Let’s begin by exploring different types of buyers, and why they seek out experts in the first place.

Companies use a number of criteria when selecting service providers. And of course, not all buyers use the same criteria. We’ve identified three types of buyers and their motives:

The Bottom Feeders. These buyers are very price sensitive and will always choose the lowest-cost option. They tend to have very low standards and unrealistically high expectations. They rarely make good clients unless your firm is optimized for delivering commodity work at bargain-basement fees. This type of client does not value true expertise and prioritizes cost over all other factors.

The Fence Sitters. This type of buyer lacks confidence in its ability to find the best option to solve their problem. Often they have been burned by a poor choice in the past. Their solution is to cast their net widely—often by sending out an RFP (side note: not all RFPs are created equal. When handled with thoughtfulness and sophistication, the RFP process can be very rewarding to all parties)—to solicit as many options as possible, under the belief this will make their choice easier. In fact, it becomes much harder. The chances of making the wrong decision grow in proportion to the size of the vendor pool. These buyers try to balance cost and expertise. More often than not, they reflexively throw out the high and low bidders and pick an option in the middle. What they tend to get is middling results.

The Expert Seekers. For most firms, this is the ideal buyer. They understand the value of true expertise: a partner who already knows their industry or problem and is equipped to solve it quickly. These buyers are willing to pay a premium for an exceptional outcome and experience. So they seek out the best, often looking for the experts or firms that write or speak with the greatest authority on the topic. It’s not uncommon for these companies to reach out to just a single service provider or expert.

In short, better clients are better attuned to expertise. That’s why making your expertise both visible and highly respected is so important.

But what does it mean to be a Visible Expert?

The first answer is obvious. You have to be really good at something. That means you know as much or more about a subject than almost anyone. And the narrower and deeper your expertise, the fewer professionals in your field can match your knowledge and relevant experience.

Second, you have to act like an expert. When you are in front of a client, you present your knowledge and advice with confidence and in a differentiated manner – meaning other agencies can’t quite replicate your delivery style and impact. When confronted with an objection, you can deliver a sound, well-reasoned response. As soon as you start taking orders from the client, you are lost.

Third, you have to be able to be a clear thinker and communicator. You must be able to explain difficult ideas in easy-to-understand language. And to become broadly known—to generate a following—you will find yourself becoming a teacher. I don’t mean you will teach at a university (though some do). Instead, you will become known through your writing and speaking. You might write the authoritative book on your field, or you might blog. Either way, you are freely giving away your knowledge to build a loyal, trusting audience. Some of whom will eventually hire you.

What’s your firm’s strategy to attract the best clients? If you are taking an expertise-based, thought-leadership approach you may be on to something!

The post Who Are Visible Experts’ Best Clients? appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

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If you aspire to be a Visible Expert^®, you will enjoy greater success if you are known as both a writer and a speaker. Public speaking often gets easier with time and experience. But writing—at least good, thoughtful writing—can feel like a painful chore even after decades of experience.

Luckily, all that’s changed. Thanks to ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or Copilot, your writer self gets to retire to Florida. (Which pool floatie will it choose today?) All those ideas that stubbornly won’t shake loose from your coconut, all those words that spill onto the page like old, crystallized honey, all that editing and rewriting, all that frustration… has vanished.

The word robots are here to save the day.

Everything in the previous two paragraphs, of course, is nonsense. The word robots are ingenious machines that love to do your bidding. And they are amazing at a lot of tasks. But ask them to draft an original blog post that doesn’t read like a cardboard box, and you’ll likely feel that old frustration on the rise again.

No bot is you. You can feed your chatbots examples of your work for style and a detailed outline for ideas and structure. But in the end, the output is, well, awkward. You’ll see all the AI tells: bullet points, bolded terms, cliches, mixed metaphors and those weird, clumsy phrases that would never have come from your fingertips. The problem is them, not you.

Bots don’t have your years of experience. They don’t know what will and won’t play with your audience. And they aren’t creative thinkers. Only you have the bottle of special sauce.

There’s nothing like engaging with the material as it forms from your head. Like clay figures, the ideas and imagery appear a little disturbing and misshapen at first. But with some tweaking here, some carving there, some burnishing here, the piece comes to life. Out of nothing appears a well-articulated idea or well-defended position!

Now, what if all this writing craft isn’t for you? What if you don’t have the time to play Geppetto once or twice a month?

Assuming you are an expert with your own ideas and a point of view, there is another approach. One that has a long history of success. You can hire a ghostwriter.

I know what you are thinking. How is a ghostwriter different from ChatGPT? They don’t have your bottle of special sauce, either.

The answer has three parts:

1. They are human like you.
2. They (presumably) can write interesting copy.
3. They can ask probing questions along the way.

You can spend a half hour briefing your writer—what you want to say, what facts you want to use to support it—and let them go off and do the hard work. Then the collaboration begins to produce a piece that presents your point of view and sounds reasonably like your voice.

A freelance professional writer isn’t cheap. Expect to pay $80 to $150 per hour for a good one. Many firms that value thought leadership will cover the cost. The benefits of Visible Expertise make it all worthwhile.

To many AI evangelists, what I’ve written will be dismissed with an eye-roll emoji. “What a Luddite!” And if I didn’t believe AI tools can play a pivotal role in writing, they would be right. In fact, AI is an exceptional tool to help writers be more productive. AI can help you come up with ideas, support them with evidence and check your work. It can be used to test your argument and strengthen your case. It can even draft short, specific passages of text—just be prepared to revise them.*

In the end, AI is a tool. A powerful tool. Like your computer. And your brain. Only don’t forget to keep using that last one.

*I’m speaking specifically here about thought leadership content like blog posts and articles. AI can produce insightful long-format pieces, such as reports and analyses, when presenting an individual point of view and style is less important.

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A lot of professionals are taken aback by this advice. Especially those that have invested years developing a unique, proprietary approach to the problems they solve. Their thinking goes something like this:

“My knowledge is my product. I sell my expertise by the hour or by the project. If I write detailed articles or books, explain my methodology in webinars, or speak openly about my strategies, I am essentially giving away the store. Why would anyone hire me if I tell them exactly how to solve their problems?” They also worry in the same breath that openly offering their deeply-held expertise just makes things easy for the competition.

