“Why are we spending so much on marketing,” they say, “when Claude (or ChatGPT or Gemini) can do it faster and with greater precision?”

Of course, nobody is asking a chatbot to run their entire marketing program (yet!). But many of the people who are inclined to keep the purse strings pulled taut have begun to get excited about AI. After all, AI can do things that would have seemed miraculous just five years ago—write persuasive emails, generate photos that are indistinguishable from the real thing, analyze data and write reports, automate repetitive tasks, even code websites and apps.

With such sophisticated tech at hand, why would we continue to invest so heavily in a traditional marketing team and tools? Why not scale down the team to the bare essentials and let the robots do all the heavy lifting?

It’s a reasonable question. And maybe someday I will be more sympathetic to this point of view. But not yet.

Today, handing most tasks over to AI without a lot of expert oversight means dancing with disaster. Why? Because many use cases for AI in marketing just aren’t ready for the real world. And I think key pieces, such as producing thought leadership content, won’t be for a very long time. At the same time, the LLM technology behind the revolution still has serious unsolved problems.

Let’s start with AI’s most publicized bugaboo: its proclivity to make stuff up. If nobody is fact-checking your emails, blogs and social media posts, you risk embarrassing your firm or even exposing it to brand harm. While the AI platforms have made some incremental progress on this front, it remains a serious challenge and worry.

Then you have to wrestle with implications of all that AI-generated content. I’ve argued why experts should avoid using AI to write their content: Thought leaders, by definition, need to develop their own voice and point of view, neither of which a chatbot is any good at. And detecting AI text is becoming easier than ever. Pangram, a leading AI detection company, has released extensions for Chrome and Firefox browsers. Now, readers can just highlight some text in their web browser and right-click to find out if it was generated by AI. Easy peasy.

While I believe expert educational content should be human-written, I don’t think that standard has to apply to every page, email and post a firm produces, as long as a person reviews and edits them before they are released into the wild. That said, even this situation poses a theoretical risk of reputational damage.

As a person who thinks deeply about branding, I worry about perceptions. Will the availability and convenience of tools like Pangram’s browser extension make everything online fair game? Will people troll the internet looking for firms to shame publicly because they used AI (to write their homepage copy? (Or they think they did. In some cases human-written content is mistakenly identified as being in part or in whole AI-produced.) We are already seeing signs of this happening—and some companies are fighting back by making a point of not using AI.

I’m not naive. I understand that AI has too many legitimate marketing applications to be ignored. It gives marketers superpowers they never had before—such as the ability to comb through and make sense of large amounts of data. It can take the drudgery out of internet research (but verify your sources!). It can dramatically reduce the time it takes to respond to RFPs. It can also speed up the production of marketing emails, landing pages, charts, infographics and more.

Major marketing platforms routinely build AI into their products, as well, making it easy to extract insights from the data without needing a computer science degree.

So here’s what any firm leader needs to know today. AI is a useful tool that makes skilled marketers more productive. It is not replacing many, if any of them, at this point. And the converse is true too: if you ask an unskilled person to use AI to do a marketing task, the results are likely to be poor.

You can’t invest in AI alone and expect results. The results come not from the tool itself, but from the experience, knowledge and good judgement of the person who wields the tool. Nor can you expect a single marketer, no matter how skilled and competent, to run a sophisticated modern marketing program alone, no matter how many AI agents they deploy. Each task requires human attention and decision-making.

An AI-centric marketing program—one with minimal human oversight—would also likely push your marketing toward the middle. That means doing more of the things ordinary firms do, delivered with similar messaging. Undifferentiated marketing is unremarkable marketing.

Each year, Hinge conducts a study of hundreds of professional services firms to determine what the top-performers do differently. They do not shy away from AI. In fact, it is a top marketing priority. But they also invest heavily in marketing. They spend 140% more on marketing than their no-growth peers. Here’s the data:

Far from running away from marketing, the most successful firms are embracing it. They are building skilled internal marketing teams, outsourcing certain tasks to specialists and going to great lengths to master the AI tools and marketing platforms at their disposal.

And they are enjoying the fruits of their harvest.

The post Why AI Isn’t a Magic Marketing Machine appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

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• AI is everywhere, but harnessing AI’s true potential isn’t easy.
• The marketplace is mired in uncertainty, so figuring out what to do next can feel like a guessing game.
• Competition is fierce, and it’s flying at you from all sides—resource-rich market leaders, ambitious mid-majors and startups with pesky new ideas.

Then there’s the pace of change. As marketing becomes increasingly tied to technology, the field is becoming more and more technical. You need a veritable army of experts to handle the dozens of disciplines required to carry out a modern marketing program.

Take the new field of AI search optimization, for example. Because the mechanics of search are hidden from us (or we are even fed misleading information), and because those mechanics are always evolving, AI search experts have to determine what is going on by looking at empirical evidence (see this 6-minute video for a summary of some recent research). Clearly, it takes an AI search specialist to keep abreast of the latest findings or conduct their own tests—and determine whether or not those findings should change the way their services are delivered.

Wrangling a large team of internal and external specialists isn’t easy. Communicating regularly with each is important. That means lots of meetings, schedules and analytics to review.

Pile on top of this the ongoing tasks of keeping the website up to date, prodding subject matter experts to write blog posts and articles, reporting to the management team and, oh, retaining your sanity.

Nobody said marketing was easy. And despite the promise of amazing technology, it’s not likely to get easier any time soon.

Marketers are so focused on implementing their sophisticated multichannel marketing strategy that they often overlook one critical question:

What makes us different or better than anybody else?

In theory, at least, you can optimize your marketing machine to perfection so that it reaches precisely the right people at exactly the right time. But if they don’t perceive you as any different from all the other options, all that effort will be wasted. Your conversion rates will be low. And failing to recognize where the problem really lies, you will try to fix the part of the machine that isn’t broken.

In short, your brilliant technical marketing will be torpedoed by your uninspired positioning.

