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

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

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

Five Characteristics of High-Growth AEC Firms

1. They Grow 4.6X Faster and Are More Profitable

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

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

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

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

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

3. They Know What Marketing Techniques Are Effective

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

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

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

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

4. They Prioritize Social Media, Technology and Thought Leadership

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

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

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

5. 3 Out of 4 High Growth Firms Do Research

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

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

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

Dive Deeper into the Habits of High-Growth AEC Firms

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Clearly, these techniques are resonating with prospective clients.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Only there is a gaping hole in this way of thinking. One so big you could drop a conference table through it.

It ignores how buyers—real people—behave.

While it’s true that many buyers may ultimately want a provider that can deliver a wide range of related services, that’s not what most are looking for when they first select a firm. Usually, they need to solve a very specific problem. And they want the fix done fast, expertly and right.

Buyers also want one more thing. They want to avoid getting burned. Every firm has at one time or another hired the wrong provider or partner, spending vast sums of money on a firm that lacked the skills, attention to detail or follow-through to get the job done.

So how do these two desires play out in the buying process? And what are the implications for a professional services firm that wants to reach more buyers and build deeper relationships?

Buyers Prefer Specialists

One way that buyers avoid this problem is to seek out providers with a reputation for solving the very problem they have. In short, they seek out specialists.

Specialists make sense for several reasons:

They focus on a particular thing, whether it’s a type of problem, service, industry, or buyer role. Focus gives them a deeper understanding of the thing they are specializing in. As a result, they are more likely to have more experience and insights into solving a problem that falls within their area of specialty. Where a generalist might say, “we can learn about your problem (or business),” a specialist can say with confidence, “we already understand your problem (or business).” That’s a powerful message.

They are faster, too. With a longer track record of relevant experience comes mastery. Identifying the cause of a problem and solving it is simpler when you’ve seen it before. Meaning they can deliver high quality work at speed.

They are seen as true experts. The problem with generalists is that they often lack the foundational background to support the advice they give. They are more likely to be ignored by the client. The specialist, equipped with deep knowledge and experience, has earned the gravitas to command the room. Clients listen to their advice. And that means their recommendations tend to be taken seriously—and are more lasting.

What’s in it for You?

There are tangible benefits for the specialized firm, as well.

Buyers are willing to pay more. In the professional services marketplace, specialists are usually more expensive. Because specialists are seemingly sacrificing something—access to a wider market—and because they are assumed to be more skillful, buyers are willing to pay a premium for their services. Another way to think about it is that buyers consider generalists commodities, while specialists are rare and more valuable.

It’s easier to grow. This may sound counterintuitive, but by narrowing your target audience, your growth potential increases. In fact, in our research we see a consistent correlation between specialization and growth. For one thing, marketing is easier. You can deliver more focused messages to a smaller, better-defined audience. Also, as your reputation in your area of expertise grows, you tend to get more “invisible referrals.” And differentiating your firm from the beige wheat field of competitors is a cinch. While not always the case, even very narrow specialties are usually large enough to support a firms’ growth ambitions.

You’ll become better at what you do. The world perceives specialists as more capable, but there is more to it than mere optics. When you specialize, your team—through repetition and exposure to variations on a limited number of themes—build deeper expertise. So when you walk into a new client, you can quickly diagnose the problem and have a good idea how to tackle it. You know what can go wrong and how to minimize those risks.

We operate our businesses in a time of continual, accelerating change. Specialists thrive under these conditions. Undifferentiated firms struggle to keep up with challenges and innovations that affect their broad customer base. But specialists can focus on just those that apply to their small corner of the marketplace. Growth and profitability come easier because their business models are inherently more efficient. And they are positioned to be perceived as an authority in their domain.

The post The Strategy that Most Firms Get Wrong appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

That said, it helps to build your plan upon solid ground. That means doing a little background work first.

