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.

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.

The post Today’s 3 Most Impactful Marketing Techniques Might Surprise You appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

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.

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.

First, let’s talk about what’s changed. There is, of course, all the stuff you read about in the news: on-and-off-again tariffs, socio/geo/political turbulence, and plenty of uncertainty about regulations and policies that affect a wide swath of professional services industries.

Then there is this:

Growth has fallen to the lowest level since 2018, shedding 1.7 percentage points in the last year alone.*

Marketing Spending Trends

How do you think leaders responded when it came to their marketing spend? In fact, across the professional services, spending (not including compensation) notched up one percentage point, from 7% in 2024 and 2025 to 8% in 2026.

So if you are looking for a broad market benchmark, it’s 8%.

But there’s another bit of data you might want to consider. In our study, we compare a group of top performers that we call high-growth firms to their no-growth counterparts. High-growth firms are those whose annual revenues grew 20% or more annually for the past three consecutive years, and no-growth firms are those that grew not all or contracted over that period.

What did these two groups on the outer edges of our sample spend on marketing last year? Here’s the data:

No-growth firms not only spent less (over a third less) than the marketplace as a whole, they kept their marketing budgets exactly where they were the previous year. Like the majority firms, this group’s revenues also declined year over year.

What about the high-growth firms? We pay special attention to this group because their financial performance is spectacular even when the going gets tough. We look to them as models of “how to do marketing right.” And we take note of any changes they make from one year to the next.

This group increased its marketing spend from 10% in the 2025 report to 12% this year—an eye-opening 20% jump.

Why High-Growth Firms Spend More

Why are high-growth firms outinvesting their slower-growing counterparts by anywhere between 50% and 240%? We don’t have hard data to answer this question, but we have four theories based on what we’ve experienced with our clients.

First, we know that some firm leaders think of marketing as a cost center rather than a growth engine. This might explain why no-growth firms kept their marketing budget at the same low level. On the other hand, many of these underperformers—the median no-growth firm took a 12.2% loss—simply may not have any additional money to allocate to marketing.

Second, high-growth organizations may recognize an opportunity when they see it. When the market is down is when growth potential is the greatest. So they poured more into marketing knowing that others were being more cautious. They were rewarded with a 39.9% median growth rate, 4.7 times higher than average!

Third, a lot of high-growth firms are investing heavily in artificial intelligence, including AI-powered marketing tech. This doesn’t come cheap, and because the technology is new, some firms are experimenting with multiple competing platforms to determine the best fit.

Fourth, marketing is the smartest path to establish and sustain visibility. Recently, I covered the five marketing techniques that deliver the biggest impact for high growth firms. These tactics are aimed squarely at building visibility and credibility. Even those firms that heavily rely on referrals to drive new business understand that any serious buyer, no matter how strong the referral might be, will want to validate the recommendation by reviewing the firm’s website, LinkedIn profiles, and thought leadership pieces. These are all facets of marketing.

With all of this information in mind, it may be time to take a fresh look at your marketing budget. While there are no one-size fits all answers to the question, “Am I spending too much or too little?” you are now equipped with the context to make a better decision.

*Dates refer to the year the data was published, not when it was collected. Each year’s data was captured in the prior year. For instance, data labeled 2025 reflects the marketplace in 2024.

The post Is Your Marketing Budget Too High? appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

In the midst of this tightening and bewildering landscape, however, a select group of High Growth firms is not merely surviving—they are accelerating.

We are thrilled to introduce the 11th edition of the High Growth Research study, the largest ongoing study of its kind. While the past decade witnessed considerable change in digital marketing and business development, one thing remains constant: High Growth firms are able to outperform their peers in almost any business environment.

How We Conducted the Study

To ensure the most accurate snapshot of the industry, the study features insights from 495 firms across a wide variety of professional services industries. Our sample represents almost $85 billion in combined revenue, and hundreds of thousands of employees. These firms represent a global perspective with participants conducting business across six continents.

