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

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

The word robots are here to save the day.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The answer has three parts:

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

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

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

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

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

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

The post Is AI the Write Answer for You? appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

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

Clients like these are not born. They are made.

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

Let me explain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Today’s issue is inspired by a reader who, after reading several recent articles focused on our recent High Growth Study findings, asked, “How effective is the Visible Expert framework, as I’ve seen less content on this topic lately?”

The short answer is that it is very effective. But that’s not a very satisfactory response. Let me, instead, share some data from the 2026 High Growth Study that supports my answer.

Let’s begin with this chart:

Top Marketing Priorities for 2026

This chart identifies the marketing activities that the fastest-growing professional services firms plan to prioritize this year. We define high-growth firms as those that grow their revenues 20% or more for three consecutive years. This group of firms grows 4.3 times faster and are 33% more profitable than their slower-growing peers.

The priority listed second most often is “developing thought leaders.” (At Hinge, we call experts who have exceptional visibility in their industry Visible Experts^® —our name for thought leaders.) The fact that many of the best-performing firms are making Visible Expertise one of their top priorities suggests that thought leadership is a concept they know works.

The fact that many of the best-performing firms are making Visible Expertise one of their top priorities suggests that thought leadership is a concept they know works.

But there’s more evidence to unpack in this chart. “Creating content” sits in fourth place. Producing content, such as writing, recording educational videos and producing webinars, are acts of thought leadership. And they are essential components of a Visible Expert strategy.

Then there is the top priority—social media marketing. While this priority covers a wide range of activities, a Visible Expert uses social media extensively (especially LinkedIn) to network with prospects and other experts, publish articles, promote their thought leadership content, publicize speaking engagements, answer questions from people who are seeking expertise like theirs, and more.

By the way, study participants also ranked “promoting thought leadership on social media” as the second most impactful marketing technique in their arsenal (in a tie with traditional advertising).

In short, three of the five marketing techniques that the top performers are prioritizing support Visible Expertise.

We also asked firms what they most wanted to learn more about this year. Here’s how they responded:

Topics and Trends to Learn More About in 2026

Buzz about the promise of AI is everywhere, from the business press to the stock market. And businesses of every stripe are feeling intense pressure to understand it and find new efficiencies. It’s no surprise, then, that AI and automation take the top two spots on the list.

But sitting in third place—and the only item in this top-5 list that has no direct connection to technology or data—is “content creation and thought leadership.” This suggests that many of the high-growth firms that haven’t already deployed a formal thought leadership strategy are very interested in doing so.

There’s one more chart from the 2026 study that correlates faster growth and profitability with Visible Expertise.

How Active Your Subject Matter Experts Are in Producing and Promoting Thought Leadership Content

This bar chart shows the proportion of firms whose experts are engaged in thought leadership activities—such as public speaking, writing blog posts, producing research studies, writing books, developing white papers and participating in podcasts or webinars, to name just a few.

While 47% of high-growth firms have low activity in this area, compare that to the almost 70% of no-growth firms in that category. High-growth firms are 2.6 times more likely to have high Visible Expert activity. And almost 53% of them say their experts are at least fairly active.

High-growth firms are also consistently more likely to provide support and resources across a range of thought leadership activities, from marketing strategy and outreach support to graphic design and video production.

I hope I’ve convinced you that there is a meaningful correlation between firms that practice thought leadership and exceptional business performance. When you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. Business people seek out individuals who have deep expertise in the problems they are trying to solve. They read them. They listen to them. They watch them. And when they are ready to buy, they prefer those experts over all others.

Guess who benefits? The firm that employs those experts. And the more Visible Experts a firm has, the greater its potential.

Do you have a Visible Expert strategy?

The post The Link Between High Growth and Thought Leadership appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

In today’s post, I want to explore the relationship between thought leadership, marketing and selling. My thinking is inspired in part by Blair Enns’ excellent book, The Four Conversations: A New Model for Selling Expertise.

When all three of these components of business development work in concert, good things happen. Selling is easier. Prospects seek you out and prefer you over your competitors. You attract more clients that respect your expertise. And because there is less distrust and friction during these engagements, your ability to help the client, your profitability and your work satisfaction rise.
But this kind of synergy doesn’t happen by accident.

But this kind of synergy doesn’t happen by accident.

Selling

At the pointy bottom of the marketing funnel is selling.* Selling is a one-on-one (or one-to-a-group, or group-to-group) process of convincing a prospect that your firm is the best qualified to solve their problem.

Firms that rely primarily on a selling-forward strategy face a big problem. They have to convince a skeptical audience to buy from them. Buyers must take their claims of expertise at face value, and chances are those buyers have been burned in the past.

Convincing people to buy in this way requires considerable skill and powers of persuasion. And even when you do close a sale, the client is likely to pounce on any misstep as evidence that they made the wrong decision.

Earning trust isn’t easy. Most professional services projects are long and complex. It’s not unusual for a relatively small mistake midway through an engagement to torpedo what little trust the firm has accrued—and impel the client to walk away.

Selling does have one big advantage, though: It’s personal. That means you can respond to objections directly. It also provides a way to introduce the prospect to one or more of your people so they can get a sense of your personality and whether you might be a good cultural fit.

Marketing

Marketing is focused primarily at the top and middle of the funnel. Marketing’s purpose is to expose your firm and its services to your target audiences.

Much of this exposure is to people who have never heard of your firm. Marketing messages make claims about your expertise and services that, like selling, must persuade the recipient without a great deal of evidence. Unlike selling, however, marketing is relatively impersonal. But it has the advantage of potentially reaching people multiple times, building familiarity with your brand. A marketing campaign can also be run quickly (think online advertising, for example).

Thought Leadership

Thought leadership is teaching. And your prospects are your students. Learning is a slow process that takes place over an extended period of time. When your experts make a habit of regularly educating your clients on a limited number of issues, they—and your firm—can build a devoted following of prospects. These prospects not only look up to your experts, they also rely on them to educate them about their business problems and how they can be solved.