Understand Your Market and Yourself

Before you even think about tactics and budgets, it can be very useful to take a fresh look at the market landscape. At Hinge, we encourage our clients to do three things:

1. Reassess Your Business. Take a look at your firm from 30,000 feet. What are your big-picture business goals for the coming year? Are you trying to enter a new market? Become more profitable? Hit an ambitious revenue goal? Outmaneuver sleepy competitors for new clients? Your marketing goals must be tied directly to these business objectives. This might also be a good time for a classic SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats). Try to be as honest as you can—it’s easy to overestimate your advantages. Or work with a marketing partner who will bring the objectivity you need.
2. Talk to Your Clients. Most firms think they know their clients, but the reality is often quite different. Our research has shown there’s only a 25% overlap, on average, between the companies a firm thinks it competes against and those that clients and prospects consider its competitors. Yikes! How do you close this gap? By conducting research. Ask your best clients about their biggest challenges, how they find and select firms like yours, and where they go for information. Also ask who they considered, and why they selected your firm. This isn’t just good intel. It’s a goldmine that will tell you exactly where to focus your marketing.
3. Figure Out What Makes You You. In a sea of look-alike firms, you have to give buyers a reason to choose you. This is your key differentiator or unique selling proposition. Maybe you specialize in a niche industry or solve a very specific problem. Maybe you’ve developed a groundbreaking new process or technology. Whatever it is, it must be true, provable, and relevant to your audience. Don’t just say you have “the best people”—a claim that anybody can make. Dig deeper to find the thing that only you can claim.

If you don’t have time to do all the due diligence, don’t panic. You can still get a useful, if not entirely complete, read on your situation. Sit down with your leadership team for an hour and walk through the three items above. Remind each other to be as objective as possible.

What Should You Put in Your Plan?

Now it’s time to start building the plan itself. It doesn’t need to be a 100-page document. In fact, short plans are more likely to be put into action. You just need to provide enough detail to guide your team through the coming year. Nor is there a specific format you have to follow. Write it to be easy-to-use and practical. Here are some elements you might want to include:

Target Audience: Who, specifically, are you trying to reach? The more narrowly you can define your audience the better. It’s far easier to market to a single audience that has a defined set of challenges than ten or twenty segments, each with different needs. If your firm is large, however, you likely have multiple audiences. Just be sure you understand what each needs to hear.

Key Messages: Based on your differentiators, what are the core ideas you want to communicate? Craft a simple, powerful “only” statement that captures your unique value.

Strategies & Tactics: How will you reach your audience with your message(s)? Your strategies are the broad strokes (e.g., “become a thought leader in our niche”), and your tactics are the specific actions you’ll take to carry out a strategy (e.g., “publish weekly blog posts, speak at two industry conferences, and launch a quarterly webinar series”). To help you choose activities that actually work, we’ve prepared a list of tactics most favored by the best-performing professional services firms. Don’t worry. You don’t have to use them all. It’s far better to do a small handful of them well.

Source: 2026 High Growth Study

Content Marketing: If content marketing, such as blogging and public speaking, is part of your plan—and it should be—create a spreadsheet that plans out each post, speaking engagement and webinar. Get specific. Include titles or topics for each item, keywords (if applicable), who is responsible, internal deadlines and publication or presentation dates. Then hold people accountable for delivering. If your experts don’t have time to write, consider hiring a professional ghost writer to help them.

Budget: What will it cost to execute your plan? Be realistic. High-growth firms, on average, invest 10% of their revenue in marketing (not including salaries), though this number varies by industry. Are you investing enough to get superior results?

Goals & Metrics: How will you know if it’s working? Define specific, measurable goals. Instead of “increase website traffic,” try “increase organic traffic by 15% in the next six months.” Track your progress, measure what matters, and be prepared to adjust or change tactics if they aren’t performing.