Five Features of High Growth Firms

At the heart of this study are the High Growth Firms. We examine them to understand what they do differently so that ordinary firms can adopt their strategies and habits. Below are five key takeaways from this year’s study. To see all the findings, you can download the full executive summary for free.

1. High Growth Firms Widen the Investment Gap

High Growth firms have aggressively increased their marketing investment from 10% of revenue in last year’s report to 12% this year, more than doubling the 5% spent by No Growth peers. This 20% surge may reflect the rising cost of deploying AI and suggests that the “pay-to-play” threshold 2026 has increased in 2026. While struggling firms often minimize marketing as an expense, industry leaders are outmaneuvering them by treating it as a primary growth engine rather than a cost center.

2. High Growth Firms Prioritize In-Person and Online Networking

High Growth firms deploy a hybrid networking strategy, prioritizing relationship-building at live events and on social media. These two techniques work together to reach and engage target audiences. These firms not only do a lot of networking, however. They also invest in content and education, using thought leadership, speaking engagements, SEO, and blogging to share expertise, build visibility, and develop a loyal following.

3. Networking, Events, and Brand Awareness Activities Deliver the Greatest Impact

High Growth firms favor a diversified, multi-front strategy rather than a single solution. For the first time, hosting an event appears at the top of the impact list, sharing the limelight with networking at conferences and trade shows. Traditional advertising also surged into the top three, in a tie with social media thought leadership. By blending high-touch events with traditional and digital tactics—including original research and video—these leaders are successfully creating platforms for industry conversation.

4. High Growth Firms’ Interest in AI and Efficiency Grows Stronger

High Growth firms’ interest in AI jumped 63% this year, with 85.2% naming it a top priority for further study. This is followed by workflow and process automation.These two areas of interest suggest that efficiency and productivity are on these firms’ minds. In third place is content creation and thought leadership.High Growth firms recognize that creating thought leaders is a primary engine of growth.

5. High Growth Firms Prioritize Tracking Visibility and Engagement Over Retention

When it comes to marketing metrics, High Growth firms prioritize tracking visibility and expansion compared to their No Growth counterparts. For instance, they are much more likely to track advertising (52% vs. 35.7%) and SEO/GEO (50% vs. 35.7%). While top performers use analytics to optimize outreach and capture new market share, No Growth firms focus on more passive metrics like client retention and lead sources. This data suggests that while struggling organizations are preoccupied with protecting existing business, High Growth firms are interested in learning what works to drive new revenue.

How You Can Use this Data

When traditional marketing tools no longer cut through the fog, you need more than just resilience—you need a new strategy to navigate the obstacles ahead. High Growth firms have already blazed this trail, aggressively investing in the data, talent, and technology required to thrive while others fall back on familiar but outmoded strategies and techniques. By comparing your own habits to the “invest-to-win” blueprint of these high performers, you can identify exactly where your program is on target and where it falls short.

Don’t forget to download the full executive summary (it’s free!). It contains many other insights to inspire your own marketing program and spark changes that can help propel your business forward.

The post 5 Key Takeaways from the 2026 High Growth Study appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

For over a decade, this study has uncovered the specific strategies and techniques that the fastest-growing firms use to outperform their peers. To create a clear picture of the challenges and opportunities facing firms like yours in 2026, we rely on your collaboration to build this valuable industry resource.

By contributing a small amount of your time, you are helping to build the most accurate and trusted benchmark data in the industry, as well a deeper, up-to-date understanding of what drives extraordinary growth and financial performance.

Each year’s report is a roadmap to success, and your participation makes it all possible.

What You’ll Learn

• What strategies the best-performing firms in your industry use to grow faster and be more profitable
• Marketing budget and team size benchmarks
• Which specific marketing techniques deliver the greatest impact
• How top performers are tackling major challenges like AI adoption and market uncertainty
• And much more!

What You Get: A Free Industry Report ($799 value) and a Chance to Win Bose Headphones, an iPad and More!