When you give away your expertise for free you allow potential buyers to experience your firm’s expertise. Most of these individuals eventually realize they can’t fix their problems themselves. They need a true expert. And the expert they know best is the one they have come to trust through repeated exposure to their writing, speeches and videos.

As buyers research possible providers, they place these experts’ firms at the top of their list. In many cases—especially if the decision makers are the ones consuming your content—they won’t even bid the project out to another firm.

One downside of educating, which I already mentioned, is the time it takes to build an audience’s trust over time. It also requires significant time from your top experts, who otherwise could be engaged in delivering work.

Putting it All Together

In the modern world, none of these business development strategies alone is enough. Those days are over. Each is much more effective when supported by the others.

For instance, if a devoted follower of your blog raises a hand and asks to move toward a proposal, you still need a talented individual or team to hold a meeting with the prospect and demonstrate that you are exactly who they think you are. You still have to close the sale.

Similarly, you can have the finest library of thought leadership in your industry, but if nobody is aware of your firm—or if you’ve done nothing to make your content visible to the right audience—you are wasting your experts’ time. Marketing is the key to building visibility and promoting your thought leadership.

You may apply different labels than I do to each of these functions. Whatever you call them, you must recognize that you need all three, and they must work together as a system. If your sellers don’t coordinate regularly with your marketers, you have a problem. If your thought leaders are writing whatever they want whenever they want, you have a problem. If your marketers are producing campaigns without a plan, you have a problem.

You are wasting resources, energy and money.

If this sounds familiar, you have two options. You can appoint an internal leader to bring these three functions together and develop a coordinated plan. This is not only the cheaper option, but it forces your firm to wrestle with and solve difficult issues. Often, however, finding the right leader can be difficult, the time required to fix everything is overwhelming or the inter-departmental challenges are insurmountable.

The alternative is to bring in an outside consultant to build the system for you. Outside specialists often have greater perceived authority than their internal counterparts, giving their ideas more weight. The right consultant also will be an expert in solving problems like yours, so they arrive with a great portion of the solution already in their heads. That can save a lot of time. In addition, they know what works and what doesn’t. They can also provide as much assistance as you need to deploy your new system.

Whether you handle everything in-house or lean on an agency to build and manage your system, be sure that all three functions—thought leadership, marketing and sales—are playing on the same team and by the same rules. Then everyone wins.

The post You Need Three Things to Win in Today’s Market 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.

What I didn’t know then was that this framework would become the single most powerful lens through which to view one of professional services marketing’s greatest challenges: getting your company’s subject matter experts (SMEs) to participate in marketing.

We often think of marketing as our responsibility alone. But the most impactful professional services marketing today is a heroic quest, and your firm’s experts are the reluctant heroes.

Let’s explore this hero’s journey deeper and identify our role in the story.

The Dilemma at the Heart of the Ordinary World

The “Ordinary World” of a professional services firm is defined by a clear, powerful rhythm: billable work and business development. Your engineers are designing, your consultants are strategizing, or your lawyers are litigating. It’s a world of deadlines, client demands, and the constant hum of productivity.

In this world, a marketer’s call to action—to write a blog post, record a video, or network more on LinkedIn—is often met with a “Refusal of the Call.” It’s not that your experts don’t believe in the value of marketing. It’s that they are facing a profound dilemma. The time spent on marketing feels like it comes directly at the expense of their billable work.

They see marketing not as an integral part of their career, but as an extra chore—homework to be squeezed in around their “real” work. They feel a legitimate tension between serving the client they have today and trying to attract the client they need tomorrow. The dilemma is real, and it’s why a simple request for a 800-word blog post can be met with crickets.

As marketers, we can’t simply push harder. We can’t get frustrated with a hero who is rightfully concerned about their responsibilities. Our role isn’t to force them to cross the threshold into our “Special World” of marketing. Our role is to be their guide. We are the mentor who helps them see that the journey isn’t a distraction, but a vital part of their transformation.

The Marketer as Mentor

In Campbell’s work, the hero always meets a mentor who provides wisdom and equips them for the journey ahead. For us, this means shifting our approach from demanding participation to guiding perspective. This is a critical step because a guide doesn’t command; they show the path forward.

Our first task is to understand our heroes. What are their unique motivations? What are their career ambitions? What kind of clients do they love working with? What do they genuinely want to be known for? Like Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi, the relationship is built on trust and a shared understanding of the goal. The goal isn’t just to “do marketing”; it’s to build a reputation, attract better opportunities, and grow their personal brand—which, in turn, grows the firm’s brand.

Once you understand their passions and ambitions, you can tailor your marketing requests to align with their deepest desires. Instead of asking for a generic blog post on a topic, you might say to them: “I know you’re passionate about the future of AI in manufacturing. I have an idea for an article that could position you as a thought leader on that topic. Would you be open to a 30-minute chat to discuss your unique insights?” This approach demonstrates that you’ve listened and you respect their expertise. It makes the task feel less like a chore and more like a strategic step on their personal and professional journey.

Making the Expert Journey Efficient

A hero’s journey is a dangerous, time-consuming quest. A mentor’s job is to make that journey as efficient as possible. This is where our responsibility as marketers moves from changing people’s minds to clearing the path forward. The goal is to make it so easy for our experts to participate that the “Refusal of the Call” is replaced with an enthusiastic “let’s do this.”

This is where the principles of a modern, efficient marketing engine come into play. We must do everything in our power to reduce the effort required from our subject matter experts.

• Become the Content Engine: Don’t ask your experts to write a full blog post from scratch. Instead, schedule a 30-minute interview and record it. Use that conversation as the source material. You can then work with professional writers, AI tools, or both to turn their spoken insights into a polished article, complete with an engaging headline and supporting visuals.
• Streamline the Process: The hero needs an effective “talisman” or “weapon” to help them on their quest. For us, this is a clear, repeatable process. Once the article is drafted, the expert’s role becomes simple—review, edit, and polish. This cuts down their time commitment dramatically.
• Build the Promotion Machine: The hero’s return is only celebrated if the community knows what they’ve accomplished. It’s our job as the guide to ensure their content gets the visibility it deserves. For instance, use the blog post to create a series of LinkedIn updates, an internal newsletter mention, and a clip for social media. The expert’s only job is to provide the initial content and be ready to engage with the praise and questions that follow.

