Creating Information Worth Citing: A Guide to Proprietary Research for PR, Marketing & AI Visibility

Key takeaways:

• Proprietary research creates original information worth citing.
• It supports PR, marketing, sales and AI visibility.
• Strong research starts with market landscape — not product messaging.
• Distribution matters as much as the data, and a single research initiative can fuel dozens of content assets.

Owned Data is One Of the Highest-Leverage Investments PR & Marketing Can Make

One of the best PR strategies today is creating information worth citing.

That's exactly why USA Today recently covered one of our clients. We never pitched the reporter. Instead, the reporter discovered and cited insights from a research report we had developed.

That report ultimately generated over 100 earned and organic media placements. More importantly, it became an asset that fueled visibility and authority across earned media, owned content, executive thought leadership, sales and search.

What is proprietary research for PR?

Proprietary research is brand-created data for storytelling. Unlike market research to inform business decisions like product development, PR data's goal is to catch the attention of external audiences.

People use several terms interchangeably for this same thought leadership strategy:

• Proprietary research: Brand-created, first-party data designed to generate original insights
• Owned data: Company-owned survey or customer insights used to create thought leadership
• Benchmark report: Recurring research published on a regular cadence (annually, quarterly, etc.) to track trends over time
• Pulse surveys & Rapid-response research: One-off data insights tied to a timely event or emerging topic

The common data sources and types of proprietary research are:

• Surveys: Questioning the general population, a specific consumer demographic or professional audience via online polling tools. You create and send your own line of questioning to the tool's built-in audience or a list that you own.
• User Data: Analysis on the collective data within tech platform or client base. Rather than creating stories about product/service usage, analysis focuses on uncovering emerging trends, challenges and behaviors. For example, a recruiting tech brand might compare the percent of job openings filled from one quarter to the next to illustrate a market shift.

Why proprietary research matters now

Owned data is becoming even more valuable. It solves for several digital media and buyer shifts:

• Journalists increasingly want exclusive information instead of generic commentary
• AI has made generic thought leadership abundant and less differentiated
• Buyers increasingly trust companies with strong POV and who teach them something new
• AI search engines increasingly surface original sources and unique data
• One research initiative fuels every major communications channel

Why Original Research Works

Owned data is incredibly effective in PR. It is why we've continued using proprietary research in our programs for over a decade.

Thought leadership is a vital component of nearly every B2B technology PR program (as well as some B2C ones) and it's far more authoritative and attention-worthy when backed by data.

This is even truer now, as AI-generated content puts pressure on publishers for more exclusive reporting. Reporters don't need another opinion; they want evidence, especially in the form of original data.

If the insights are compelling enough, owned data can result in a flurry of coverage. It's especially effective for:

• Getting tier-one coverage and organic citations without hard news
• Making subject matter experts stand out in pitches to reporters
• Creating a news hook, proof and authority for corporate narratives and POVs
• Boosting brand relevance and authority around trends

Benefits of owned data beyond PR

The greatest strength of proprietary research isn't the press coverage it generates. It's how many teams can use it.

A single research initiative can become dozens of assets across communications, marketing, sales and AI visibility for months or even years. Here is how original data can be for thought leadership across functions, channels and objectives:

• Inbound marketing (blogs, eBooks) for discoverability and demand capture
• Outbound marketing (email, social, paid) for visibility and demand creation
• Sales enablement (cold outreach, prospect touchpoints, ABM)
• GEO/AI search visibility, for which original data is increasingly impactful

Creating Data People Want

Unlike product launches or customer stories, proprietary research is news marketing and PR can control. But it only works if the insights are genuinely interesting — not promotional. The best research teaches people something they didn’t already know.

How to choose the right research topic

A clear hypothesis for your research is even more important than the survey questions or datapoints, themselves.

Identifying your "big" theme — the thing you want to prove or disprove — is arguably the hardest part. To figure that out, analyze and ask yourself if the topic and thesis:

• answers a real industry question
• is something impacting buyers and their customers
• aligns with business positioning and vision
• has the potential to produce surprising findings, reveal an emerging trend or add a novel POV 
• has timely/broader socioeconomic relevance

Our framework for building research that earns attention

A successful owned data program is equal parts insights & strategy, storytelling and distribution. Here is a condensed version of our process for building compelling research and deriving the real value, which isn't the report itself but rather everything the report enables.