It sounds logical, doesn’t it? It’s the “secret sauce” theory of business. If you give away the recipe, no one will come to the restaurant–or they’ll head straight to the newest competitor who copied the recipe.

But in professional services, you aren’t selling the recipe. You are selling the chef.

In my decades of working with firms, I have found that the professionals who share the most—who educate their audience freely and generously—are the ones who grow the fastest and charge the highest fees.

The “Sample” Effect

Imagine you are at a food court. One vendor is standing behind the counter with their arms crossed, promising that their food is delicious. The vendor next door is handing out free samples on a toothpick. Who gets the sale?

Public speaking, blog posts and webinars work the exact same way. They allow your audience to witness your thinking and expertise in action. Because each of these channels sets you up by default as the authority on the topic, your audience is inclined to perceive you that way. This cognitive behavior is known as authority bias, and it can give you tremendous influence over your readers and listeners.

Speaking at targeted conferences and presenting in educational webinars are proven ways to establish credibility quickly. Why? Because you are in a de facto position of authority, your words carry more weight. By giving away a sample of your knowledge on stage or on a screen, you aren’t satisfying your viewers’ hunger, you are whetting their appetite for the full meal—which is working with you directly.

Writing can be just as powerful—and reach even more people. By applying the techniques of SEO and GEO, you can expand your reach to individuals and their organizations that need to solve problems like the ones you write about. Whether they are using Google, ChatGPT or LinkedIn, these searchers are looking for answers to complex challenges. And you can position yourself exactly where they are looking.

If you are still skeptical, hear me out.

The DIY Myth

The biggest hesitation I hear is, “If I tell them how to do it, they’ll just do it themselves.”

Maybe. But it rarely happens. In the world of complex professional services—whether it’s law, architecture, consulting, accounting or some other service—learning how to do something can be very different from actually pulling it off.

You can explain the tax code changes to a CFO, but that doesn’t mean they have the time, desire, or risk tolerance to file the complex returns themselves.

In fact, educating your audience often reveals the complexity of the problem, making your audience more likely to hire an expert to handle it. And if they find your content compelling enough, that expert is likely to be you.

The other common objection I’ve mentioned is, “My competitors will just steal my ideas.” If you are really doing something that different and special, your competitors are going to figure it out pretty quickly, anyway. And if your methodology is easy to replicate, hiding your secrets isn’t going to protect you for long. (On the other hand, if you have a differentiator that is difficult to copy, most competitors won’t bother.)

What’s more important is how visible you are in the marketplace—and how people perceive you. Firms that freely give away their expertise have a huge advantage over those that don’t. You can have the most amazing proprietary process in the world, but if nobody knows about it you aren’t likely to thrive. Word-of-mouth referrals only go so far. Giving away your expertise breaks open the dam.

How to Start “Giving It Away”

You don’t have to write a book tomorrow (though a book can be fantastic for your business!). You just need to meet your audience where they are. Here are a three ways you can do that:

1. Write and Speak: Thought leaders use multiple channels to build their reputations. These might include blog posts, journal articles, speaking engagements, webinars or videos—to name just a few.
2. Use Research: Follow the lead of experts like Michael Zipursky, who conducts frequent surveys to find out exactly what his market wants to learn. This kind of data equips you with the highly relevant, evidence-based content that many of your prospects are looking for.
3. Collaborate: If writing isn’t your strong suit, work with a ghostwriter to turn your ideas into high-value blog posts or books. This practice is a lot more common than you might think. If you prefer to write your own pieces, consider enlisting an editor to give it a professional polish and catch embarrassing errors.

So stop hoarding your secrets. Open the vault. Share what you know. You will discover that the more you give away, the more you get back in trust, reputation and lucrative new business.

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Since the inception of this study over a decade ago, we have tracked the AEC industry through digital revolutions, global pandemics, and economic turbulence. Today, the landscape has shifted once again. Following a brief post-pandemic boom, the industry is undergoing a significant recalibration. The median growth rate for AEC firms has fallen for the second consecutive time to 10.5%—the lowest in eight years.

We are pleased to announce the release of the 2026 High Growth Study—Architecture, Engineering & Construction Edition. This year we surveyed 110 AEC firms, representing $42.7 billion in revenue and almost 70,000 employees. The sample included a mix of firms of all sizes.

Below, we explore five key findings from this year’s study.

Five Characteristics of High-Growth AEC Firms

1. They Grow 4.6X Faster and Are More Profitable

We define high-growth firms as those with a minimum 20% compound annual growth rate over a three-year evaluation period. This year, high-growth firms grew an impressive 40.7%—4.6 times faster than the average-growth group, which had a median growth rate of 8.9%. They were highly profitable, too. With a profitability of 37.2%, they were 62% more profitable than the average group and 266% more than firms with zero or negative growth. In fact, profitability was healthy across all three growth categories.

How does the high-growth group achieve outstanding performance year after year? The next four charts provide a few answers.

2. High-Growth Firms Invest a Lot More in Marketing

High-growth AEC firms’ marketing budgets are twice the size of their slower-growing peers. The median budget for high-growth firms, expressed as a percentage of overall revenue, was 10%, compared to just 5% for the rest of the industry.

Of course, high-growth firms aren’t just spending more, they are spending smarter. But where are they investing those dollars? We can’t go into all the places in this post, but the next chart provides an entry point.

3. They Know What Marketing Techniques Are Effective

What marketing techniques do the top-performing AEC companies use most often? In this age of the internet and AI, AEC organizations largely favor techniques that either employ their interpersonal skills or help build their reputations.

The figure below lists the top six. Networking at events has emerged as the most widely used technique, employed by 7 out of 10 high-growth firms. This provides the advantage of meeting prospective clients face to face, making it easier to establish trust and create personal relationships. This is followed by business development materials. High-quality pitch decks, proposals, brochures and similar materials can make the process of closing new business easier and faster because they present your firm in the best possible light.

Networking on social media, in the third spot, is a common and convenient way to build new connections and create interest in your services—anywhere and anytime. Think of it as the online counterpart of live networking.

Sponsoring a conference or event can build awareness of your brand over time. And public speakers, who we call Visible Experts®, can be a real asset to a firm’s business development program, often streamlining new client acquisition and commanding premium fees. Another way AEC professionals build their professional reputations is to write original thought leadership and promote it on social media.

