In a previous post, I described how median growth rates have plummeted more than 4 percentage points in just two years. That’s a 29% decline, and today’s 9.9 growth rate is the lowest in eight years. Whether or not this trend has hit bottom yet is impossible to say, of course. But it’s fair to say that we are in a cautious market—and perhaps one that is continuing to cool.

With this context in mind, I want to examine one chart from the 2026 High Growth Study.

This chart lists the top business challenges identified by our survey participants. It also compares this year’s results with the previous year’s.*

So what do we make of it? Here are my top three takeaways:

1. AI Remains Firms’ Top Business Concern

Artificial intelligence (AI) and automation continue to vex businesses as they try to balance AI’s undeniable power with its significant shortcomings. AI platforms are evolving quickly, with new features and capabilities added on a breakneck schedule. At the same time, AI poses real risks. Hallucination plagues AI-generated answers and content, and firms bound by strict privacy regulations worry that AI could expose sensitive information.

Most firms use generative AI tools for basic tasks such as taking notes, summarizing long documents and drafting text. These are relatively easy to learn and use. But taking AI and automation to the next level involves integrating it into workflows to handle operational tasks, provide deeper insights, inform strategy and improve client deliverables. This stuff is hard and expensive.

This challenge took top honors last year and it holds its position this year, though its dominant position is in jeopardy. That’s because an old hobgoblin is on the rise again: marketplace uncertainty.

2. Uncertain Days Are Here Again

“Unpredictability in the marketplace” rose nearly nine percentage points to nearly overtake AI/automation in the top spot. This is pretty good evidence that the falling growth rates aren’t a statistical blip. With all the political, regulatory and financial volatility we’ve experienced in the past year, there’s plenty for firms to be anxious about.

Uncertainty makes planning for the future—already a fraught exercise—even more difficult. Should you go through with that acquisition? Should you hire those expensive experts? Do you make a move into a new market?

When the marketplace looks like this: ? ? ? ? ?, answering business questions like these becomes doubly hard.

3. The Talent Issue Is in a Holding Pattern

One consequence of today’s economic, technological and political environment is that firms aren’t doing a lot of hiring. Or firing for that matter. The talent shortage hasn’t gone away, but what was once a perennial top-three challenge has drifted into fourth place across the professional services as they kick these concerns down the road.

Not all industries experience this issue the same way, however. Accounting firms, for example, feel the talent shortage acutely as they grapple with an insufficient number of college graduates to fill available openings. For these firms, talent is the second most important challenge today. Meanwhile, the talent shortage has fallen to sixth place in the technology and consulting industries.

Related to this trend is the biggest year-over-year change in the chart. The need for new skills has tumbled 39%, cited by 33.2% of firms in the 2025 report but only 20.2% in this year’s study. While the data doesn’t directly explain this dramatic drop, we can find some clues.

Nine out of ten firms are actively using AI. It is very possible that these tools are making firms’ employees more productive, lessening the pressure to hire new people.

Some leaders may be playing wait-and-see, as well. Almost a third of firms believe their industries are being disrupted by artificial intelligence. With the promise of true agentic AI on the horizon—and the ability to generate sophisticated code from a plain-English prompt already available—many firms may be reluctant to hire or develop skills today that they may no longer need tomorrow.

And as we’ve already discussed, firms also may simply have a new, bigger set of concerns as they find their footing in a boggier, fog-shrouded marketplace.

I hope this walk through some of the challenges faced by firms like yours provides some useful perspective as you adapt to this wind-swept, stormy world. If you feel a little bewildered, you aren’t alone.

Remember, the 2026 Executive Summary also looks at how some firms are growing four times faster than average and generating exceptional profits amid rapid change and chaos. There’s a lot to learn from them. If you haven’t already, be sure to download the free report today.

The post 3 Ways the Marketplace Has Changed appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

We don’t mean the audience research that we’ve written about before. We’re talking about a different category of research, specifically studies and surveys that delve into issues your audience cares about. Issues that your firm can address.

This has been a smart strategy for years. Most of the heavy hitters in professional services—from the Big 4 to the top global firms in every industry—conduct this kind of research. But so do small and mid-sized firms, such as construction cost management firm RLB and regional accounting firm LBMC. And, boutique specialists, such as B2B training and consulting firm The AIM Institute and consultant coaching and training firm Consulting Success, are putting out compelling original research that educates their respective audiences on the very things that are keeping them up at night.

When you conduct research that answers questions your audience wants answers to, you put yourself in a unique position. Suddenly, you are an essential resource—and you might be the only organization with data on those issues.

According to a study by SurveyMonkey, 75% of readers find content that contains data more trustworthy than material that doesn’t. And 73% find research-based information more persuasive.

More trustworthy and persuasive. That sounds like a powerful combo. In fact, this is exactly the approach that Hinge has used to build a large and growing loyal audience. We include data—often data that we collected—whenever possible in our content. And we recommend this approach to our clients.

You now have something else, too: a mine of dazzling gems that can inspire a whole content marketing campaign. For instance, you can write a blog post that summarizes your findings. Then you can dive deep into each one. These provide fodder for a series of webinars and educational videos that also cover the material. Podcasters love to feature new guests who have a data-driven perspective. And individual data points can turn heads on social media.

Speaking of media, journalists love research, especially if it turns up unexpected findings. So be sure to promote your survey or study to them, as well. A well written press release is a good place to start. Be sure to distribute it to the news wires. To increase your chances of getting coverage, consider working with a PR professional who can pitch your study to specific journalists who cover your industry.

In today’s fast-evolving AI-search-oriented marketing environment, research is also a powerful tool to improve your chances of appearing in AI search results. Google and AI tools like ChatGPT are looking for content that demonstrates first-hand experience, knowledge and authority. Original research fulfills all those requirements. That means your blog posts and YouTube videos are more likely to be featured in their results, or at least influence what those AI-generated answers say. And when people who are ready to buy search for firms like yours, you will be better positioned to make the list.

AI is the future of search, and one you need to be thinking about today. Research can play a powerful role in preparing you for that future. A search environment dominated by AI is right around the corner, and you’d better be ready.

