Spiraling Up — Marketing For Professional Services

Is SEO DEAD!? + Marketing Superlative Awards

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In this episode of Spiraling Up, we tackle the ever-persistent question: Is SEO dead? Join Austin, Joe, and Mary-Blanche as they dive into fascinating new data from SparkToro (‪@SparkToro‬ ) highlighting Google's dominance and the relevance of SEO best practices. The team also hands out special marketing superlatives, recognizing companies excelling in thought leadership, talent acquisition, past performance, and more. In this episode, you'll hear:

  • Is SEO dead? (enough with this nonsense)
  • The Black Hole Award
  • The Talent Magnet Award
  • The Acquisition Amplification Award
  • The People Powered Firm Award
  • Legacy of Excellence Award
Austin_McNair:

In today's episode of Spiraling Up is SEO Dead goodness gracious, the topic that won't Die. Well Spark touro has some interesting new data on this conversation, and then after that, our team will be giving out some marketing superlatives. Welcome everybody. This is spiraling up with Hinge. Welcome everyone to Spiraling Up the podcast for professional services marketers and business leaders where we explore key marketing stories and industry trends through engaging segments, interactive challenges and insightful discussions. My name is Austin and I'm joined by my co-host Joe Pope and Mary Blanche Kramer. How are you guys doing today?

Mary Blanche:

It's doing great.

Joe Pope:

Feeling a little slow actually.

Austin_McNair:

A little slow. All right, well let's pick it up, man.

Joe Pope:

Well, there's really only one way. I think you can pick it up right.

Austin_McNair:

A little bit of Saratoga water. Okay, good. Sounds like your morning routine is off to a good start. Um, well, hey, as we get into today's episode, I wanna say thank you to our listeners and all those watching on YouTube. Uh, you can support the show by giving us a, like, hitting that subscribe buttons, leaving a review. Um, we are just getting started with this podcast spiraling up. So, uh, any love that you give to the algorithm, we really appreciate it.

Mary Blanche:

Speaking of morning routines, you're coming to, uh, you're gonna be getting up pretty, pretty early to come to the US here pretty soon.

Austin_McNair:

Yeah. Yeah. I just booked a flight. For those that don't know, I'm, I'm, I'm currently located in Southern Brazil, far away from my co-hosts and hinge colleagues up in Northern Virginia.

Joe Pope:

Too far, too far.

Austin_McNair:

I know it's too far. It would be so cool if we were doing this podcast in person, but maybe, hey, maybe we can do something because actually the three of us are gonna be in Arizona for a conference together. This conference is with the Association for Accounting Marketing. I know we're excited for that. Joe, what will your morning routine look like? Uh, at the AIM conference?

Joe Pope:

It probably won't involve a 3 42 alarm clock followed by a four 15 cold plunge, but I'm sure we'll still find great opportunities to have a a good time together. Maybe that might push the morning routine to 7 38. We'll see. I mean, we'll be mountain time. Right. So that's gonna, that's gonna have some differences there with time zones, especially for you. Right?'cause you're, you're a few hours in front of us in Brazil. I can't, I can't remember

Austin_McNair:

that's right. I wake up, I'm already, my morning routine's way earlier than you guys. Yeah. If I wake up at 6:00 AM that's 4:00 AM on the East Coast, so yeah. I'm, I'm like that influencer, that viral influencer that we're kind of, uh, alluding to

Joe Pope:

Ashton Hall. Yeah.

Austin_McNair:

Ashton Hall. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm ripping the tape off and doing the whole thing just like you. I just don't have the Saratoga Spring water here in Brazil. Um, yeah, there you go. Product placement. We need to get a deal from this.

Joe Pope:

Can, can Saratoga sponsor this podcast?

Austin_McNair:

That would be, that

Joe Pope:

can you guys please?

Mary Blanche:

We'll even suspend ourselves for four minutes midair before we take a gold plunge.

Joe Pope:

That was to the pool, right? We could reenact that. All right. We should move on.

Austin_McNair:

All right. We should move on mb what's our pivotal story for this week?

Mary Blanche:

Yeah. All right. So, um, well welcome back to another week of Pivotal Stories. Today we are dissecting the Spark Toro report that came out earlier this month, and the headliner is, this is AI stealing Google's market share. So what I'm gonna do, I'll kind of set the stage for us a little bit here, and then we can dive into it. Now the report notes that Google search grew by nearly 22% from 2023 to 2024, and that Google processes 14 billion searches daily compared to chat GPTs 37.5 million, search like prompts. And the research even noted that only 30% of chat GPT prompts are search related to begin with. So there's plenty to unpack here, but long and the short this report. Report is saying that Google remains dominant and that marketers should prioritize data-driven strategies and focus on where their audience is, which for now is without a doubt Google. Uh, so I know this has been a big topic internally, uh, recently, uh, so lots to unpack here, but Austin, let's start with you. What are your thoughts?

Austin_McNair:

Yeah, I mean, Joe, how many times have we had the conversation with prospects and clients and everybody forwarding articles to us about SEO is dead. SEO is dead, you know, hinge. You guys are silly for constantly talking about SEO or whatever. I mean, how many times have we heard that Joe?

