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.

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.

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.

Does any of this even matter?

Not long ago, I wrote about how well you may or may not know your competitors. Now, I want to explore two arguments on the topic of whether you should keep tabs on your competitors. Both sides have interesting things to say.

What the Naysayers Say

There is a school of thought that says, No, don’t worry about your competition. Focus instead on running your own business. Trying to keep abreast of your competitors is a distraction you can’t afford.

These folks make an excellent point: When firms focus intently on competitors, they tend to look to them—especially the largest, most visible firms in the industry—as role models. In trying to emulate these competitors, however, firms fall into a trap. They start to look and say the same things as those businesses they admire. Instead of trying to differentiate themselves, they look to the industry leaders for easy answers.

This is why so many firms describe themselves as “trusted advisors.” It’s why the color blue dominates firms’ logos in every industry. It’s why so many websites look alike. Instead of becoming leaders themselves, these firms are cementing their status as followers and wannabes. Lacking any new ideas themselves, they struggle to attract a wider audience and grow.

In Hinge’s Inside the Buyer’s Brain research, our research team uncovered another big problem with focusing on the competition. Most professional services firms don’t actually know who they compete against. When we asked firms to list their top competitors, and then asked their clients what firms they considered when hiring the firm, there was just a 25 percent overlap. As I’ve pointed out in other articles, that means three quarters of your competitors aren’t even on your radar. Whoops!

What the Yeasayers Say

On the other side of the fence are a faction who believes you should know your enemy (or, if you are the more charitable type, your frenemy). They ask, how can you possibly set your business apart if you don’t understand what your industry peers are doing and saying?

This argument also makes a lot of sense. After all, differentiation and positioning don’t mean much if you aren’t setting up a contrast between your firm and those you compete against. If you don’t know much about your competitors, you are marketing your firm with your peepers squeezed shut.

This camp also advocates for keeping an eye on what’s happening in your industry. What new services are your competitors offering? How are they using emerging technologies like AI? Are they up to anything interesting—something you may have missed?

Finding the Common-Sense Common Ground

If you look carefully at these two perspectives, you will find that they aren’t in fact diametrically opposed. Each side is worried about a specific set of issues, most of which are not incompatible with the views of their counterparts.

Both, for instance, recognize the importance of differentiation. In the case of the naysayers, they point to a real danger in paying the wrong kind of attention to the firms you admire. It can promote a laziness that masquerades as strategy. Just because you look and sound like a major player in your industry doesn’t help the poor buyer who is just trying to understand what’s unique about each competitor.

In short, most naysayers are concerned about firms obtaining a superficial understanding of their competitors then veering into waters that feel “safe.” It’s not hard to see how those waters are strewn with hidden rocks and sandbars. That “safe” means “familiar.” And familiar means undistinguished. Ships have sunk in far less treacherous seas.

But what if you could uncover intrinsically valuable insights about your competition—without wasting valuable time? This is where the yeasayers and naysayers can find common ground.* Knowing how your competitors talk about themselves can be an advantage as long as you understand that you need to project a set of messages, values and visual cues that are your own.

In addition, there is nothing inherently wrong with knowing what new services or technologies a few top rivals are rolling out—in fact, this knowledge could uncover critical gaps in your own offerings.

You just need to go about it in a way that is efficient and designed to uncover valuable, practical insights. So long as you approach competitor research with the goal of differentiating your firm, you will not only avoid dangerous pitfalls, you can approach the marketplace with a sense of identity and confidence you didn’t have before. And those poor buyers? They will thank you by taking renewed interest in your firm and those characteristics that set you apart.

One final note. I speak to a lot of firms whose leadership believes they have no competitors. As long as they can get in front of the prospect, they can bring home the deal, so they say. The challenge with this assumption is that it’s based on a glaring blind spot, and potentially leaves a lot of unstudied business on the table.

Say your pipeline is full of referral wins. What about any referrals who never picked up the phone or sent you an email? Why didn’t they call? In some cases, they went to another firm. All to say that it’s just as important to learn about the competitors already on your radar as those who aren’t. How do you find these players? One way is to gather intel on who else shows up in search results for terms you should be found for. You can use tools like Moz Keyword Explorer or Semrush to see who competes for the same keywords that you do.

*To be fair, a few hard-core naysayers believe any competitive research is a waste of time. I take issue with this point of view for the reasons I present above.

The post Should You Care About Your Competitors? appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

Of course, figuring out where that line between too little and too much lies is as much an art as a science. But let’s indulge in a little science as a starting point.