If there’s one thing you can count on, it’s this: Not all of your marketing activities will go according to plan. A marketing plan is an educated guess. So expect bumps and adjustments along the way. While you will put your plan in writing, it will change along the way. That’s why it’s a good idea to keep notes that document where things went wrong, how you adjusted and whether those changes moved the needle.

Writing a marketing plan doesn’t have to be like folding a fitted sheet. It can be a fulfilling—even fun—exercise. And one with tremendous upside for your business.

The post Could Your Marketing Planning Use a Reality Check? 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.

Well, that world is gone.

Today, we live in a strange new era, and the strategies that worked for the last decade are fast becoming, if not irrelevant, less relevant. If you’ve noticed your website traffic taking a nosedive, you’re not imagining it. One recent analysis found that about 70% of searches today end without a visit to a website. Ouch.

So, what in the digital world is going on?

The Great Click-Through Heist

The main culprit is the very search engine we’ve all been trying to please. Google’s relatively new AI Overviews and Search Generative Experience (SGE) are now answering many of users’ questions directly on the results page.

Why is this a problem? Because your prospects no longer need to click your link to get their answer.
This has led to a terrifying new term—zero-click searches. Early data shows this shift could cause an 18-64% drop in organic clicks for some queries.

In short, Google is becoming an answer engine, not a link engine. The rules of the game are shifting. The goal isn’t just to rank #1 anymore. It’s also to be the source for the AI’s summary. This new discipline even has a name: generative engine optimization (GEO).

And how do you win at GEO? Google itself has given us the answer. They call it E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness).

Google’s AI is learning to value true expertise. It doesn’t just want a blog post. It wants a blog post written by a recognized authority.

This is where the entire marketing playbook pivots.

Welcome to the New PR

If you can’t rely on your website to be found, you have to go where your audience already is. This is where public relations (PR) comes in, but not the PR you’re used to.

The old PR model is also breaking. Traditional media is shrinking—mass layoffs and media consolidation mean there are fewer journalists to cover businesses like yours. At the same time, the number of PR specialists has ballooned, creating more competition for fewer media slots.
The new, smart PR strategy isn’t about chasing a feature in a shrinking national paper. It’s about digital PR and micro-media.

This might mean generating visibility in outlets like these:

• Niche industry podcasts
• Respected newsletters
• Guest spots on influential YouTube channels
• Speaking at virtual webinars
• Relevant, high-authority blogs

These are just a few general examples. In fact, the best way to find out exactly where you should be promoting yourself is to ask your clients what they read, watch and attend. The challenge, of course, is finding, reaching out and pitching these outlets. Many firms hire or outsource this specialized function—the digital PR specialist.

This new form of PR is less about getting coverage and more about building awareness and authority. It’s a content and thought leadership play, and it leads directly to the most powerful asset you have.

Your Superpower—The (Very Visible) Expert

If your corporate website is losing traffic and traditional media is too crowded, what’s left?

Your people.

The new world of professional services marketing is about building the personal brands of your top experts.

Buyers of professional services don’t trust a faceless firm. They trust experts. The more you can make your experts the face of your firm, the greater your potential to grow. While this may sound like a return to the traditional professional services marketing of yore—where relationships were built on the golf course and at networking events—it’s not.

The new marketing mandate is to stop hiding your experts and turn them into “Visible Experts.” This means:

1. Empowering Them: Encourage them to build their own followings on platforms like LinkedIn.
2. Promoting Them: Use your new “micro-media” PR strategy to get them on podcasts and webinars, not just your CEO.
3. Connecting Them: Their authority is your firm’s authority. Their visibility is your firm’s new SEO.

The old model was to drive traffic to a website. The new model is to build a following around your people.

That’s not to say your website is unimportant, or that in-person networking doesn’t work. In fact, these—and many other traditional techniques—remain critical components of many firms’ success. However, it’s time to change the way you think about what builds engagement in a world of declining personal referrals and buyers’ increasing reliance on social media, micro media and AI to find and vet service firms.