Joe Pope:

Well, I've, I've attempted to get into every single episode of this podcast so far, it's a consistent theme

Austin_McNair:

I mean, one thing that is funny to me is that it's, it's been a consistent theme that I feel like we've been joking about this since I started with Hinge seven years ago. I mean, it, that that's how long this like narrative of SEO being dead has, has been around and I, and I think that most people are saying that. Because, um, F-E-S-E-O is is difficult. I think maybe it's like the, the real problem that people have. So it's, it's just much easier for us to say that it's dead and pretend like we don't have to pay attention to it. my headline takeaway from this. It's just to feel a little bit reassured. Um, and, and I say that because off, off the back of a few months ago, I, myself, I did not write an SEO is dead article, but I did write a, an article and I'll, I'll pull it up here on the screen for those watching on, on YouTube. I wrote an article back in October of 2024 and I called it panic. At the SEO disco. So if that tells you anything about how I'm a millennial, and I guess the three of us are millennials here, all that to say, yeah, no, we're, you know, SEO is not dead, but there is I think a lot of, concern, I would say reasonable concern about. How much more challenging it has gotten. I'll just highlight a couple of things, right? So to the point about how challenging it is, Google has definitely been a little bit more greedier, right? Keeping people in the search platform. for content creators, making the i the prospect of paying for sponsored spots at top positions, making that a little bit more alluring because getting those organic spots is harder. When AI overviews are added to the top of, uh, different Google search results pages, that just pushes all of the organic results down. So click through rates are definitely something that we're seeing tank. So I gave some different data ranges in our blog post about our own website performance and how, despite the fact that, we've had basically the same amount of impressions. Our clicks have gone down considerably on our own website. So I think a lot of marketers do have these reasonable concerns, like, our website is not getting the kind of traffic that, uh, it should. So I think the question that our listeners are wondering is, okay, well what do we do about this Right Spark tour. It, it is telling us Google is still dominant. Um, we're saying SEO is not dead. What are some ways that we might respond to the disruption? So, um, a few things here. Uh, number one, double down on your SEO best practices. Joe, I think this is something that we commonly talk to our clients about, What, what have you seen in our, in the business development space about, Addressing concerns about like SEO and why do we, we, why, why do we bring that up? Even in the business development space of like continuing to keep it at the center.

Joe Pope:

I mean, intent is a big thing, right? I, one of the biggest things you'll see with these differences between clicks, impressions and so forth, is as Google tries to make things more relevant. That relevancy is so key to being able to make the connections between where an SEO strategy, the content of which is generating views, clicks, movement is then translating into action when people get to your website. that intent is so important. So original content, thought provoking content, all of these different elements that are tied to issues, I. Is a continual theme that we're seeing in conversations with our own prospects. Right? So just to continue to pull the curtain back a bit, hinges the maj. Vast majority of our business is generated through search. In fact, you know, in professional services, a lot of times you hear referrals. Our search actually for historically, has overwhelmed our referrals. And it's not that we don't get plenty of referrals, uh, it's, it's just that if you make this commitment to getting content in front of the types of folks. That have these issues, have these challenges, it's a great narrative to then take forward in our sales conversation. So one of the things we'll always ask, in fact we ask it on all of our forms, is, how'd you find us? And, uh, the amount of times you see Google is still extremely relevant there, but we have seen that rise in things like chat, GPT. Gemini and some of these other artificial, uh, AI based type platforms that are using these SEO principles to still channel folks to us.

Austin_McNair:

Yeah, so one thing that we do at Hinge is we, we conduct ongoing research on professional services buyers, and you know, referrals is always. The number one source to that question you were talking about. Then after that is doing a general web search. It's still at the top of the list. Now we've recently added the LLMs as a, as kind of an additional channel, which is starting to get some traction. But one of the interesting things that we highlight in the article as well is that to to, to the best of our knowledge at this moment. We are seeing a strong correlation between best SEO practices and then being found on these other platforms. So I mentioned how Google itself has changed, but Joe, I'm glad that you brought up that, you know, one of the concerns, especially from the Spark Touro article is about how. Platforms like chat, GPT, perplexity, Gemini, there's a, marketers are wondering like, oh man, is this just gonna take away, you know, traffic from our website? And I think to a degree the answer is yes, but as MB pointed out the findings that clearly say that Google is still dominant. So what were our recommendations? Uh, double down on those best SEO practices. That might mean doing an audit. With an SEO specialist. Um, not every professional services firm has an SEO specialist in-house, and that's totally okay. We, we get that marketing is very omnichannel right now

Joe Pope:

That's what we're here for anyways.

Austin_McNair:

we can help with that. Um, side note, Joe, you, you just spoke to this, increasing the relevance of your thought leadership content, right? So that's, that, that is absolutely, uh, an important thing. Another recommendation that we've talked about is creating a signature piece of content. Um, to be fully transparent, I mean, the Spiraling Up podcast is one way that Hinge is Dell evolving and doing that. We also have our high growth study and our research reports, and I mean, more importantly, the work that we've done for our clients. I mean, this is the direction that we're heading is, you know, as, as AI is. It's so easy to use now to create content. How do you, how are you gonna create content that really sticks out and that people can associate with your particular organization? Joe, do you have any thoughts on that piece?

Joe Pope:

Well, I think if you follow each of these guidelines, you should have high hopes that they're gonna work.