This approach isn’t just about making things easier; it’s about respecting an expert’s time and billable responsibilities. It’s the difference between asking them to single-handedly slay a dragon and handing them a sword, a shield, map, and logistical support.

The Return with the Elixir

In Campbell’s framework, the hero’s journey culminates in a “Return with the Elixir.” The hero comes back to the Ordinary World, transformed by their experience, and they bring with them a treasure—a new tool, a new wisdom, or a new perspective—that benefits their community.

For a subject matter expert, the “elixir” is their reputation as a Visible Expert. They return to the Ordinary World of their practice, but they are no longer just an engineer or a consultant. They are a thought leader. The marketing journey we guided them through has become a gravitational force, pulling in new opportunities, strengthening client relationships, and establishing their authority in the marketplace.

When you can show your experts the direct return on their investment—a new lead who mentions an article the expert wrote, a speaking invitation they received because of their public profile, or a client who says, “I already feel like I know you because of your videos”—they have successfully completed the journey. You have helped them transform their perspective and see marketing not as a chore, but as the heroic quest it truly is.

So, the next time you need to engage your team, don’t think of your experts as obstacles to overcome. See them instead as the heroes of your firm’s story. Your job is not to write their journey for them, but to provide the guidance, tools, and perspective they need to embark on a quest that will ultimately lead to glory for them and for your firm.

The post The Expert with a Thousand Faces: How to Guide Your Firm’s Heroes to Marketing Glory appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

But what does it actually mean to be a thought leader? How do you become one? Is it in fact a good marketing strategy for the professional services firm? The answers to these questions, and more, are what we will cover in this post.

Let’s start with an understanding of what thought leadership marketing actually is.

Thought Leadership Marketing Defined

Thought leadership marketing is the process of increasing the visibility of specialized expertise and accelerating market influence to accomplish marketing goals, such as building brand strength or generating new business. It is accomplished by creating insightful analysis and content and making that thought leadership visible to your target markets.

Thought leaders are individuals or firms recognized for their specialized expertise and their influence on the development of their discipline. They are both subject matter experts and influencers. They lead the thinking of their field of expertise.

Thought Leadership vs. Content Marketing

Thought leadership is often confused with content marketing. Content marketing is a much broader discipline. It involves using content to attract, educate and close new business. Thought leadership is a specific strategy within the broader concept of content marketing.

For example, a firm might publish helpful content that explains confusing terms and concepts without offering any innovative or advanced thinking. Another firm may offer entertaining or humorous content. Both of these are content marketing strategies, but neither would be considered thought leadership.

Thought Leadership Must Be Made Visible

Thought leadership involves more than expertise and an understanding of industry best practices.

It’s being the expert that brings a fresh, insightful perspective to a common problem or anticipates emerging trends. Often a thought leader’s perspective is at odds with conventional wisdom — even controversial. But a successful thought leader can turn that new insight into tomorrow’s best practice.

Now, having great insights is not enough. Those insights need to be widely visible if they are to become influential.

And this is where many potential thought leaders stumble. They have the expertise and the insight, but no one sees it. Think of it as invisible expertise.

Watch the On-Demand Webinar “Brand You: Build a Powerful Personal Brand in Any Economy” 

Five Levels of Visibility

Our research has been able to identify five distinct levels of visible thought leadership. Each level has increasing levels of influence and impact.

Level 1: The Resident Experts

Recognized as an expert by clients, staff and colleagues that work directly with the thought leader, these individuals are not well known outside of their firm. External influence is minimal.

Level 2: The Local Heroes

Known in their local market or small industry niche, these individual experts’ reputations have moved beyond the boundaries of their firms. Occasionally they attract new business based on their thought leadership.

Level 3: The Rising Stars

These individuals’ reputations are moving onto a regional stage. They are becoming more widely known as influencers and are attracting new business and commanding higher fees. Influence is growing.

Level 4: The Industry Rock Stars

These are the nationally recognized names within their industries. They are influential thought leaders, and they draw top-tier opportunities to their firm. They are sought out as keynote speakers at major industry events and are often quoted in the press. 

Level 5: The Global Superstars

These individuals’ visibility and reputation for thought leadership have developed beyond their niche and industry. Their influence extends to many industries and, in some cases, to the general public. Business flows to their firms, and major brands clamor to be associated with them. Their opinions can influence societies as a whole.

How to Develop Your Thought Leadership Strategy

Developing your though leadership strategy is the best place to start. If you get the strategy right everything else is easier. Without a strategy you are likely to be unfocused and much less effective.

Here are five steps to get you started.

1. Define Your Target

Who are you trying to reach? Is it a certain industry? A specific corporate role such as the CEO or CFO? Referral sources as well as target clients?

Once you’ve identified your audience a lot of other specifics start to fall into place. But a word of caution is in order. Don’t be overly broad in your targeting. The narrower and more specific you can be, the faster you will progress. Focus drives faster progress.

2. Research Your Target

Pay special attention to your target audience’s business challenges, important issues and concerns. These will ultimately influence how you position your expertise and what issues you focus on in your thought leadership content.

There are a variety of research methods and strategies you can use to collect your information. Don’t rely on your “gut instinct” or anecdotal evidence. The stronger your research, the more confidence you will have in your strategy.

3. Specify Your Areas of Expertise

You can’t be an expert in everything. Instead, try to focus your area of expertise on as small a niche as is economically viable. As with your target market, the narrower your niche the faster you can growth.

Look for an area where your natural interest and important priorities of your target market overlap. You become a thought leader by offering insights into an area your target audience cares about.

4. Develop Your Content Strategy

What will you write and speak about? What is your unique angle or insight that makes it thought provoking or practical? Your content needs to be valuable enough for people to use and recommend it.

How do you develop such valuable content? We’ll explore that in the next section.

5. Develop Your Visibility Strategy

How will you make your valuable content visible to your target audience? This question can be partially answered by the research you conducted earlier. Where does your target audience turn for new ideas and inspiration? What publications do they read? What blogs do they follow? Who do they already turn to as thought leaders?