In this strange new world, the firms that win will be the ones that stop marketing their services and start marketing their brains.

The post The Strange New World of Marketing appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

Techniques like these certainly have a place in your marketing tool belt. But the world of B2B marketing strategies has expanded, and the behavior of professional services buyers has changed. Today’s buyers are nearly as likely to turn to search engines for answers to their work-related challenges as they are to ask a colleague or connection for a referral.

This evolving marketplace has broadened the range of B2B marketing strategies at your disposal. So staying competitive today means taking full advantage of a wide spectrum of strategies.

You may wonder, though, which ones actually work in today’s hyper-competitive environment? In this article, we will explore ten fundamental B2B marketing strategies that will not only help your firm keep up, but help you get ahead. First let’s define exactly what we mean by B2B marketing strategy, including examples of how one can be deployed at different stages of the marketing funnel.

What is B2B Marketing Strategy?

B2B marketing strategy is the carefully selected set of techniques a firm uses to reach, nurture and sell its products and services to businesses in its target audience. Buyers are often c-suite or director-level professionals at other companies. This makes B2B marketing different from other kinds of marketing.

One key difference is that when businesses buy from other businesses the sales cycle tends to be longer—often weeks or months, and sometimes years. Buyers are trying to solve complex business challenges, and the solutions can be expensive, often requiring a great deal of time and customization to complete. As a result, many companies approach the selection process with care and deliberation. So a B2B marketing strategy needs to address all stages of the buyer journey. Let’s explore how this looks practically with some examples.

B2B Marketing Examples

We simplify the concept of B2B marketing by thinking of it as a three-tiered funnel. In this section we’ll explain each tier and provide examples of how B2B marketing techniques fit into the mix.

At the top tier of the marketing funnel you have a potential universe of buyers who are generally unaware of your product and service offerings. B2B marketing activity at this top tier employs techniques that broaden the visibility of your brand and attract the right kind of leads to engage further with your brand. These leads could be potential buyers, referral sources, or other influencers who could amplify your visibility.

An example of B2B marketing at the top of the funnel might be having one or more experts from your firm attend, network at, and speak at a top industry conference where your firm’s potential buyers gather. Another example is submitting a series of articles to an online publication that’s widely read by your target audience. Remember, the goal of B2B marketing at the top of the funnel is not to start closing deals! The objective is to increase your visibility, expose new people to your expertise and provide a pathway for leads to take the next step of engagement.

Speaking of engaging your potential buyers, that’s what the middle tier of the B2B marketing funnel is all about! If there is one section of the funnel that is underutilized, it’s this one. Marketers can be tempted to rush potential buyers into a sales pitch. But not all buyers are ready to make a purchasing decision today—in fact, many will be months or years away. So the middle of the funnel is where B2B marketers focus on engaging and nurturing their audience over a long period of time.

A common middle-funnel B2B marketing approach is to supply interested parties with insightful and practical educational materials. Webinars are a great example of middle of the funnel B2B marketing. In a live webinar, a potential buyer can experience your firm’s leading experts in a no-pressure environment where they can learn and ask questions. If they are ready to take the next step, it’s easy to reach out and speak to someone on your team. Another common middle-funnel tactic is email marketing. To demonstrate your thought leadership and nurture your contacts over time, you can send them relevant educational material—topical e-newsletters, blog posts, white papers and guides. If you are able to segment your list by industry or area of interest, this technique becomes even more powerful. Most people are more receptive to receiving helpful information like this than a hard offer (though there is a time and place for those, as well).

Finally, a buyer reaches the bottom of the B2B marketing funnel when they are ready to buy—though not necessarily from you! More often than not, they are evaluating a variety of options. Often they raise their hand and indicate that they are ready to speak with a representative from your firm about one or more of your services. We consider this moment a true B2B marketing lead. At this stage of the funnel, B2B marketers are responsible for preparing those who close business deals in their organization with the materials they need to communicate clearly and persuasively to the buyer. Examples of these materials might include pitch decks, qualifications packages and case studies.