Here’s what the data from the 2025 High Growth Study says.

Note that we’ve compiled data from each of the core professional services industry segments. And within each industry, we’ve included metrics for two groups: 1) the entire industry sample (green); and 2) the High Growth cohort (blue)—those firms that grew at least 20% for three consecutive years.

How to Read This Chart

This chart not only provides a benchmark for your industry overall, it also shows what the best performers are investing in marketing. This data alone goes a long way toward answering your question. But wait! There’s more to the story.

One thing you can’t help but notice is that the percentage varies significantly from industry to industry. Why is that?

The data itself doesn’t have much to say on that front. But we can tell you from our experience working with firms in all of these industries that a wide range of factors contribute to these differences. For instance, in the AEC industry, pass-through costs (materials, equipment, contract labor, etc.) often make up a high proportion of their revenue, potentially artificially depressing their marketing budget numbers. Firms in the accounting industry (distinct from financial services) often spend less on marketing because they have a high percentage of repeat business from year to year. Other industries, such as government contracting, report a higher spend on marketing as a means of combating the intensely competitive bid for both government work and teaming arrangements. And of course there are firms across every corner of professional services that can see themselves in these “unique” circumstances.

Now, something you can’t see from this chart is how these numbers move from year to year. There can be a lot of variability. Over time we see different industries grabbing the top spender spot and others sinking like pebbles to the bottom. This churn can be attributed to a variety of factors, such as market cycles, changing industry norms, technical advances, labor market conditions and more.

But just because the numbers change over time, however, doesn’t mean they aren’t useful. This is the closest you can get to knowing how much your competitors are investing in marketing today. And that intel can be very useful as you plan next year’s marketing strategy and budget.

Another thing you may notice about this year’s data is that High Growth firms spend more than their slower-growing counterparts. What can you learn from them?

Firms that consistently generate outstanding revenues and profits clearly know something about marketing and business development. For one thing, they have a better idea than most firms what marketing strategies, tools and techniques tend to work in their industry. How do they know? In most cases, they learned from researching the learning and buying behavior of their target audiences, and then matched their marketing to that behavior. And,unlike much of their competition, they track from their successes and failures. Some even run marketing experiments. In short, they treat marketing like a science.

High Growth firms also seek out efficiencies. In our research, we’ve found that High Growth organizations are more likely to have completed a digital transformation and are more advanced users of technology than their competitors. Marketing automation, in particular, can dramatically decrease labor costs while increasing audience engagement. And AI, while still in its infancy today, promises even greater performance improvements—especially to those who embrace it early.

How to Set Your Marketing Budget

How big should your marketing budget be? Start by looking at your current budget. How does it compare to your overall industry (the green bar) in the chart above? This will give you a general sense of whether you are over or under investing relative to your peers.

Next, compare your budget to the High Growth cohort. Think of this as the ideal budget for your industry. Are you spending more or less?

Remember when we said finding your ideal marketing budget was as much an art as a science? Well, we’ve covered the science. Now it’s time to flip on our right brain switch and engage in a little art.

It’s easy to assume that the High Growth firms’ marketing budget should be your guide. After all, they have figured out the optimal marketing spending level, right? That’s true. But….

High Growth firms spend what’s required to run their highly optimized marketing programs. Likely, your configuration is different. Our High Growth Study show you what these firms do, and we encourage you to check out the report for your industry. Even if you aren’t ready to purchase an industry report, you can read some of the top highlights on our blog.

Most likely, you should be spending an amount relatively close to your industry benchmark. Begin there, then use what you have learned about High Growth firms—and your best judgment (art!)—to determine if your marketing program is more sophisticated than average. If so, calibrate your marketing budget a bit closer to the High Growth level. Over time, as you implement more of the strategies used by your industry’s top performers, you can adjust your budget accordingly.

As you plan for next year, we hope this helps.

The post How Much Should You Spend on Marketing? 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.

We conduct research like this for five reasons:

1. To learn about the firms that buy our services
2. To position ourselves as thought leaders
3. To differentiate our firm
4. To provide a well of ideas for content
5. To implicitly make the case for our services

In a moment we will describe each of these reasons. But first let us explain what we mean by research.

When we say research in this context, we mean formal research on your target audience. There are many other kinds of research—market viability research, client satisfaction research, pricing research, to name just a few. While each of these can answer specific questions you may have, they can’t be used in as many ways as audience research.

Why? Because when you conduct research on your audience, you can collect data that will also be interesting to the people you serve.