How do you determine if your positioning is working?

An engineer would say, “Let’s A/B test it.” But that’s actually very hard. You can certainly test specific messages—say, headlines in an online ad. And that can provide some useful surface-level insight into positioning.

But it doesn’t really provide the context you need to truly position your firm. Positioning is more than what you say about yourself. It’s what you are, the services you offer, who you serve and who you don’t serve, how people perceive you and, importantly, how this whole cast of characteristics stacks up against your competitors.

For that, you need to conduct research on your target audience. When you talk to your clients you learn some pretty interesting things. Like why they chose you over other firms, why they stick with you and what they think of your competitors. If you do your research right, they will also reveal your strengths and weaknesses. Your best clients are more than happy to share this information because they believe in you and want you to succeed.

All of that intel should inform your positioning, including the messages you use to communicate it.

There are several signs that your positioning is working:

• People immediately grasp what you do
• Prospects already understand your value proposition when they reach out to you
• Buyers are less price sensitive because you offer more perceived value
• Referral sources can easily describe and differentiate your firm
• It is easy for anyone in your firm to explain what you do

So ask yourself: Is your firm so focused on the mechanics of modern marketing that you are missing the big, compelling story that will inspire your buyers?

The post What’s Broken? Your Marketing or Your Positioning? appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

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Since Hinge has named or renamed dozens of professional services firms, practices and products, I have first-hand insight into this dark alchemy.

Whether your organization needs a new name and wants to know how to go about it, or if you are just curious about the mechanics of the process, this article is for you.

Step 1. Select Your Decision Makers

How smoothly the entire process will go often hangs on this first crucial step. I can’t emphasize this enough: Empower a small group to make the decisions—including the final name choice.

Three to five people is ideal. These chosen few will be in all the meetings, collaborate in the process and make all of the decisions.

Skip this step at your own peril. The more people you involve in the decision making process, the more opinions you will have to wrestle with and the longer everything will take. Diverse perspectives, of course, can be very valuable. But only when the number of viewpoints is manageable.

A particular problem arises when decision makers join late in the process. A common example is the leaders who is “too busy” to participate in the presentations and meetings yet wants to make the final call. Another example is a flat organization with dozens of partners, all of whom want a say in the final choice.

In both cases, people who pop in and out aren’t exposed to the explanations, discussions and challenges of the process, so they lack the context to make informed decisions. All they offer is their reaction in the moment. Because most people are inherently uncomfortable with change, those reactions are often negative.

If you don’t set the process up for success from the beginning, you risk making a final decision impossible.

Step 2. Ask and Answer Key Questions

The naming team is likely to ask you a series of questions so they can use the answers to guide them down the right conceptual pathways as they explore different options. Apart from background information about the firm and its services, here are a few typical questions the team might ask:

• What do you dislike about your current name?
• What should the new name convey or make people feel or think of?
• Are there any ideas or themes the name should steer clear of?
• Who are your competitors?
• Do you need the clean dot-com domain (name.com), or is a compound dot-com (such as name-inc.com) okay? Be aware that a clean dot-com requirement will significantly restrict the range of name options.
• Are you willing to potentially pay premium prices for a clean dot-com domain?
• Will the name be used extensively overseas? If so, which countries?
• Do you have any other preconceptions or criteria regarding the name (such as types of names to consider)?

Let me take this opportunity to take you on an excursion and briefly explain what we mean by “types of names.”

Different branding firms may use different terminology, but there are essentially four ways to build names:

1. Dictionary word names: These are English (or foreign) words like Slalom or Populous that can be found in a dictionary. Unless they are obscure (such as Petrichor, which means ”the pleasant, earthy smell that fills the air when rain falls on dry soil or rock” and is the name of a venture capital firm), people know them already, so they are easy to remember, say and spell.
2. Compound names: These names are two common words welded together to form a new one. Examples include Guidehouse and ClearView [Healthcare Partners]. They have the advantage of allowing the namer to combine two different ideas, but they tend to be limited to short, simple component words.
3. Coined names: These names exist in no dictionary. They can be completely made up (Xerox), built from Greek or Latin roots (Cognizant) or misspelled English words (Kinetix). Coined names are often easier to trademark and sometimes their clean dot-com URLs are available. A disadvantage is that they are unfamiliar and can sometimes be confusing to say or spell.
4. Abbreviations: Initialisms and acronyms are ubiquitous in professional services. While they might be worth considering in certain situations (especially if they create interesting acronyms that can be spoken like a word), we usually recommend that clients avoid them.

Names can also take two different approaches:

1. Descriptive: These names describe to some extent the firm they represent. Highly descriptive, multi-word names, such as Construction Support Services, are so generic that they have little brand value and are almost impossible to trademark. However, many one-word names hint at what the firm does or what benefit they provide (BearingPoint is a management consulting firm that points the way forward; Method is a digital product design firm with, well, a methodology).
2. Abstract: Abstract names provide no information about the firm other than, perhaps, some suggestion of its personality. Abstract names are often easier to protect and are more unique and differentiating. However, they may require extra explanation and may take a while for people to get used to them. Most coined names are abstract, but many dictionary words can be, too, if they have no obvious connection to the business (think Apple).

Now, back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Step 3. Develop a List of Potential Names

This is where experience really shines. Using the answers to the questions in Step 2 as a guide, a seasoned namer, or team of namers, has the tools, taste and techniques to develop a long list of strong name options. Usually, a final list includes hundreds of possible names—and for some clients, thousands. Many of the options will be variations on a theme as the namer explores different permutations and combinations. Some are designed to feel safe while others are chosen to push the limits in an attempt to produce something unexpected and memorable.

The goal at this stage is to produce as many different ideas as possible. Namers will comb through dictionaries, thesauruses, lists of Greek and Roman cognates and proprietary name databases for ideas. They use various techniques to look at the firm from interesting new angles and uncover new naming possibilities.