Now that we’ve defined what B2B marketing is and how a B2B marketer needs to consider all three tiers of the funnel, let’s explore the ten essential B2B marketing strategies you can implement to help your firm get ahead of the competition.

Top 10 B2B Marketing Strategies

1. Research

Research is the bedrock of any modern marketing program. From marketplace research to brand research, detailed scientifically conducted studies will help you make more informed decisions. They’ll give you an objective basis for your marketing and provide valuable baselines for measuring your results.

By conducting research, you’ll know your clients better—which positions you to serve them better. Market research also gives you insight into how your processes are performing. You’ll discover which aspects of your firm are performing most successfully and develop a better understanding of which services you should offer.

The impact of research is clear. Our own studies on the impact of research have shown that firms that conduct systematic research on their prospects and clients grow three to ten times faster and are up to two times more profitable than peers that don’t pursue research.

2. Niche-driven Strategy

One of the most powerful marketing strategies is specialization and niche targeting. Our research has repeatedly shown that the fastest-growing firms tend to be specialists in a carefully targeted niche. Target an area of the industry that you understand thoroughly, a space in which you can become an indisputable expert and leader.

Specialization makes all of your marketing efforts easier, because it helps you define exactly what you do and tangibly distinguishes you from the competition. A specialization is a differentiator that proves itself.

3. A High Performance Website

In today’s professional services marketplace, your firm’s website is one of your most crucial assets. It is much more than a digital billboard or brochure, as some firms believed in the past. Instead, a successful modern website is the hub of a firm’s online presence and a place where visitors can sample a firm’s expertise before even talking with anyone.

Your website is a critical tool for building visibility. Buyers today go online to find service providers. To have a chance at winning their business, you must have a website that can be found in search. At the same time, your website must demonstrate your firm’s expertise and have clear, differentiated messaging that convinces visitors that your firm is credible, impressive and a good fit.

Our research paints a clear picture of the importance of a professional services firm’s website. In fact, 80% of people look at website when checking out service providers—the most commonly used information source by far.

And as new visitors reach your site, robust educational content and carefully targeted offers can drive leads closer and closer to a buying event, eventually bringing qualified leads straight to you. The process of nurturing leads through content is illustrated in the funnel graphic we discussed earlier in this article.

A second component of your website you need to consider is design. The look and feel of your site can influence your audience’s perceptions, aid recall, and differentiate your firm from competitors.

The power of design to engage audiences is often under appreciated — which means it offers a tremendous opportunity to set firms apart and convey the credibility firms needs to thrive.

Finally, another increasingly essential consideration for your website is its usability across a wide range of devices, including mobile. Responsive design, which allows your website to adapt to suit a user’s device, has become a key feature as more people use mobile devices to do business.

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4. Search and Generative Engine Optimization (SEO & GEO)

As we alluded to in #3 above, your target audience has to be able to find your website for it to be effective. That’s where search engine optimization plays an important role.

In our studies of the best performing organizations, most high-growth firms rate SEO as a critical digital marketing technique. And in a recent High Growth Study, we saw that higher levels of SEO maturity was correlated with a greater proportion of digital leads. This same study showed a similar connection between higher SEO maturity and increased profitability, most likely because digital leads usually cost less to produce.

Though SEO is a complex and evolving discipline, especially due to the rise of GEO in recent months, both practices ultimately consist of two primary components.

On-site optimization incorporates targeted keyword phrases into your content to communicate concepts that you want prospects to associate with your firm—and use to find you in online search. These keyword phrases typically focus on ideas related to your services and expertise.

The purpose of on-site optimization is to communicate to search engines and other platforms what your website is about. This allows those engines to produce more relevant results to searchers. And when audiences search for some area of your expertise, they’ll be more likely to find you.