Austin_McNair:

Hi. High hopes continuing the panic at the disco. Uh, yeah. Um,

Joe Pope:

man. We let the insiders get the

Austin_McNair:

that's right. Don't explain the joke, my bad. Um. Increasing the visibility of your experts was the number four thing that we talk about. I mean, this is bread and butter stuff that we talk about at Hinge, um, beyond your, your core marketing team and, and, you know, getting your experts into the mix, engaging them and integrating them into your marketing. And then finally, improving your ability to, to track and attribute marketing. ROI our, our research has revealed this is to be a, a, a huge challenge right now. For professional services marketers. But in terms of, you know, uh, if, if you're thinking about and, and you're, you're inclined to say something like, SEO's dead, it's not working well. How well are you tracking it? How often are you tracking it? How often are you making improvements to your content and your system and actually making it. Um, a, a, a larger piece or a larger conversation within your marketing department. So these are different things that we've, um, prescribed mb you know, from the perspective of the Spark Touro article. Do you feel like we covered it in terms of some of this analysis, or what did we miss?

Mary Blanche:

Yeah, no, I think between the both of you, that was a great walkthrough. Good recommendations. Um, so just to kind of tie a bow on it here, you know, while AI tools are important, you know. You guys are saying is marketers should prioritize efforts on platforms where their target audience is most active, which today is Google search. And just because there is hype around a new technology, marketers should always be looking at the data first to evaluate where their marketing dollars are best spent. So great job guys.

Joe Pope:

Say Amen.

Austin_McNair:

All right. Well, we have a really fun segment planned here. Now we're gonna be giving out some marketing superlatives. Uh, but first let's, uh, let's tell everybody a little bit about this high growth study again.

Mary Blanche:

Let's do it.

Joe Pope:

Do you know the best way to start a morning routine?

Mary Blanche:

Tell us, Joe, what is it?

Joe Pope:

Well, there's only one way that I would recommend, and that is by downloading the latest edition of Hinges High Growth Study 2025, the 10th Edition Austin. Tell the people more about it.

Austin_McNair:

Yeah, if you want to know what the fastest growing professional services firms are doing. You don't need to drink Saratoga water. You don't need to wake up at four 30 in the morning. You don't need to do all this crazy stuff. All you gotta do is go to hinge marketing.com/ high-growth and you will get the latest edition of our research on the fastest growing professional services firms. It's that link. It will always be that link, hinge marketing.com/high growth mb how many downloads we want to get.

Mary Blanche:

gotta be 10,000, bro.

Austin_McNair:

It's gotta be 10,000. So help us out, get us, get us to 10,000 downloads of the high growth study. you. All right. Well, one thing that we are asked all the time is can you show us an example of a company that is doing this really well, or a company that's doing that really well? These kind of conversations happen all the time as as a marketing agency. So what we wanted to do for today's segment is introduce a new. Segment that we're calling Marketing Superlatives. So, uh, it's a good thing that we, uh, have on this call to participate with this, a multi-time award-winning yearbook editor. And I'll let everybody guess. Is it Mary Blanche? No, it's Joe Pope. It's

Joe Pope:

my gosh. Shout out to the team at West Potomac High School, uh, the Predator yearbook team. Yep, that's right. Dedicated a substantial portion of my high school days in a room playing with Photoshop, trying to make the acne go away. Mostly on myself and a few other folks who could bribe me into doing it for them. Uh, but yeah, no, I, I Photos, yearbook photos, right. Devastating. Across the board. Uh, any of you guys have, uh. A memorable one that you can remember.

Austin_McNair:

I definitely have a memorable yearbook photo. Um, in, in high school I sported some longer sitting hair thought, thinking that maybe, maybe projecting into the future, you know, I've not, you know, today I like to, you know, I. Get out, get out in the ocean surf. But you know, there's not a beach in Northern Virginia. But that didn't stop me from doing the, you know, the shell necklace and the long flowy surfer hair. That was what I rocked in high school. What about UMB?

Mary Blanche:

Um, probably my most memorable one is middle school, like eighth grade, big face, full of braces, a little bit of a unibrow situation happening. Um, and not, not the puca shells, but what were they called? Like the, like the hemp necklaces. You know what I'm talking about? That had like the, like the tie-dyed beads. Um, so yeah,

Joe Pope:

Yeah,

Mary Blanche:

that happened.

Joe Pope:

that, that was a thing. Our earlier segment, uh, referencing a certain, uh, emotional ban, panic at the disco definitely is a call to my best high school yearbook photo, which was sophomore year. Where I was sporting, multiple ear piercings, skateboard t-shirts, and excessively jelled and frosted tip hair.

Mary Blanche:

Frosted tips.

Austin_McNair:

Well, I hope, I hope that people watching the YouTube version of this are laughing right now because I'm gonna ask our editor to put some of these, uh, yearbook photos on the screen. Sorry to the people that are listening, uh,

Joe Pope:

why you have to watch it on YouTube.

Austin_McNair:

you have to go check this out on YouTube. It's, uh. These are pretty great pictures. Uh, Joe, so tell us about the superlative process. Right? What do you look for in a superlative? How did that, how did, how did that, was there a lot of politics involved in those in, in those decision making?

Joe Pope:

There's no politics in high school. You know that. All right. It's entirely political. Uh, we, I'm pretty sure that we had somewhere around 20 superlatives and they pretty much went to the same type of person every year. Uh, I our, our school. Our school broke them into a, a guy and a girl winning each award. I'm pretty sure that the best car superlative was awarded to the exact same car. It might even have been literally the same car passed down year after year after year. Some

Mary Blanche:

What car?