4. They Prioritize Social Media, Technology and Thought Leadership

Like any firm, the high-growth companies in our study have limited resources and must choose where to put their time and energy in the year ahead. The chart below lists these firms’ top three marketing priorities for 2026.

This year, social media marketing has jumped to the top of the list. AEC companies often use a variety of social media platforms, but one dominates. LinkedIn is used by 9 out of 10 firms. If you could use only one, the choice would be easy.

In a tie for second place are “marketing technology, AI and automation” and “developing thought leaders.” The rapid advances in AI have forced even reluctant firms to take this technology seriously. Our only surprise was that only a quarter of respondents listed it. Developing thought leaders is entirely consistent with high-growth firms’ interest in building interpersonal relationships and polishing their reputations (see #3 above).

5. 3 Out of 4 High Growth Firms Do Research

In a tie for second place are “marketing technology, AI and automation” and “developing thought leaders.” The rapid advances in AI have forced even reluctant firms to take this technology seriously. Our only surprise was that only a quarter of respondents listed it. Developing thought leaders is entirely consistent with high-growth firms’ interest in building interpersonal relationships and polishing their reputations (see #3 above).

This year, increased competition is the number 2 challenge across the industry (after market uncertainty). Pricing research helps top performers determine if they are charging too little or too much for their services, equipping them to be as competitive as possible while protecting their margins.

Client satisfaction research is the third most common type of intelligence gathering used by high-growth companies. It is a useful tool to gauge not only how well you are delivering your services, but how likely clients are to come back and refer you. This kind of research is usually simple to conduct and requires a minimal time commitment from the client.

Dive Deeper into the Habits of High-Growth AEC Firms

We hope this data helps you make better marketing and business development decisions. High Growth AEC firms can be a model for firms like yours. These organizations have learned what works and what is a waste of time even in unpredictable times.

How can you use these findings? Compare what high-growth firms do to your own marketing program. Are your priorities in line with theirs? What adjustments do you need to make? High growth and high profitability are within reach—if you are equipped with the right information. This study can be a valuable source of reliable intelligence.

If you are interested in taking a deeper dive into the latest industry data, including practical suggestions to put it into practice, consider purchasing the full report.

The post 5 Key Findings on the Fastest Growing AEC Firms in 2026 appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

By “act accordingly,” I mean they give you the permission to conduct your engagement on your terms, not theirs. They take your advice. They work collaboratively with you, and they do it enthusiastically. In short, they view you as a true expert in your discipline.

Clients like these are not born. They are made.

And ideally they are made long before you ever meet them.

Let me explain.

There are a number of ways that prospective clients discover professional services firms. They can be referred to you by current and former clients. They can be referred to you by partners in adjacent businesses—those that serve clients like yours but which don’t compete directly with you. For instance, lawyers and accountants often refer clients to each other. Prospects can meet you at a tradeshow or conference. Or they can see your advertising at the very moment they have a need.

All of these marketing techniques work, but they come with a built-in problem. Even though marketing tactics like these can put you on a company’s radar, the prospect doesn’t really know your firm. You still have to convince them you are worth taking a chance on.

That can mean responding to RFPs, along with dozens of your competitors. Or it can mean preparing elaborate pitches that involve a platoon of expensive team members. And at the end of the day, after the client has selected you, they begin the relationship crossing their fingers that they chose wisely.

Most firms of any size will (and probably should) use some, if not all, of these techniques. But there is another way—one that the most successful firms understand sidesteps this problem entirely. This strategy is not new, but it is widely misunderstood.

The strategy I’m describing is thought leadership. Most firms think of thought leadership as a nice-to-have, a supplement to their “real” marketing program. Often firms take this view because they know creating high-quality content is hard and distracts top talent from lucrative billable client work. These firms may do thought leadership but they implement it haphazardly. They simply don’t recognize its true potential.

When thought leadership is done right, however, you attract a different kind of prospect. These folks have been following you for months or years. They read everything you write. They attend your webinars. They fly to conferences to hear your experts speak. And when they finally raise their hand, they are ready to buy. From you—often only from you.

This approach involves educating your audience and sharing, for free, some of your expertise. At its best, your thought leadership—the topics you write and speak about—has a distinct point of view. It is this distinction that makes your work so compelling and separates what your experts say from other firms in your industry.

Over time, you not only build up a following, you establish deep credibility and trust. By the time these prospects reach out to you, they are bought into your firm and your system. This alignment not only makes the sale easy and quick, it sets up the engagement for success from the very start.

If, on the other hand, you enter an engagement and the client isn’t 100% convinced of your expert status, they can be hyper sensitive to any mistakes you make. Even the smallest error adds friction to the relationship and erodes trust. The engagement can still be salvaged, but that can take heroic measures from (and a toll on) your team.

To sum up, the best clients are those who got to know you long before they engaged you. They learned from your experts, and they came back to the well again and again. When they are ready to buy, you are at the top of their list. And when they engage you, they trust you implicitly, so you can do your best work.

That’s the power of a well-conceived thought-leadership strategy. Is your marketing strategy designed to attract your best clients?

The post How to Create Great Clients appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

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These are the three marketing techniques that high-growth firms* identified as having the most impact on their business.

In-person networking. Hosting an event. Traditional advertising.

Wait. Are we Marty McFly? Have we travelled back in time? In this age of AI, are billboards and tradeshow booths really the future of marketing?

Now, I admit that I have engaged in a little selection bias here. In fact, a digital marketing technique—promoting thought leadership on social media—shares third place with traditional advertising. And that is followed on the list by marketing video, another digital technique.

But that doesn’t change the point I want to make. Of the top ten most impactful marketing techniques used by high-growth firms, seven are old-school activities like marketing partnerships and providing free consultations. (Download the research report for the full list.)

And this isn’t a new trend this year. Traditional marketing techniques have long dominated this list. Last year, for instance, eight of the top-ten high-impact activities were traditional. The year before, five out of five were. When I use the term “traditional,” I mean techniques that firms were using before there was even an internet.

A vast array of digital marketing tools are available to professional services marketers. And our research shows that the best-performing firms deploy a roughly balanced mix of digital and traditional techniques. So why does this list of those that deliver the best results skew so heavily to the traditional side?