Step 4. Cull the List

The naming firm will schedule one or more internal meetings to go through the list and select a handful of semifinalists. How many will vary depending on the specific engagement and how the naming firm operates. At Hinge, our goal is to present six to eight options to the client. Why so few? More options make selecting a name more difficult. So we pick 15 to 25 of the best names from the long list, knowing that many of these will likely not survive the vetting process (see below).

Step 5. Screen the Names

In this step, the naming firm typically takes the winnowed-down names through a multi-part evaluation process.

1. First, the namer checks the candidates for linguistic problems. Are they pronounced the way they look? Do they have any unforeseen negative connotations (the Urban Dictionary is a good place to start)? If the name is going to be used internationally, do the names have negative meanings or associations?
2. Next, they check the names in the US Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) database. Only the largest naming firms have IP attorneys on staff and access to more powerful search tools, so usually this is a preliminary search to knock out any obvious conflicts and to identify potential problems. Most professional services firms fall into more than one Nice Classification (NCL), so this can be a tedious process for names that include common words.
3. They may then run Google searches on the names to see what other companies turn up. Suppose you find a business in your industry with the name you want but it hasn’t registered it with the USPTO. That doesn’t mean you can automatically ignore it. The business might have common law rights to the name in certain markets, which could mean you can’t operate under that name in their jurisdiction.
4. They might also run a search in an AI chatbot. AI can be helpful in tracking down potential conflicts and often provides a more nuanced view on the marketplace than a traditional Google search.

Our team will meet, review the screening results, discuss any edge cases and decide which names to eliminate until we have six to eight finalists.

Step 6. Check for Domain Availability

At this point, the team can hop onto any online registrar to check for a name’s domain availability. At Hinge, we look only for the configuration “name.com”. While there are hundreds of alternatives to the dot-com extension (such as .biz), we don’t believe they are familiar or credible enough yet to recommend to our professional services clients (with the possible exception of .net for some firms).

Some domains may be available for a low standard fee. Unfortunately, this is increasingly rare. Some may be available for a “premium” fee, which can range from reasonable to ridiculous. Others are owned but advertised as available for sale. In this case, you contact the owner or a third-party intermediary to negotiate a price. Others may not be available, but are not in active use. In some cases, these domains may be available for purchase from the owner. And of course, many will be actively used on the internet. Unless you have a pot of gold to spend, good luck buying those. Remember, just because a domain isn’t available, doesn’t mean you can’t come up with a simple, easy-to-remember variation.

By the way, if a client prioritized finding a name with a free-and-clear dot-com domain back in Step 2, this activity has to take place earlier in the process—in either Step 3 or 4.

Step 7. Present Names

And now for the big moment. The client is anxious to see what’s in store. The purpose of the presentation, however, is not to decide on a final name. Rather, it is to select a few candidates to move forward with. In fact, because only preliminary trademark searches have been done at this point, choosing one name would be very risky.

The naming team presents the options one at a time, saying each aloud and explaining what makes it a perfect name for the organization. Often, they will display each name on one or more realistic mockups, such as a business card or lobby sign, to help the client visualize how it might look and feel in the real world.

They may also talk about any potential trademark registration issues they found, domain name availability and linguistic checks.

Then they will pull up all the names on one slide and open the floor for discussion. As I said earlier, change is difficult for most people. To avoid negative feedback dominating the commentary from the start, some presenters ask the audience at first to identify only which names they like and why. This allows the conversation to build upon a positive foundation. Only after everyone has voiced their positive opinions do they open the floor for criticism.

By the end of the meeting, the team may have its list of three finalists. Or the naming team may be asked to go back and develop a few more options.

Step 8. Conduct a Full Legal Search

At this point, the client firm likely has a favorite name. But that doesn’t mean it will pass legal scrutiny. That’s why we recommended that they send three (or more) name options to an IP attorney. It’s wise to have backups.

By the way, don’t expect a clear go/no-go recommendation. IP attorneys score each trademark candidate on various criteria. They can help you understand the risk factors the USPTO may consider for each name candidate and the confidence level they have in each one. But since they aren’t making the final judgment, that’s as far as they can go.

Step 9. Apply for the Trademark

While a firm doesn’t have to register its name, we strongly recommend that it take the extra step to protect its brand. Most IP attorneys routinely handle the necessary paperwork. The USPTO can take many months to review a trademark application. In the meantime, a firm can use the name. They can apply an SM (for services) or ™ (for products) after the name to indicate that it is under review.

Step 10. Secure the Domain Name and Social Media Handles

At this point, the firm likely has enough legal confidence in its name to purchase its domain name. If the free-and-clear dot-com domain isn’t available, this is the time to explore various extensions it might add to the name.

This is also a good time to secure any social media handles the firm will need on platforms like LinkedIn, X, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. If possible, the firm should try to use the same handle across all its platforms.

Step 11. Register the Name with the State

If the firm is changing its legal name, it will need to register it with the state or local government. If the firm is retaining its legal name but will be known in commerce under the new name, it will need to register a separate Doing Business As (DBA) name.

Step 12. Launch Your New Name

Woo hoo! The firm is ready to introduce its new name to the world.

Whether it announces the name before it designs the new logo, rebrands its website and creates new marketing materials or waits for a grand reveal, the firm needs to prepare a compelling story to tell about its new moniker. The naming firm is usually happy to draft a concise explanation of the name and why the firm is making the change.

Launching a new name, of course, involves a lot more than writing a press release. Ideally, it is a carefully orchestrated rollout—first to staff, then clients and the public. A branding firm is often the best option to plan and help execute this launch, though it certainly can be handled in-house if the resources are available.

The point is to make the most of this seminal moment. A name change is a huge opportunity to tell your larger story to an audience that might not have noticed or known about you before. Make the most of it.

The post The Firm Naming Process Demystified appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

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You have to retrain your clients and prospects to recognize you, for one thing. Then there’s the cost of producing updated stationery, collateral, and signage.

But there are good reasons that firms rename themselves—despite the drawbacks. Below I describe seven of the most common.