For example, suppose you are an accounting firm that wants to understand how prospective clients in your region are feeling about the economy. That’s very useful information for you as you plan for growth or decide whether to enter a new market. But those are valuable insights for your clients, as well. Because you are surveying organizations just like them, the information is relevant and meaningful as they do their own planning.

Now let’s turn to the reasons Hinge conducts research. We suspect your reasons would be no different.

Why We Conduct Research (And Why You Should, Too)

1. We learn about the firms that buy our services – Buyer behavior and preferences–how they build their lists of firms to consider, how they whittle down those lists, and how they make their final selection–are always changing. By conducting regular research on our audience, we can see those changes, as well as emerging trends. Equipped with this intel, we can adjust our marketing accordingly.
2. It positions us as thought leaders on a topic our audience actually cares about – When you publish original research you elevate yourself to a different level. At Hinge, our research gives us the data and credibility to claim we understand how high-growth firms market themselves differently. As a result, we are perceived as pioneers and thought leaders in the type of marketing and branding that leads to profitable growth.
3. It differentiates us – Conducting research like this isn’t easy. That’s why so few firms do it. It’s also why the market leaders do. When you offer something valuable that your competitors don’t, it can be a very tangible way to separate your firm from the rest. At the same time, our professional advice and services are supported by real data. Hinge’s research is a pillar of our differentiation strategy.
4. It provides a well of ideas for our content – Content marketing can be difficult for some firms to sustain. When you do audience research, however, you have a deep pool of insights you can dip into to inspire a stream of blog posts, webinars and speeches. Thank you, research!
5. It makes the case for buying our services – Often, prospective clients know they need services like yours, but they struggle to convince the stakeholders in their companies. We hear over and over again how useful our data was in making the case to hire us. And even if a buyer wasn’t considering our firm at first, the fact that we were the ones with the data often put us on the list.

You don’t have to conduct as much research as we do at Hinge to make a difference. Some firms put out a study once a year, or even less often. Like publishing a book, research gives you an opportunity to talk about your firm in a different way—and can change the way people perceive your business. That’s powerful!

The post Why Every Firm Needs Research appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

But you are probably wrong.

While you know more than 99.9 percent of people about how to solve specific problems, you aren’t well equipped to notice the changes—sometimes slow, sometimes fast—reshaping the people and businesses that buy your services.

5 Reasons You Don’t Know Your Buyers as Well as You Think

There are five main reasons why professionals and their firms misread their audiences:

1. Technology. The rise of the commercial internet was a turning point in professional services marketing. Suddenly, every firm had a central, easy-to-access place to describe services and provide access to thought leadership content. Search engine optimization and online advertising allowed firms to reach audiences across domestic and international boundaries. Social media provided a free, or inexpensive, way to communicate with audiences and network—without leaving the office. And today, AI is about to radically transform the marketplace again. Buyers are beginning to use it to research their business problems and to find service providers. At the same time, it promises to revolutionize the way services are delivered, with all the disruption powerful new technologies bring. Do you know how they use these technologies today? Or how they will use them tomorrow?
2. Demographics. The workplace is getting younger, and the new generation of decision makers have different expectations from firms. They expect to be able to sample a firm’s expertise for free, whether by reading expert articles and white papers, watching a webinar or listening to a podcast. They are also more tech savvy and can be more likely to trust and rely on online information than older generations. The days of cutting deals primarily on the golf course are fading fast.
3. Evolving Behavior and Preferences. For at least a decade, buyers have been relying less on referrals and more on online sources to find, evaluate and select professional services providers. But buying behavior can change in many other ways, too. Certain services, messages and business models can go out of vogue, leaving a firm out of touch and clueless why their business begins to sag.
4. Marketplace. Today’s professional services marketplace is always in flux. Economic uncertainty, a polarized political environment, fast-changing regulations and a host of other factors create an environment that, like a roller coaster, can be a stomach-churning ride. Adapting to new conditions—and planning for the future—isn’t easy. Perhaps the hardest part is recognizing how your audience will react to this maelstrom of change. Are they feeling good about the future, or anxious? Are they about to snap shut their pocketbooks? Or are they inclined to invest now to weather a possible storm later? The answers could have profound implications for your business.
5. Anecdotal Evidence. It’s very tempting to assume that information you receive from one or two clients applies universally to your target audience. This type of thinking drives many poor decisions. Relying on anecdotal evidence is perhaps the most common bias we encounter in our work with professionals.