Each answer provides a possible channel to reach your target audience. Speak at a conference they attend. Publish articles in trade publications. Establish relationships with existing experts in related fields. The section below called How to Make Your Thought Leadership Visible should give you further ideas. Another valuable resource is our book on becoming a Visible Expert^®.

When you have documented your thought leadership strategy you are in a position to create insightful thought-leading content.

What Is Thought Leadership Content and How Do You Develop It?

Thought leadership content can take many forms. The most common are blog posts. In fact, they provide the foundation for most thought leadership strategies. But most Visible Experts develop many other types of content, too, from webinars, videos and speeches to executive guides and white papers.

How do you develop the insights and content that moves a field forward? While there is no formula that can guarantee you will become an insightful, influential thinking, there are meaningful steps you can take to take your expertise to the next level. Deeper, more relevant insights make better thought leadership content.

1. Narrow Your Focus

Our research on high-profile experts shows that narrowing your focus greatly increases the likelihood of deepening your expertise. The narrower your focus, the faster your ascent to leadership.

The reason is pretty simple. Going narrower almost always allows you to accumulate experience and insight faster. That accelerates the process and improves the impact of your content.

2. Do Original Research

Conducting original research on a topic gives you a huge advantage. High-quality research supplies new insights that you can be apply to clients’ challenges and share with your readers and listeners. It is one of the key paths to thought leadership. New research findings make exceptional raw material for thought leadership content.

3. Take a Contrarian Perspective

A fresh perspective is another hallmark of thought leader level thinking. Perhaps it’s taking a client’s perspective on a challenge when everyone else is viewing it through his or her own lens. Or when everyone is headed in one direction, you explore the opposite view.

A contrarian perspective doesn’t mean being quarrelsome or negative. It means looking at a problem from a novel angle.

4. Mash Up Your Expertise

Sometimes great insight comes from applying the methods and thinking from one discipline to another: putting two seemingly unrelated fields of expertise together. For example, what happens when you apply design thinking to accounting services? The result may be a novel insight that influences the thinking of others.

5. Interact With Other Experts

Having a good working relationship with other experts helps you in a couple of important ways:

First, it gives you access to the most advanced and influential thinking. Ture thought leaders talk with each other. They help each other get smarter—which helps you develop more insightful content.

Second, your colleagues become your amplifiers. They add credibility to you through their association with you. You are a part of a “club” of influential experts, and they will often share your latest thinking or refer new business to you.

Watch the On-Demand Webinar “Brand You: Build a Powerful Personal Brand in Any Economy” 

How to Make Thought Leadership Visible

The challenge with expertise in general and thought leadership in particular is that they are invisible. You can’t tell a thought leader by how they look.

Nor does declaring yourself a thought leader make you one. It could just as easily backfire.

Instead, thought leadership must be demonstrated. Generally this happens in one of three ways:

1. Direct Interaction and Networking

This approach involves working with people directly, perhaps as a client or coworker — interacting with colleagues in meetings, in educational settings or at conferences. The interaction, however, must allow you to demonstrate your expertise.

Making the rounds at a cocktail party or networking event probably won’t cut it. The interaction needs to be substantive enough that people can experience your command of the material. Think of it as an expertise appetizer.

2. Writing

Writing the definitive best-selling book on a topic is the gold standard of thought leadership. But if a book sounds overwhelming, there are other ways that you can convey your expertise through writing. Articles in trade publications, blog posts, white papers and executive guides can also communicate your insights and build your reputation.

Of course, not all writing builds thought leadership. As a matter of fact, if done carelessly, it can easily reveal a real lack of leadership.

3. Speaking

Public speaking is another good way to demonstrate thought leadership. Standing behind a podium has the advantage of positioning you as an expert. For many experts, speaking engagements are their single best source of new business leads.

Live speaking events are also a great way to meet new people and get fresh input. Sometimes audience questions can be a source of new insights and inspiration.

Sharing Your Thought Leadership

How do you spread the word about your thought-leading content? There are a wide variety of techniques you can use to share your insights. A good cross section of the most popular techniques is shown in the figure below.

Notice this approach balances traditional offline techniques, such as networking and speaking engagements, and their digital counterparts, such as social media and webinars. Interestingly, for each offline technique there is a corresponding online technique.

The most successful firms understand where their potential clients look for thought leadership and make their content visible in those channels. 

How Your Firm Benefits From Thought Leadership Marketing

Thought leadership not only benefits the subject matter expert, but also the professional services firm they are associated with. Many of these are intuitive, but our research study on high-visibility experts has documented them in some detail.

1. Faster Growth

Thought leaders’ single biggest impact is their ability to drive firm growth. Highly visible thought leadership attracts clients who want or need greater expertise. The leads are more qualified and easier to generate. Prospects close more quickly with less effort and greater success. 

2. Higher Billing Rates

There is a direct relationship between the visibility of a subject matter expert’s thought leadership and the billing rate that expert is able to charge. This relationship is shown below.

3. A Stronger Brand

If you can combine thought leadership with greater visibility, your brand will become significantly stronger. That brand not only drives growth and profitability, it also creates a more valuable firm.

And when you make thought leadership one of your primary marketing strategies, you create a strong differentiator (specialized expertise) and a powerful strategic focus.

4. Attract the Best Talent

The best people want to work with industry leaders. Thought leadership is a great way to demonstrate the quality of your firm and attract employees who themselves want to become thought leaders. In a time when top talent is in high demand, thought leadership is a potent recruiting tool.

5. The Best Opportunities Come to You

Leading subject matter experts not only attract the best new clients and the most talented people, they also yield the best strategic partners and business relationships. When other organizations look to an industry for potential partners they look first for thought leaders.

Leading brands tend to want to work with other leading brands. High visibility experts report that they have their pick of teaming relationships, marketing partnerships and other strategic business opportunities. Thought leadership marketing not only helps you get ahead, it also makes it easier to stay ahead.

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The post Thought Leadership Marketing for the Subject Matter Expert appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

But this superpower affects more than the professionals who wield it. It elevates their firm, too. How do we know? Because we did the research.