Examples of Research

What kinds of things can you cover in a research study or survey? Really, anything your buyers are actively looking to answer. Here are examples from three firms that produce regular research:

At the beginning of each year, Tennessee-based accounting firm LBMC publishes a Business Outlook Report for the year ahead. This report gives clients and prospects in key industries insights in the marketplace to inform their planning and strategy.

The AIM Institute conducts a variety of research on topics related to the front-end of B2B product innovation, from drivers of organic growth to advanced VOC (voice of the customer) practices. Much of this research is very specific and difficult to find elsewhere.

RLB releases a quarterly report on construction costs. This report has become a go-to resource for the entire industry. The data they produce provides benchmarks that are available nowhere else. A considerable part of their reputation is built on these studies.

What Are Your Research Options?

If you can afford it, nothing beats a formal, in-depth research study. Covering a topic from every angle produces a wealth of insights and value. Your marketing team can draw on a comprehensive study for an entire year, and often longer.

A comprehensive study is difficult to pull off in-house, and it is expensive. You will get the best result by outsourcing it to an experienced research firm that knows your industry. This kind of study can include 25 or more questions, and may involve phone interviews, online surveys or both.

How much does it cost? Expect it to be one of your bigger marketing investments. Research can take many forms, but it can quickly cascade into the tens of thousands of dollars. However, you have to put that investment in perspective. It becomes the foundation of your marketing program. If you produce a study on this scale each year, for instance, you can start to build research into the advice you give your clients. It becomes part of your DNA. And because it is expensive and hard, few of your competitors will be willing to copy it.

This is the kind of research reputations are founded upon.

What if you don’t have the time or budget to produce a full-blown study? What other options are available to you?

One avenue is to sponsor another organization’s research. If their study targets the same audience as yours and covers relevant material, this can be a fast and affordable shortcut. You may even have some influence over the questions they ask. Typically, this approach involves paying a fee to the organization—which could be an association or a firm in a different but audience-adjacent industry or niche—and agreeing to promote the report to your list. You get your logo on the cover, exposure to their audience, and the right to use all that data in your own content.

A similar option is to license an existing research study. While you won’t have any say in the content of the report, this approach offers similar benefits to a sponsored study. Typically, a license covers a specific period of time, after which you no longer can use the data.

The cost of sponsoring or licensing a report varies greatly, since each organization will put a different value on their research. Typically, this sort of arrangement costs thousands to the low tens of thousands of dollars, depending on the quality and depth of the research and the specific usage terms you negotiate.

Another path is to conduct smaller-scale research. This involves limited surveys using a tool like SurveyMonkey, SurveySparrow or TypeForm (these are not endorsements—there are plenty of others to pick from). Choose a very narrow topic, then ask just a few questions. Five to ten questions is a good target.

An added benefit of a limited survey is that it takes less of people’s time. If you can tell potential respondents that it will only take three to five minutes to complete, they are far more likely to participate than if the survey requires 20 or 30 minutes.

How to Find Research Participants

The key with any survey is to target the right people. And getting access to enough of them can be a challenge. A good rule of thumb is to develop a list that is twice as large as the number of responses you want to receive. That means if you want 100 respondents, you may need to reach out to at least 200 people.

Your clients are a great place to start, but if you want to get a large enough sample to make your study both statistically valid and credible to your readers, you may need to look elsewhere for additional candidates. Your email list is the next place to go. If you have a large enough list of prospects, you may be all set. Just keep in mind that only a fraction of your list will see or open your email, so each person on your list is not the equivalent of a person you ask directly. It will likely require a much higher proportion of email list recipients to reach your target number of respondents.

If those tactics don’t attract enough participants, you’ll need to hire a survey panel provider. These are companies that guarantee a certain number of qualified participants for a fee. Typically, you describe the demographics you are looking for and the number of survey participants you need, then they will supply you with a fixed-price estimate. In our experience, this can be a good way to fill in gaps, but the quality of panel responses—especially in niche markets—can vary. Many panel providers will allow you to reject low-quality responses and replace them with new ones.

Incentives Work

These days, people are bombarded with requests to take surveys. Most of those requests are ignored. While you can simply ask people to take your survey, you are going to get a much better response rate if you incentivize them.

Your budget will determine what incentives are possible. For instance, offering each participant a $25 gift card if they complete the survey may make sense if you are looking for 100 participants. But it might become unaffordable if your target is 1,000.

If you plan to sell your research study, giving it away for free to participants who complete the survey may be your best incentive option. Not only does it cost you nothing, it also motivates the people who take the survey to provide high-quality responses. After all, their input will affect the final data. This is exactly what we do at Hinge.

Another lower-cost incentive strategy is to enter participants into a drawing for a prize. Make sure the prize is valuable and broadly appealing enough to entice people to take the survey. You can calibrate the value of the prize to the level of effort required to complete the survey. If you are targeting a large number of participants, you can increase people’s odds of winning by offering multiple prizes.

Important: Make it clear up front that the incentive is only available to people who finish the survey. Partial completions don’t make the cut.

If you have never conducted research on the markets you serve, it may feel like a big undertaking. But if you work with a qualified firm or start with a small DIY survey, doing research can be a lot easier than you think. The potential payoff—today and tomorrow—is enormous. It could even transform your positioning… and fortunes.

The post How to Make Data Your Differentiator appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

Featured below are three rounds of photo challenges. Each round includes one picture captured from an AI-generated video and one from a real-life photographer. Picture A is on the left-hand side, and Picture B is on the right-hand side. Do you think you have what it takes to successfully determine which pictures are real and which are AI? Make your guess, then scroll down to reveal the answers.

Round 1:

Round 2:

Round 3:

Answers:

1. Picture A captured by Stephan Nell
2. Picture B captured by Alec Sills-Trausch
3. Picture B captured by Nazrin Babashova

How did you do? It’s hard to determine which pictures are real and which ones are fake, right? Let’s talk about why.