Clearly, these techniques are resonating with prospective clients.

Perhaps in a world in which prospects’ email inboxes get more difficult to manage every year and digital ads are everywhere online, more personal marketing makes an outsize impact. Maybe prospects like meeting the firms and professionals they might hire, getting to know them in a way that many digital techniques can’t deliver.

I think there is some truth to those explanations. But I believe there is a lot more to the story.

Professional services are by their nature people-based businesses. They have an inherent bent toward interpersonal interactions. These are tried and true ways to establish trust, build relationships and close deals. At the same time, these traditional techniques come with real limitations. You can only meet as many prospects as your time allows. And your reach is constrained by the number of places you can travel.

To some extent, traditional advertising and public relations address the problem of reach, but they aren’t great at eliciting trust. They can tell a lot of people what to think, but they can’t make them actually believe it.

High-growth firms recognize these limitations. That’s why they spend twice as much on marketing as their slower-growing peers. They are investing in a wide range of traditional and digital techniques that not only expand their reach (like advertising) but build trust (like content marketing). Not all of these techniques show up on the top-10 impact list, but each one contributes to the success of the activities that do make the list.

In other words, the items on this list get the credit, but a host of interconnected tactics support them in the background. Let’s take one example: networking at conferences. Before, during and after the conference, a firm’s marketing team might use social media to encourage people at the conference to reach out to their attending experts. They may use social media advertising to promote a speaking event or breakout gathering they are leading. Their email newsletter might include an article related to the conference theme—and let readers know members of the firm will be there. All of those activities make the networking or speaking opportunity more visible, more resonant and more powerful.

Another factor is that many of these so-called traditional techniques have evolved for an online world. For instance, hosting a conference—number two on the list—could be a physical gathering of people. But it could just as easily (or more easily) be a virtual assembly. Even if it were held at a physical location, you might offer remote access for individuals who can’t attend in person.

To further make this point, free consultations (tied for seventh on the list) often happen over video conferencing software. And most of today’s business development materials (tenth) are digital documents delivered by email or uploaded to a secure portal.

Professional services marketing and business development will always be focused on making personal connections. Even if we wake up one day and find AI agents doing large parts of our jobs, those agents are ultimately serving people. And those people will be selling those services to other people (clients) who need them.

Will this list ever be dominated by digital techniques? Maybe. But only if those techniques build bonds between people that can be attributed to business growth.

*We define high-growth firms as those that have a compound growth rate of at least 20% for the past three-year period. This group significantly outperforms the rest of the field when it comes to growth and profitability.

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The chart shows what proportion of study participants rated themselves poor, somewhat good or excellent at measuring their various marketing activities and using the results to improve business performance. It compares two categories of professional services firms: 1) high-growth firms, which achieve at least 20% compound growth rate over a three-year period; and 2) low-growth firms, which comprise the rest of the sample.

If there were a sad trombone of charts, this would be it.

Of the top-performing professional services firms, less than 12% rate themselves highly proficient. That’s shockingly low. Even worse, more than half of high-growth firms say they are doing a poor job of collecting and using marketing data.

Not surprisingly, the story is even grimmer for the average firm. Two out of three low-growth firms consider themselves “low proficiency,” while about only one in twelve rate their use of marketing metrics as high.

So what’s going on? Why are even the fastest-growing firms—presumably the most sophisticated marketers—struggling with something seemingly as basic as capturing and using marketing data?

Our research doesn’t provide a definitive answer. But our experience with hundreds of firms—and running our own—provides plenty of clues.

For one thing, marketing generates so much data. Between your CRM, email marketing, social media and website analytics platforms alone there are hundreds of potential data points you could monitor. Add in the many other tools you rely on—from video hosting to SEO and GEO to digital advertising—and things get hairy… well, in a hurry.

Another reason firms struggle with marketing metrics is that pulling data from each platform can be a tedious manual process. The more friction in a system, the more likely it is to break down, and that’s as true of marketing reporting as any other ecosystem. While it is possible to create automated workflows and dashboards, these can be expensive and challenging to set up, and most firms have yet to reach that level of sophistication.

Some of the most valuable metrics aren’t available right out of the box. They have to be configured, a highly technical process often best handled by a skilled expert. If you want to be able to figure out where a piece of new business came from (called attribution), you need to configure your CRM to make that possible. You also need to connect it to all of your digital lead sources, including your website and email marketing platform, so that each touchpoint is accounted for.

Even when marketers and firm leaders have access to the data, they often don’t know what to do with it. Some popular statistics like web traffic might mean less than they seem, while others, such as engagement or conversion metrics, might tell a more useful story. But somebody has to have the training, context and intuition to make sense of that story.

If a channel isn’t producing results, someone has to act on that finding. It can be remarkably hard to abandon an activity that’s become part of the routine. Laziness masquerades as doubt: “What if we’re wrong? Why don’t we just let it run a few months longer.” And a lot of marketing data is less than perfect, which makes decision-making feel risky.

The challenges are many, so how do you escape this situation? If you are in the low proficiency category, don’t aim too high. It’s easy to become overwhelmed. If you can track just a few metrics well, you are likely to improve your position relative to the field.

Which metrics are most important? I can’t give you an easy answer, since any good and honest response will depend on your own business model and growth strategy. Speaking of strategy, that’s the place to start. For instance, how are you hoping to attract the attention of new prospects, or how are you planning to nurture existing ones? You might look for a handful of high-quality metrics that measure your visibility to qualified prospects or quantify your engagement with people already in your database.

Examples of visibility metrics might include the number of new people who visit your blog and spend at least a minute on the page; the number of new registrations for your webinars; or the number of people who clicked on your LinkedIn ad. This just scratches the surface, of course.

Engagement metrics could include your marketing email open rates; number of content bingers (people who consume a high volume of your online content); and consultation requests. Use your imagination to determine your own.

Don’t forget the bottom line impact metrics: key financial and business developments metrics, like revenue growth, closing rate, revenue per lead and client lifetime value. These are the fundamental metrics that your marketing program is designed to drive forward. If these needles aren’t moving, or if they are moving in the wrong direction, there is likely something wrong with your marketing. Of course, external forces can affect these numbers too, so you have to read them in the context of the broader marketplace.