As a thank you for completing the survey, you will receive two key benefits:

• A complimentary industry research report of your choice (a $799 value). Be the first to get your copy as soon at it is released in early 2026.
• Entry into a drawing for a prize of your choice (up to a $500 value). The winner will choose from a selection of items.*

⭐ Early Bird Bonus! Complete the survey by Friday, October 17, 2025, and you will automatically receive three entries into the prize drawing! Participants who complete the survey after this date will receive one entry.

The survey takes approximately 15-20 minutes to complete, and all your responses will be kept completely confidential.

Thank you for helping us provide this essential resource to the professional services community!

*Survey participation not required to enter. See the complete official rules by clicking here. To enter the drawing without participating in the survey, click here.

The post Help Us Help You Grow — Join the 2026 High Growth Study appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

Here’s the data from the 2026 High Growth Study:

When marketing budgets are tight, it’s easy to think of design as a “nice to have.” But in a marketplace filled with look-alike professional services firms, design can play a pivotal role. It can shape perceptions at a variety of touch points, from your website to your business collateral to your pitch decks and proposals. People encounter your visual identity at every stage of the buyer’s journey.

Instead of relying on words alone to persuade and express key brand attributes and benefits, a firm can use design—color, images, layout and typography—to set a tone and help tell its story. By enlisting design as part of its brand strategy, a firm can engage its audience at a raw, emotional level, laying a psychological foundation for a uniquely appealing, powerful brand.

Good design is not just about aesthetics. It is also about differentiation, creating an exciting experience and communicating your firm’s sophistication without using words. When a buyer encounters a well-crafted visual identity, it inspires confidence and signals a high level of credibility and attention to detail.

If your identity looks significantly different from your competitors, your firm immediately stands apart from otherwise similar firms. Color and imagery, in particular, can play a big role in achieving this effect.

Design can also convey your firm’s personality. Are you bold and innovative? Calmly efficient? Confident yet friendly? Fun to work with? The design choices you make can communicate a wide range of attributes and support your positioning.

So much of branding and marketing is about building perceptions. Perceptions that your firm is exceptionally—if not uniquely—qualified to solve a prospective client’s problem. Perceptions that your team will be a perfect fit. Perceptions that you are top experts in your field. Although design can’t communicate these abstract ideas directly, it can create a psychological setting that makes those messages and perceptions plausible and convincing.

In a hypercompetitive marketplace, you need every advantage. And high-quality design provides one more way to capture buyers’ attention and cultivate trust. Best of all, it mostly does its work without any intervention from your team. It can make the messages on your website more compelling, your pitch decks more persuasive and your proposals easier to sign.

The professional services are rife with firms that don’t appreciate the power of design. As a result, buyers have to overcome that hurdle before they can take the next step. (“I’m not encouraged by the look of this website. Hopefully, that’s not a bad sign.”) Inattention to the visual side of your brand just adds unnecessary friction in the selection process.

High-quality design is an investment. But the best-performing firms understand that is money well spent. We are visual beings, and we often draw conclusions unconsciously based on visual cues we encounter. So why take a cue from the market leaders and position your visual brand to deliver the best possible impression?

The post Design: The Unsung Hero of Growth appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

We collected the data for this year’s study late in 2024—before the US election and the turbulence that is disrupting the federal government contracting marketplace. However, this study explores what strategies and techniques high-growth firms use to gain an advantage over their competitors. Those marketing fundamentals continue to work, even in an uncertain environment. As long as there is government demand for services—and we see no indication that it is going away—firms that navigate the marketplace with skill will experience greater success.

At the federal level, and to a lesser degree the state and local levels, new expectations require new positioning and messaging. Some firms may need to reconfigure their services to address the evolving needs of a government in transition. But the psychology of buyers hasn’t changed. At the same time, how businesses communicate their new messages, and the array of strategies, tools and techniques available to deliver them, are the same as ever. Some combinations produce ordinary results, while others deliver exceptional ones. In this blog post, we’ll introduce you to a few of the marketing techniques and habits of the government contracting industry’s most extraordinary performers.