___________________________________________________________________________________________

Do you remember the early days of the internet? Back when it was simply an expansive bank of knowledge to provide answers on everything from astrophysics and rocketry to the perfect substitute for all-purpose flour. A few clicks away lie information on the stock market, current international affairs, and that annoying piece of information that had been sitting on the tip of your tongue for days. Sure, websites like Wikipedia always encouraged a healthy dose of critical thinking, but at least we knew that we were reading a human’s work.

Without a doubt, these technological advancements were here to help us learn, grow, and solve our toughest challenges.

Then came the seismic shift of the COVID-19 pandemic, forcing us to fully embrace technology. Suddenly, hybrid and remote work became the norm. Employees abandoned office gatherings and face-to-face meetings ceased to exist. Calendars became crammed with video chat invites rather than blocked-off time to spend with colleagues and friends.

This was when we really began to see the two sides of technology. The flexibility of work, elimination of long commutes, and ability to squeeze in a doctor’s appointment were undeniable benefits. But at what cost? We were so eager to move away from the isolation of cubicle farms to “open office” layouts designed to encourage collaboration, only to swap that for zero in-person interaction. Like most things in life, there was no clear perspective on the value of the shift, but it undeniably prompted us to think critically about our interaction with technology.

Veo 3: A Glimpse into the Hyper-Realistic Future

However, a new technology just entered the market, which Hinge discussed on a recent Spiraling Up podcast (embedded below), and it’s making us wonder about its implications for our relationship with the digital world. Google’s brand new Veo 3, a text-to-video AI tool, is truly groundbreaking. Launched in May 2025, Veo 3 marks a significant leap forward in the AI landscape.

This model can turn a simple text prompt, only a few sentences long, into a cinematic-quality video equipped with complex camera movement and dialogue in a matter of seconds. If that wasn’t enough Veo 3 can even generate video from a still image. That’s right. You can now turn any picture from your camera roll into a movie with a simple click.

We can all agree that Veo 3 is remarkable.

The platform’s creative capabilities are cutting-edge, opening new doors for content creation. However, this immense power also forces us to accept an extra layer of digital due diligence. The days of trusting a video simply because it features a “real person” or a “real event” are behind us. That “person” might not be human, and that even might be staged. As discerning fact from fiction becomes more difficult, the burden falls to us, the viewer, to constantly ask ourselves the crucial question: “Is this real?”.

The Erosion of Digital Trust and Its Impact

This shift not only impacts our personal interaction with technology but also the future of marketing and business development. As people lose confidence in what they read, watch, or listen to, what does that mean for attracting new clients? How will your audience know that what your company presents on its website, YouTube, or social media accounts is factual? How do you cut through the growing presence of fabricated content to establish digital trust?

This heightened skepticism in the digital realm is, fascinatingly, leading to a resurgence of traditional marketing techniques – the very ones that predate our current hyper-digital environment. In our recent edition of the High Growth Study, a comprehensive analysis of professional services organizations, we observed a striking trend: only two of the top marketing and business development techniques identified by firms were purely digital (webinars and SEO).

This isn’t to say digital marketing is obsolete, but it does suggest a powerful gravitation back towards methods that foster direct, undeniable human connection and demonstrate tangible expertise.

These current insights can be attributed to several factors. To begin, people are increasingly eager to interact face-to-face with prospective clients after years of virtual-only connections. There’s an undeniable human need for genuine interaction – a handshake, eye contact, smile, or nod – to gauge authenticity. Further, traditional marketing strategies continue to prove their effectiveness. Techniques such as speaking at industry conferences, publishing original research, and forming strategic marketing partnerships are proven ways to establish visibility, demonstrate thought leadership, and build credibility. When you hear someone speak live, watch them converse with industry experts on a video podcast, or engage with them at a networking event, the human element is undeniable.

Navigating the Future: Authenticity at the Core

With the rise of increasingly realistic visual AI models, such as Veo 3, which are completely transforming our digital landscape, it is challenging to predict how they will shape our lives, let alone the specific ways companies will need to adapt to stay ahead. Current research indicates that in-person meetings, events, and presentations are resurging as vital marketing tools. Therefore, establishing a strong event strategy will be key to leveraging these traditional marketing techniques.

Although the landscape is completely changing, we’d like to leave you with one piece of advice: stay ahead of the curve as much as possible. The best way to accomplish this is to keep learning. Marketers should follow technology–oriented influencers, such as @askchatgpt, to stay up to date with the current technology trends. Going a step further and challenging yourself to experiment with these tools is even better. Still, these new technologies do not have to revolutionize your marketing approach completely. Just because new ways exist does not mean that the old ways are bad. The key to success is to continue utilizing techniques with proven success, learn about new technology, and actively begin to incorporate relevant aspects into your marketing strategy.

For the sake of jumping back to embrace old trends,

KEEP CALM, AND MARKET ON.

The post Rethinking Digital Reality: Why Authenticity in Marketing Matters More Than Ever in the Age of AI appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

Let’s get started!

If you pay attention to your website metrics, you’ve probably noticed that fewer and fewer people are visiting your website—and this decline has likely been happening for a year or longer.

Source: Similarweb, as reported by Digiday

The reason for this decline, as some of you already know, is because of a fundamental change in the way search results are delivered. According to one ongoing study, over half of Google searches provide an “AI overview”—a detailed AI-generated answer to a search query (Google launched this feature in May of 2024). And this percentage is only going to grow larger.

Most searchers find the answers in these AI overviews sufficient and never click on a website link. This behavior is a leading driver of traffic declines across the internet. Today, two out of three Google searches end without a single click.

In fact, the situation is a lot worse than it appears. Half of your traffic isn’t real people at all! It’s bots, many of which are scraping the internet for fresh content to train the AI engines and feed generative AI results, including AI overviews.

Earlier this month, things got interesting. Cloudflare—a company that provides infrastructure and security services to over 20% of the websites on the internet—announced it will begin blocking all AI bots by default on new websites. That means that AI engines won’t be able to read those websites at all unless the site owners specifically allow it. They will even allow some publishers to require bots to pay to index their pages. The robot wars begin!

If all this feels like the wild west, you’re right. The rules are changing fast, the bullets are flying and the dust is so thick it’s hard to know which way to turn.

So what does this mean for your content marketing program? And what can you do about this distressing and confusing situation?