Now, collecting data without taking action is a waste of time. So schedule regular meetings with key stakeholders to evaluate your analytics. The cadence will depend on what you are measuring, but once a month is a good place to start. Ask fundamental questions like, “What are we trying to achieve with this channel?” And, “Is this a blip or a trend?” And, “Have we given this technique enough time and resources to succeed? Or have we stuck with it too long?”

Don’t leave the meeting without a specific action plan based on the findings. It might be as simple as staying the course. Or it might be a decision to drop one technique and reassign its resources to a new or existing technique. If at some point your marketing program isn’t delivering the performance you need, you might decide to reset and start over. Sometimes big problems require big changes.

Mastering marketing metrics isn’t easy. But if you take it slow and smart you’ll be rewarded with remarkably clear insights that you can put to work today.

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Below are two charts. Both represent high-growth firms, the elite segment of study participants that grew at a compound rate of 20% or more for the past three years. The first chart shows the five marketing techniques that high-growth firms use most often. The second shows the five techniques that deliver the greatest impact (on a 0–10 scale, where 10 is the highest level of impact).

Traditional Marketing Makes a Comeback

If one theme emerges from this data, it is the dominance of traditional marketing techniques. For instance, in-person networking has made a huge comeback since the pandemic. In last year’s study, 45.6% of respondents identified in-person networking as a technique they use. That put it in a tie for third place. This year it has jumped to the front, listed by 52.4% of respondents. That’s a 15% year-over-year increase.

Let’s put this number in perspective. The year before the pandemic (2019), networking at live events was listed by 56.5% of survey participants—the most-used marketing technique that year. Today, adoption of this technique is approaching pre-Covid levels.

But we noticed other things as well. For instance, networking at events is not only the most common technique used by the top-performing organizations, it’s also tied for the most effective.

When we asked which techniques produced the greatest impact, hosting a conference or event tied for the lead, the first time this tactic has made the top-five—or even top-ten—list. Apparently, events are not only popular, they are generating leads and business opportunities for today’s most successful firms.

We also observed that of the five most effective marketing techniques high-growth firms use, only two are digital (promoting thought leadership on social media and marketing video). But what really caught our eye was the middle item on the list. For a variety of reasons, traditional (non-digital) advertising isn’t used much these days—it’s not even in the top 25 techniques—but when it is used, it apparently works very well. It’s in a tie for second place on the impact rating list. We didn’t see that coming!

How the Pandemic Changed Professional Services Marketing

You remember it well. The pandemic forced almost every firm to embrace digital marketing tools and techniques. And typically, once an organization gets used to a new way of doing things, they stick with it. At the same time, the way relationships were developed and services were delivered changed. Even today, many relationships that were once handled in person are now done remotely.

What’s Happening Today

So why this snap-back to traditional techniques?

Likely, this trend is propelled by at least two forces:

• A strong desire to build relationships face-to-face again. With the specter of the pandemic behind us, firms crave a return to “normalcy.”
• Digital marketing is in a period of radical transformation. Traditional SEO is stumbling, website traffic is in steady decline and the rise of AI produced a basket full of partially baked new products. Marketers are either cautiously testing these products or waiting for something they can trust to emerge.

But this is not the whole story.

Digital Marketing Is Alive and Well

Digital marketing may be a-changing, but it is no less critical. When we look deeper into the data, we see that high-growth firms are still using a balanced mix of traditional and digital techniques in their marketing programs. For instance, social media, search optimization (SEO & GEO), online advertising and email marketing are prominent features of many firms’ strategies.

Without this digital marketing backbone, these firms’ face-to-face opportunities would be considerably limited. Digital provides the reach and brand awareness that make interpersonal relationships easier to cultivate and new business faster to close.

What Do You Do with this Information?

So should you be doing more in-person and online networking and fewer webinars? Not so fast. Every firm, client base and industry is different. So what works for a typical high-growth firm may not be right for you. But if you are aware of what these top-performers are doing, you will have a deeper understanding of the marketplace, so you can make better decisions.

Download the 2026 High Growth Study (it’s free!) and explore the data and advice, especially what high-growth firms are doing. Then compare what they do to your own program. You are likely to come away with at least a few exciting ideas or initiatives for the coming year.

The post Networking: It’s Back appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

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You’ve heard the phrase a million times, right? “You have to differentiate your firm.”

All leaders say it, and some also believe it. But very few firms actually do it in a way that matters. And when they don’t, the consequences aren’t subtle. They’re brutal.

So what is brand differentiation? And more importantly, why does it matter?

What Brand Differentiation Actually Means

At its simplest, brand differentiation is your competitive advantage. It’s the real reason a buyer chooses you instead of that beige, paint-by-committee firm down the street. But there’s a twist in that road. In professional services, the advantage of being different isn’t static. Your differentiator yesterday may be invisible tomorrow because the market moves fast and buyers aren’t sitting still.

Differentiation isn’t a one-and-done check-the-box exercise. It’s continuous. It’s strategic. It’s what separates firms that grow from firms that get stuck in commodity-land where the only differentiator left is price.

Why Differentiation Matters

If your firm can’t clearly explain how you’re different in a way buyers actually care about, your only choice is to compete on price. And competing on price is a race to the bottom no one wins.

Hinge’s research actually shows that fast-growing firms — the ones well ahead of the pack — are three times more likely to have strong differentiators. Strong differentiators don’t just set you apart, they help you speak directly to the right audiences.

That means differentiation can be a growth engine.

“We Already Do Great Work” Isn’t Enough

Here’s where most firms unintentionally sabotage themselves: they fall back on phrases like:

• “Our people set us apart.”
• “We’re trusted advisors.”
• “We strive for excellence.”
• “We provide fantastic service.”
• “We have a proprietary process.”

Sound familiar? These may all be true. But being true isn’t the same as being differentiated. If every firm says the same thing—and many of them do—then none of them are actually standing out. And buyers stop paying attention.

Buyers expect quality work and professionalism. Your differentiator has to be something above and beyond that baseline to deliver true impact.

The Differentiation Test

To have a meaningful differentiator, it has to meet three criteria:

• True — You actually do it.
• Relevant — It matters to your buyers.
• Provable — There’s real evidence behind it.

If a potential differentiator fails any of those tests, it doesn’t help you. It just adds noise.