What the Research Says

In our 2025 High Growth Study, the best-performing professional services firms identified which marketing and business development techniques deliver the greatest impact. Here are the top six:

One thing that struck me right away: Two of these top six techniques involved speaking to a live audience. Speaking at conferences and presenting in webinars involve similar skills. And both are part of a thought leader’s playbook.

This data also backs up what we learned in our research on Visible Experts. Here are the top three impact ratings from that study:

Clearly public speaking—in all its guises—not only has value, but true impact on the visibility and reputation of firms and their experts.

Why Public Speaking Works

Speaking in-person or online offers a few advantages that are not available in, say, written content.

First, as a presenter you are automatically in a position of authority. Your words, opinions and advice carry more weight than they might in another setting.

Second, it’s more personal. Whether you are speaking to a packed room or an invisible group of webinar attendees, your audience can associate a face (or, in some cases, a voice) with your expertise. That’s a powerful connection.

Third, your audience gets to sample your thinking and expertise in action. Even though your message is delivered in a controlled environment, that experience is enough to generate feelings of trust.

Fourth, if you are participating in a live event, you can leave time for questions and answers—and address a few of your audience’s real-world challenges.

How Experts Become Speakers

Now, I know that public speaking is not for everyone. Even the best speakers started out tentatively, but their confidence grew with every experience. Most people can conquer their natural anxiety and become capable, even inspiring, public speakers.

The trick is to start small. Some novices join an organization, such as Toastmasters, that helps people learn the craft. Others play a supporting role in a few webinars, then build experience until they are ready to host a webinar on their own. Still others deliver short speeches at local groups such as chambers of commerce.

The most important thing a firm can do is support their experts in this journey. Leadership should encourage their experts to seek out speaking opportunities—even provide resources to help find, reach out to and negotiate with them. Give your experts the time to prepare their presentations and, if they like, to practice in front of a few friendly colleagues.

Where Do Experts Speak?

Below are some of experts’ most common speaking channels. Most of these can be used to increase visibility and nurture relationships.

• Conferences. Your goal should be to secure speaking opportunities, not just attend the conference. If you can, try to incorporate research data into your presentations to make them more informative and persuasive. Public speaking can expose you to new audiences as well as deepen your engagement with those who know you.
• Webinars. Webinars are today’s digital version of seminars. One nice feature is that you can record the presentation then offer it later on an on-demand basis. This gives your webinars a long shelf life. Webinars are an excellent way to nurture people who already know who you are. At the same time, they can be a powerful tool to impress newcomers, as well. And with the right partnering and promotional strategy, they can also be an excellent way to expand your visibility.
• Podcast and radio appearances. These two mediums are great ways to increase your visibility. You can either establish your own podcast, as many experts have, or seek out guest appearances on other people’s podcasts. Running your own podcast is a large undertaking, so you may want to start out as a guest. Then there’s radio. Just because it was invented over a century ago doesn’t mean it’s irrelevant. Today, most radio talk shows are not only broadcast live but recorded and made available to listeners on demand. Sounds a lot like a podcast!
• Videos and video blog posts. Videos can be used in a variety of ways. They can become video blog posts, arranged as channels on video platforms such as YouTube or included in relevant places on your website. Videos are also critical to establishing your speaking credentials.

How many experts in your firm are presenting to live audiences? The more you can make your experts known in the marketplace, the faster you’ll grow.

The post Public Speaking: The Superpower That Keeps Giving appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

Since my early days of learning about search engine optimization (SEO), I’ve encountered articles and dramatic LinkedIn posts proclaiming that “SEO is dead” and that it’s a waste of time. However these attention-seeking posts never aligned with the successes we and our clients were having. 

Even through major algorithm shifts, SEO played an important role in building visibility and engagement for our marketing and website clients. Of course, we’ve evolved our techniques over time, and like many other respectable experts in the space, we continue to see meaningful results from our emphasis on SEO.

However, the amount of change this year has been different. In May of this year, Google introduced AI Overviews to its search results pages, and everything began to change. Even top SEO experts are sounding alarm bells about how this will negatively impact website traffic, with dramatic results. Gartner predicts that all organic website traffic will decline by 50% by the year 2028. We suspect this number could be even higher.

So what does this mean for professional services firms and how should we adapt? Let’s explore the problem and propose some solutions.

Google’s Greediness, AI Overviews, and More

In Hinge’s research on professional services buyer behavior, we have seen a decade-long trend of buyers increasingly relying on search engines to solve their business problems. These searches would yield a curated list of websites that address the search query. The content deemed most relevant and authoritative would earn a spot at the top of the list. But now Google’s artificial intelligence system is stepping in and wants to provide answers, too.

This year Google introduced the AI Overviews feature (other search platforms have similar technologies). How does it work? For many online search terms, Google serves up a detailed AI-generated summary that addresses a person’s search query. Each answer is sourced from a variety of sources across the web. You may not see this kind of summary for every search right now—and currently there are device and browser restrictions—but we expect this kind of AI-generated content to only become more prevalent.

To illustrate how this tool works and how it could be a threat to your website traffic, let me provide you with a real example from Hinge’s own website performance. And you can test this yourself!

Go to Google’s search engine and search for “business development.” A  blog post we wrote currently appears as a well-positioned organic result. We’ve been pretty happy with that, but…

In the last three months we’ve received 889 clicks to the article from this search query. Not bad. But one year ago, during the same date range, we had 1,815 clicks. This is a staggering decline. And this loss in clicks is despite improving our post’s average position from 6.7 to 4.8. 

See the stats from Google Search Console for yourself below:

Date range in 2023:

Date range in 2024:

So why has there been such a massive decline in organic search traffic? If you look closely at the numbers you can see that total impressions haven’t gone down significantly. The major change is what Google is putting on the search engine results page (SERP). Take a look at my screen capture below as to where our post lives on the SERP.

This SERP is absolutely packed to the brim with content. There is an AI Overview, featured images, highlighted definitions, a section of things people also ask, and more. All these pieces of content are diluting a user’s attention. And this particular search doesn’t even include sponsored ads! 