If your answer is to double down and generate more search traffic, sorry—you are on a fool’s errand. That traffic is never coming back. And if you believe the folks at Google (you should at least take them seriously), sending search traffic to your website is a “necessary evil,” one they are actively working to eliminate.

Does this mean you should abandon SEO? Should you stop blogging?

The short answer is absolutely not. But…

It’s Time to Rethink Your Marketing

If you believe your blog is going to continue to reach and attract new audiences the way it used to, you are in for a heap of disappointment. Google isn’t playing that game anymore.

Now, you can still use traditional SEO to position a page at the top of Google’s search results. And these same techniques will even help your content be referenced in AI overviews.

But don’t get too excited. The return on ranking #1 in Google or Bing is diminishing. As organic search results are pushed further down the page, fewer people will even see those links, and even fewer will click on them. When it comes to AI overviews, your firm’s name will almost never be mentioned. Your content will be sampled, rewritten, anonymized and aggregated with relevant content passages from other websites. While you might get a reference link in the AI overview, almost nobody will click on it.

To make things worse, in May, Google added AI Mode to AI Overviews. AI Mode allows you to dive deep into the search query, as if you were typing it into Gemini, ChatGPT or another large-language-model chatbot. It takes your question and creates dozens of related synthetic queries, selects passages from hundreds of pages it believes are most authoritative and relevant, then constructs a detailed answer.

Similar to AI overviews, AI Mode provides scant reference links next to the answer. Beyond those few links, it provides no insight into what pages it visited. Nor are there any tools available today that will tell us what keywords or phrases people used to search in AI Mode (or ChatGPT, CoPilot, Perplexity or any other AI chatbots).

Google has made it clear that it considers AI Mode the future of search, and traditional search results links will become even less prominent—or superseded entirely:

“AI Mode is where we’ll first bring Gemini’s frontier capabilities, and it’s also a glimpse of what’s to come. As we get feedback, we’ll graduate many features and capabilities from AI Mode right into the core Search experience.”

And because Google is the dominant search platform today, it has a built-in advantage over competitors when it comes to driving AI-driven search.

Where Does This Leave Content Marketing?

All of these developments have significant implications for your content marketing program—and your entire marketing strategy.

Even a year ago, a combination of blogging and SEO could drive significant, dependable traffic to your website. Today, that’s still possible, albeit at a diminished scale. Many people don’t trust their answers. That means quite a few people are still using Google the old way and clicking on links.

So traditional content marketing still works, but a little less well each month. Between Google’s stated intentions, the rise of generative AI search and the erosion of search-generated website traffic, content marketing is entering a moment of crisis.

So what’s the answer?

A New Marketing Strategy for the AI-verse

Buyers in the professional services still want free access to expertise and thought leadership. They continue to need a way to find firms that can deliver the services they want—firms that can solve their business problems and will be a good fit for their culture. AI isn’t erasing those paths, it’s just delivering them in different ways. That means firms need to adapt their marketing strategy to fit the new roadmap.

Here’s a framework any firm can use to build a marketing program that not only works today, but will function efficiently tomorrow as AI search becomes more dominant.

1. Stop worrying about web traffic as a solitary metric and start measuring quality, engagement and brand awareness. We have noticed that while overall traffic has declined for most businesses, the quality of visitors who reach their website is better than ever. In other words, the people who make the effort to click on links are much more likely to turn into leads and opportunities. Unfortunately, you aren’t able to tell where many of your visitors come from. But a few Google Analytics 4 metrics can help you get a general sense of your marketing program’s success and monitor engagement. These include metrics such as landing page visits, branded search and average engagement time. But a top goal of your marketing program should be to achieve exceptional brand visibility and awareness. Using tools such as Google Alerts, BuzzSumo and Meltwater, you can track brand mentions, engagement, influencers and more across multiple channels. The ultimate measures, of course, are the ones you can capture directly: high-quality leads, opportunities, new clients and revenue.
2. Identify your audience’s interests and learning behavior. Determine where your audiences go to learn about the problems you solve—and what topics they are searching for. Audience research can answer many of these questions, including insights into their top business challenges, what publications they read and which social media platforms they use. A host of tools are also available that can help you see what topics they are interested in and where they are searching for them.
3. Choose a few key issues that your firm will be known for. You increase the chances of your firm’s expertise being featured in AI answers if it addresses a relatively narrow range of issues. In our experience, three issues is the perfect number for most firms, though large enterprises with many practice areas may need more. Each issue should be broad enough that you can write dozens or hundreds of blog posts on subtopics that address the issue from different angles. At the same time these issues must be of deep interest to your clientele AND related to a service you offer. Use the information you gleaned in #2 to help you think about issues. The ultimate goal is to build a library of expertise that demonstrates experience, expertise, authority and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T). These are the attributes that AI Mode, ChatGPT and other AI tools look for when constructing their answers.
4. Write your content for people… but don’t forget the bots. Use easy-to-understand language and short sentences. Summarize key points so that humans and AI bots can easily digest them. Consider including a key takeaways or FAQs section at the end. When possible, include video, charts or images in your content. If you can include original data, so much the better. Publishing and citing research of your own is one of the best ways to build authority—with Google and your prospects. Perhaps most importantly, feature your expertise. While it’s okay to use ChatGPT or Gemini to help you produce a better piece more quickly, be sure that your own thinking, opinions and perspectives shine through. Otherwise, you are just adding to the noise.
5. Lean into video. Google can now “watch” and “understand” video content. And it is increasingly featuring video in its search results and AI overviews because so many people prefer to consume content that way. Ideally, whenever you write an important blog post, for instance, you would also produce a video that covers the same content. Each video can then be edited into medium- and short-format videos perfect for social media. Last but not least, set up a YouTube channel where people, and AI search, can find your videos and clips. In practice, producing video on a regular basis may be a challenge for many firms, especially those that have little video production experience. Whether you develop this expertise in-house, work with a video marketing firm or outsource some or all of the work to freelancers, video is an essential skillset in the modern marketing toolbox. Start developing your video chops now.
6. Make your brand name more visible. Remember E-E-A-T? AI is looking for well-known, authoritative brands. Use digital PR to get your firm in front of the media. Issuing press releases isn’t enough. Enlist a PR professional to help you get quoted in the media, appear on well-known podcasts, and publish articles in publications your audience reads. Speak at conferences that your buyers attend. And if you conduct original research on the industries you serve, it can make you a lot more interesting to the world. Set up your Google Business Profile and ask your clients to recommend and rate you on Google. Engage with your audience where they are. Google is increasingly interested in community-style sites such as Reddit. See if there is a subreddit on your area of expertise. If so, join the conversation. If not, consider starting your own. Use your client research to determine where else you can converse with your audience. Wherever you engage people, always be helpful, not salesy. While it is okay occasionally to link to a relevant piece of content on your site, be very careful not to come across as self-serving. Finally, a classic—and still powerful—way to build both your visibility and reputation is to write the authoritative book on your area of expertise.

