One of the outstanding findings within the 2026 Excessive Progress Research is captured on this chart:
These are the three advertising and marketing methods that high-growth corporations* recognized as having probably the most influence on their enterprise.
In-person networking. Internet hosting an occasion. Conventional promoting.
Wait. Are we Marty McFly? Have we travelled again in time? On this age of AI, are billboards and tradeshow cubicles actually the way forward for advertising and marketing?
Now, I admit that I’ve engaged in slightly choice bias right here. The truth is, a digital advertising and marketing method—selling thought management on social media—shares third place with conventional promoting. And that’s adopted on the checklist by advertising and marketing video, one other digital method.
However that doesn’t change the purpose I need to make. Of the highest ten most impactful advertising and marketing methods utilized by high-growth corporations, seven are old-school actions like advertising and marketing partnerships and offering free consultations. (Obtain the analysis report for the complete checklist.)
And this isn’t a brand new pattern this 12 months. Conventional advertising and marketing methods have lengthy dominated this checklist. Final 12 months, for example, eight of the top-ten high-impact actions have been conventional. The 12 months earlier than, 5 out of 5 have been. Once I use the time period “conventional,” I imply methods that corporations have been utilizing earlier than there was even an web.
An enormous array of digital advertising and marketing instruments can be found to skilled companies entrepreneurs. And our analysis exhibits that the best-performing corporations deploy a roughly balanced mixture of digital and conventional methods. So why does this checklist of those who ship the most effective outcomes skew so closely to the standard facet?
Clearly, these methods are resonating with potential shoppers.
Maybe in a world wherein prospects’ e mail inboxes get tougher to handle yearly and digital adverts are in all places on-line, extra private advertising and marketing makes an outsize influence. Perhaps prospects like assembly the corporations and professionals they could rent, attending to know them in a means that many digital methods can’t ship.
I feel there may be some fact to these explanations. However I imagine there may be much more to the story.
Skilled companies are by their nature people-based companies. They’ve an inherent bent towards interpersonal interactions. These are tried and true methods to determine belief, construct relationships and shut offers. On the similar time, these conventional methods include actual limitations. You possibly can solely meet as many prospects as your time permits. And your attain is constrained by the variety of locations you’ll be able to journey.
To some extent, conventional promoting and public relations handle the issue of attain, however they aren’t nice at eliciting belief. They will inform lots of people what to suppose, however they’ll’t make them really imagine it.
Excessive-growth corporations acknowledge these limitations. That’s why they spend twice as a lot on advertising and marketing as their slower-growing friends. They’re investing in a variety of conventional and digital methods that not solely develop their attain (like promoting) however construct belief (like content material advertising and marketing). Not all of those methods present up on the top-10 influence checklist, however each contributes to the success of the actions that do make the checklist.
In different phrases, the objects on this checklist get the credit score, however a bunch of interconnected techniques assist them within the background. Let’s take one instance: networking at conferences. Earlier than, throughout and after the convention, a agency’s advertising and marketing group would possibly use social media to encourage individuals on the convention to succeed in out to their attending consultants. They could use social media promoting to advertise a talking occasion or breakout gathering they’re main. Their e mail publication would possibly embrace an article associated to the convention theme—and let readers know members of the agency can be there. All of these actions make the networking or talking alternative extra seen, extra resonant and extra highly effective.
One other issue is that many of those so-called conventional methods have advanced for a web based world. For example, internet hosting a convention—quantity two on the checklist—may very well be a bodily gathering of individuals. Nevertheless it may simply as simply (or extra simply) be a digital meeting. Even when it have been held at a bodily location, you would possibly provide distant entry for people who can’t attend in particular person.
To additional make this level, free consultations (tied for seventh on the checklist) typically occur over video conferencing software program. And most of right now’s enterprise growth supplies (tenth) are digital paperwork delivered by e mail or uploaded to a safe portal.
Skilled companies advertising and marketing and enterprise growth will all the time be centered on making private connections. Even when we get up in the future and discover AI brokers doing giant components of our jobs, these brokers are finally serving individuals. And people individuals can be promoting these companies to different individuals (shoppers) who want them.
Will this checklist ever be dominated by digital methods? Perhaps. However provided that these methods construct bonds between individuals that may be attributed to enterprise progress.
*We outline high-growth corporations as those who have a compound progress price of at the least 20% for the previous three-year interval. This group considerably outperforms the remainder of the sphere in terms of progress and profitability.
