a deep dive into a company’s DNA to uncover the quiet gaps between a firm’s self-perception and the market’s reality. Seeing this research-first philosophy in action was a reminder that no amount of flashy presentation or polished slogans can replace a strategy rooted in truth.

This experience validated my belief that the discovery phase isn’t a hurdle to get through before the “real” work begins. In many cases, it is the real work. No amount of flashy presentation decks or polished slogans can make up for a research-backed strategy that will ultimately move a client towards growth. It is the process of unearthing the raw materials of a brand: the specialized expertise and unique perspectives that define a firm. By leaning into this phase with empathy and intent, we start being partners who truly understand the value we are about to translate to the world. My job isn’t to have all the answers upfront, but to have the curiosity to find them.

3. Expertise is a brand’s greatest asset

At Hinge, I realized that in professional services, you aren’t marketing a product you can pull off a shelf; you are packaging human wisdom. This requires a unique form of translation. I learned the delicate art of sitting with a Subject Matter Expert—someone with decades of experience—and extracting the core insights that a skeptical, time-strapped audience actually cares about. This process taught me that content serves as a proxy for trust. In a world of “empty” marketing, the most effective way to win is to lead with generosity—sharing high-value insights to build the kind of authority that makes a firm the only logical choice for a client.

Moving forward in my career, I will carry the understanding that my role as a marketer is to be a bridge between technical brilliance and market relevance. I’ve learned that the most successful content isn’t just about “brand awareness,” but about demonstrating competence before a contract is ever signed. I am committed to being a storyteller who leads with value first, knowing that in high-stakes industries, you don’t earn a seat at the table by being the loudest—you earn it by being the most helpful.

4. Strategy requires the “big picture” view

Ultimately, this experience instilled in me a disciplined, goal-oriented mindset. I realized that in a high-growth environment, there is no such thing as “content for content’s sake.” Whether I was fine-tuning a slide for a major deck or synthesizing competitive research, I learned to zoom out and see every tactical output as a single thread in a much larger strategic tapestry. I stopped asking “does this look good?” and started asking “does this move the needle for the firm’s growth?” This perspective transformed my work from simple execution to strategic contribution. I’ve walked away understanding that the most successful marketers aren’t just creators; they are business strategists who use content as their primary tool for driving results.

I am carrying forward the understanding that creativity is only as powerful as the objective it serves. In my future work, I won’t just focus on the aesthetics of a project; I will focus on its purpose. My time at Hinge taught me that when you align every creative choice with a firm’s long-term KPIs, you stop being a “deliverer of assets” and start being a driver of evolution. I’m walking away with the clarity that the most impactful marketing isn’t just about making a statement—it’s about making a difference in the trajectory of a business.

Conclusion

My time at Hinge was the perfect example of marketing being an intensely strategic pursuit. I’m leaving with more than just a set of new skills; I’m leaving with a foundational philosophy that when you combine the rigor of data with the empathy of storytelling, you don’t just market a firm—you help them find their voice and the confidence to use it. I am incredibly grateful to the entire team at Hinge for welcoming me into their process and for the mentorship that has so deeply shaped my path as a marketer.

The post What I Learned During My Internship at Hinge appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

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A growing body of research suggests that people who offload their cognitive and creative tasks to AI tools are paying a dear price. Like any muscle in your body, if you don’t actively use your mind it will atrophy.

In a 2025 study, researchers at the MIT Media Lab asked participants to wear EEG headsets to monitor brain activity. They were asked to write essays with and without ChatGPT. AI users showed significantly lower brain activity—particularly in regions linked to memory and reasoning—compared to those who wrote manually. A whopping 83% of AI users could not recall a single quote from their own essays shortly after “writing” them. While this was a small study that has not yet been peer reviewed, it largely supports what other studies have found.

A 2024 Swiss study published in the journal Societies, for instance, found “a significant negative correlation between the frequent use of AI tools and critical thinking.”

When you are busy, it’s easy to leave the thinking to the LLMs. And that’s the beginning of an expertise death spiral. When you outsource your thinking to AI, you are only recycling other people’s ideas.

This reliance on LLMs has a cost on society, too.

We can just look around us and see how generative AI has taken over so much news, sports and social interest reporting. These pieces may be technically perfect—neatly laying out the facts in clear, grammatical English—but they lack the insight and soul that a true expert can bring to an issue. And it can lead to some pretty bad outcomes, too.

Does all this mean experts should avoid AI? Not at all. In fact, if you use it right it can make your expertise even sharper.

The job of an expert is not simply to lay out the facts. The expert’s job is to put them in context, to interpret them and to solve the problems they expose.

This kind of thinking is hard. If you don’t think deeply about a problem, it’s possible to misinterpret the facts and complicate the solution.

This is where AI can be truly valuable—but only after you’ve done the hard thinking. Feed your favorite chatbot like ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini all your notes, research, thinking, conclusions, recommendations, article draft—whatever you are working on and the inputs that went into it.* Then start asking some tough questions.

Here are five specific ways you can use AI to strengthen your expertise:

1. Avoid embarrassing mistakes. Ask your chatbot to check your document for spelling and grammar. Ask it to check that you have correctly cited figures or calculated percentages. Ask it to check that your internal logic is sound. Actually tell it to not hallucinate.
2. Challenge your assumptions. Ask it to examine your underlying assumptions and find every reason they are wrong or misguided. You may not agree with everything the AI identifies, but this exercise can be invaluable in uncovering gaps and areas you hadn’t thought about.
3. Challenge your argument. Ask it to make the strongest possible case against your argument or recommendations. Use the output to strengthen your reasoning. You can even use AI to help you figure out how.
4. Uncover alternative solutions. Ask the chatbot the three best solutions to the problem at hand and to explain its reasoning. Often, this approach uncovers at least an idea or two you hadn’t considered before.
5. Predict what could go wrong. Buyers rely on experts not only to fix problems but to reduce risk. Ask the chatbot to assume the proposed solution was ultimately a complete failure and to do a post-mortem on what might have gone wrong. Here you turn AI’s proclivity to hallucinate into a brilliant asset.

If you are still trying to wrap your head around AI and how it will transform your work, join the club. Depending on whom you ask, the technology is either evolving faster than they imagined or more slowly than expected. But one thing is certain: AI is here to stay. And you don’t have to jump into vibe coding or agentic AI (but more power to you if you do) to start enjoying the power of these modern tools. You can use them today to improve the quality of your work. So what are you waiting for?

Just don’t let them do the thinking for you.

*If you are working with sensitive or confidential client information, be sure you are working with a closed enterprise version of the chatbot that won’t use your data to train the LLM.

The post How Experts Use AI to Improve Their Thinking appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

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