1. Your Name Infringes on Another Copyright

Here’s a fun one! You receive a cease and desist letter from another firm in your industry with a similar name. Your lawyer says you can fight it in court, but it will be very expensive. Oh, and there is at least a 50/50 chance you will lose. It happens to organizations small and large. Even the global titans aren’t immune. Remember Andersen Consulting? After losing in arbitration, they became Accenture.

2. Reputational Damage

This one also falls into the “fun” category. For whatever reason—a transgression real or imagined—your firm is transformed overnight from market dynamite to public kryptonite. No amount of PR or crisis management seems able to revive your reputation. But sometimes a new name can change the dynamic. After Cambridge Analytica and its parent company SCL Group were embroiled in a Facebook data harvesting scandal, they dissolved the original companies and reconstituted them under the new name Emerdata. Which brings us to…

3. Mergers and Acquisitions

When two or more firms come together, they sometimes need a new identity that is distinct from any one of the component businesses. Sometimes it is a merger of equals and no party wants to appear to have been subsumed by the others. Other times they simply want to move away from stale old names and take on a fresh moniker. In 1990, for instance, five AEC firms came together to form the new firm AECOM, an acronym that stands for the services they provide: Architecture, Engineering, Construction, Operations, and Management.

4. Too Long

Older professional services firms are notorious for growing partner names like yeards. Even after those partners are long dead, the firms live on with their complex, multisyllabic surname extravaganzas. Once, there was a Los Angeles law firm with ten partner names: Ziffren, Brittenham, Branca, Fischer, Gilbert-Lurie, Stiffelman, Cook, Johnson, Lande & Wolf. Imagine answering their phones! Today, many firms embrace simplicity. In 2023, for example, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld rebranded as Akin. That’s what I call progress!

5. Too Generic

The professional services marketplace is crowded. Many firms are eager to stand out from a sea of look-alike competitors. As a result, some firms with undistinguished names change them as part of a differentiation strategy. What types of names are ripe for a refresh? Those that simply describe the service they provide (for example, CEO Support Services LLC). Perhaps those known only by their initials. Or a firm known by a founder’s name that has no distinctive characteristics (Smith & Associates). For firms like these, a unique and memorable name can help set them apart from their less interesting competitors. In 2017, accounting firm HA&W rebranded themselves as Aprio. With 40+ offices across the nation, they are one of today’s fastest-growing accounting firms.

6. Change of Strategy

When a firm decides to move away from its core business or audience, perceptions can be difficult to change. A new name can be a fresh start and create permission in buyers’ minds to put the firm in a different category. For years, Forensic Technologies International provided computer graphics, trial animations, and technical expert witness testimony for courtroom litigation. Then they shifted strategy to offer corporate restructuring, crisis management, economic consulting, and strategic communications services. They reformulated their name to FTI Consulting.

7. Spun-Off Business Line

Occasionally a mature business realizes it has developed significant expertise in an area that no longer supports its core mission. So it decides to spin it off as a separate company. Usually, there is no reason to retain the original firm’s name. In fact, that might create confusion. In most cases, the best answer is to devise an entirely new name. Dun & Bradstreet did exactly that in the 1990s when it spun off its internal IT support unit as a stand-alone business targeting Fortune 500 companies. Its new name was Cognizant Technology Solutions (but goes by “Cognizant”).

There are, of course, a host of other reasons firms update their names—a desire to be perceived as more modern, to overcome linguistic problems with their old name and to unify fragmented brands, to name just three more examples. But a new name can bring new audiences and new opportunities.

When a firm finds itself in a period of fundamental transition—or in need of change—a fresh name can help it reset its brand and thrive in its new environment.

The post 7 Reasons Firms Change Their Names appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

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Now, before you pack your teeth with spinach or ask if I like “see-food” (I have 3 boys), I have to tell you that I’m talking about digital immaturity. My apologies to the young at heart.

I’ve commented briefly on this chart before, but today I think it deserves a deeper look:

This chart compares high-growth firms (green bars)—those that experience at least 20% compound annual growth over a three-year period—against no-growth firms (beige bars)—those that experience zero or negative growth over the same period. It also divides each growth category into five digital maturity levels. If you are interested, you can read what each signifies in the 2026 High Growth Executive Summary. But for our purposes, you just need to know that the numbered levels represent an increasing scale of sophistication, from rudimentary (1) to highly advanced (5).

What can we take away from this data?

Almost one in three of all firms rated themselves in the lowest level of maturity. Over half of firms, including those in the high-growth category, fall into the two lowest levels. And when you move up another rung, three-quarters of high-growth firms and 89% of no-growth firms sit in the first three levels of digital maturity.

That’s a shockingly bottom-heavy distribution.

Slightly less than a quarter of high-growth firms and about one in ten no-growth firms have reached the top two levels. In a business world that talks incessantly about technology, especially AI, this seems like a dismal state of affairs.

When I looked at the results for each of the individual industries we covered in the study, one set of data looked different. Its chart was a classic bell curve, with most firms clustered around the center. This was, unsurprisingly, the technology & software industry.

No technology or software high-growth firm gave themselves a Level 1 rating, while 14.8% placed themselves in Level 5—that’s a 50% improvement over the aggregate, all-professional services number.

This means that if you are in any other industry, the results in the chart above are skewed slightly higher because of the technology and software firms in the sample. Meaning your industry is likely worse off than the data shown.

In a marketplace pushing a highly connected, automated, AI-superpowered tech stack, most firms are falling woefully short. Many firms remain stubbornly stuck in the paper-and-spreadsheet age.

There is a paradox in these numbers, of course. While the high-growth cohort grows four times faster and is much more profitable than their no-growth peers, they follow roughly the same digital maturity pattern as the rest of professional services. Yes, their maturity numbers are better (especially at the high end), but they tell more or less the same story as everyone else, with about one in three bottomed out at Level 1.