How to See Your Buyers More Clearly

I’ve worked with hundreds of professional services firms, and when we research their clients, we almost always uncover significant blind spots, gaps and misalignments. Most likely, you have them, too.

To get a true picture of your buyers, you’ll need to conduct research of your own. In a previous issue of Pivot, I’ve covered some of the questions you should ask your clients. Armed with this knowledge, you can deliver more relevant messages—and services—to your audience. And you can put your business into a new, more efficient, gear for the climb ahead.

The post Do You Know Your Buyers… Really? appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

In our work with clients, we see a professional services marketplace with lots of competition and very little differentiation. Many firms claim distinction, but they aren’t able to demonstrate true difference. In fact, most firms rely on “same story” differentiators. As a result, they all sound pretty much alike.

These firms talk about their “great people,” “exceptional service“ and how they are “trusted advisors.” Maybe you’ve used the same language — and maybe those claims are even true. But today’s buyers hear them so often, and they are so difficult to validate until a client has been through an actual engagement, that they’ve lost any power to persuade.

How can you avoid undifferentiated messages like these and really, truly stand out from the competition? The answer lies in brand research. Below, we’ll explore some of the most common questions about brand research and how it can help firms like yours get ahead.

What is Brand Research?

Brand research is the process of collecting and analyzing data on your firm’s reputation, visibility and marketplace to understand how your business is perceived today and how it can build a powerful, differentiated brand in the future. Brand research uncovers the characteristics that truly set you apart from key competitors in the eyes of your prospective clients. These characteristics are commonly known as differentiators or your competitive advantage.

To fully understand the implications of this definition, we first have to nail down the concept of your firm’s brand. Your brand is the product of your reputation and your visibility. If you have a great reputation for specific expertise and high visibility within your target audience you have a strong brand.

Here’s another way to think about a brand: It’s the way in which people in your target audience perceive your firm. Have they heard of you? And when they think of you, what comes to mind?

What is the Impact of Brand Research?

Studies show that firms that conduct brand research grow faster and are more profitable than firms that do not.

Figure 1 shows that even occasional research has an impact. More frequent research produces a bigger impact.

Why? Research gives firms an evidence-based foundation on which to build a solid strategy — including data-driven brand positioning and messaging.

Often, major decisions about a firm’s messaging and business direction are based on guesswork or assumptions. That can be very risky. Do you base decisions on suppositions like these?

• “This is probably a message our audience will respond to.”
• “I think this is a service our clients would appreciate.”

By conducting research, you equip yourself with evidence so you know that you are on the right track. And that certainty can save you a lot of pain and effort down the line. Brand research can give you solid answers to questions you were guessing at before—for instance, what differentiators matter most to your clients or which services they would most like to see you offer.

There is another major benefit that many firms overlook. In the absence of solid data, everyone feels free to have an opinion. If your leadership team isn’t in complete agreement about the direction your firm should take, research can provide objective guidance and get everyone in alignment. When facts replace opinion it’s easier to achieve a consensus.

When Should You Use Brand Research?

There are a number of junctures at which a firm would be well advised to conduct brand research. Here are ten common examples of situations when brand research can provide powerful insights.

Top 10 Examples of Brand Research Scenarios

• Following a merger or major acquisition
• When launching a new practice or service line
• When growth has stalled
• When facing powerful new competitors
• When experiencing downward pricing pressure
• When your target audience has changed
• When considering a new name or identity
• When your visual brand or messaging has become dated or no longer reflects your firm
• When you need to attract top talent
• When your professionals don’t know how to describe your firm

Some of these are the big moments in the life of a firm. These are the pivotal periods when a firm stakes out a new identity or a new path for the future. They typically involve major decisions with major consequences. As such, they are opportune times to guide the path forward with data.

But research isn’t just for moments of big, disruptive change. You may simply find that you have outgrown your old brand. What once differentiated you no longer embodies the value that you provide to clients. This will happen many times in the life of most firms, and research helps you rebrand to communicate who you really are today.

Similarly, when you decide you want to accelerate growth and gain a competitive advantage, research gives you the knowledge you need to get there efficiently.

What Can You Learn From Brand Research?

As it turns out, you can learn a lot. Common research topics range from how the marketplace views your firm to who your true competitors are and how you differ from them. In short, you can gain insight into the entire client journey.

Below are examples of insightful brand research questions you might ask your audience.

