By: Amanda Jackson

You just spent thousands, if not tens of thousands, of dollars on a research report. You surveyed a few hundred folks in your ICP or pulled proprietary data from your platform (possibly both). You interviewed a handful of customers or internal SMEs for quotes or commentary. 

And the final result is… a well-designed PDF. 

One that lives on your website. 

Maybe gated, maybe not. 

Congrats! You’ve just crossed the starting line of your original research efforts. More than any other content type, topic, or format, data reports are made for distribution. 

Don’t let the medium limit you

My high school rhetoric class was the first time someone handed me a book and assigned me a reading about Marshall McLuhan’s idea that “the medium is the message.” Here’s a 1964 deep dive, courtesy of MIT—if you want a much quicker refresher, this concept is all about the strong influence of the channel or platform on what consumers understand about what they’re consuming.

“the medium is the message” = the idea that the channel, platform, format, etc. (the medium) of your content deeply influences what audiences understand about the content they’re consuming (the message)

And this applies to tried-and-true formats like a PDF or an interactive webpage for your data visualizations and flashy statistics. Your audience knows the drill. They know they’re being sold to (directly or indirectly). The gated form that they complete for access (thereby turning them into an MQL or SQL or some other QL) reinforces that transactional relationship. That’s not inherently a bad thing, especially if your data is knock-it-out-of-the-park insightful.

But the “report” itself is your baseline and should be a small fraction of the ecosystem you use to distribute your research. 

Those hard-won data points aren’t building toward a 20-page document. Well, they are… but they’re building a lot of other, less tangible things that are far more important. 

They’re building an unrepeatable point of view and proof behind why your product matters or the need it meets in the market. The research is building expertise and intangible momentum for your business when your best future customers DM your report (or one of many spinoffs on other channels—more on that in a moment) or the data itself to someone in Slack or LinkedIn DMs. It’s starting conversations on podcasts or team meetings that you may never even hear. 

All of that happens best when the right people keep seeing your research findings over and over, from multiple people, on every channel where they spend time… whether they click to view the full report on your website or not.

Data distro, all over the map

In my experience, the sweet spot for planning your distribution is after you’ve created your report, but before you publish. You’ve got the data and potentially the design and visualizations, ripe and ready to be shared. 

If you aren’t doing this already, ground yourself in the channels, forums, and sites where your ICP spends time with a tool like SparkToro. I like to check out the Reddit conversations and YouTube videos that can validate the narrative of the report and help spark spinoff content from the report. 

From here, map and build your distribution across a map of control and influence. 

Here’s how I break this down:

• High-control, low-influence channels are spaces that you own, like your website. You’ll probably start here with posting the asset, either gated or ungated. Long-form content on your blog can follow up on the ideas started in the report and gives you new space to promote it in different formats.
• Low-control, low-influence channels include dark social conversations or industry-adjacent conversations you might be able to break into with enough organic buzz. They’re a tough nut to crack, and you probably won’t know how you’re performing on them. 
• Low-control, high-influence channels tend to be pitchable, like podcasts and publications you already know your target audience consumes. 
• High-control, high-influence channels are relational and higher reach channels, like your employees sharing data from the report on LinkedIn or elsewhere, and email series that break down the findings for an engaged group. 

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to make a plan for distribution that covers (or at least touches) all four quadrants. Visuals are your friends, too; organize your data visualizations, graphics, and any videos you plan to make into these quadrants to make the stats easy to consume. 

All told, your distribution plan should include direction and content for:

• Long-form content based on the data
• Employee posts to use on social (and encouragement to send the report or specific findings to people via email or DMs to nudge those low-control, low-influence channels)
• Short-form branded social posts and/or paid content, including carousels and graphics (for months… not just the week after launching.)
• Pitches to publications and podcasts
• Email series and content for any other owned platforms
• Update or refresh ideas to incorporate data into your existing content
• Videos featuring the data or spotlighting your team’s thoughts about the data

Whenever possible, you’ll still link out to the report asset on your website, gated or not. But we all know that clicks are harder to come by these days. 

Lead with the splashiest statistical hooks you can that people will walk away remembering and repeating to their colleagues or peers, whether or not they ever click. I’m firmly outside of the “people don’t read anymore” camp, but if you put any stock in that idea (or in zero-click marketing), original data is one of the best, most distributable assets in your content closet. 

Original data is one of the best, most distributable assets in your content closet. And distribution outside of that one PDF is your best shot of putting it well within reach of the right people. 

And distribution outside of that one PDF is your best shot of putting it well within reach of the right people. 

Do as I say… not as I did. 

Too much content advice reads like a 90s infomercial. “It’s that easy!” And you won’t get that from me—I know firsthand exactly how difficult it is to add an entire new phase to launching your report out into the world.

After writing scads of research reports for my clients (plus recommending data viz and creating multiple distribution roadmaps like what I recommended above), I decided to produce one of my own. I surveyed 70+ solopreneurs and freelancers to create a report for them, and I’m proud of the final product. 

Yet even though distribution is a key part of what I do for my clients, I didn’t take my own advice. I published the report and made a very sketchy plan for LinkedIn content, a channel where I have high control over the creation but low control over the algorithm. I reached out to a few higher influence voices that could help take the report farther. 

But all in all, I failed on the pre-planning and much of the follow-through. (At least, in the first month post-publish.) I felt like I didn’t have time, and I didn’t capitalize on the early-days momentum. 

What makes this even more painful is that anecdotal evidence of the report is promising. Comments and word-of-mouth have cited my data and said the report was useful. So every additional inch of distribution would have given it that much wider reach to reach my main “KPI”: helping freelancers level up their client acquisition in a tough market. 

As much as I agonized over the report itself, I wish I’d spent just as much time planning to get its POV and findings into the right readers’ hands.

There’s still time left, though. Like my friend Morgan Short advises, your research report can and should fuel your content calendar for an entire year.

I’m glad more and more companies are starting to see the usefulness of proprietary data content for driving AI citations and overall brand awareness. They’re setting aside time and budget and attention to craft their next research report—hurray! 

I can only hope we’ll start doing the same for distribution. 🤞

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Amanda Jackson is a content strategist and writer who specializes in original research reports for mid-market and enterprise B2B software brands. She also hosts quarterly virtual crafting meet-ups for creative careerists. You can find her on Substack for creativity-related content and LinkedIn for content-related content. She lives in Ohio with her husband; they watch the Best Picture nominees every Oscar season.