Off-site optimization takes the form of links to your website, either through outside engagement or guest articles in other publications, for example. Think of these links as votes of confidence in your site (though some votes—from highly reputable sources, for instance, count more than others). These links work to increase your site’s authority as a widely recognized leader on your topic.

As more high-authority and relevant websites link to your website, search engines and AI platforms will begin to see your site as more credible—resulting in higher rankings and more frequent mentions.

5. Social Media

If you need any more proof that social media is here to stay in the professional services industry, we’ve got you covered. Our research has found that over 60% of buyers check out new service providers on social media, making it a more commonly used source of information than formal referrals and recommendations.

Even the nature of referrals has changed in the wake of social media. A study on referral marketing has found that 17% of expertise-based referrals are made on the basis of interactions on social media. In short, social media can accelerate the reach of your reputation, expertise, and content. It also allows you to network and connect with valuable contacts and influencers, as well as monitor your brand’s reputation through social listening.

6. Advertising

There are a number of platforms on which your firm can advertise effectively:

• Industry publications and websites
• Social media (especially LinkedIn)
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – Google Ads, as well as Bing and Yahoo
• Retargeting – A cookie-based technology that uses a simple JavaScript code to anonymously “follow” your audience across the Web and serve relevant ads

Advertising doesn’t just promote your services—it can also play an important role in driving content downloads, increasing both your expertise and visibility.

It’s important, however, to use forms of advertising well-suited to professional services. LinkedIn, retargeting, and other industry-focused advertising tend to work best because they allow you to most directly target appropriate industry audiences, which leads to more conversions, higher click-through rates, and lower cost per download.

Search engine marketing can be an effective way to speak to hard-to-reach audiences. For instance, if you can’t compete for an important keyword, Google ads provide a convenient way to access people who search for it. Just keep in mind that getting good results usually requires testing different headlines, copy and offers.

It’s important to remember there are many variations of each of these advertising types. Professional services firms might find them more or less successful depending on budget, ad purpose, targeting, and industry niche.

7. Referral Marketing

Earlier we explained that the nature of professional services referrals has changed—and this has major implications for your B2B marketing strategy. Our studies of referral marketing strategies in professional services have revealed an important new facet of the practice: over 81.5% of providers have received a referral from someone who wasn’t a client.

Where do these referrals come from? The vast majority are based on a firm’s reputation for specific expertise.

By using content marketing in conjunction with the rest of the tactics in this list, you can build a brand with a widespread reputation for specialty in your area—and an understanding of your expertise even among audiences that haven’t worked with you directly. This brand recognition can lead to referrals and new business.

8. Marketing Automation, CRM, and Lead Nurturing

Marketing Automation: Marketing automation replaces high-touch, repetitive manual processes with automated ones enabled by technology solutions. It brings much or all of your online marketing together in one centralized system for creating, managing, and measuring programs and campaigns.

As with any technological tool, selecting the right marketing automation software for your firm is critical. Make sure the tool’s size, complexity, and scalability is a good match for your needs.

CRM: Another essential software is a Customer Relationship Management System (CRM). Many firms use a CRM platform to track and organize opportunities and client information. It will help you stay organized and connected, no matter how sophisticated your operations grow.

Your CRM serves as the database for all the information you collect about opportunities and clients, including specific interactions with them. The information can be entered, stored, and accessed by employees across a firm’s departments, providing a centralized repository for all leads, business development activities and historical data.

Lead Nurturing: But CRM isn’t the end of the story. Remember the lead-nurturing middle of the content funnel? Your website is one critical piece of that puzzle, and email marketing is another. Targeted, analytics-driven email marketing campaigns allow you to deliver relevant content, as well as soft and hard offers for specific buyer roles, tailored to a buyer’s particular place in the buying process.

Similarly, drip email campaigns provide a hands-off way to send targeted offers to segments of your audience over a set period of time. This produces better educated prospects and builds deeper engagement by delivering a carefully curated selection of relevant content and offers.