Joe Pope:

coop. It was a Mercedes coop. Yeah. Uh, in fact, I'm pretty sure both the guy and the girl had the same car. So, um,

Mary Blanche:

Morning

Joe Pope:

Yeah. This is Northern Virginia, so yes, people give children Mercedes coops. I drove around a Volvo two 40 station wagon, which. We'll ask our editor to put a picture up of that. But when you think nerdy dude who's driving around a car in high school, that would be me. I was that guy.

Mary Blanche:

I a Honda Accord.

Austin_McNair:

I drove an Isuzu V Cross, which nobody knows what that is.

Joe Pope:

Oh, I

Austin_McNair:

3000 of those made. Um, yeah, that was a wild, that was a wild car to drive, and I loved it, and I miss it. All right. We would like to issue some marketing superlatives, to some companies out there that are, uh, maybe leaders in the space or maybe they're more unknown gems. But, these are examples that in kind of day in, day out life here at Hinge, we turn to these different, Companies. Firms, some of them really large, some of them really small as as examples of, wow, I mean, this is an impressive way to go about doing this. The first award. MB do you want to talk about? What's our first superlative?

Mary Blanche:

Sure. So our first award is called The Black Hole. Award award. And you might be thinking, what in the world is that? Uh, now this award is gonna go to the company whose thought leadership content is most likely to suck you into their black hole. So before we reveal the winner, Joe, remind us why do we care about thought leadership content?

Joe Pope:

Yep. Uh, well, listeners to the podcast have heard us talk about this. It's been featured in a few of our episodes so far, but in professional services as our recent high growth study uncovered this. But the number one marketing priority is creating thought, thought-provoking content. So without further ado, Austin who is number one. In 2025 and the award winner for the black hole.

Austin_McNair:

Alright, thanks Joe. Let me, uh, I'll, I'll show our, our YouTube viewers again on the screen, kind of what we're talking about here. But for those listening, the award, the black hole. Superlative Award is gonna go to Gartner. All right. Fun fact about Gartner. Um, my. My, my first ever professional interview out of college. Um, so I went to Liberty University. I was a barista and a lifeguard. That was all of my professional experience. And so I, my first ever interview professionally fun fact, was at a company called Corporate Executive Board, which was re, which was eventually acquired by Gartner. But I just, you know, I still look back and left to this day of me fresh out of college, putting on like my dad's suit that like didn't fit well and like. Going up to Rosalyn, uh, in Northern Virginia and trying to like fit into a corporate culture. It didn't, it, it didn't work out well. It

Joe Pope:

Did you have your pookah shell necklace still

Austin_McNair:

I I, you know, I had moved on from the Puca shell necklace at that point. Um, but I, you know, was not quite ready to enter the corporate environment at that stage of my life. Um, fast forward, I'm glad it didn't work out'cause now I'm here with the Hinge team. It's been great. So. Gartner Black Hole Award. What are we talking about here? So for this superlative, our team is just really talking about, um, taking something, like taking this finding right content creation and how important it is to B2B, how important it is for professional services. And I mean, Gartner just goes all the way, right? Um, many of you may be on Gartner's email list. Most of you probably don't remember how you got

Joe Pope:

How are you got there?

Austin_McNair:

It's, they, they do guides, they do, um, blog posts, they do events. Um, they, they're very well known for that famous magic quadrant, Joe, that I know we, we see from time to time. so all this to say like from a thought leadership content in the perspective of a black hole. Gartner sucks you in. they do produce very high quality content. and I will say, just being on their email list, they have a very sharp, probably one of the highest quality enterprise marketing automation systems out there. They really push personalized content to people. I mean, I don't get random content, they. They are well aware of what position I'm in, what industry I'm in, and everything I get is very relevant to me. So it's hard not to get sucked in. Right. I mean, they are, they're a real beast in, in, in terms of professional services, B2B. but yeah, I mean it, they do back it up with more personalized content.

Joe Pope:

And I guess that's probably our biggest takeaway here, too, recognizing that most organizations don't have the clearly seven figure plus budget that Gartner puts into their website. Probably just that every year in terms of the content that they create, but that personalization angle. I, I think that's definitely the biggest takeaway here. They do such a, probably such a good job at this, that it helps to mask the fact that you referenced the Magic Quadrant. But there is some criticisms there that in order to fit inside those box boxes that you are, uh, pretty much doing things that allows Garner to sell their services. Uh, that's been a overarching, uh, complaint that most folks have had towards Gartner. But hey, look, I mean, if that's what your play is and to be a gorilla in the, uh. Arena like Gardner is, then you, you kind of have to make that investment and they do a darn good job at it.

Austin_McNair:

Well, I, for one, think Gartner should feel very, very proud that they won the Black Hole Superlative Award from the Spiraling Up podcast.

Joe Pope:

You think that that's an award they'll put on their website?

Austin_McNair:

I sure hope so. Uh, let's transition over to our next superlative. Okay. Joe, what was our next superlative? I.

Joe Pope:

Well, it's hard to beat the black hole, but I think we might have an award that can potentially get that done. Our second award is known as the Talent Magnet Award. So what is the Talent magnet award? Well, this superlative is gonna go to the company that is appealing well to prospective job candidates of all different levels. Austin, why do we care about such things with employer branding?