If 75% of the best-performing firms are absent from the top two levels, then how much of a role does technology really play in their success?

It’s a tricky question. The easy—and very likely wrong—conclusion is that there is little correlation between digital maturity and high growth, so technology is not an important factor in firm growth.

We believe the answer is more subtle. And it has as much to do with human psychology and the pace of technological change as it does with what tech platforms a firm employs.

My colleagues at Hinge have noticed that a “reset” has taken place in these numbers over the past couple of years. Digital maturity used to be generally higher across the board, then around 2023–2024 they abruptly fell. Based on the timing of this decline, we believe the emergence of AI was the major culprit.

All of a sudden, the bar of technological sophistication rose to a towering new height, and everybody was standing at ground level looking up, trying to figure out how in the world they would clear it. Even today, most firms are still trying to understand how and when to use AI.

When asked to assess their digital maturity, firm leaders and marketers seem to believe they are now playing a different game, one whose rules they are still trying to understand. This seems like the most plausible explanation for today’s lower high-growth digital maturity numbers.

That said, we continue to believe that high-growth firms are better at deploying, integrating and using technology than this chart indicates.

Why do we think this? Because their numbers were higher before the Big AI Bang, which occurred in November of 2022 when OpenAI released ChatGPT 3.5. These organizations were better at connecting disparate platforms, training their teams on the software and using its advanced features.

Even if all the fastest growing firms haven’t yet mastered AI, many of them still have a strong lead over their slower-growing peers when it comes to using technology to improve efficiency and provide real-time insights. But when we ask them to rate their digital maturity, they give themselves only partial credit because of their AI deficit.

So by one measure, the difficult-to-attain ideal of multiple connected AI-driven technology platforms, most professional services providers are immature. Even if they aren’t telling Uranus jokes.

By a different measure, one that includes powerful process automation and tech that today seems so 2022, high-growth firms have a decided advantage. And if you look again at the chart above, you’ll see that the fast-growing group also significantly outperform their no-growth counterparts in the top two levels.

There are many factors that contribute to high performers’ success. Technology is one of them. But it sometimes takes a careful reading of the data—and some historical context—to see the story.

How does your digital maturity stack up against the fastest-growing firms?

The post Oh, You’re SO Digitally Mature appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

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The conversation around “moving beyond PPC” can sometimes imply that paid media no longer works. We don’t think that’s what’s happening. What’s becoming less effective is treating PPC as a standalone, bottom-of-funnel lead-generation engine. Paid search, paid social, display/demand generation, and video can all play meaningful roles across the professional services buyer journey. The opportunity now is to be much more intentional about the job we’re asking each of them to do. Paid media should capture demand when it exists, help create it when it doesn’t, and amplify the expertise and ideas that make a firm worth remembering in the first place.

Here is how we address the most pressing paid media questions facing professional services firms today, along with our approach to building an integrated marketing engine.

1. Where does PPC still work today, and where has it stopped delivering?

PPC still works for us across the funnel. What has changed is the expectation that every paid interaction should produce a lead immediately.

Search is powerful when someone is actively looking for a service or solution, but it can also reach buyers much earlier. Someone researching a problem, business challenge, or emerging issue may not be looking for a provider yet. The right search strategy and content can introduce a firm while that buyer is still defining what they need. Beyond search, paid social, display/demand generation, and Video let us reach relevant audiences even when they aren’t actively looking.

This is particularly important in professional services. The 95/5 principle suggests that at any given time, only about 5% of potential buyers are actively in-market, while the other 95% aren’t ready to buy yet. The exact percentage varies, but the implication matters: focusing on paid media exclusively on immediate intent means competing for a small pool of existing demand while largely ignoring future buyers.

Byron Sharp’s concepts of mental and physical availability capture what we should be doing with that larger audience: become easy to think of and easy to find when a buying situation arises. In professional services marketing, that means building familiarity with your expertise before a buyer is in-market, then being a visible firm and easy to engage when the need becomes real.

The problem isn’t PPC. It’s expecting every paid channel to behave like bottom-funnel search.

A LinkedIn ad introducing an executive to compelling original research shouldn’t be judged by the same standard as a Search ad for a specific service. Paid media can capture today’s demand while helping create and shape tomorrow’s.

2. What paid formats and approaches should we be testing or scaling?

We’re emphasizing paid formats that let professional services buyers experience our expertise before we ask them to convert. That includes LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads, LinkedIn Document Ads, and highly targeted YouTube campaigns, alongside more traditional paid search and social.

Thought Leader Ads are particularly interesting because they let us amplify the voices and perspectives of individual subject matter experts, rather than always advertising from a company page. In professional services, where buyers are ultimately hiring people and their expertise, that distinction matters. It also allows us to put paid support behind content that’s already proving valuable organically.

We’re also using LinkedIn Document Ads to bring substantive content directly into the feed, rather than requiring a click before someone gets value. Original research, proprietary data, and strong educational content are especially well suited to that format. And because these formats can amplify content firms are already producing, they allow us to extend the life and reach of strong assets rather than continually investing budget in net-new campaign content.

YouTube is especially interesting because it can serve multiple parts of the marketing strategy at once. Sophisticated targeting lets us put expert-led video in front of specific professional services audiences, while video is becoming increasingly important to how people search, learn, and discover brands across traditional search and AI-driven experiences. A strong video asset can support paid distribution, organic search, social content, and a firm’s broader AEO/GEO strategy rather than existing as a one-off ad.

The common thread isn’t chasing new ad formats. It’s getting more value from the content and expertise firms already have, then using paid media to make sure the right people actually see it.

3. What kind of results should we actually expect to see?

We’re seeing some of the strongest signals from formats that put expertise ahead of the traditional sales pitch. LinkedIn, for example, has reported Thought Leader Ads delivering up to 2.4x higher CTR than other single-image ads, reinforcing what we’re seeing directionally: professional services audiences are often more willing to engage with a useful perspective from a person than another polished brand message.

