10. There’s far more marketplace noise to cut through to get attention. More distribution channels for marketing messages (primarily driven by the addition of social media) means more publishing and more competition for buyers’ attention. Good content is the most effective way to stand out from the rapidly growing publishing crowd.

9. Attention is getting harder to grab. In our mobile-enabled, on-the-go world, bullet points seem to be replacing full paragraphs and sentences. But it’s not enough to be brief: To capture distracted executives’ fleeting attention, firms must provide deep, valuable, concise insights relevant to the challenges those prospects are facing.

8. You can’t fool Google. Search engines are getting smarter and more proficient at sniffing out bad content. In fact, The Wall Street Journal has declared that Google’s new Panda algorithm has “changed SEO forever.” The big difference: By incorporating time spent on pages, bounce rates, sharing of pages with friends, and other measures of how real people use websites, the new algorithm makes the quality of a site’s content much more important to search rankings.

7. Content lives longer and can have a lasting impact on a firm’s brand. Because of email and social media channels, it’s impossible for a firm to fully control the dissemination of its content—whether good or bad. Content that hits the Internet “lives” in perpetuity. Thus, the risk associated with publishing poor content (defined as perceived by clients and prospects as not adding value), and having that content continually remind prospects and clients of the firm’s lackluster ideas, is greater than ever. Conversely, a firm that publishes quality content has its brand positively reinforced each time that content is encountered.

6. It’s an uncertain world. The long-awaited economic recovery continues to ebb and flow, leaving clients of professional services firms uncertain about revenue growth, cash flow, and the future of the business. In this environment, executives take no unnecessary chances, and need to know the consulting firms they work with have real solutions, real experience, and can generate real results. One of the best ways to show them is through high-quality case studies and points of view that showcase the firm’s best work and ideas.

5. High-quality content combats pressure on prices and margins. Many clients of professional services firms are more focused on price than they were before the recession, particularly for more “commoditized” segments such as IT and business process outsourcing. High-quality content that demonstrates superior experience and results can effectively shift the conversation from price to the overall value a firm can deliver for a client, and thus elevate a firm above less-qualified and less-expensive competitors. In the end, a firm that’s known for the strength of its ideas and efficacy of its approach can command a price premium over firms whose value proposition is simply lower costs for services rendered.

4. You need something to say, and something else to say tomorrow. The impact of such digital marketing channels as blogs, social media sites, and a professional services firm’s own website has been profound. Firms now need something new to say with much greater frequency, and it must be relevant and meaningful. In our experience, one of the best ways of ensuring the idea pipeline stays full is by investing in major pieces of high-quality content that can be “sliced and diced” for use in different channels over a longer time horizon. For instance, the findings of a major research study could be released in phases via LinkedIn or Facebook posts over several weeks or months.

3. Increased expectations for marketing ROI. As many firms’ marketing budgets have tightened in recent years, leadership is demanding a greater return from their marketing investments. That means marketers must get the biggest “bang for the buck” they can from each and every collateral piece or campaign they create. By focusing on the quality of the content in those pieces and campaigns, and not simply “getting something in prospects’ hands,” firms can increase the chances that their messages will resonate with prospects and clients.

2. Superior-quality content levels the playing field. For firms that don’t have significant marketing war chests, producing high-quality content is one of the best ways to get attention and to insert themselves in the conversation with executives—alongside the bigger brand names in their industry. In other words, firms with limited marketing resources should focus on “outsmarting” their competitors, rather than lamenting the fact that they can’t outspend them. Executive buyers are intrigued by the strength of a firm’s ideas, not by the size of its marketing budget.

1. And the number-one reason why high-quality content is more important than ever: High-quality content will increase your odds of winning work. According to a 2010 ITSMA buyer survey, strong insights on a buyer’s problem and best solution increase the odds that you will win the work, even sole source. When asked how likely it was that the company that helps you clarify your business need and suggests a solution will successfully win the business to implement that solution, 30 percent said there would be a higher probability the firm would win the work, and, of those, 54 percent said they would consider sole-sourcing it.

In sum, for a host of reasons, high-quality content is actually more important now than at any point in recent history. Firms that make superior content quality the foundation of their thought leadership marketing programs stand a much better chance of cutting through today’s marketplace clutter, connecting with target buyers, and growing their revenue.