How Do You Find a Real Differentiator?

There are two paths:

• Discover a strength you already have but haven’t leaned into.
• Decide to build something new that makes you distinct.

And by the way, discovery doesn’t mean guessing. It means talking to your clients, understanding what actually matters to them, and seeing where your firm lines up in ways others don’t. That’s the difference between something that sounds good on a webinar and something that actually works in the market.

Examples that Stand the Test of Time

Effective differentiators come in many flavors. Here are just a few examples:

• Specializing in a particular industry or service niche
• Focusing on a specific audience
• Using a unique business model that flips the script on the competition

The real magic happens when you blend two or more of these. Niche expertise plus a novel way of delivering value, for example. That’s when buyers don’t just notice you, they remember you.

Differentiation isn’t a buzzword. It’s your strategic lever for growth, visibility, and pricing power. Firms that lean into it thoughtfully don’t just survive, they thrive. Firms that don’t? They get stuck in the murky middle where nothing sticks and price becomes king.

The real question isn’t whether your firm should differentiate. It’s what kind of differentiated future you want to build.

The post Why it Pays to Be Different appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

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Business Development Defined

Business development (BD) is the process used to identify, nurture, and acquire new clients and business opportunities, driving growth and profitability for organizations. A business development strategy is a document that describes the approach you will use to accomplish that goal.

The scope of business development can vary significantly from organization to organization. Consider the model professional services organizations use to get new business shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. The three stages of the business development funnel

The first two stages of the model, Attract Prospects and Build Engagement, are traditional marketing functions. The final stage, Turn Opportunities into Clients, is a traditional sales function. In its traditional role, business development would be looking for new channels of distribution or marketing partners.

However, roles are changing and naming conventions evolve. In today’s world, many firms refer to the entire marketing and sales process as business development. We know, it can be confusing. So let’s sort it out a bit.

Business Development vs. Marketing

Marketing is the process of determining which products and services you will offer to which target audiences and at what price. It also addresses how you will position and promote your firm and its services in a competitive marketplace. The result of all this activity should be greater awareness of your firm among your target audience — and a stronger flow of qualified leads and opportunities.

Historically, business development has been a subset of the marketing function that was focused on acquiring new marketing or distribution relationships and channels. While this role still exists in many companies, the business development title has become interchangeable with many marketing and sales functions.

Business Development vs. Sales

Sales is the task of converting leads or opportunities into new clients. Business development is a broader term that encompasses many activities beyond the sales function. And while there is some overlap, most traditional BD roles are only lightly involved in closing new clients.

Business development is often confused with sales. This is not too surprising because many professionals who are clearly in sales have taken to using the title of Business Developer. Many organizations likely believe that the BD designation avoids the stigma sometimes associated with sales.

Nowhere is this practice more prevalent than in professional services. Accountants, lawyers, and strategy consultants do not want to be seen as “pushy sales people.” This titular bias is deeply rooted despite the fact that developing new business is an important role of most senior members of professional services firms. Also, the many aspects of the traditional business development role (finding new distribution channels, for instance) don’t translate easily to the professional services environment.

Since clients want to meet and get to know the professionals they will be working with, the seller-doer role is well established in many firms. The preference for seller-doers also tends to discourage firms from fielding a full-time sales force.

To alleviate the burden on fee-earners’ time, however, some firms have hired one or more Business Developers. In professional services, these individuals are often involved in lead generation and qualification, as well as helping the seller-doers close new clients. In other organizational contexts, this role might be thought of as a sales support role.

The result of this confusing picture is that many professional services firms call sales “business development” and make it part of every senior professional’s role. They may also include some marketing functions, such as lead generation and lead nurturing, in the professional’s BD responsibilities.

This expanded role—in which business development includes the full range of lead-generation, nurturing, and sales tasks—is what we will concentrate on in this post.

Business Development Strategy in Practice: Examples

To clarify what the professional services business development role entails, let’s consider this example:

Bethany is the Director of Business Development at a mid-sized architecture firm. She is not an architect herself. Nor is she involved in any aspect of delivering client projects. Instead, her role is focused on signing new business for her firm, including new and repeat clients.

For new clients, Bethany spends much of her time responding to RFPs, communicating directly with inbound leads generated by the marketing team, and nurturing potential clients that she met at a recent industry conference. Bethany also collaborates with the marketing team to develop any materials she needs to sell to new accounts.

When it comes to existing accounts, Bethany also plays a major role. She meets monthly with delivery teams to understand whether current client projects are in scope or if change orders are needed. She also maintains a relationship with clients’ key stakeholders. If an opportunity for more work arises, she knows that her relationship with the client is an important component of the potential deal.

In this example, Bethany is the primary driver of business development, but that does not mean she is doing this alone. Her colleague, Greg, is a lead architect at the firm. While Greg’s primary focus is working with clients, business development—and even marketing—is also an important part of his professional life. Greg often attends industry conferences with Bethany, where he is a speaker and subject matter expert and she is the primary networker. The business development dynamic does not end with Bethany. In fact, it permeates the whole organization.

In this business development example, you can see that the range of roles and responsibilities is extensive. This is why business development has to be delivered strategically. Let’s talk about what that means.

Strategic Business Development

Not every business development activity has the same impact. In fact, many are opportunistic and tactical in nature. This is especially true for many seller-doers.

Caught between the pressures of client work and an urgent need to bring in new business, seller-doers cast about for a quick and easy win—maybe a small piece of business at a low price point—that will produce short term results. Of course, this is no real strategy at all.

Strategic business development is the alignment of business development processes and procedures with your firm’s strategic business goals. The role of strategic business development is to acquire ideal clients—the kind that are highly profitable and aren’t overly demanding—for your highest priority services using brand promises that you can deliver upon.

Deciding which targets and strategies to pursue can be a high stakes decision. A good strategy, well implemented, can drive high levels of growth and profitability. A poorly conceived strategy can stymie growth and frustrate valuable talent.

Yet many firms falter at this critical step. They rely on habit, anecdotes, and fads—or worse, that innovation killer, “This is how we have always done it.” In a later section, we’ll explain how to develop your strategic business development plan. But first, let’s explore some of the strategies that might go into that plan.

Top Business Development Strategies

Let’s look at some of the most common business development strategies and how they stack up against what today’s buyers are looking for.