While traditional search results still appear further down the page, many people will simply stop at the AI Overview. And because many questions can be answered by this summary, no clicking through to a webpage is required. Fewer clicks mean fewer visitors to the websites that show up in those traditional search results.

How does this help Google? Well, they know that the longer they can keep users’ attention within the search portal, the more likely it is that a user will return to use them and eventually click a sponsored ad. Clicks on sponsored ads make them money. And we’ve observed an increase in sponsored ads recently as well. It is another way that Google is making it more difficult for traffic to make it to your website.

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Ready for More Disruption? Let’s Talk ChatGPT.

Google’s changes to SERPs is not the only disruption underway right now. Users are increasingly using generative AI tools like ChatGPT instead of search engines. These powerful platforms have created an all-new way for your prospects to find answers to their business problems. The real question now is if your business will appear in those results.

These are still early days for this technology. But we’ve noticed that these platforms are increasingly becoming their own sources of website traffic.

In Q2 of this year, we had 269 sessions come to Hinge’s website from generative AI tools (led mostly by perplexity.ai). This number increased by nearly 100% to 533 sessions in Q3 as ChatGPT and Google Gemini registered their first sessions. And aside from these website sessions, we’ve had multiple qualified business opportunities tell us that ChatGPT is how they found us. 

That’s right, business prospects found us by asking ChatGPT. It’s a brave new world.

This is a topic we will continue to explore, but from what we can tell most of the same principles that work well for traditional SEO also work well for being found in these tools. Focusing on the right keywords, publishing long-form, high-quality content, and keeping your content updated all send positive signals to these complex systems that your website is a reputable source of information.

5 Ways to Respond to the Disruption

So with all this disruption underway, what do we do now? Is it time to panic at the SEO disco? Not quite. Here’s how we’re advising our clients to proceed.

1. Double-Down on Your SEO Best Practices

Let me say this as clearly as possible… SEO still matters. A lot. 

Is the environment more challenging and competitive than in previous years? Of course. But what’s the alternative here? To stop caring about SEO and website visibility? That would be a mistake. 

If you’re unsure that your website is optimized for search engines, or you’re producing thought leadership content without any thought to keywords or search intent, then you’re leaving better results on the table.

Years of data from our annual High Growth Study have shown that the fastest growing professional services firms are more likely to include SEO as a part of their marketing strategy than their slower growing peers. So it’s vital to stay up to date with the latest SEO tactics and to work with specialists who can steer you toward more visibility.

Recommendation: Audit your SEO performance and make improvements. What queries are users searching to find your website? Do you have any pages that are close to ranking in Google’s top 10 search results? If so, how can you improve them to bump them to top positions? Are there opportunities with local or regional SEO to explore? To get the most out of your website and content, work with an experienced specialist—one who can dive deep into your SEO analytics and find real solutions.

2. Increase the Relevance of Your Thought Leadership Content and Business Development Materials

AI-powered tools are making it easier than ever to generate content, leading to an explosion of generic, low-quality content. To stand out in this noisy digital landscape, professional services marketers must prioritize better quality content—content that has a strong point of view or opinion backed up by evidence. By creating insightful, valuable, and differentiated content, you can position your company as thought leaders and attract higher quality leads. But how do you do that?

First, make sure your team is using AI tools like ChatGPT responsibly. Think about it… Every AI-generated response is built from information aggregated from a wide number of sources. By design their output is undifferentiated. It’s an “average” answer. It has no particular insight beyond what already exists. It has no point of view. And, of course, the answer could be dead wrong. 

If your team is using AI when they write, encourage them to use them as tools, not to do their thinking for them. AI is great to generate ideas (including many weak ones), supporting points, and headline concepts. But they should then use their expertise to organize the material and build a strong argument—and inject the piece with their own personality and voice.

Buyers of professional services are looking for true insights or answers to complex business problems. They are unlikely to be satisfied with summaries pieced together from different sources. They are looking for true expertise. And today, at least, that can only come from people. People like you and your firm’s experts.

Recommendation: Focus on content relevance. Generic content will be overlooked and forgotten. Your prospects want you to speak about their specific issues and bring an original perspective to the table. To understand these issues better and what your clients and prospects need, you may need to conduct research. That way, you can tailor your content and business development materials to be more relevant to your audience. 

And finally, make sure that these materials meet high editorial standards. High quality content is both thorough and readable. Visual materials must look clean, professional, and be consistent with your brand guidelines.

3. Produce a Signature Piece of Content

To pull on this thread of originality further, we recommend that you consider producing a signature piece of content. What do we mean by a “signature” piece of content? We’re referring to a piece that can be tied to your firm and comprehensive enough to be repurposed into other kinds of content. There are many ways to do this, but here are some popular examples today.

Research Reports – What if you could provide insights to your audience available nowhere else? Research reports make exceptional marketing assets. Apart from their value in their own right, they are a bottomless well of data and inspiration for other content pieces. Quality original research has tremendous potential to generate visibility, foster trust, drive engagement, and capture leads.

The versatility of research reports is limitless. Whether utilized in their entirety or deconstructed into individual components like charts, key findings, insightful quotes, or compelling data points, they can be seamlessly integrated throughout the marketing and sales funnel. Accessible, original data like this makes it easier for your experts to share unique insights that represent the unique perspective of your company.

Learn more about this topic in our free guide: Research as Content: A Guide for B2B Marketers.

Podcast – One of the fastest growing media channels in the world are podcasts. According to Hinge’s research, professional services buyers are highly likely to “listen to an expert speak on a topic” as a primary way they answer top business questions. Consider starting your own business podcast, speaking on existing podcasts, or advertising on existing podcasts that your audience listens to as options to explore.

Like research reports, one of the primary advantages of producing your own podcast approach is the extent to which you can repurpose the content across your other marketing channels. Podcast episodes can be published on your website as blog posts. They can be shared with your audience via email. If you do a video-based podcast, you can clip interesting parts of your podcast episodes and share them as social media posts. Full episodes can also be uploaded to popular video platforms such as YouTube.

