Portrait Analytics: Using Your Product Output as Your Marketing Engine

Portrait Analytics: Using Your Product Output as Your Marketing Engine

Most B2B companies hire content writers to create marketing materials about their product. David Plon realized his product could create the marketing materials itself.

In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, David Plon, CEO and Co-Founder of Portrait Analytics, an investment research platform that’s raised $10 million in funding, shared a marketing strategy that only works if you build the right kind of product: let your output do the selling.

The Structural Advantage

Portrait Analytics generates investment research insights. Stock analyses. Market observations. Key debates around companies. This isn’t a byproduct of their software—it’s the core offering. And David recognized something most founders miss: the best marketing for a content product is the content itself.

“The nice thing about Portrait, it ultimately is, you know, generating content. Right. And research insights,” David explains. This seems obvious in retrospect, but the execution is what matters. “And so we share those on our LinkedIn page and just get a ton of engagement.”

Think about the economics here. Most companies spend money creating marketing content that approximates what their product does. Portrait spends that same energy running their actual product, then sharing the genuine output. The authenticity gap between “content about our product” and “content from our product” is massive.

The LinkedIn Laboratory

LinkedIn became Portrait’s primary distribution channel, but not in the way most B2B companies use it. They’re not posting thought leadership about AI or investment trends. They’re posting actual research insights generated by their platform.

The engagement validates both the marketing approach and the product quality. If the insights generated by Portrait were mediocre, sharing them publicly would backfire. High engagement signals that the product output is genuinely valuable—which is exactly what prospects need to see.

This creates a virtuous cycle: good product output drives engagement, engagement drives awareness, awareness drives trial, trial feedback improves product, improved product generates better output. Each loop strengthens the next.

The Personalization Weapon

But the real leverage comes from how Portrait uses product output in direct outreach. This is where content marketing transforms into product-led sales.

David describes his favorite outbound tactic with precision: “One of my favorite things to do is to kind of look at like maybe some of their holdings and send them an insight or some sort of output that’s going to be highly relevant for them.”

Read that again slowly. He’s not sending a generic pitch email. He’s not even sending a personalized pitch email. He’s sending actual product output customized to the prospect’s portfolio.

Why This Converts

The conversion psychology is straightforward but powerful. When a prospect receives a cold email, they’re evaluating two things: is this person credible, and will this product actually work?

Traditional sales emails ask prospects to trust claims about credibility and functionality. David’s approach demonstrates both simultaneously. The insight itself proves the product works—they can see it working on their actual holdings. The relevance proves David understands their world.

This isn’t theoretical positioning. This is concrete value delivered before any commitment. The prospect doesn’t need to imagine how Portrait would help them. They’re experiencing it.

The CB Insights Parallel

David explicitly references CB Insights as a model worth learning from. For context, CB Insights built a data and research business that became a media powerhouse through aggressive content distribution.

“CB Insights is definitely a company that I look up to,” David notes. Then he explains why: “The nice thing is while the technology we’re building is quite young and constantly evolving, there are so many great examples of companies that have figured out fantastic go to market motions.”

CB Insights proved that research businesses can turn their output into marketing flywheels. They published reports, got media coverage, attracted subscribers, used subscriber data to create better reports. Portrait is applying the same principle in a different market.

The Authenticity Multiplier

What makes this strategy work is authenticity in both senses of the word. First, the content is authentic—it’s real product output, not marketing approximations. Second, the approach is authentic to David’s values.

When discussing marketing philosophy, David talks about companies “that are quite specific in terms of like telling a story that’s going to make it really relevant for you.” He admires Stripe’s developer-first approach because “it’s just so clear like what the value proposition is and how to get started in a really quick way.”

His conclusion reveals the principle: “I think authenticity with respect to outbound and marketing in general is something that I value and I believe our ICP values as well.”

Using actual product output as marketing content is authentic by definition. You’re not spinning a story about what your product might do. You’re showing what it actually does.

The Early Stage Reality

David acknowledges Portrait is still early in executing this strategy. “Look, we’re early in doing this. Right. And I think there’s just so much possibility with their like CB Insights is definitely a company that I look up to.”

This humility matters. The strategy is working, but they haven’t fully exploited it yet. The potential remains largely untapped, which means the current results—good engagement on LinkedIn, effective personalized outbound—represent a floor, not a ceiling.

The Timing Advantage

Portrait also benefits from market timing in their content strategy. “We’re a little bit lucky in that. Generative AI is quite topical and a lot of investment firms are quite focused on it. So we’ve gotten a lot of inbound,” David explains.

But notice how they’ve handled the inbound interest. “I think we’ve been very, I’d say specific around who we end up speaking and working with because we want to make sure that we’re continuing to build and sell into folks where we believe there’s going to be a natural fit for a product like this.”

They’re using content to generate inbound, then filtering that inbound aggressively. The content acts as both awareness driver and qualification mechanism. People who engage with Portrait’s research insights self-select as interested in sophisticated investment analysis.

The Constraint That Creates Quality

What prevents every company from copying this strategy? You need a product that generates output worth sharing. That’s a high bar.

Most B2B software helps users do things but doesn’t create sharable artifacts. A CRM helps you manage relationships but doesn’t generate insights you’d post publicly. A project management tool helps you coordinate work but doesn’t create content worth distributing.

Portrait’s product inherently creates valuable, sharable content. This isn’t luck—it’s product strategy. They chose to build something that generates insights, not just facilitates workflows. That choice enables the marketing strategy.

The Generalizeable Principle

Even if your product doesn’t naturally create sharable content, David’s principle still applies: show, don’t tell. Find ways to let prospects experience your product’s value before asking for commitment.

This might mean interactive demos that solve real problems. It might mean freemium tiers that deliver genuine utility. It might mean consultative selling where you provide value in the sales process itself. The form varies, but the principle holds: demonstrated value converts better than described value.

The Measurement Challenge

One question David doesn’t address: how do you measure attribution when your product output is your marketing? If someone sees a Portrait insight on LinkedIn, then three months later requests a demo, was it the LinkedIn post or something else?

The answer probably doesn’t matter much. The goal isn’t precise attribution—it’s building a machine where product usage generates marketing assets that drive more product usage. As long as the flywheel spins, the exact mechanics of each conversion matter less than the overall momentum.

The Competitive Moat

Here’s the strategic insight: this marketing approach builds a defensible moat. Competitors can copy your features. They can’t easily copy your content library of demonstrated value.

Every insight Portrait shares, every personalized outbound example they send, strengthens their position. They’re not just acquiring customers—they’re accumulating proof of value that compounds over time.

For founders building products that generate valuable output, David’s strategy offers a framework: share that output publicly to build awareness, personalize that output for prospects to drive conversion, and let the quality of the output do the selling. Your best marketing might not be content about your product—it might be content from your product.