1. Networking

Networking is probably the most frequently used business development technique. It’s built on the idea that professional services buying decisions are rooted in relationships, and the best way to develop new relationships is through face-to-face networking.

It is true that many relationships are established in this way. And if you are networking with members of your target audience, you can develop new business. But there are limitations. Today’s buyers are very time pressured, and networking is time consuming. It can be very expensive, if you consider travel and time away from the office. Your business development potential is also limited to the relatively small number of people you can meet in person.

Newer digital networking techniques can help. But even networking on social media requires an investment of time and attention.

2. Referrals

A close relative of networking, referrals are often seen as the mechanism that turns networking and client satisfaction into new business. You establish a relationship, and that person refers new business to you. Satisfied clients do the same.

Without question, referrals are common, and many firms get most or all of their business from them. But referrals are passive. They rely on your clients and contacts to identify good prospects for your services and make a referral at the right time.

The problem is, referral sources often are unaware of all of your services or the range of ways you can help a client. So many referrals are poorly matched to your capabilities. Other well-matched referrals go unmade because your referral source fails to recognize a great prospect when they see one. Finally, many prospects that might be good clients rule out your firm before even talking with you. One study puts that number at over 50%.

Importantly, there are new digital strategies that can accelerate referrals. Making your specific expertise more visible is the key. This allows people to make better referrals and increases your referral base beyond clients and a few business contacts.

3. Sponsorships and Advertising

Can you develop new business directly by sponsoring events and advertising? It would solve a lot of problems if it works. No more trying to squeeze time from fully utilized billable professionals.

Unfortunately, the results on this front are not very encouraging. Studies have shown that traditional advertising is actually associated with slower growth. Only when advertising is combined with other techniques, such as speaking at an event, do these techniques bear fruit.

The most promising advertising strategy seems to be well-targeted digital advertising. This strategy allows firms to get their messages and offers in front of the right people at a lower cost.

4. Outbound Telephone and Mail

Professional services firms have been using phone calls and mail to reach potential clients for decades. Target the right firms and roles with a compelling, relevant message and new opportunities abound. At least, that’s the theory.

There are a couple of key challenges with these strategies. First, they are relatively expensive, so they need to be just right to be effective. Second, if you don’t catch the prospect at the right time, your offer may fall flat—delivering no impact on your business development goals.

The key is to have a very appealing offer delivered to a very qualified and responsive list. It’s not easy to get this combination right.

5. Thought Leadership and Content Marketing

Here, the strategy is to make your expertise visible to potential buyers and referral sources. By writing and speaking about issues relevant to your audience, you can demonstrate your expertise and how it can be applied to solve their business problems.

Books, articles, and speaking engagements have long been staples of professional services business development strategy. Many high-visibility experts have built their practices and firms upon this strategy. It often takes a good part of a career to execute this approach.

But changing times and technology have reshaped this strategy. With digital communication, it is now easier and much faster to establish your expertise with a target market. Search engines have leveled the playing field so that relatively unknown individuals and firms can become known even outside their physical region. (Though with the rise of AI, this landscape is evolving quickly.) Webinars have democratized public speaking, and blogs and websites give every firm a 24/7 presence. Add in video, podcasts, and social media, and the budding expert can access a vastly expanded marketplace.

But these developments also open firms to much greater competition, as well. You may find yourself competing with specialists whom you were never aware of—raising the stakes on your business development strategy.

6. Combined Strategies

It is common to combine different business development strategies. For example, networking and referrals are frequently used together. And on one level, a combined strategy makes perfect sense. The strength of one strategy can shore up the weakness of another.

But there is a hidden danger. For a strategy to perform at its peak, it must be fully implemented. If you attempt to execute too many different strategies, you will never completely implement any of them.

Good intentions, no matter how ambitious, are of little real business development value. Under-investment, lack of follow through, and inconsistent effort are the bane of effective business development.

It is far more effective to fully implement a simple strategy than to dabble in a complex one. Fewer elements, competently implemented, produce better results.

Next, we turn our attention to the tactics used to implement a high-level strategy. But first, there is a bit of confusion to clear up.

Business Development Strategy Vs. Tactics

The line between strategy and tactics is not always clear. For example, you can think of networking as an overall business development strategy or as a tactic to enhance the impact of a thought leadership strategy. Confusing to be sure.

From our perspective, the distinction is around focus and intent. If networking is your business development strategy, all your focus should be on making the networking more effective and efficient. You will select tactics that are aimed at making networking more powerful or easier. You may try out another marketing technique and drop it if it does not help you implement your networking strategy.

On the other hand, if networking is simply one of many tactics, your decision to use it will depend on whether it supports your larger strategy. Tactics and techniques can be tested and easily changed. Strategy, on the other hand, is a considered choice and does not change from day to day or week to week.

10 Most Effective Business Development Tactics

Which business development tactics are most effective? To find out, we conducted a study that looked at 770 professional services firms. The research identified those firms that were growing at greater than a 20% compound annual growth rate over a three-year period.

These High Growth firms were compared to firms in the same industry that did not grow over the same time period. We then examined which business development tactics were employed by each group and which provided the most impact.

The result is a list of the ten most impactful tactics employed by the High Growth firms:

1. Networking at conferences, trade shows, and events
2. Hosting a conference or event
3. Traditional advertising (print, radio, billboards, etc.)
4. Promoting thought leadership on social media
5. Marketing video (firm/service/product overviews, testimonials, company culture, etc.)
6. Conducting and publishing original research
7. Marketing partnerships with other organizations
8. Providing free assessments or consultations
9. Pay-per-click/digital display advertising (not including social media advertising)
10. Business development materials (pitch decks, proposal templates, etc.)

There are a couple of key observations about these tactics. First, these techniques can be employed in service of different business development strategies. For example, number seven on the list, marketing partnerships with other organizations, can easily support a networking or a thought leadership strategy.

The other observation is that the top tactics include a mix of both digital and traditional techniques. As we will see when we develop your plan, having a healthy mix of digital and traditional techniques tends to increase the impact of your strategy.

Business Development Skills

Now that we have identified some key business development strategies and tactics you might incorporate into your business development plan, it is time to consider the skills your team will need. Business development requires a broad range of technical skills, but there are some that make a particular difference.

