*One of four parts of [my content research framework](https://vickygu.com/content-research-framework).*
**What:** Quantitative brand and content performance insights
**How:** Pulling metrics from tools across the organizational tech stack
**When:** Onboarding audit, and key reporting moments that inform future strategy (e.g. an end of year review)
**Why:** See where past actions went right or wrong, so you can double down on the right and avoid the wrong.
**Questions to answer:** What strikes you about the data? What validates your intuition or surfaces new insight? How might these findings back your next decisions with confidence?
There's no way around deep data analysis. If you're in-house, dig around. If you're a consultant, ask for metrics reports across platforms. Even if you might not use them, it's better to have more than less. Look everywhere:
- website traffic and engagement reports (GA4)
- revenue and leads (Salesforce, sales enablement platforms)
- email and campaigns (ESPs like Hubspot, Mailchimp)
- editorial and creative operations (project management tools like Airtable, Notion, Asana)
- social media (platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube)
- product analytics (tools like Amplitude, Mixpanel)
- brand tracking and media monitoring (tools like Meltwater, Morning Consult)
- your notes (anecdotal stories and screenshots collected over time or requested from your clients and client-facing teams)
Download all the reports, close Slack, and get dirty with the data. For example, your conclusions and recommendations might look like:
- It's worth investing in deep subject matter expertise, even in this economy, because last year those packages contributed to up to 30% increase in QOQ revenue.
- Let's continue to publish quality over quantity, because last year web engagement increased during the quarter that publishing volume decreased.
- Let's refine our process to identify marketing-ready client partners with sales, since 7 out of 10 of our top performing content pieces were partnerships with strategic accounts.
A tip on how to extract insights from the data, from one of my ex-consulting VPs: "I sit, and I think really hard."