To expand on our process and data flywheel:

1. ‍Find the opportunity: Analyze media coverage, audience needs and industry conversations to identify an emerging topic that matters to your buyers — and their buyers (i.e., the B2B2C human angle) — but hasn’t yet been fully explored. The whitespace.‍
2. Build the story. Create your hypothesis and design survey questions or a proprietary dataset that tells a complete and compelling narrative, not just a collection of statistics.‍
3. Develop the data. Field the research. Collect and analyze the data, drawing out narratives and detailing overarching findings and demographic breakdowns in a primary content asset(s).‍
4. Build for distribution. Launch with a coordinated plan across all relevant channels, turning one research project into many assets including:
   • Brand content: flagship report, blog series (LLM-optimized), newsletter issue, podcast episode, webinar, social posts (LinkedIn carousel, infographic, etc.)
   • Earned: press release, press pitching (embargoed, day-of, ongoing)
   • Executive: earned byline, LinkedIn article, LinkedIn posts, speaking abstracts/talking points
   • Paid: sponsored editorial, newsletter spots, post boosts, ad content
   • Sales: prospect touchpoints, ABM assets, cold outreach, customer briefings
5. ‍Extend shelf life. Continue pitching the data around relevant news moments. Use it to support future content, campaigns and conversations.

Examples of successful data campaigns

Across our work, we’ve built research programs using proprietary platform data, customer insights, online polling, recurring benchmarks and rapid-response research. While the methodologies vary, the common denominator is the same: the best research starts with the market, not the company. Here are a few examples:

• Rapid-response AI research: helped enterprise AI startup Storj break through blue-chip competitors for national media visibility
• Hiring challenges survey series: helped hiring SaaS Lever own industry conversations around emerging hiring challenges, earning top share of voice during a critical market opportunity
• ‍Annual pay equity benchmark: accelerated awareness and credibility for European compensation software startup Beqom as it entered a crowded U.S. market
• First-to-market social advertising research: positioned an adtech startup as an industry authority while naturally showcasing its capabilities and expertise‍
• Workplace readiness survey: helped a training tech company enter new sales verticals by supporting ABM campaigns and establishing credibility around emerging workplace regulations and issues
• Consumer influencer buying survey revealed that only 3% of consuemrs were influenced to purchase by celebrity endorsements (in the early days of influencer marketing), generating nearly 100 media placements for Collective Bias across mainstream consumer, national business and trade press, with coverage continuing for more than a year

Top common mistakes with proprietary research and survey reports

Even after all time and budget investment involved, we see many research reports miss the mark, bringing in virtually no press coverage or quality leads.

These are the most common mistakes we see:

1. Too product-centric: No one wants product promotion disguised as thought leadership. Data should never directly focus on the need for a product. It should not be a market research or product marketing-led initiative. Reporters will ignore it and prospects will see through it.
2. Interesting but unrelated to the brand: It's opposite the “promotional” point above, but as important. Even if on a trending "click-worthy" topic, press will question expertise and motive if too far removed from the brand. If it does get coverage, your audiences won’t be its reader.
3. Not differentiated: We often see multiple competitors release nearly identical data. Without new insights, there’s no reason for a reporter to cover the story or a buyer to engage. News and competitor analysis at the onset is key to finding white space within a topic of interest.
4. Poor timing: Data can be evergreen and cited for months to come, but timing its release with a calendar hook makes a difference. Launching around events (tax season, a conference) creates urgency and makes it more of a news event people will pay attention to.
5. Too much research, too often: Be careful not to oversaturate your market with data, especially repeated benchmarks. It'll likely lose impact and start to get ignored, no matter how good.

Proprietary research planning checklist

Here are important questions to ask yourself before developing questions/insights on anyone else to ensure your data will be of interest:

• Is the topic genuinely new?
• Does it reinforce positioning/vision?
• Do we have a clear hypothesis?
• Will journalists find it newsworthy?
• ‍‍Is the data defensible?
• Does the launch align with a relevant news, socioeconomic trend, or seasonal moment?
• Have we planned distribution across earned, owned, social, executive and AI search channels? Have we repurposed insights into multiple content formats?

What results should you expect with data reports?

Original research reports give immediately credibility and evidence to support a market POV. They position a company and its spokespeople as authorities. And, when distributed strategically, they usually result in strong visibility and enagement across channels.

We've seen research programs achieve results including a 100% increase in business press coverage y-o-y, upwards of 100 on-message articles and hundreds of new website users.  

But proprietary research strategies aren't always about volume.

We've also used data to support ABM, creating insights on issues only a few specific companies would care about, or to build credibility through a couple of strategic trade press articles that doubled as conversation starters for companies entering a new sales vertical.

One initiative, endless assets

No matter the goal, proprietary research is one of the fastest, most effective ways we’ve seen companies create credibility, attention-worthiness and scale from a single initiative. It’s why we’ve continued using this approach for more than a decade.

In a world flooded with AI-generated content and recycled opinions, original information is becoming one of the most valuable communications assets a brand can own. Companies that consistently create information worth citing won't just earn more media coverage — they'll build authority across every channel that matters.

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*This post was updated July 14, 2026.

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