Austin_McNair:

Uh, I can give you two reasons. So, number one, um, when we do, again, research on the, the, the professional services marketing space, um, what one thing that we find over and over again is that finding and keeping good people. Is a top challenge for professional services firms. This varies from industry to industry. Some in industries feel this very acutely. Um, the example of the winner that we'll show in a minute, we're talking about an engineering firm. And engineering is an example of an industry where. Wow. It is really tough to, um, not just get new candidates, you know, fresh out of college, but like getting experienced talent into your company. It, it's a bit of a challenge, so a lot of HR teams are running to the marketing team and saying like, Hey, we, we need some help. Like we need to create more content and we need to put more stuff on our website. That appeals to job candidates. Um, I, I think we all have the experience of looking at job boards, but then you go, and I think it's very natural for people to check out like a potential employer's website. And I think one thing professional services leaders have found out is that if we're not investing in making some sort of interesting appeal to job candidates on our website, we're gonna be losing. That war for top talent to competitors that do make bigger investments. So, drum roll please. It is with that, that we selected for this talent magnet, talent magnet superlative. We're gonna give it to Burns and McDonell. Like I said, this is an engineering firm. MB do you want to take us through a couple of the things that we saw, um, that we highlighted here for what they're doing well in their career section?

Mary Blanche:

Yeah. So let's talk about the couple of the, of the highlights here. So, uh, first. Thing is their employee stories. They have a whole section that features real stories from current employees that showcase their personal journeys and experiences, which, you know, really just humanizes the, humanizes the company. And it provides potential applicants with relatable insights about, you know, what it's, what it's actually like to work there, which is, which is so important. And then another thing that, uh, especially caught our eye was the recognition and awards. Section, uh, they highlight multiple awards, um, and recognitions that they've had, uh, recently and throughout the years. Um, like one example, uh, healthiest 100 workplaces in America. I mean, that's, that's huge. And so that's really important to be able to, when you receive awards like that, to be able to showcase them on, on your website. Uh, you know, it shows that they're highly regarded and really committed to employee overall. Wellbeing. And then I think, you know, the third, the third thing that really stood out to us with this one as well is just the abundance of comprehensive resources that they have for prospective employees. They also have a section with practical advice on, you know, like how to apply training, interviewing, which for candidates, you know, when they're coming to the site to get more information, that really helps them feel. Prepared and, you know, supported throughout the, the hiring process. And then just last little one, which is just something that I love on any website, whether it's professional services or not. I love a good FAQ section, right? Like even if you're going to an event or maybe you wanna go to a winery or a restaurant you've never gone to before, right? Like, you, you kind of wanna know what, what's going on. Like what, you know, what's. You know, like those, those top questions, um, you know, that are kind of running through your mind as you're, as you're preparing for something. Um, whether that's an event, in this case, a perspective, um, a perspective employee, but, um, they, they've got a great FAQ section. Like, what's your equal opportunity policy? Can I reapply to a role if I don't get it the first time? So, you know, those things are, those things are important too.

Joe Pope:

There was, uh, there was a few things that really stood out to me on this site as well. Uh, if you start to click around into the actual job postings, most of the time you can see what type of setup their technology stack is using in the background. I. And Burns McDonald has put a boatload of effort into what is their applicant tracking system process. Uh, you can just look at the URLs to see that there have implanted UTM codes tracking efforts, which would then allow a complete and seamless integration into their marketing efforts, which being a company we haven't worked with, we're just guessing at that. But if you're gonna go through the effort on the tracking side, almost certainly that's what the result is, which, you know, anytime that you can integrate. Your marketing and your human resources departments together, you know, there, there's, there's great benefit there. We, one thing that's really stood out in our research over the years is the same types of content that can appeal to prospective clients. You know, employees want to see themselves as those experts in that journey too, right? So featuring these different staff members in other ways is another way that, you know, somebody can say, I really wanna be at that company. That's some, that's a company. I could see myself growing my career in.

Austin_McNair:

Yeah, I think the last feature that stood out to us was just about how they speak directly to those levels of expertise, uh, or like where their people might be at in their career journey. Joe, like I mentioned before, appealing to experienced. Engineers is a very difficult task. So actually creating a page on your website that speaks to the kinds of things that more experienced engineers might want, things like career stability, that is a really elegant way of. Tailoring messaging to job candidates, and like you mentioned before, you combine that with the tracking piece and then everything MB said, all those validating stuff, the testimonials of the employees and, and the awards and recognition. It's a really full package here that Burns and McDonnell is presenting. Anything else that we wanted to cover on this one?

Mary Blanche:

Yeah, so just to circle back to the, you know, the a TS piece. So from the human resources side, I mean, you can tell that they've, they've just done a ton with their applicant tracking system. and it, I think that's just really, really important when you wanna have a good pipeline of, of talent that you're investing in. Um, some. Sort of a TS uh, tool, just huge efficiencies with that. repetitive tasks like posting job openings and, like multiple job boards, sorting resumes, scheduling interviews, it does all of that for you. Um, and it keeps all of that data in, in a centralized. A centralized place, and just as someone who has in the past had to spend an previous job, spend hours, uh, you know, in LinkedIn job postings and sorting through resumes, like the ability to be able to do like keyword matching, um, and using the a TS algorithms to scan resumes for keywords that just. It cuts down on the time there, uh, so much more. And there's like customizable filters where you can look for, you know, education level work experience or, or certain skills to better match candidates with, with job requirements. So, um, they're, they're definitely doing a great job with that. It sounds like there's a little pain there in how you're describing that MB. yeah.