Expertise-driven firms like yours are a perfect fit for today’s new marketing paradigm. Your team has knowledge and original thinking to impart. You have prospects who are hungry for that knowledge. So make the most of that expertise and turn your experts into your biggest marketing asset.

Right now, most of your competitors either aren’t aware of these changes or have no idea how to adapt. That means there is a golden opportunity right now to build an advantage. It’s up to you to exploit it.

Change is never easy. And these days, it always seems to come at breakneck speed and with little warning. But to those willing to invest in change will go the spoils. Your time is now. Are you up to the challenge?

Happy marketing!

The post AI’s Effect on Professional Services Marketing appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

Some say we are headed for deeper, bluer oceans of opportunity. Others warn we are being blown onto the craggy rocks of recession. Professional services firms are actively working to figure out how to navigate today’s topsy-turvy, storm-wracked marketplace.

And what about marketing? What’s its role in this high stakes environment? Marketing is your compass. Without it you’ll be at the mercy of the shifting winds and likely find yourself battered, off course and well behind the competition.

Below are five fundamentals every firm should pay attention to survive—and thrive—in today’s unfamiliar marketplace.

1. Your brand.

Some professional services executives roll their eyes when they hear the word “brand.” They think of brands as the realm of consumer products—trusted items people reach for as they peruse the grocery store aisles. But brand is a useful concept for any business, including professional services. After all, your industry has market leaders, and buyers are more likely to know about, consider and prefer them. Why? You can bet these leaders invested heavily in their brand.

At the heart of your brand is your name. A weak name can be a liability and a strong one can help distinguish your firm. If your name isn’t helping you, maybe it’s time to do something about it.

Your logo is the second most prominent manifestation of your brand. We were born with two eyes, and your logo is the visual proxy for your firm and everything it stands for. It conveys subliminal signals about the quality of your firm and level of those you compete with. A logo and brand identity refresh can elevate a brand to a higher plane. You can read how to assess your firm’s logo here.

Your positioning is less tangible than your name or logo, but it is probably more important than either. A well differentiated, clearly positioned firm has competitive advantages baked in, including a narrowly defined audience, deep relevance and the power to command premium fees. In contrast, a poorly positioned business has few tools to attract attention, stand apart from similar firms or avoid the commodity death spiral. But even these firms have hope, as explained in this article on differentiating the not-so-different firm.

2. Your messaging.

Technically, messaging is part of your brand, but it’s important enough that I want to talk about it separately. So many firms get it wrong, which can produce a variety of damaging responses from prospective clients, from indifference to confusion. Your messaging should be tied to your positioning, if you have one. If not, it should at least tell a compelling story about your firm and—this is important—in a way that’s different from your key competitors.

To test this proposition, you can conduct a thought experiment. In your mind’s eye, remove the logo from your website homepage, pitch deck or brochure. Read the headlines. If you were to put one of your competitors’ logos in place of yours would the messaging still apply? Be brutally honest. After all, real money is at stake. If your key messages read like everyone else’s—or if you struggle to tell prospects how your firm is different or better—it’s time to work on your differentiators and positioning.

Take another look at your messaging. Are you “telling and selling”? There’s a better way, which I address in the next fundamental.

3. How you reach your audience.

Many firms use a handful of time-tested techniques to reach new audiences. Referrals, sponsorships and networking still work, but they come with a built-in limitation. They can only reach a relatively small audience. Referrals are limited to the number of clients and referring partners you have. Sponsorships will only be seen by the people who attend the event. And your networking universe can only be as big as the personnel and time you can dedicate to it.

Digital marketing gives you longer arms. Much longer arms. The potential to reach new prospects is almost limitless—if you can figure out how to catch their attention. There are many ways to do this, but I want to focus on one because it is so well aligned with professional services’ biggest strength: its expertise.

A moment ago, I urged you not to “sell and tell.” The better alternative is to teach. Firms like yours are jam packed with experts. And buyers are hungry for expertise. The problem is, most firms in your industry are “selling” more or less the same thing, which makes for a very noisy, difficult-to-navigate marketplace. Buyers can’t tell one firm from another, and their look-alike messaging makes the task even harder.

However, firms that produce free educational expert content can get around this problem. They can build a following. Organizations that regularly blog, conduct webinars, produce videos and speak at conferences not only attract new audiences, they turn a good number of them into loyal fans. And loyal fans already prefer you when they are ready to buy services. There is a reason that producing content is the number one marketing priority of high-growth professional services firms. In this way, your experts can become invaluable marketing assets.

Of course, it’s important to write about topics your audience is interested in. You have two avenues here: keyword research and client research. Keyword research will tell you what words and concepts people are searching in Google and generative AI tools such as ChatGPT. Client research can tell you what business challenges your clients are facing today. This type of research can also illuminate another dark corner: where your audience goes to learn about business challenges and solutions. Equipped with the answers, you can develop highly relevant content for those publications or events.

4. Your website.

I often say your website is your single most important business development and marketing tool. That’s because it serves three critical functions. First, it is the place prospective clients always go before they talk to you. Make a few rookie mistakes and they rule you out.

Second, it is the central hub for your digital marketing program. It’s where your free expert content lives. It’s where you send people from your email and social media campaigns. And it’s where new visitors can be converted into contacts, who you can then nurture through email.