Newsletter – Digital newsletters have long been a powerful marketing technique for companies that prioritize sharing their expertise. They still work today! As we’ve seen from our analysis above, search platforms and social media platforms are making visibility more difficult (or expensive). An opt-in email newsletter is your personal owned media channel. The data is yours and performance cannot be arbitrarily throttled by LinkedIn or Google.

Recommendation: How do you engage your audience on a regular basis? The three types of signature content above are proven techniques to elevate your visibility, keep your audience thinking about you, and build a loyal following over time.

4. Increase the Visibility of Your Experts

Another way you can respond to the disruption caused by the AI revolution is to continue to build the visibility of your firm’s leading subject matter experts. At Hinge we’ve coined a term for these individuals: Visible Experts®. And there are clear benefits to investing in them.

Professional services are a relationship business. Personal referrals continue to drive new business. And buyers want to work with subject matter experts—people they recognize and trust. That means building the visibility of your firm’s top experts can deliver meaningful benefits to your firm’s reputation and bottom line. 

Recommendation: Develop a plan to identify, train, and support your company’s Visible Experts. If you’re interested in learning more about how ordinary professionals can become Visible Experts, check out our book The Visible Expert Revolution.

5. Improve Your Ability to Track and Attribute Marketing ROI

One of the most difficult aspects of professional services marketing is tracking and attributing the results of your marketing efforts. While tracking things like analytics and results may be unglamorous work, it’s probably one of the most important things you can do.

Marketing attribution is another area where the fastest growing companies have an advantage. When we asked professional services firms about their confidence in tracking marketing results, the top-performing firms were the most likely to report high confidence. Average and low performers were far less confident.

We recommend you track your marketing efforts in four areas:

1. Implementation – Often tracked in a content calendar. Be sure to track all of the marketing activities you’ve committed to carry out. What did you do? When did you do it? Who were the stakeholders? Were there any lessons learned? You want to track these kinds of details.
2. Visibility – How much visibility is your marketing producing? You should have a dashboard that answers this question clearly—especially when it comes to digital marketing and website traffic, the simplest visibility metrics to track.
3. Expertise – Is your thought leadership content engaging your target audience? Tracking results from speaking engagements and online pieces of content is key to understanding what is resonating with your audience.
4. Business Impact – Technology is essential if you want to measure the business impact of your marketing efforts. When a new prospect raises their hand to learn more about your capabilities, you want to capture as much information as you can, such as how they found you and what compelled them to contact you.

Recommendation: Analyze the strengths and weaknesses of your marketing team’s current approach to measuring marketing ROI. Develop next steps to improve performance in the near future.

Less Panic. More Action.

If there’s anything else left to say it is simply that now is the time to act. Experiment. And challenge yourself to grow. This wave of disruption is only getting started. 

In this article, we’ve covered the many ways that online visibility is becoming increasingly challenging. As a professional services marketer or business leader you are going to be the first to feel the effects of this disruption. To stand out in a crowded digital environment is going to require changing the way you approach marketing. The fundamentals may not have changed, but the tools and techniques are on the move. Will you be able to keep up?

The post PANIC! At the SEO disco. appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

Traditional marketing techniques are giving way to strategies that are designed with modern clients in mind—and the old ways are no longer enough. So what are the top techniques for professional services firms today?

Before we consider the best marketing techniques, let’s consider what exactly we mean by the term “marketing technique.”

Defining Marketing Techniques

A marketing technique is anything you do to bring in new business or increase your firm’s visibility and reputation.

We’re not talking about strategies to close the sale on existing opportunities. Instead, marketing techniques are all about generating those opportunities in the first place. These methods include targeting promising markets, building your brand and generating and nurturing leads to drive faster growth and higher profits.

A wide range of marketing techniques are available for both online and offline. Common offline examples include trade shows, networking and in-person speaking engagements. Key online techniques include a firm’s website, search engine optimization (SEO), and webinars.

Together, online and offline marketing techniques allow you to reach clients wherever they may be. Traditional, offline networking has been an important part of the professional services industry for some time, but these days crucial relationships are forged more and more often through social media platforms like LinkedIn (by far the most popular social channel across the professional services).

For decades, experts have used speaking engagements and seminars to share their knowledge and vision. Today, the Internet can expose these ideas to a wider audience. Webinars, online courses and podcasts are used in much the same way as their offline counterparts, but they have the potential to reach many more people.

In this evolving, increasingly complex marketing world, how can professional services succeed? Which techniques are the most important for building a powerful reputation?

1) Specialization and niche targeting

Our research has repeatedly shown that the fastest-growing firms tend to specialize in carefully targeted niches—areas of expertise they understand deeply.

While not everyone recognizes specialization as a marketing technique, it is among the most powerful. Why? Specialization impacts every aspect of your business, from the audiences you target to the messages you craft. Specialization makes your marketing easier because it defines exactly what you do and distinguishes you from the sea of undifferentiated competitors.

Often, specialization is the foundation of a firm’s competitive advantage. If you understand a very particular slice of the marketplace better than anyone else, then you’re exceptionally well equipped to recognize what matters to them and speak to their needs. And buyers are more likely to be drawn to specialists and pay a premium for their expertise. Specialization is perhaps the most powerful differentiator.

2) Visible Experts^®

Visible Experts are exactly what they sound like: high-visibility experts in your industry. They are leading figures who advance big ideas and attract clients through the sheer power of their names.

Our research shows that firms with in-house Visible Experts experience a variety of important benefits. These highly visible experts generate more leads, command billing rates that are up to thirteen times higher and close sales more easily.

Many firms have subject matter experts, but all too often they’re not widely visible, and there’s no focused plan to increase their prominence. Many firms simply don’t recognize the benefits of high visibility.

If they do, they don’t realize that there are proven strategies for building an expert’s profile. By giving experts platforms to educate their audiences—such as books, blogging, public speaking and webinars—firms can support an individual’s reputation and ultimately positively affect the firm’s growth as a whole.

Cultivating Visible Experts is a powerful strategy. When your firm has a clear specialization and one or more nationally-recognized Visible Experts, you’re in an excellent position to accelerate your marketing efforts and your growth.