But clicks aren’t the only result we’re looking for. In one recent campaign, targeting a highly specific, hard-to-reach buying committee, we reached 57% of the key decision-makers and internal influencers, outperforming standard enterprise professional services ABM benchmarks by almost double. Across that high-value executive audience, we generated a 79% landing page engagement rate and saw ad-level engagement peak at 7.79%, over 6x the B2B industry average. When you put substantive expertise in front of the right executive audience, they don’t just click – they stay.

That gives us a much richer picture of whether we’re actually earning attention among the people we want to influence.

Paid Ads also give us something less obvious but incredibly useful: content intelligence. We can see which research findings, topics, and expert perspectives earn attention and generate leads, then feed those insights back into organic content, video, sales enablement, and future campaigns.

The key is not lowering the bar for paid media because attribution is difficult. It’s matching the measurement to the job the campaign was designed to do. A high-intent search campaign should generate qualified leads and pipeline. A mid-funnel campaign might be measured against meaningful conversions like a research download, webinar registration, or assessment completion. A campaign focused on the 95% who aren’t ready to buy yet should show that we’re reaching the right audience, earning attention, and building familiarity over time. Different objectives require different measures of success, but every campaign must clearly define what success looks like.

4. How do you integrate paid media into a broader content strategy alongside earned and owned media?

Paid media shouldn’t be the last step in the content process – “we published something, now let’s put some budget behind it.” We think about paid, owned, and earned as parts of the same content ecosystem, with each channel extending the reach and credibility of the others.

Hinge’s original research is a great example. We invest heavily in studying how high-growth professional services firms market, grow, and compete. One research study can fuel a flagship report, articles, webinars, executive commentary, PR and earned media, organic social, video, and sales conversations. Paid media then lets us take the strongest findings and perspectives from that research and deliberately put them in front of the audiences who will find them most relevant.

That approach also makes the content investment work much harder. Instead of continually creating net-new assets for paid campaigns, we can turn one strong research piece into dozens of touchpoints across channels and formats. A single research finding might become a LinkedIn Thought Leader Ad, a short-form video for YouTube Shorts, a Document Ad, an article, and a talking point for an SME – all reinforcing the same idea.

And the relationship goes both ways. Paid media isn’t just a distribution channel; it’s a feedback loop. Search data can tell us what buyers are asking, social engagement can reveal which research findings or perspectives resonate with specific audiences, and campaign behavior can help identify which topics deserve deeper investment across owned and earned content.

The goal is consistency without repetition. Buyers may encounter a firm through search, an expert’s LinkedIn post, a research study, a podcast, or an industry publication, but those experiences should build on one another. That’s when paid stops operating as a campaign silo and starts working as part of an integrated marketing engine.

5. How should we measure these efforts?

Measurement starts before a campaign ever goes live. We define the campaign’s role in the buyer journey, the action or behavior we’re trying to influence, and the KPIs that tell us whether it’s working. A high-intent search campaign, a gated resource, and a thought leadership ad shouldn’t have the same definition of success.

For campaigns designed to generate demand, we look well beyond leads and cost per lead. A campaign can produce an efficient cost per lead and still have very little business impact. We want to understand what happens after the conversion: Are those leads becoming MQLs and SQLs? Are they turning into opportunities? How much pipeline did the campaign source or influence? What does lead quality look like by channel, audience, and campaign?

To make that possible, we build integrated dashboards that bring paid media, website analytics, and CRM data together. That gives us a view from the initial ad interaction through conversions, qualified leads, opportunities, pipeline, and revenue. It also helps us identify the real constraint. Sometimes the issue isn’t generating more leads; it’s lead quality, the offer, the landing page, the handoff to sales, or what happens further into the customer journey.

At the same time, we don’t pretend every valuable marketing interaction can be tied neatly to revenue. Brand building and demand creation are inherently harder to attribute, particularly in long professional services buying cycles. Still, they’re essential to reaching the much larger group of buyers who aren’t in-market today. For those efforts, we define appropriate leading indicators such as reach within priority audiences, content engagement and consumption, branded search, direct traffic, and target-account activity, then look at those alongside long-term pipeline and revenue trends.

Attribution tells us what we can trace. It doesn’t necessarily tell us everything that influenced the buyer. The goal is to define success upfront, measure what matters at each stage of the buyer journey, and understand how those efforts work together to capture demand today while building the conditions for future growth.

The post Do Pay-Per-Click and LinkedIn Ad Campaigns Still Work for Professional Services? appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

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Hinge’s annual High Growth Study uncovers what techniques the most successful professional services firms use to outperform their peers. As valuable as those insights are, they aren’t enough.

Every firm’s clientele is different. As a result, their behavior may be different, too. They may respond to different marketing strategies, read different publications or online resources, attend different conferences or be more or less inclined to search for new service providers using Google and AI than other firms in your industry.

Until you understand how your buyers behave, you can’t really build a marketing program with confidence.

Now, you may think you understand your buyers. After all, you work with them every single day. But chances are, you don’t. Their habits and preferences change. And our research shows that you know less—a lot less—about them than you think.

Consider the chart below, which represents interviews with hundreds of firms and thousands of their clients. When we ask firm staff who their competitors are, then ask their clients who they consider competitors of the firm, there is just a 25% overlap on average between the lists!

Buyers’ and Sellers’ Competitor Lists Show Minimal Overlap

Source: Hinge Inside the Buyer’s Brain study

So what do you do about this situation? The answer is to conduct research on your target audience. Audience research is the best way to learn about how your clients and companies like them find, assess and select a firm like yours. It is also the only way to find out why they selected you over the competition—and why, in many instances, they continue to use your firm.

Research provides a wealth of insights that touch every aspect of your organization. And the way it can help marketing make smarter decisions is pretty remarkable. When you can get a handle, however imperfect, on the way your buyers think and behave, you are able to evaluate where you invest your limited dollars and time. Having this information can be such a revelation, and a lucrative one at that.