Top Brand Research Questions

• What are your target clients’ priorities?
• How do you fit in?
• How is your firm perceived in the marketplace?
• Who are your true competitors?
• How do you compare to your top competitors?
• How do your best prospects search for a firm like yours?
• What are they most interested in?
• What turns them off?
• What tips the scale during the final selection process?
• How well does your firm deliver on its promises?
• What do your clients value most about your firm?
• How loyal are your current clients likely to be?
• What is your potential for more referrals?
• What other services do your current clients want you to offer?

Answers to questions like these usually uncover some surprises. You may discover hidden competitors you hadn’t known about. You may also learn that your clients value traits in your company that you had never appreciated before — traits that might make good differentiators.

Likewise, you can study your firm’s strengths, weaknesses and the reasons clients choose you — all of which may inform your firm’s differentiation and positioning.

You may think you know the answers to these questions already. But after conducting research, most firms find significant gaps between what they think they know about their audience and the facts on the ground. These blind spots can have major negative consequences. They result in wasted marketing budget and effort. Your hard work will not produce the results you seek. Assessing these perception gaps is another important function of research, helping you check your assumptions and evolve your internal views of the marketplace.

What Are the Major Brand Research Methods?

There are four research methods that professional services firms use most often. But it’s important to note that only two of the four are effective and practical.

1. Informal or unstructured interviews. Probably the most common type of research used by professional services firms, this involves interviewing or having conversations with clients without performing any formal scoring or analysis. These interviews are often carried out by internal team members. While well-meaning, this informal approach is rarely useful. Respondents are often highly guarded, producing misleading — or outright incorrect — conclusions. Evidence is anecdotal at best.
2. Focus groups. Focus groups can work well for consumer products, but they are not very effective in the B2B world. The reason is simple: Clients are reluctant to reveal any significant information to a group of competitors. Equally problematic, assembling a useful focus group in the professional services world can be expensive and a logistic challenge. Focus groups are rarely the right choice for professional services firms.
3. Online surveys. Online surveys can be effective, as long as they are produced by people who have deep experience with the relevant audiences. It takes experience to craft questions that produce useful and actionable information. As long as your research team understands your industry and is seen by respondents as impartial, online surveys can be an affordable way to reach a geographically diverse audience with a degree of anonymity that will reassure respondents and encourage more accurate answers. But be cautious, the kinds of questions and research protocols that work for B2C audiences often fall flat in the professional services world.
4. Structured interviews. While relatively expensive, live interviews, typically conducted by phone, offer a number of advantages. Because they are structured, the data can be subjected to sophisticated analyses and generate powerful insights. And because they are relatively personal, a skilled interviewer can pick up indirect information — such as emotions and nuances in a participant’s language — making note of those details and scoring appropriately. Structured interviews can be used in conjunction with surveys to provide multiple angles of insight. Again, an impartial researcher reinforces the confidentiality of the person’s answers and encourages more candid responses.

Selecting the appropriate research method can mean the difference between a useful, productive study and one that falls short of your goals.

How Can You Turn Brand Research into Growth?

Research will help you better understand your firm’s strengths, weaknesses, current opportunities and emerging threats. With this detailed, multidimensional picture of your firm and its place in the market, you can then proceed to develop an informed strategy.

It’s useful to document your brand strategy — your true differentiators and the positioning you will adopt moving forward — in three related areas.

1. Differentiators—This is a simple list of individual differentiators that set your firm apart from your competitors. Some of these differentiators may be decisions that you make to do things differently. For example, specializing in an industry. Others may be characteristics of your firm that you discover during the course of your brand research.
2. Positioning Statement—A positioning statement is a short paragraph that describes what your firm does, who it does it for (your target clients) and why they select you over your competitors. It describes how you are positioned in a competitive marketplace and serves as the DNA of your go-to-market strategy. Writing a positioning statement forces you to look at your firm in relation to the rest of the marketplace.
3. Messaging Architecture—Your messaging architecture identifies your primary audiences (for example, potential clients, referral sources and prospective employees) and what messages each needs to read or hear to persuade them that your firm is the best choice. Each of these messages must be consistent with your overall brand positioning. The document may also identify common objections and concerns you will encounter from each audience and outline the arguments you can use to counter them. This is a very useful document when you are developing promotional materials or pulling together a proposal.

These are living documents—you should update them as conditions change—that your team can mine for key messages as you reach out to existing and new audiences.

This is also the stage at which you will begin to really drive growth, as you translate your new, differentiated messaging into the materials that communicate your brand. These materials can take many forms, from your logo, tagline and brand identity guidelines to your website, marketing collateral and pitch decks.

The post Brand Research for Professional Services: What Every Executive Needs to Know to Grow Their Brand 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.