3) Blogs and articles

There are two approaches to publishing blog posts and articles: 1) contributing content to your firm’s blog, and 2) writing for outside publications.

Writing is a great way to project your firm’s specialized expertise, way of thinking, and problem-solving acumen. According to our research into buyer behavior, more than 50% of buyers read articles or publications to learn more about a topic important to them professionally. By educating your audiences, you demonstrate your relevance and qualifications as an expert.

There is also a second key benefit to blogging. It is an excellent way to increase the drawing power of your website. Search engines like Google look for fresh content on your website. They also give preference to content that is linked to by other sites. A robust guest blogging program coupled with engaging content on your own site is a great marketing technique to deliver these twin benefits.

This is also why blog posts and articles are an important part of any initiative to cultivate Visible Experts—and a cornerstone of online marketing.

4) A lead-generating website

A website carries your identity and message to an ever-growing online audience. But it can do more. A lead-generating website is carefully crafted to be the hub of your online marketing program. Useful, easy-to-find content is served up alongside relevant offers designed to convert visitors into leads—all integrated into a comprehensive ecosystem optimized to generate and nurture leads. In fact, our latest research shows that going to a firm’s website is the second most common way buyers check out a professional services provider.

Because of its central role, a lead-generating website is a key tool for turning visitors into fans and fans into clients.

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5) Search engine optimization (SEO)

Behind any lead generating website is a thoughtful search engine optimization strategy. SEO is an umbrella term for a variety of techniques designed to make sure that your valuable content gets in front of the right audiences online.

There is no shortcut here. You must develop well-written content that is truly useful to your specific target audience. And that almost always requires the participation of a true subject matter expert.

There are also a host of important technical issues to attend to. Your website must be well structured and pages should incorporate keywords that signal to the search engine what it is about. SEO is part art and part science.

6) Speaking engagements

Public speaking is one of the most powerful visibility-building and lead-generating techniques in an expert’s toolbox—and a great way to build one’s reputation. Speaking engagements confer credibility and often put you in front of a highly-targeted audience, presenting an excellent opportunity to engage your listeners, establish trust and build a following.

This is why nearly 78% of Visible Experts rank speaking engagements as a top marketing technique. And it is why speaking engagements have long been an important part of many successful firms’ arsenal of marketing techniques.

But all speaking engagements are not created equal. You must be in front of your target client group or influencers who are in a position to recommend you to your potential clients. And, of course, you must have something valuable to say.

7) Trade Shows & Conferences

For firms in many industries, trade shows can be a great way to get in front of a high concentration of potential clients in one place. Because trade shows usually address a narrow audience, they can be a convenient way to target your prospective buyers.

At a trade show, you can share content, network with prospects and potential partners, speak, check out your competition and exhibit. By choosing (or organizing) the show strategically, you can keep your cost-per-interaction low, engaging with many qualified potential clients in a short period of time.

The keys to success are careful targeting, planning and follow-through. While trade shows and conferences can be time and labor intensive, they provide an ideal venue to meet people in person and drive multiple high-qualified sales opportunities.

8) LinkedIn

LinkedIn provides another way to network with potential buyers and partners without investing in plane tickets and hotels. As the premier social network for professional services, it is a rich resource to meet new people, share your expertise with other and build visibility.

While other social media platforms have their uses, LinkedIn is the top of the social media food chain in the world of professional services marketing. It’s not only a way to connect one-on-one, but it hosts a bevy of specialized professional services communities.

Most firms are already using LinkedIn, but you have to be active to reap its rewards. Begin by developing strong individual profiles for key team members, building a robust firm page, and actively engaging in relevant groups.

An active social media presence also works hand in hand with your blogging and SEO activities. Sharing valuable content is the currency of social media. It attracts web traffic and can encourage people to add valuable backlinks to your site from their own blogs.

9) Video

Video offers many of the benefits of face-to-face interaction without the physical demands of meeting with a large number of people one-on-one. Through video, viewers can get a taste of your team’s personality and expertise. 

Video comes in a variety of formats:

Pre-recorded video: This is what most people think of when they hear video—a scripted or unscripted piece that may include voice over narration, music, talking heads, text, animations and b-roll, to name a few possible components. Pre-recorded video is usually hosted on a dedicated service such as YouTube or Vimeo (there are many options available).

Live streaming video: Usually, presented to a small group, live streaming video can allow two-way communication and Q&A. It has the advantage of allowing you to interact with your audience and pick up on visual cues like body language. It also makes it easy to share detailed, highly visual tutorials or demonstrations. Common tools include Zoom, Google Meet and GoToWebinar, among many others.

At the heart of professional services are people, and video is an exceptional way to showcase your people and even get to know your audience. Some common uses for video include:

• Firm and service overviews
• Demos
• Webinars
• Video case studies
• Video blogging
• Short-form social media posts
• Meet-the-team videos

10) Signature Content

Signature content can come in a variety of formats. But whatever form it takes, it should represent a significant investment of time and expertise. The payoff is higher credibility and the potential to attract new audiences.

Perhaps the most widely recognized and effective form of signature content is a book about your specialty. In fact, writing such a book is one of the characteristics that distinguishes the fastest-rising Visible Experts from the rest.

But a book is not the only possible approach. You might, for instance, produce a significant piece of research that is relevant to your audience and sheds light on an area that is poorly understood. Or you might write an in-depth best practices guide or produce an online course that explores a common client problem. 

The key is that it has to be truly noteworthy and not replicate work produced by a competitor. It should not only enhance your reputation, it should provide a tangible point of differentiation in the marketplace.

Conclusion

These ten most effective marketing techniques are a diverse group of online and offline strategies. Each technique is even more powerful when used in concert with the others. For instance, search engine optimization can point audiences to a video of a speech delivered by one of your Visible Experts, which is featured on your lead-generating website, where a targeted offer converts web visitors into leads.

When you use a thoughtful and diverse array of marketing techniques, they build upon one another. By selecting the right techniques and delivering them at a high level, you can take your professional services marketing program to a higher level—and your firm’s potential with it.

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The Marketing Planning Guide for Professional Services Firms

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