9. Testing and Optimization

We started with research, but that’s only the beginning of the science in modern marketing strategy. Testing and optimization allow you to monitor and refine your marketing efforts—so you can make in-flight decisions based on hard data rather than intuition.

Just as research is the bedrock of your marketing, testing and optimization is your steady guide. You should never stop testing your marketing campaigns and adjusting them accordingly. This includes:

A/B testing of emails, landing pages—Using A/B testing tools (like Optimizely or Unbounce), learn which of two emails or landing page variations produces more conversions. You can test variables like language, design, imagery and color.

Email and landing page rendering—Using tools such as Email on Acid, you can test how emails will render on different devices and platforms, ensuring that they look and function as you intended.

10. Analytics and Reporting

To improve your marketing program over time, you need to monitor the right metrics, analyze what you find and make sure the right people see these insights. You will need the right suite of tools in place to collect accurate data on all your marketing and business development activities, from your website to social media to SEO.

Google Analytics is an essential tool for measuring and analyzing your site traffic. Many third-party tools are available, such as Moz and Semrush, can help you study and improve your SEO results, while platforms like Hootsuite and Zoho Social provide detailed social media analytics.

Analytics and testing help you truly understand what is working and what is not. Embrace them, use them. They will help you turn your marketing efforts from an art form into a science.

The online marketing world is evolving at a faster and faster rate, but today, the firms that diligently data on their performance—across a wide range of marketing efforts—then act on this information are situated to win.

A Final Thought

No two B2B marketing strategies are the same, nor should they be. That’s because as every firm strives to say something different to their clients, they need to develop a unique suite of messages, tools and techniques to reach and persuade their audience. As you use the ideas in this post to shape your own business’ marketing strategy, you may discover that some resonate with your audience better than others. Or you may uncover new ones that you want to test out along the way.

B2B marketing is evolving. Organizations that equip themselves to understand how the marketplace is changing and how their audience buys their services and products are positioned to thrive in any economic environment.

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Make Simplicity Your Guiding Principle

Keeping things simple can be your superpower. Distill your business strategy down to a single, vivid idea and it becomes unforgettable—even inevitable. Deliver your marketing messages with simple, carefully chosen words and watch the friction melt away. Describe your services in clear, easy-to-understand language and they become more compelling.

When it comes to marketing and business development, prospective clients are repelled by complexity. They have a hard enough time distinguishing one firm in your space from another. And they have better ways to spend their time. What they want is for you to make it easy to choose your firm.

You have a magic arrow in your quiver. It’s called simplicity. Explain what you do and how you are different in minimal, straightforward language and the marketplace will reward you. While most of your competitors anxiously pile more words and charts into their PowerPoint decks, you will stand apart with stunning clarity.

Where Complexity Comes From

Most organizations naturally gravitate toward complexity. That’s because it’s hard work to reduce ideas to their essence or challenge foggy thinking. The majority of ideas, strategies and messages are born not fully formed. If they arise from a collaboration, they often lack sharpness and even internal logic. Some ideas are foggy because the people who conceive them don’t have the self-confidence to state them plainly—couching their thoughts instead in vague, confusing and passive language. Lots of writing is difficult to read because the writers didn’t take the time to go back and clearly state their ideas, write in short, easy-to-digest sentences or build a coherent argument.

Now, I want to make sure that you don’t mistake simplicity for simplistic. Simplifying doesn’t mean dumbing down. While the best ideas are usually simple ones, they are also sophisticated. They say boldly what others are reluctant to say. They take a stand, often an unexpected or contrarian one. They cut through complexity like a razor. With elegance and restraint, they get at the heart of the problem, and they inspire confidence.

How to Simplify Your Writing, Marketing and Thinking

There have been whole books written on the topic of simplicity (including this excellent one by Jack Trout). So we can only scratch the surface in this article. But let us leave you with a few practical tips you can start using today.