Austin_McNair:

So with all of this, I mean, it's clear to see that marketers really play a big role, right? If you're gonna raise to this standard of, you know, burns and McDonald and. Full disclosure, we do not, we have not worked with Burns and McDonald on this, but we are advising a lot of clients, kind of looking at this as like a north star of a company that is doing really well here. And I think for those competitive industries, this is a standard that people are gonna have to, rise up to. Let's take this in a little bit of a different direction for our next superlative, and I'll go ahead and introduce this one. All right. The next superlative we're calling the Acquisition Amplification Award. This award goes to the company that is most elegantly handling. I. The digital integration of their acquisitions. Now, another big theme, we've touched on a few, right? Employer branding, we've touched on thought leadership content. Another big challenge out there, Joe, is mergers and acquisitions, right? And how do marketers handle these when it comes to the digital content? Like the, you know, all of a sudden a marketer's handed a new website. What do we do with this? Right. Um, what are the biggest challenges you've seen in working with some of our clients in terms of m and a and the challenges that need to be addressed?

Joe Pope:

Yeah, it's, it's interesting, this is kind of a combination of the first two, right? Like we just talked, we talked about content, we talked about employer brand. Well, m and a being such a big, big, big element in company's growth strategies these days has led to a significant amount of challenge. How do we bring these different elements together? Uh, honestly speaking, a lot of organizations, it's pretty low on their priority list. Uh, and then you've certainly got the different factors that can go into things like, oh gosh, exit strategies for founders, or things along those lines where, you know, you've gotta retain a name or a color or whatever it might be. Or sometimes it's complete reverse where. You gotta dump everything about it. You know, sometimes companies that have an employers, sorry, a company name that's based off of a founder, things along those lines. So, because of all of these different challenges, the rule book in a sense on this, is pretty much non-existent. Uh, you, you see companies doing it in all different shapes and sizes and, um, I think the government contracting space being a place where a lot of this happens, um, leads to some pretty hideous results. Uh, which is why I think. One of the biggest reasons this website though, winning a website stood out to us because they are a government contractor, one that has grown significantly through acquiring other organizations as they expanded their portfolio to sell into various, uh, agencies and company, uh, contract vehicles and things along those lines. Drum roll. The winner.

Austin_McNair:

Ake a. Yeah, so Joe, we came across ake a recently. I we're, obviously Akeem A is a huge government contractor. Um, and we kind, we came across their website again recently doing some just general competitive analysis of the space. What's going on in the space, what are we seeing out there as terms of best practices and. The whole team was kind of like impressed by this looking kind of on the backend, some SEO tools. Seeing that the Akima website gets a ton of branded traffic, but not just from the Akima name. It's from all sorts of other business names that they've acquired and include in their portfolio of operating companies. So when we go to their website, and it's pretty much integrated all throughout their website, but what we're showing on the screen here is one of their services pages, one of their capabilities pages. Uh, in this case, we're looking at the facilities and logistics page, and when you scroll down. Um, they list all of their services, but they also list all of their operating companies. Now many of these are branded as akea, so Akea Facilities management, akea, facilities, operations, akea, global Logistics. But then you see another one in here, river Tech. A Hema company. And when you, when you put a click into that page, um, what it does is it opens up its own sort of microsite within the same domain, but it maintains the name of River Tech you go through here and this microsite showcases river tech's, um, breadth of services. Company info. They even, as we were just talking about with the challenges with careers and, and sort of integrating that in m and a, they've got their own careers dropped down in here doing business leadership contact information. So this is a very elegant way to kind of maintain the brand equity that's put into the name River Tech of this organization, yet still folded in as an operating company under the Akea umbrella. So. This to us was a really elegant way of handling this. Joe, you mentioned that there are many ways to do this. This is not the only way, but in terms of the impact that we were seeing specifically with in terms of SEO and that branded traffic, I mean, they're really getting a lot of visibility to their website, and I think this would do only, you know. Good for the broader AHIMA brand to amplify, you know, their overall market presence. So this was our winner for, uh, the superlative.

Joe Pope:

We've seen a lot of organizations embrace the multi-site approach. Uh, we've, we've done quite a few of those in the last few years as a, as a, as a angle for organizations to tackle this challenge of bringing in different brands into their larger sphere. I that I. Integration that they've put together at KEMA in how this looks is, is seamless. Like it looks great. I, in fact, when we were trying to look through some of the more technical pieces, we struggled to see exactly how they've done that breakout of those different multi-site and, and when you can hide it from some of these technology platforms and make it look as clean as they have. Boy is that a good sign. So, a well deserved award, I would say the only knock. Is they just can't get away from government contractors. That is putting American flags as the first thing you show up on the website.

Austin_McNair:

Hey, I think it's kind of important right now.

Joe Pope:

Yeah, I mean USA all the way, but come on guys, differentiate here.

Austin_McNair:

yeah, yeah, absolutely. All right, actually, mb, what is the next superlative that we have to issue today?

Mary Blanche:

Okay, so the next superlative is called the People Powered Firm Award. Um, and the superlative is for an organization that really captures the best of their people in their. Digital marketing experience. Um, so Joe, why do professional services struggle with showing their company culture and, and people on their website? Talk to us a little bit about that.

