Survey your buyers once a year and publish the numbers. It becomes press coverage, a year of content and a lead list.
In 2012 Puppet Labs, the IT automation software company, brought in Gene Kim, who was about to publish a book on IT and DevOps, to help it survey the people who build and run software (DX, 17 February 2023). The results, published in March 2013, drew on more than 4,000 IT operations and development professionals in 90 countries and led with one quotable finding: high-performing organisations deployed code 30 times more frequently, with 50% fewer failures (Puppet Labs, 26 March 2013).
The survey became the annual State of DevOps report. Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble and Kim formed DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA) around the research and wrote the bestselling book Accelerate on it, and ThoughtWorks' Technology Radar highlighted its Four Key Metrics. Google acquired DORA in December 2018 (DORA, 20 December 2018). By 2019 the report rested on six years of data from more than 31,000 professionals and called itself the largest and longest-running research of its kind (Google Cloud, 22 August 2019). Puppet has not published what the report earned it.
B2B companies and consultancies with access to a cohort of buyers, and consumer brands with a customer base worth surveying.
Journalists and AI assistants both reach for numbers that did not exist until someone collected them. In a survey of 3,132 journalists by Cision, which sells PR software, 68% said they wanted original research and trend data in pitches (Axios, 18 May 2023). In a study presented at the KDD conference in 2024, adding statistics, quotations or citations to web pages each raised their visibility in generative engine responses, by up to 40% on one of the study's measures (Aggarwal and others, August 2024).
An opinion can be copied in an hour. A sample of your buyers, asked the same questions every year, cannot, and each edition hands the press a new number and a comparison with last year.
Verified. Aggarwal and others, GEO: Generative Engine Optimization (KDD, August 2024). Self-reported. Puppet Labs' survey release (March 2013), DORA (December 2018) and Google Cloud (August 2019) on the State of DevOps research. Vendor. Cision, which sells PR software, on what journalists want (reported by Axios, May 2023); DX on the report's origins (February 2023).
Cost to test. A survey tool, an incentive for respondents, and about a quarter of one person's time for the first edition.
Kill it if within two months of launch the first edition has earned no coverage or citations outside your own channels and the gated report has brought fewer than 100 qualified leads.
Small or skewed samples get picked apart, so publish the sample size and how respondents were found. The first edition takes a quarter, and a report nobody pitches is just a PDF. If you gate it, the names you collect are personal data and UK GDPR applies even to business contacts (ICO). Puppet has not published what the report earned it, so the commercial return in the original case is an argument, not a measured number.
Data PR, The Roundtable Series, Seed the Connectors
A 30-minute call first. If it fits, two calls in one week and a written growth plan you keep.