About the Study

126 government contracting firms participated in this year’s study. They represent $53.6 billion in combined revenue and 140,000 employees. As you can see in the chart below, the sample included organizations of all sizes. We oversampled large firms to moderate the distortions that small and particularly micro businesses can introduce to the data.

5 Marketing Habits of High-Growth Technology & Software Firms

1. High-Growth Firms Grow 3.5X Faster and are 79% More Profitable

The high-growth group in our sample grew revenues an average of 35.8% per year, compared to just 10.2% for the average-growth contingent. That’s 3.5 times faster. Their profit margins were also exceptional, at 34%. The average-growth group generated a very respectable 19% profit margin, but the high-growth firms outperformed them by 79%.

2. They Spend More than Twice as Much on Marketing

How much do the fastest growing government contractors invest in marketing? An eye-popping 21%—two and a third times more than their slower-growing counterparts. Should you dedicate a fifth of your revenue to marketing? Not necessarily. This is a median number, so half of the high-growth group spends less and half even more.

What do these high flyers spend their marketing dollars on? They are more than twice as likely to have achieved the highest level of digital maturity, so they invest heavily in their tech stack. They conduct a variety of research at regular intervals. And they outsource a wider variety of specialized marketing skills than their competitors. The extra money they spend appears to produce dramatically better results.

3. They Have Learned Which Marketing Techniques Work Best

The figure below shows the seven marketing techniques used most often by high-growth government contractors. Networking—online and in person—takes two of the top three spots. Clearly, making personal connections is an important ingredient in these firms’ success. In second place are business development materials, such as pitch decks, brochures and proposal templates. Making a great impression, and positioning your firm as a sophisticated player, can move a firm from being a mere contender to a top favorite. Advertising on social media is also a commonly used strategy to build brand awareness.

Social media appears three times on this list, including promoting thought leadership (such as white papers, articles, and executive guides) on social platforms. If social media isn’t a major part of your marketing strategy, you may want to begin building that expertise, or outsource it to an experienced agency.

To find out which techniques deliver the most impact, and which provide the best results for the time and money invested, see the full industry report.

4. 6 in 10 High-Growth Firm Leads are Digital

The high growth cohort attracts 68% more digital leads than their no-growth counterparts. In fact six in ten of their leads come from online sources. Digital leads can come from any online source—the contact form on your website, content marketing, social media, webinars, and digital advertising, to name just a few. If you receive the lead on your computer or digital device, it is a digital lead.

How do you attract more digital leads? That requires a multifront digital strategy, starting with your website. A blog that features a steady stream of high-quality educational content and optimized for SEO drives new visitors. Gated, high-value, long-format content and a compelling offer strategy convert visitors into contacts. Then you use email, social media and other techniques to share more of your content and encourage people interested in your expertise to return again and again. Eventually, some of these people become loyal fans. And when they are ready to buy services your firm is automatically at the top of their list.

5. They Outsource a Wide Range of Skills

The chart below lists the three skills that the best-performing firms outsource most frequently. Podcasts and traditional advertising are tied for first place. Producing a podcast requires organization and specialized skills, from audio production and editing to guest outreach, scheduling, and followup. Many firms prefer to outsource the more technical skills to experts—saving countless hours and producing a superior end product. Traditional advertising, whether in print, radio or television, also requires special expertise (such as media buying, top-shelf graphic design and ad copywriting) that most government contractors don’t have in-house. Search engine optimization is a function critical to the performance of a firm’s website. With the relatively recent introductions of zero-click search and generative AI search (such as ChatGPT), the field is evolving quickly. High-growth firms look for help from outside experts who are familiar with the new SEO landscape and know how to achieve results.

How to Learn More

We hope you’ve learned something new—an idea or two you can put into practice at your firm. High-growth firms produce superior performance year after year for a reason: they have discovered what works and what doesn’t. Now you can start emulating them and build a marketing program that works more efficiently, with less guesswork.

These five insights, however, are just a beginning. To learn more about the marketing habits of the fastest growing technology and software firms, purchase the full industry report. The 54-page report goes into greater detail on these and many other practical findings. It also includes easy-to-understand ideas to put the data into practice at your organization.