Joe Pope:

Because they're cheap. Kidding. No, just kidding. Kidding aside, kidding aside. Uh, remote work has definitely been a big challenge here. And if we're talking like more recency. You know, the fact is you used to have the opportunity to take photos pretty much any day. You got folks sitting in their cubicles. Nobody really misses that. But the idea there was you had everybody together, opportunities to show culture or even experience culture were easier to come by if, assuming that the organization actually put effort towards it. another challenge that we constantly run into is, is organizations being paralyzed by not knowing who to even feature. On the website, you've got the big challenge of turnover, right? It's the reality. You put a bunch of effort into taking photography and uh, getting everybody together to make'em look good for this website. And then the next thing you know, Johnny quits, I. So not having kind of a system set up on how to build that type of thing out. Older websites that are inflexible to update, you've gotta go to a development partner to even make a switch to a new employee that's a pain in the butt, right? So that's another factor that we continually hear about. I, I'd say the worst of all is that, they actually attempt this and, and let's use that word. Very loosely, and they put up a bunch of stock photography or copy and paste, DEI text from a generic handbook to try to say that they care about those types of things. So two areas of focus that we always look for in a website. And when we're evaluating a website, career section and employee bios, what do those elements look like? And this year's winner. Assuming we do this every year, but I'm gonna set it up like we're gonna do this every year, is Maxwell Locke and Ritter and B, tell us about it.

Mary Blanche:

Sure. Yeah. So I mean, for me, one of the things that immediately stands out here is the visual and narrative integration that they have on their site. Uh, just a ton of strong visuals and employee centered narratives that align with the values that they promote as an organization. And so it really just gives that cohesive. Portrayal of, of their company culture. And I also love that they really keep their core values at the forefront of all of the language that they use. So respect, inclusion, solidarity, empowerment. And then they pair it with visuals that, um, you can see are deeply integrated, um, into their, their daily work culture. And then the other thing I would say too is, and you're scrolling through it now, Joe, is like their community engagement. Piece, ML and r you know, they really emphasize their involvement in over, I think it's 300 community organizations, which is just amazing. And, and highlighting their, their culture and their giving back and how they're making, um, how they're making a positive impact, not only with each other in the workplace, but beyond the workplace and out in the community. So those are, those are two things, uh, to me that just right off the bat, um, kind of hit you when you, when you come to their site.

Austin_McNair:

Yeah, I, I think you summed that up really well. And, uh, full disclosure, ML and R is a client of Hinge. We had a hand in de designing this website, and from what, what I learned with the account team is that this w this meant a lot to them. They really wanted to stand out in the way that they featured their people. And the company culture and that even, you know, worked its way into the navigation level. One of the things we were just showing on the screen for those watching on YouTube is, um, a culture page where they actually go through and highlight most of those things that you were talking about MB as well as a community involvement page. So those, those things are actually called out in the navigation and on specific pages. Another thing that we, you know. One of the aspects of this award, uh, or the superlative, was the people themselves and beyond kind of the, the company culture. we think about people in professional services as experts. Um, and so how do we feature the experts on the website? So for ML and R they really follow the best practices that we advise our clients to take, which is that even on, on pages, like the services pages. In this case, we're looking at, um, the financial statement, assurance, and advisory page. Right? It, it's just very to the point about what they do. But if you scroll all the way down to the, to even this page, you see featured experts that work in this line of the business. And then when you click into that, so let's click on Leslie Hargraves, who we know. Um, the pages are very robust into the level of detail that they go into. So, um, a little bit about. Leslie and her professional, uh, experience including education, community involvement, being even integrated into there, and then, you know. Extra features. How many years of experience? 16 years at ml and r with 22 years of overall experience. Um, what does no success at work is worth a failure at home mean to you? Um, really tying in these like really personal features and, and making each expert kind of have a, have a say in terms of what's featured on their website. Some, you know, pictures of, you know, who's there, why, like, you know, what do they, you know, a little bit of more of a personal touch, but then also bringing it to the, uh, insights. What has Leslie in this case written about? So in, in this case, we can see that recently she wrote an article I. Called revenue recognition for SaaS companies. Um, all of it is baked right there into the website. It's easy to navigate through that. And so when we were thinking about issuing this superlative man, ml and r really just checked all the boxes for us. Anything else that you guys would want to add there?

Joe Pope:

No, I think we, I think we hit it and yeah, of course we had to get a homer pick in here eventually. But, um, ML and R really lives those ideals and that's key, right? We go back to what I was saying earlier in the lead into this. If it comes across fake boy, I think it does worse for your organization than not including it. And when you just take three, five minutes to click through this website as a recruit, as a, as a prospect, even just your own employees, and when you're at a company starting to get into the size of ml and r and beyond, your employees are gonna go to your own website, right? There's information there to, to have, you are living those ideals. And then ml and r is is an example of that.

Austin_McNair:

That's right. So congratulations to our client, MLNR. All right. We have one last superlative to issue, so let's turn to that one.

Mary Blanche:

All right. For our last superlative, it is called the Legacy of Excellence Superlative, and this is gonna go to a firm that excels in showcasing the past performance of their work for. Their clients. So before we announce the winner, tell us a little bit, Austin, you know, why does demonstrating past performance matter in BD and in marketing?