• Always put yourself in your audience’s shoes
• Write in simple sentences—mostly short but with some variety
• Choose simple words over fancier ones or jargon
• Revise your work. Then revise it again.
• Promote benefits over features
• Keep your calls to action clear and straightforward
• Think about what you want your audience to do next
• Ask yourself if there is a clearer, simpler, more intuitive way to state your idea

The post The Joy and Sophistication of Simplicity appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

I’ll explain why in a moment, but first let’s look at the data.

In our 2025 High Growth Study, we asked professional services firms to rank the impact of their marketing techniques. We then isolated the best performing firms from the larger sample. These standout firms grow much faster and are more profitable than average—and achieve spectacular performance year after year.

Out of 32 marketing tactics they assessed, here are the High Growth cohort’s top ten techniques:

Today, we want to focus on the technique in the ninth position: marketing partnerships with other organizations. While partnerships are used by firms of all stripes, High Growth firms rate them as having more impact than their slower-growing peers.

What Are Marketing Partnerships?

Before we continue, let’s make sure you understand what we mean by the term “marketing partnership.” A marketing partnership is a mutually beneficial marketing collaboration between a firm and another organization. That organization could be another firm that doesn’t directly compete with you (for instance, accountants and lawyers work with the same clientele but offer very different services), or it could be a non-commercial third party that serves your target audience, such as a trade association.

The goal of building relationships like these is to reach a new audience with the consent and help of your partner. Usually, engaging a partner’s audience is easier, since they provide a tacit endorsement of your firm.

Partnerships can take any number of forms—and they often include a variety of activities. Here are just a few:

• Co-host webinars
• Publish on each other’s blog
• Send content and offers to each other’s email lists
• Co-present at a conference
• Write an article together for a major media outlet (such as HBR, The Wall Street Journal or a top industry journal)
• Conduct and publish joint research on your common target market
• Write a book together
• Cross promote each other’s events, valuable content, training, courses and other educational offerings
• Refer clients and prospects to each other

Once you are in a partnership arrangement, use your imagination. The opportunities to support each other are endless.

For example, at Hinge over the past decade, we have produced a research report for the Association of Accounting Marketing that they make available to their members. We also help promote these reports. In exchange, we speak at their annual conference and they promote select pieces of Hinge content to their members. Accountants are one of our major audiences, so this relationship connects us to a well respected organization in the industry. Conversely, our research is of great interest to AAM’s members, providing a benefit they can’t get anywhere else. Win–win!

The Start of a Beautiful Friendship

Finding the right partner and establishing the relationship isn’t always easy. For instance, working out an arrangement with a large association can be challenging. Even if you have a champion on your side, you still may have to navigate layers of bureaucracy—a time consuming process. Identifying another firm that serves your audience but doesn’t directly compete with you may be easier in some industries than others.

A partnership should be a tremendous boon for both sides. If there is an imbalance, it won’t work. After all, each side is investing in the other’s success. When you approach a potential partner, consider what irresistible benefit you can offer them. Is it access to your list? Your expertise? Some combination of both? How can you package your offering in an unique and powerful way? At the same time, think about what they can offer you that is of roughly equivalent value. The more creativity you can bring to the table, the greater your chances of success.

A great partnership should last for years. It doesn’t take very many of them to significantly expand your reach and deliver more leads and new business opportunities.

So why do High Growth firms find partnering more valuable than their low-growth competitors? Unfortunately, the data doesn’t answer that question. But based on my experience working with many, many high-performing firms I can think of one big reason. High Growth firms are always looking for efficiencies, especially in their marketing. They don’t mind putting in hard work up front to build a relationship that delivers reliable results over the long term. A partnership provides easy access to new audiences, and as your partner grows so does your potential.

How many strategic marketing partnerships do you have?

The post Marketing Partnerships: Why One Is the Loneliest Number 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!

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