The post 5 Highlights from the 2025 High Growth Study, Government Contracting Edition appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

One group of these firms significantly outperformed the others. We call these high-growth firms, which we define as firms that achieve at least 20% compound annual growth rate over a three-year evaluation period.

In the five charts below, we explore five key marketing characteristics of these exceptional companies—including where they focus their limited time, attention and dollars. You can learn much more about these organizations and how you can emulate their success in this year’s technology and software industry report.

Before we dive in, a note about the marketplace: We collected our data late in 2024, but before the election or the changes that are sweeping across the marketplace today. High-growth firms, however, have an excellent track record of success even in uncertain times. So the findings in this report represent a set of fundamentals that can work in almost any economy.

Let’s dive in.

5 Marketing Features of High-Growth Technology & Software Firms

1. They Grow More than 5X Faster

The high-growth group grew at an astonishing rate of 54.6%—almost 5.5 times faster than the average growth group. This represents a 16-point increase over the previous year. High-growth company profitability was a respectable 19.5%—half a percentage point below the average- and no-growth groups. Whether they are growing or not, most technology businesses today are generating healthy profits.

2. High-Growth Companies Invest Twice as Much in Marketing

Most technology and software companies spend about 5% of their overall revenues on marketing. High-growth firms, however, invest twice that amount. What are they spending on? Mid-size and large high-growth firms have much larger marketing teams, for one. They also tackle more marketing priorities and are more likely to have achieved the highest level of digital maturity. The extra dollars appear to deliver dramatically faster growth.

3. They Know Which Marketing Techniques Work Best

Below is a list of the six marketing techniques used most frequently by high-growth technology and software companies. If you study this list, you’ll notice a couple of themes. First, they tackle networking on two fronts: online and in-person. Building personal connections is a classic way to establish trust and move people down the marketing funnel. Second, thought leadership is a major thrust of their marketing, including public speaking and promoting written and recorded material in social media. In fact, thought leadership is their top priority. Third, these firms use a balanced mix of online and offline marketing techniques. In our experience, a 55:45 ratio of online to traditional techniques is ideal.

4. Creating Content Is Their Top Priority

As we mentioned above, high-growth companies have made thought leadership their highest priority. How do we know? They told us. The chart below lists these organizations’ top three marketing priorities for this year. Leading the way is creating content. Content can include a wide range of things, from blog posts and journal articles to books and executive guides to videos, webinars and speeches. Second on the list is developing thought leaders. At Hinge, we call these industry stars Visible Experts^®. One very important way these experts build their reputations and visibility is by writing and speaking—in other words, creating content. The third biggest priority for these firms is differentiation. High-growth firms tend to be well differentiated, which gives them real advantages over their poorly differentiated peers.

5. More than 9 Out of 10 High Growth Firms Do Research

All but 8.6 of high-growth firms conduct research. That’s important because research provides critical, highly relevant intelligence they could get no other way. Information they can act on and use to gain an advantage over their competitors. The type they do most often is competitive research. In an industry where innovation is the name of the game, it’s critical to know what your rivals are up to. Client research (also called audience research) is the second most common. This type of research is especially valuable because it allows companies to monitor the changing habits and preferences of their target buyers. Leadership can use this intelligence to inform their strategy, products and services, and marketing. SEO research involves identifying what words and phrases your audience searches for, determining which are most relevant to your organization and using the results to optimize content and service pages so they are more likely to rank well on search results pages and in generative AI searches (such ChatGPT, Gemini, and Anthropic).

How to Learn More

We hope these findings help you understand today’s marketing landscape a bit better and spark a few ideas to adjust your marketing strategy.

These five insights, however, just scratch the surface. To learn more about the marketing habits of the fastest growing technology and software firms, purchase the full industry report. The 55-page report goes into much more detail on these and many other eye-opening findings. It also provides easy-to-understand guidance to put the data into practice.

The post 5 Highlights from the 2025 High Growth Study, Technology & Software Edition appeared first on Hinge Marketing.