Beyond formal audience research, tools like SEMRush, Sparktoro and Meltwater (to name just a few) can help you understand where your audiences spend their time online, what they read, what topics they are interested in and what events they attend. This data can not only validate your traditional research findings, but also provide new ideas to test.

Most firms today don’t have access to accurate information like this. Instead, they rely on anecdotal evidence, gut instinct and memories of what seemed to work in the past, though they often lack the hard data to know for sure.

How well do you know your audience (and how certain are you that you are right)? And is your marketing program based on the way your buyers behave rather than the biases you bring to it?

Your success may depend on how you answer the tough questions.

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Each year, they inch closer to a standard modeled by the market leaders in their industries: to become truly “full-service”—offering every conceivable relevant service to buyers across the nation or the world.

The thinking goes like this: “If we can be our clients’ one-stop shop, they will never need to go elsewhere. Prospects want to know that we can handle any challenge that comes their way.” At the same time, firm leaders carry an underlying belief that the key to growth is to expand the pool of potential buyers by adding services and entering new markets.

Our research shows that some buyers are indeed looking for a full-service experience. They appreciate the convenience of working with a familiar partner as new challenges arise.

But that isn’t the way most buyers’ minds work. The majority of professional service buyers are tasked with solving a specific problem rather than a range of possible future problems. As a result, they seek out the firm most likely to be able to solve their immediate issue in the shortest amount of time.

In this scenario, what kinds of firms do most buyers perceive as most qualified?

Specialists.

Because specialists focus on one thing (or, sometimes, a related group of things), they get really good at solving those problems. I won’t go into more detail on the advantages of specialization here because I’ve written about it before.

Instead, I want to provide a few examples of large, successful firms in different industries that have thrived by specializing. My goal is not only to demonstrate that large firms can specialize, but also that they pay no penalties for their narrower focus. In fact, it helps them attract and win exactly the kinds of clients they are best suited to serve.

Legal Industry

Quinn Emanuel
This firm focuses exclusively on litigation law, almost unheard of for a firm of its size. With more than 1,300 employees in 33 offices across four continents, they have built a reputation as one of the most feared law firms in the corporate world.

Consulting Industry

Health Management Associates (HMA)
With over 700 consultants working in all 50 states, HMA has grown to become the leader in its category. By focusing exclusively on solving the operational challenges of healthcare organizations—and with its deep insider expertise in Medicare and Medicaid regulations—it has grown quickly into the leading consultancy for public and private healthcare organizations across the nation.

Altman Solon
By focusing on a specific sector (telecommunications, media, and technology), Altman Solon has become the largest strategy consulting firm in its category. With 18 offices worldwide and over 600 professionals, they demonstrate that specialization is no barrier to growth.

Cornerstone Research
This research firm concentrates on just one thing: delivering economic and financial analysis for commercial litigation and regulatory proceedings. They have over 1,000 employees across the US and Europe.

Architecture Industry

Populous
This architecture firm went all-in on stadium and entertainment venue design, and it paid off. Since their inception in 2009, they have grown to 1,600 employees in 34 offices on four continents. They have designed some of the most iconic structures in sports and entertainment, including Wembley Stadium in London and the Sphere in Las Vegas.

Technology & Software Industry

Bishop Fox
This cyber security firm has built a reputation for exposing IT system weaknesses by simulating attacks on them. Their tenacious, offense-is-the-best defense approach sets them apart from other competitors in their category. Despite their signature approach to IT security—and in fact, because of it—they are a fast-growing firm with almost 400 employees and plenty of venture capital interest.

Epic
This software company has not only remained privately held (and employee owned) but has stuck stubbornly to its mission of helping the healthcare industry be more productive and connecting healthcare providers with their patients (if you have used MyChart, you have used their software). With revenues of $5.7 billion, Epic has grown to become the dominant player in the industry—thanks to its powerful focus.

Accounting Industry

Highly specialized large accounting firms are harder to come by. There are, however, at least a few specialized mid-sized accounting firms. Here are three representative examples:

Pinion focuses on serving the agricultural industry. With roughly 700 employees in 26 offices in the US and Australia, they have been serving the industry since 1932.

Stambaugh Ness specializes in the AEC industry, generating over 80 percent of its business from that segment. They serve over 1,400 AEC firms in all 50 states.

Your Part-Time Controller (YPTC) offers outsourced accounting services exclusively to non-profits. Today, they are a top-100 accounting firm.

There is no reason that these, or firms with similar focus, couldn’t continue to grow and challenge the industry giants.

As you can see, focus has helped firms in many industries achieve leadership status. While generalist firms also make it to the highest levels of success, they must constantly battle people’s natural inclination to seek out specialists.

Specialization may not be for everyone, but don’t operate on the faulty assumption that it limits your growth opportunities. Unless your niche is simply too narrow to support significant growth (this is rarer than you think), it will be easier to attract and close new business if your firm is closely aligned with the needs of your prospective clients. All it takes is focus.

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As buyers become more skeptical, simply relying on strong relationships, referrals, and polished proposals isn’t enough. Today’s buyers conduct extensive research long before they contact a firm, using search engines, AI tools, peer recommendations, and digital content to validate every claim. By the time an RFP is released, many buyers have already decided which firms belong on the short list.

The firms that consistently win work understand that business development begins long before the proposal phase.

The Modern AEC Buying Journey Has Changed

Historically, referrals were the cornerstone of new business development in the AEC industry. While they’re are still valuable, they no longer operate the way they once did.

According to Hinge’s research, buyers increasingly verify referrals through online searches, articles, videos, websites, and even AI platforms before ever reaching out. Rather than accepting a recommendation at face value, prospects seek independent confirmation that a firm’s expertise and reputation match what they’ve heard. This mean firms are constantly being evaluated, even when they don’t know they’re under consideration. If your firm’s online presence doesn’t reinforce what a referral promises, you’ll be out of the running before your business development team ever gets involved.

