The data marketing playbook big companies don't share 📊
7 genius ways to turn boring metrics into viral content
Gong did something amazing with their data.
They analyzed millions of sales calls and discovered a game-changing insight: starting a cold call with “How have you been?” is far more effective than “How are you?”
Why? → Because it psychologically assumes a pre-existing relationship. 🧠
This simple tweak, pulled from their own data, helped thousands of companies nail their cold calls (and remember Gong positively for helping them). Gong didn't stop there—they launched Gong Labs, a hub of actionable insights derived from their data.
👉 This is the power of leveraging internal data for marketing.
How to do it:
👀 Analyze your product data for interesting patterns/insights
🤯 Find a surprising or valuable takeaway that could impact your industry
🍬 Package it into easily digestible content (reports, infographics, social posts — see examples below)
🎁 Share it with the world
Let’s dive into how other industry leaders are doing it — and how you can too.
1. Okta’s "Businesses at Work" Report 📈
Okta analyzed their user data to spotlight the fastest-growing SaaS apps of the year.
What they did: Published an annual report showcasing which SaaS apps saw the most adoption.
Why it’s genius: Companies featured are likely to share the report (it’s praising them!), amplifying Okta’s reach.
The kicker: Startups are motivated to integrate with Okta for a chance to be featured.
What the marketing team did here is absolutely amazing.
2. Spotify’s User Praising 🎧
Spotify Wrapped turns user listening data into personalized stories.
Viral impact: Millions share their stats every year.
RTM: After Brexit, Spotify noted that 3,749 people streamed "It's The End Of The World As We Know It" on the day of the vote. Data-driven real time marketing is genius!
3. Carta’s Startup Insights 🚀
Carta aggregated equity data from thousands of startups.
What they shared: Unprecedented insights like founder ownership rates at IPO and equity for early hires. Founders would kill for this data!
Ultra-shareable: They’ve created colorful visuals with detailed watermarks (the link in the bottom) that link back to more data.
4. Wiz’s Cloud Threats Database ☁️
At Wiz, we published our internal cloud threat intelligence database (the resource our in-house researchers build & use daily).
Our move: We’re the first player in the cloud security industry to “put the cards on the table” and share this rare internal database.
Why it matters: It positions us as thought leaders and provides immediate value to security experts (= our potential customers). It’s always updated with new threats to drive repeat visits (we even released a new periodic table!)
5. AirDNA’s Eclipse Booking Map 🌙
AirDNA analyzed Airbnb booking data during the solar eclipse of 2023.
What they found: A spike in bookings precisely along the eclipse’s path.
Visual win: They’ve created a map showing the trend, which went viral.
Note: This map wasn’t actually done by Airbnb, but by AirDNA, a company that analyzes Airbnb data
6. Asana’s “Anatomy of Work” Index 📊
Asana conducted extensive surveys to reveal this fact: workers spend 58% of their time on “work about work” instead of skilled labor.
Why it’s brilliant:
Original data gathered through surveys.
Highlights a problem their product solves (reducing busywork).
Widespread impact: Widely cited in media and featured by productivity influencers on YouTube like Ali Abdaal.
BONUS: Automatic page generation for niche SEO 🤖
Here’s my personal favorite way to leverage this marketing idea: What if you could use your internal data to create thousands of hyper-targeted web pages... automatically?
That’s the power of programmatic SEO.
You’ve probably seen it in action without even realizing it. Ever noticed how when you google something like “How to get from X to Y”, you often see pages from Moovit or Lyft right below the Google Maps result?
That's programmatic SEO at work.
These companies have developed algorithms that can generate a unique page for virtually every possible route query (using the wealth of transit data they’ve collected). The result is an endless library of landing pages — each one laser-targeted to a specific search.
But it’s not just for travel apps.
Zapier does the same with pages for every app combo (like “Connect Asana and Slack”), and G2 does it with product comparisons (like “monday.com vs ClickUp”). Genius! 🤯
The beauty of this tactic is that it lets you capture a massive volume of long-tail search traffic — niche queries that are low in competition but high in purchase intent.
It’s not a low-effort tactic. But for companies with the right data assets and technical resources, programmatic SEO can be an absolute game-changer for driving organic growth.
Pro tip: No interesting internal data? Create your own data through surveys, like Asana did.
See you next week ✌️
Tom
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A great set of examples in this post to get inspiration. I loved the airbnb one.
Spotify made this 'viral' in the products. Everybody wants to do a year end wrap now. Substack did just yesterday.
However the real trick is finding that 'unique' and 'interesting' insight from the data. Not just virality, but even usability of this hack works on how good is that insight. I see companies spending a lot of time on packaging rather than searching for this insight.
Gold Insights 🙌