Austin_McNair:

Oh my gosh. There's, there's probably no other area that matters more esp, you know, depending on your industry. Um, for, for one thing, our research validates that buyers care about past performance. I mean, it's just one of the top things. Not just when you are talking to them, but even at the earlier stages of the buyer journey, when buyers are just evaluating your firm, they're coming to your website, they want to know like, have you done the kind of work that I'm asking you to do? Who did you do it for? When did you do it? And the degree to which you share details about those projects. Uh, really makes all the difference. Now, in this case, we're working, we're, we're, we're gonna issue this award to someone that's more in the, uh, architecture, engineering, interior design space. Um, and man, there's no other industry where this, this matters more. Just go to any of the top architecture sites, for example, and you're gonna see super impressive visuals of not just the renderings that they've done, but videos and professional photography of the finished products. Um, to go a level further, like writing out a little bit of information about these projects, um, I can't tell you how many. Websites I've looked at for say like architecture engineering firms, where the project portfolio is just so limited. Everything's limited down to one picture in one paragraph, and it's like, wow, this is an area where we could be so much more expansive and really highlight to prospects and just to the whole marketplace. The impressive work that we do. Some ways that we see companies do this, highlighting individual experts on pages, video, lots of imagery, storytelling. I mean, the list really goes on connecting it to industry and services pages. There, there's so much you should be doing or thinking about when you write a case story or develop a project page in terms of like the overall potential that exists there. Uh, I mean, Joe, taking this over to the sales side, how often are are prospects in a BD conversation asking about past performance?

Joe Pope:

For all the reasons that you just outlined. If they don't ask about it, I'm pretty concerned that there are Val, they're a valid prospect in the first place. Is this somebody I even want to talk to? Right. Uh, kidding aside, demonstrating that experience and expertise in your sales conversations and being able to have it tie back into what that experience that they went through before they got to you, because we know. Anytime somebody's gonna reach out to be a hand raiser, if you will, I want to talk to your sales team. They're going to your website first, right? So they're wanting to see those connective tissues and, and when they get on that sales call, they're asking, you know, what have you done? That's exactly like me. Without a conflict of interest. So it is a continuous thing in professional services. It's never gonna change. And so having a website that props that up is gonna be a key to being high performance and, and being a, um, a connected marketing and business development system. Which leads us to the award winner. Uh, this year's award winner is Teal and team.

Austin_McNair:

teal and team. We, you know, these last two we're, we're, we're kind of playing favorites a little bit. This is another Hinge client, but, um, it's one that, uh, our team has direct experience, uh, working with here in terms of this, theme of past performance and how much it matters for their industry. So, talent team, they do incredible interior design work, architecture work, procurement work. Um, they're a group down in, in, in Texas. Um, but they, they work nationwide. Um, with their clients. And when they came to Hinge, one of the key things that we did in our engagement was we looked at other, at some other of their competitors, and we looked exactly at the portfolio section and of these websites and made like some analysis. What are the things that matter the most and where is kind of the, the, the level at right now, what we saw in kind of the competitive. Uh, landscape was a lot of really high quality video, uh, high quality imagery. So that was like the basic standard. But one thing we noticed is like there wasn't any storytelling or there wasn't anything going much further than that. And so I remember talking with the, the co-president of Telan team, um, about, and, and just how much she was stressing. Like, we have put so much energy into these case stories, we really want. Them to, to pop. When we do a new website, we really want them to, to, to be able to use them in, in many different, you know, just for business development, but for also for people visiting their website and they have really knocked it out of the park. Just going through their portfolio section, you can see how much they've invested into the photography, how they've invested into building out these, um, different, uh, case stories. So just clicking into one in particular, they're. Doing a historic preservation project with the Baker Hotel and Spa. Um, huge project. And you can see the level of detail that they've gone into explaining what this project is and why it matters and, and, and really the. Um, historical context to this particular project, including even some, some video there. Um, they have done a really remarkable job in terms of the storytelling here, and I think that they will continue to greatly benefit from going so far in this direction in showcasing the talent of their team, the proof of work, and, you know, all the projects that they've done over the years.

Joe Pope:

Yeah, Austin. You used the word investment and I think one of the things that's so striking about a website like this that includes so many different elements, video motion, uh, you know, overlays, different things along those lines, you're going to, somebody's immediately gonna go to a site like this and think to themselves, there's just no way we could pull this off. This would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. TE team is not a massive company. They're a small business, and one of the biggest things they talk to us about is how do we get these experiences in a manner of which can, you know, fit within a budget of a small business? And, and it's possible. Like that's the biggest thing. And the results that you're seeing here is tied to being able to develop a site within. Principles of using things like page types and modules and integrations and plugins, right? So you don't need to go and do a fully custom, every page is, you know, coded out and so forth to, to be able to provide this type of experience. It's possible in today's modern website development.

Austin_McNair:

Absolutely. Good point, Joe. Well, we have now wrapped up our superlatives. I think we'll come back to this, uh, segment. I felt like, um, we were really able to share a lot of details and maybe give some behind the scenes looks into how we think about things, especially on the digital marketing front, the things we value when it comes to websites. The digital experience, but I don't think we covered all the, you know, we only scratched the surface in terms of the different kinds of examples that we've, we could have talked about. so I'm excited to maybe re-explore this segment in the future with you guys, but I thought we did a nice job here, laying out some. Some of the work of these excellent companies and the great stuff that they're doing. So, uh, this will wrap up another episode of Spiraling Up. If you're watching on YouTube, please, you're, you made it this far. Hit the like and subscribe button. Uh, and if you're listening, please leave. Consider leaving us a review. Again, this podcast is just getting off the ground and we'd love to hear your feedback. If you do have any feedback for the podcast, you can always email us at. podcast@hingemarketing.com and we'd be happy to engage with you, answer your questions, or if you have any topic suggestions, guest suggestions, we'd love to hear those as well as well. Well, thank you Joe and B for all three of us here and team at Hinge. Thank you so much. This has been another great episode of Spiraling Up.