Third, your website is the most complete representation of your brand—from the sophistication of its design and the images you choose to the messages you present to how easily visitors can find what they’re looking for. People will access the site from many ports of entry—primarily your homepage, services pages and blog—so almost every page needs to make a great first impression.

If you are wondering which of these fundamentals to tackle first, your website might be a good place to start.

5. Measurement.

As I wrote recently, tracking metrics is hard. But one of the biggest advantages of digital marketing is that you can monitor its efficacy—usually in real time. Then you can make adjustments. Again and again. Firms who develop this skill set can see things that others can’t. Their marketing is more efficient. And they waste less time and money. If you aren’t measuring, you are guessing. And far more often than not, those guesses are going to be wrong.

Closing Thoughts

Only a few years after a pandemic shut down our world, a new round of uncertainty is spreading across the nation and the globe. But that doesn’t mean the rules of marketing no longer apply. If anything, they are more important than ever.

Most firms have gaps in some or all of these five marketing fundamentals. Some areas you can tackle yourself. Others will require qualified help. But the important thing in times like these is to recognize what drives new business and build on those fundamentals.

Whether the economy is headed north or south, businesses will still need services like yours. So why not make them more accessible, clear and persuasive?

The post Marketing to Survive in Tough Times appeared first on Hinge Marketing.

A lot changed in a short period of time—and five years later, we’ve adjusted to some of this change. Remote and hybrid work policies are now commonplace across the professional services. Many firms have either completed a large digital transformation or are well into the process. And organizations are finding ways to move forward in a topsy-turvy political landscape.

None of this is to say that we now live in a predictable world. But we may be adapting to its variability.

Why do I think this? Because that’s the story we’re seeing in this year’s High Growth Study. We’ve already discussed the top challenges facing professional services firms in this article:

Today’s article is dedicated to the single biggest shift we witnessed across professional services over the past year—and what it means for you.

In last year’s study, unpredictability was the strongest headwind buffeting the professional services marketplace. Four out of ten firms listed it as a top challenge. In this year’s results, those winds are still with us, but the gusts are a bit weaker.* It has dropped sharply from first place into third.

That’s an interesting development on its own. But just as fascinating is what’s taken its place.

The Rise of AI

In November 2022, OpenAI launched ChatGPT. AI had already been on the minds of some professional services leaders for a number of years, but its heyday seemed a long way off. ChatGPT changed everything. Suddenly, here was a mature AI product that could do amazing things—write computer code, draft high-quality emails, summarize long technical documents, even draft screenplays!

To say the world wasn’t expecting this level of sophistication would be an understatement. Quickly, other companies entered the fray, including Google and Meta, rolling out similar products of varying quality. By the spring of 2023, AI was dominating the news. Of course, it wasn’t all good news. Journalists, researchers and users discovered that the results weren’t always reliable, and occasionally the output was pure fantasy.

But the business world was warming to its promise. AI began appearing in more and more technology products, including many major platforms used by professional services firms. And a lot more was in the pipeline. Its promise seemed limitless. In our 2024 study (which explores the 2023 marketplace), we documented this rise. AI and its close cousin, automation, rose from an also-ran to become the second biggest business challenge of High Growth firms.

This year, it shot into the top spot—by a significant margin. Over half of firms in the sample cited AI and automation as a top challenge, compared to 37.3% for the next item on the list. That’s a whopping 35% difference!

Whatever your feelings about AI, one thing is for sure: it’s no passing fad. Billions of dollars are being invested in it, including major server and power generation infrastructure to support it.

What’s Next?

At Hinge, we believe that soon AI is going to become an organic part of the way firms like yours deliver their services, run their operations and market themselves. That’s why we are advising our clients to start experimenting and using this technology now.

Even today’s imperfect AI and automation tools offer tremendous potential to do things more efficiently and to make sense of the immense amounts of information that is available to us. Firms are using AI in ways that save countless hours on big tasks: uncovering patterns and trends in data, optimizing supply chain routes, identifying potential risks in workflows and predicting buyer behavior.

These tools are only going to get better. And new ones will enter the market that handle even more complex tasks. Those firms that embrace this revolution early will be positioned to profit from it most.

Okay. But What Can You Do Today?

How do you get started? The same way you handle any unfamiliar situation: You ask lots of questions.

If you are using technology platforms to run your business, chances are they either have AI functionality already included or they are available as add-on modules. Look at every part of your tech stack—from marketing and CRM to core operations and project management software—and determine where you have opportunities to add AI.

Talk to the developers about what these features can do. Ask about use cases: Explain your business and find out where AI can improve workflow, efficiency or even customer satisfaction: find out what new insights you can glean about your customers, and how to use that information to your advantage and theirs.

When you adopt AI, all the little efficiencies you gain can really add up. Easy-to-use tools like Gemini (Google’s AI chatbot), Copilot (Microsoft), ChatGPT (OpenAI), Perplexity (Perplexity) and Claude (Anthropic) can save minutes or hours on common tasks. If you have privacy concerns, many of these platforms have sandboxed versions that protect your data so that it won’t be exposed to their training algorithms.

At Hinge, for instance, we use a protected AI environment that is fully integrated into our full suite of office applications. While we have a policy that we never use AI to write thought leadership pieces (including this one, thank you), we encourage our team to apply it to tasks like drafting meeting outlines or summaries, analyzing complex data sets and even brainstorming ideas. We’re still learning ourselves, but for many on our team Gemini has been a revelation. We also make extensive use of our CRM’s marketing automation tools, from customized tagging and reporting to automated email sequences. Many of these tasks would be impractical or impossible without these tools.

The biggest thing you can do is make a commitment. A commitment to embrace AI, even if it isn’t always great right now. A commitment to invest in the training to deploy the software or features fully and to get your team up to speed. And a commitment to stick with it.

Organizational change is always hard. And adopting AI in a meaningful way is no different. But we believe making this investment today will set you up to thrive in a very different tomorrow.

*Keep in mind that each year’s study represents data collected in the previous calendar year. For example, the 2025 study presents a snapshot of the marketplace in 2024.