When the Hinge Research Institute studied marketing and business development skills in another recent edition of the High Growth Study, we found that the firms that grow fastest have a skills advantage within their marketing and business development teams.

In Figure 2 below, we see which business development skills are the most important for the high growth firms:

Figure 2. Skill ratings by marketing function (High Growth vs. No Growth firms)

Let’s dive into the top three skills from this list. 

High growth firms’ number one business development skill is strong project management. And for experienced business development specialists, this makes good sense. Staying organized, accurately tracking business development activity, and managing accounts are essential for building and maintaining strong business relationships. Sound project management practices also allow the business development team to produce stronger proposals more quickly without sacrificing quality.

The next most important skill is simplifying complex concepts. In business development conversations, it is vital that team members are able to communicate your firm’s service offerings and capabilities in a way that prospects can understand. Speaking in industry jargon or presenting overly complicated charts creates unnecessary confusion and friction. Therefore, it is no surprise to see that the fastest growing professional services firms have an advantage in communicating complex information in a way that buyers understand.

The third most important business development skill is data analytics. Firms that make a habit of regularly monitoring key metrics have a real advantage. They can see what marketing techniques are working and which are having problems. This allows them to make course corrections in near real time. Firms that rarely or never look at data are running blind, relying instead on potentially misleading anecdotal evidence.

Review the other business development and marketing skills in the figure above and determine if there are any skill deficiencies in your business development team. Developing these skills should be a key priority.

How to Create Your Strategic Business Development Plan

A Business Development Plan is a document that outlines how you implement your business development strategy. It can be a plan for an individual, a practice, or the firm as a whole. Its scope covers both the marketing and sales functions, as they are intertwined in most professional services firms.

Here are the key steps to develop and document your plan.

1. Define your target audience

Who are you trying to attract as new clients? Think about your “best-fit” clients, not all possible prospects. Focus on a narrow target audience. But don’t go so narrow that you can’t achieve your business goals.

2. Research their top challenges and buying behavior, as well as your competitors

The more you know about your target audience, the better equipped you will be to attract their attention and communicate how you can help them. What are their key business issues? Is your expertise relevant to those issues? Where do they look for advice and inspiration? What is the competitive environment like? How do you stack up?

3. Identify your competitive advantage

What makes you different? Why is that better for your target client? Are you the most cost-effective alternative? Or the industry’s leading expert? However you position your firm, your claims need to be true, provable, and relevant to your target audience. It is very useful to document this positioning as you will use it over and over again as you develop your messages and marketing tools.

4. Choose your overall business development strategy

Pick the broad strategy or strategies you will use to reach, engage, and convert your prospects. You can start with the list of top strategies provided above. Which strategy best fits your target audience’s needs and preferences? Which ones best convey your competitive advantage? For example, if you have superior industry expertise, a thought leadership/content marketing strategy will likely serve you well.

5. Choose your business development tactics

A great place to start is with the list of the most effective tactics we provided above. Make sure that each technique you select fits your target audience and strategy. Remember, it’s not about your personal preferences or familiarity with a tactic. It’s about what will create a connection with your audience.

Also, you will need to balance your choices in two important ways: First, you will need tactics that address each stage of the business development pipeline shown in Figure 1. Some techniques work great for gaining visibility but do not address the longer-term need to nurture prospects over time. You need to cover the full funnel.

Second, you need a good balance between digital and traditional techniques (see figure 3 below). Your research should inform this choice. Be careful about assumptions. Just because you don’t use social media doesn’t mean that a portion of your prospects don’t use it to check you out.

When, how often, which conferences, what topics? Now is the time to settle on the details that turn a broad strategy into a specific plan. Many plans include a content or marketing calendar that lays out the specifics, week by week. If that is too much detail for you, at least document what you will be doing and how often. You will need these details to monitor the implementation of your plan.

7. Specify how you will monitor implementation and impact

Often overlooked, these important considerations often spell the difference between success and failure. Unimplemented strategies don’t work. Keep track of what you do, and when. This will both motivate action and provide a great starting place as you troubleshoot your strategy. Also monitor and record any results you see. The most obvious effect will be how much new business you closed. But you should also monitor new leads or new contacts, at the bare minimum.

Finally, don’t neglect important process outcomes such as referrals, growth of your list, and downloads of content that expose prospects and referral sources to your expertise.

Follow these steps and you will walk away with a fully documented business development strategy and a concrete plan to implement and optimize it.

Free Resource

The Business Development Guide

Learn More

Key Takeaways

Business Development Defined: Business development (BD) is the process used to identify, nurture, and acquire new clients and business opportunities, driving growth and profitability for organizations. A business development strategy is a document that describes the approach you will use to accomplish that goal.

Strategy vs. Tactics: From our perspective, the distinction is around focus and intent. If networking is your business development strategy, all your focus should be on making the networking more effective and efficient. You will select tactics that are aimed at making networking more powerful or easier.

Digital and Traditional Mix: Combine digital and traditional business development techniques for greater impact, taking inspiration from what High Growth firms have found to be most effective.

Essential Skills: Build project management, communication, and data analytics skills for a high-performing business development team.

Plan Implementation: Monitor and document your business development strategy for continuous improvement.

Conclusion

A comprehensive business development strategy aligns your marketing and sales efforts, leverages the right skills, and combines digital and traditional tactics to drive sustainable growth for your firm.

FAQ

What is a business development strategy and why is it important?

A business development strategy is a documented plan outlining how a firm will identify, attract, and convert new clients and opportunities. It is essential for driving long-term growth and profitability in professional services organizations.

Where can I find resources to help build my business development strategy?

You can access guides, research, and case stories from Hinge Marketing in our resource library. In particular, we recommend the Business Development Guide linked within this post.

How can I implement a business development strategy in my firm?

Start by defining your target audience, researching their needs, identifying your competitive advantage, and selecting the most effective tactics. Regularly monitor your progress and adjust your approach based on measurable results.

How do I compare different business development strategies before choosing one?

Evaluate strategies based on your firm’s goals, target audience preferences, and available resources. Consider combining approaches such as networking, thought leadership, and digital marketing to create a comprehensive and effective business development strategy.

The post Business Development Strategy: How to Build a Plan for Growth appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

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