Why Firms Never Reach the Short List

Today’s buyers aren’t looking for reasons to consider specific firms; they’re looking for reasons to eliminate them. Once, technical expertise was enough to get a foot in the door. Now, it’s only one consideration of many. Besides lack of relevant experience, other disqualifiers include:

• Poor collaboration or communication
• Budget overruns
• Quality concerns
• Schedule delays
• Regulatory or legal risks
• Reputational red flags
• Technology implementation failures

Selecting an engineering consultant, architect, or contractor is a high-risk decision. Buyers aren’t simply looking for the most qualified firm—they’re looking for the firm that gives them the greatest confidence. That confidence must be established before interviews ever begin.

The Trust Deficit

Today’s buyers face an overwhelming number of choices. Nearly every firm claims technical excellence, exceptional service, and proven experience. As those messages become increasingly similar, trust becomes harder to earn. Marketing teams often respond by producing more proposal content or polishing boilerplate language. But buyers aren’t looking for spin; they’re looking for proof that firms understand their needs and can solve their specific problems.

Combating the trust deficit requires giving buyers proof that firms can do what they say they can. Being featured in reputable publications, earning independent media mentions, providing educational content and data-driven case stories, engaging in visible thought leadership, and sharing verifiable client testimonials help reduce buyer uncertainty.

Winning After You’ve Made the Short List

Making the short list is only half the battle. Once firms reach the interview stage, buyers evaluate a different set of criteria.

The factors most likely to tip the scale include:

1. Expertise and technical skills
2. Prior relationships
3. Quality of the project team
4. Understanding client needs
5. Trust and integrity
6. Reputation
7. Proven results
8. Communication and responsiveness

After technical expertise, every item on the list is rooted in trust building.

Visibility Is the New Business Development

One of the biggest findings from our latest research is that the most successful firms don’t just have strong reputations; they’re also highly visible. A firm may have an excellent reputation among existing clients, but if prospective buyers can’t easily discover or verify that expertise, business growth stagnates. Conversely, visibility without credibility creates awareness, but not confidence.

High-growth firms invest in both. They publish articles, participate in industry events, speak at conferences, contribute original research, optimize their websites for search, and create educational resources that answer buyers’ questions before they ask them. When buyers begin researching potential firms, those organizations are already on their radar.

Moving Beyond Proposal-Centric Marketing

Many AEC marketing departments remain heavily focused on proposal production. The firms that consistently outperform competitors leverage the strengths of marketing and business development in cooperation. Instead of simply responding to opportunities, they’re actively creating them.

That includes:

• Building recognizable experts within the firm
• Publishing educational content regularly
• Investing in search visibility
• Developing strong client success stories
• Creating research that addresses buyer challenges
• Aligning marketing and business development around long-term visibility

Rather than asking, “How do we win this RFP?” they’re asking, “How do we become the obvious choice before the RFP is written?”

The Future Belongs to Verifiable Experts

Today’s AEC buyers conduct far more independent research than ever before. They consult peers, search Google, read articles, watch videos, attend webinars, and increasingly rely on AI-generated summaries to narrow their options. That means firms are no longer competing solely in interviews or proposal evaluations. They’re competing every day online. The firms that consistently make the short list—and ultimately win more work—are those that invest in building trust long before a proposal is submitted.

Relationships still matter. Technical excellence still matters. But in today’s marketplace, neither can remain invisible.

By combining expertise with visibility, strong trust signals, and consistent thought leadership, AEC firms can reduce buyer uncertainty, strengthen their reputation, and improve their win rates in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

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Yet, it appears nowhere in the top-10 list of most impactful techniques used by high-growth firms. What are we to make of this discrepancy? And what does it mean for your own marketing program?

First, let me define my terms. In our study, we differentiate between social media advertising (on, say, LinkedIn or YouTube, for instance) and pay-per-click/digital display advertising (such as Google Ads). In professional services, social media advertising usually takes place on LinkedIn, though different industries may favor various social channels, too.

Next, I want to make a point: data alone doesn’t always tell the whole story. Sometimes, it helps to have a bit of context or familiarity with the situation to understand what is likely going on. And that’s what I’d like to explore briefly today.

In our experience, many firms that do digital advertising—whether on social media, Google or elsewhere—get poor results for a wide range of reasons. Often, they see their competition doing advertising and they feel like they need to get in on the action. This, in part, explains the popularity of this marketing technique.

What many firms lack, unfortunately, is a true strategy, which may explain why impact scores lag. Digital advertising, whether on social media or elsewhere, requires several things be in place in order for it to deliver any kind of respectable return:

1. Clear goals
2. Well-defined audiences
3. Compelling calls to action
4. Willingness to experiment with different messages and visuals
5. Strong conversion pages
6. An eye on analytics
7. Readiness to follow up quickly
8. Plenty of patience

Digital advertising also requires a significant financial and time investment. A small one-week experiment isn’t likely to get enough traction to produce results. Many firms dip their toe in the water, see no results and get out. That’s not a plan for success.

While high-growth firms have lower impact scores for this technique, theirs are significantly higher than the rest of the field. They use the technique because it works for them and because they know how to deliver with greater sophistication than average firms.

We have also found that social media advertising, particularly on LinkedIn, offers firms a precision tool to target very specific audiences. Because you can target job functions and even specific job titles in specific industries and company sizes, you can reach exactly the people you want. You can even target specific companies, which is a critical function of account-based marketing (also known as ABM).

While advertising is a big part of some firms’ marketing programs, others use it as yet another channel to reach and nurture their audience. As Google and AI search upend traditional SEO, firms use social media advertising to bridge the gap. It can be used in a variety of ways, from promoting important pieces of content you have produced to promoting events to building brand awareness.

Today’s marketing mantra is “be everywhere your prospects are.” Social media advertising can be an effective part of that strategy. If, and how much, you should invest in it will depend on your industry, your audience, and what you want advertising to accomplish.

The post Should You Advertise on LinkedIn? appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

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