The post How AI Has Rocked Professional Services 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.

Free Resource

The Free SEO Guide for Professional Services Firms

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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.

With the arrival of AI tools like ChatGPT and its competitors, generic content will be increasingly less impressionable—and professional services marketers are going to be challenged more than ever to differentiate their firm’s brand as a service provider and employer.

For years now, professionals have been inundated with an overwhelming amount of unsolicited and unhelpful content. From unrelenting sales pitches filling up email inboxes to random weekly LinkedIn connection requests, the average professional is constantly bombarded with content they have no interest in. However, the situation is only intensifying as these AI tools become more prominently used by marketers.

Here’s the concern for professional services marketers… the pretenders are coming. With the barriers to entry for basic content creation lowered, it is easier for individuals and businesses to portray themselves as qualified service providers, even if they lack the necessary experience and capabilities. This situation rewards those who are larger and louder while possibly putting true experts who are more qualified at risk of being overlooked—and none of us can afford to be overlooked.

Tools like ChatGPT, and those who will inevitably misuse them, are here to stay—so all of us need to at least understand them, and perhaps even use them for our benefit. In the hands of competent experts and content marketers, they present an excellent opportunity to accelerate marketing programs and streamline time-consuming workflows. But there are risks too!

So what should be our top content marketing considerations as we move forward into this new era of AI tools? In this article, we will reflect on these tools’ risks and rewards and outline some strategies to make sure your business stays competitive in this brave new world. Let’s begin by identifying some of the risks associated with these tools.

Risks of Using ChatGPT in Professional Services

There’s no denying the power of ChatGPT can provide marketers for the kinds of work they do day-in and day-out for their businesses. Need to generate some quick social media copy? No problem. Want it to completely rewrite an older blog post? Just plug and play. The simple use cases are endless—not to mention the more advanced automation integrations that are rapidly being introduced to the marketplace.

We recommend taking a good look at your marketing system and identify any places that ChatGPT might simplify or streamline your workflow. Just keep in mind that AI is still far from perfect and comes with real risks. Let’s consider two of them.

Lack of Originality and Depth

The highway to mediocrity is wide—and it just got an express lane.

ChatGPT can generate a lot of content quickly, but since it is trained on an existing body of content, it could produce results that lack originality, personality, and creativity. And the longer your content, the more likely you’ll encounter these issues.

As AI-generated content continues to become more prevalent in our daily lives, readers are likely to be less interested in content that lacks an original perspective or style. Users themselves will have access to these tools, so they’ll have little patience for basic AI-generated content when they’re expecting something more fulsome. If they want a simple answer, they’ll use the tool themselves.

Of course, this won’t stop (and indeed, has not stopped) many from attempting to game the system by pumping out as much AI-generated content as they can on their websites or social media channels. Some will even masquerade as authorities on topics they know little about.

To stand out from all this noise, experts will need to focus on the “leadership” part in thought leadership content. People will gravitate toward those who have unique points of view and are pushing their industries forward. They will look for experts who communicate in a way that authentically represents their perspective as an expert. Marketing teams or experts who rely solely on content from AI-generated output will be left behind.

Inaccurate or Inconsistent Information

Another criticism of ChatGPT is its occasional tendency to deliver inaccurate information. Publishing false information can pose a serious risk for a brand’s reputation. And the risks are particularly acute in the professional services where reputations are built upon trust.

Author and entrepreneur Vivek Wadhwa brought this shortcoming of ChatGPT to life in a recent article. Wadhwa asked his son to use ChatGPT to search for “interesting details about [him] and his family.” While the output seemed credible it included troubling inaccuracies, the most staggering being that he was married to a woman named Ritu, an executive at Microsoft. In reality, not only had Wadhwa never met this woman before, his real wife Tavinder had lost her battle to cancer three years before.

Wadhwa and his son repeated the experiment a number of times and continued to get different inaccurate results, including another false marriage report. Wadha reflected, “[Deep learning systems] are often referred to as a ‘black box,’ meaning that the processes and reasoning behind their outputs are not transparent or easily understood. Once a neural network is trained, not even its designer knows exactly how it is doing what it does. This makes it difficult to reverse engineer or understand how the AI system learned what it did.” While ChatGPT can be a valuable tool for coming up with ideas and even producing content, be prepared to fact check its results.

It is worth considering that AI tools’ accuracy will improve quickly, much like the chess-bots that made headlines in the past. At the same time, the law is trying to catch up. Legal cases are exploring the strange new world of copyright protection for content that involves AI, and where such hybrid work crosses a line. AI is one of the harbingers of the fourth industrial revolution, so we can expect many behavioral and institutional disruptions in the coming years.

Professional Services Marketing Strategies for the ChatGPT World

The risks of relying on AI tools are real. But their potential to dramatically improve your marketing efficiency can’t be ignored. We need to consider how these tools will transform the practice of marketing professional services and set some strategies to guide us forward.

Here we propose four strategies that professional services marketers should follow as we continue to step into an AI-saturated marketplace.

1. Thought Leadership is King Now

Just creating a large amount of content won’t cut it anymore… Anyone can do it now. What will matter moving forward is how you position yourself as a thought leader.

At Hinge we’ve coined the term for thought leaders who are visible for their subject matter expertise—Visible Experts^®. We define a Visible Expert as a firm or individual who has attained high visibility and a reputation for expertise in their industry niche. While Visible Experts come from many backgrounds and specializations, at the core of their professional life is a body of knowledge and a perspective that makes them stand out as subject matter experts. And it just so happens that professional services buyers value working with these experts the most.

In the latest edition of Hinge’s research on the changing behavior of professional services buyers, Inside the Buyer’s Brain, we saw that buyers continue to value subject matter expertise and industry knowledge above all other things when they evaluate a potential service provider.

What does this mean for professional services marketers? Well, it means we need to organize our marketing system in a way that showcases the unique knowledge of an expert. In the past, basic content creation could be serviceable—but now it’s time to take it to the next level of sophistication.

Let’s provide an example of what positioning yourself or your firm’s experts as thought leaders should look like. The classic situation might include an expert who writes blog posts and articles for industry publications, has a couple speaking engagements per year, and is a key team member delivering value to your clients. How might you position this expert on your firm’s website?

When Hinge builds websites for our clients, we recommend a strong cross linking strategy between experts and the thought leadership content they produce. Here’s what that looks like:

Blog posts should include the following:

• Blog posts are clearly attributed to the expert
• Users can easily navigate to the author’s expert bio page
• Users can easily find a way to read more by the author

Experts’ bio pages can include the following:

• Professional photography
• A bio that showcases their expertise and experience with the organization
• Links to completed projects/case stories they are responsible for
• Links to services they deliver for the organization
• Links to thought leadership content they’ve produced
• List of certification and awards they’ve received
• Videos of them speaking

Do you see the possibilities? Experts who are positioned as thought leaders will be the ones most likely to break through in the future.

A full Visible Expert strategy extends beyond your website and blog. It includes a strategy that takes into account each expert’s industry, niche, and skill set. Professional services marketers of the future will need to develop the right approach and strategy to help increase the visibility of their experts.

2. Differentiation Will Matter More Than Ever

There are two factors at play in the marketplace today. First, is the rise of more and more competitors engaging in an increased volume of content marketing. Second, is the fact that larger firms are engaging in mergers and acquisitions at record rates. How do we address these factors? With clear differentiators and a strong brand positioning.

Can you answer the following questions?

• Does your business or service line focus on a specific target market?
• Does your messaging clarify how you’re different from your competitors?
• Does your business development team have prepared responses to critical questions?
• Does the aesthetic of your brand reinforce or detract from your positioning?

In an AI-saturated world, it will be more important than ever to set your business apart from your competitors in a way that builds preference for you among your target audience. Are your key messages relevant to your buyers? Are they true? Do you have proof points to support them? Strengthening your brand positioning can make a huge difference.

Not convinced? Well the fastest growing firms in your industry are. When we surveyed hundreds of professional services leaders and marketers at the end of last year, the best performing firms identified content creation and brand differentiation as their top priorities in 2023. Now is the time to take steps towards differentiating your brand.

Another way to improve brand differentiation is to develop a visual identity that both supports your firm’s positioning and differentiators and takes a different direction from your competitors. And look out for cognitive dissonance. There’s nothing more confusing than brands that use words like “innovative” on their out-of-date websites and marketing collateral. Your marketing materials should present your brand in the very best light.

Your brand design can make an impact on the way your business is perceived by your buyers and potential job recruits. A modern, well-designed website, logo, and marketing materials can create an immediate impression that your business as a professional and reputable brand.

3. Less Content, Higher-Quality Campaigns

When searching for answers to their top business challenges, your buyers can struggle to find the clearly articulated, specific information they are looking for. Expert thought leadership delivered as part of a content marketing program can address this need.

In fact, the need for high-quality content has never been greater. However, with so much noise in the marketplace, it can be challenging for marketers to create content that stands out.

One effective solution is to incorporate research-based content into your marketing strategy. Research adds empirical evidence and credibility to your insights and advice. And many buyers are looking for exactly this kind of fact-based information. In addition, since most of your competitors do not use research in their content, it provides yet another way to differentiate your firm’s expertise.

In the image above, you can see how a large, high-quality piece of content like a research report can be repurposed into a number of pieces of marketing collateral. It can be part of an interconnected campaign that can be integrated into many areas of your marketing strategy. These signature pieces of content open up a lot of marketing possibilities for your team and experts.

4. Humanize Your Brand with an Integrated Marketing Strategy

AI and content aren’t the be-all end-all. You can include real-world experiences into your integrated marketing strategy to stand out from automated fodder.

This means leveraging techniques that humanize your firm and experts. These additional techniques should be integrated with the primary cross-channel goals of your firm’s go-to-market strategy. We have five recommendations here:

Speak and network at in-person events

In-person events are back! Attending events allows you to connect with your target audience on a more personal level and build relationships. Prioritize events where you have an opportunity to speak or where your business is operating campaigns like sponsorships and partnerships. If you struggle to find and secure speaking engagements, you may want to work with a public relations specialist.

Write for recognizable publications

Reach a wider audience by contributing thought leadership articles to publications read by your target clients. By writing for outside publications, you increase the credibility of your expertise and demonstrate to your network that you are in demand as an expert. Again, you may want to consider working with a PR specialist with a track record of pitching articles to top publications.

Pursue awards and certifications

Businesses and experts can differentiate themselves from their competitors when they achieve awards and certifications that demonstrate their commitment to excellence. By showcasing their achievements, firms can increase their credibility and visibility within their industry.

Publishing social media videos

Sharing your thought leadership using video on LinkedIn can be very effective for several reasons. To start, video is more engaging and captures the attention of your audience more effectively than text or image posts alone. Videos of you speaking on a helpful topic can convey your message more effectively and increase the chances that your audience will engage with your content.

Feature detailed case stories and projects

Storytelling is an essential part of what it means to be human. Case stories and project summaries provide the real-world impact of your work and help you further differentiate your business. Making these stories accessible on your website and well-organized for use by your business development and marketing teams is essential. Don’t make it difficult for your audience or internal team to understand the impact of your work.

Final thoughts

ChatGPT and its ilk introduce new opportunities and challenges for professional services marketers. These technologies will not replace conventional content marketing but they are likely to increase the level of noise that is coming from competitors and pretenders. Mediocre doesn’t cut it anymore. You need to be great, not good.

The journey from good to great begins with differentiating your brand and positioning your firm’s experts as thought leaders. Of course, these are no easy tasks. You need to be strategic, grounded in a solid understanding of your audience, and equipped with the right marketing tools and resources.

Our recommended approach of an integrated marketing strategy may require more resources than your firm is currently able to handle in-house. In our decade-long research of high-growth professional services firms, we’ve learned that these high-performers outsource the critical services they can’t handle themselves. If your firm’s differentiation, brand or content marketing don’t meet the highest standards, it might be time to look for a partner like Hinge who knows your industry to take your business to a new level of sophistication and visibility.

(Featured image created by Austin using Midjourney)

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