Sprout Social sells social media software and markets it with the thing it sells. Its annual Index, a research report built from its own data, launches with a named team of nineteen, gets cut into a deck, a toolkit and a webinar, and in 2023 delivered 7,700 new leads against a target of 7,500, by Sprout's own count. The company's filings say more than 80 percent of new-customer revenue in 2024 came through unpaid channels. Here is the machine, in the company's own words.
The Content Machine is a column about startups and scaleups that run content as a system: what they make, how often, how it is reused, where it goes, who makes it, how it is measured and what it moves for the business. Sprout Social is here because it has said what its content does for the business in the one place a company cannot be loose with words: its annual report to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. Every figure in this piece is Sprout's own, and I will say which document each one sits in.
The premise
Sprout Social sells social media management software: publishing, listening, analytics and customer care for brands' social accounts. It was founded in April 2010 by Justyn Howard, Aaron Rankin, Gil Lara and Peter Soung, is based in Chicago, and listed on Nasdaq in December 2019. Its filing for 2025 reports revenue of US$457.5 million, up from US$405.9 million in 2024 and US$333.6 million in 2023, and 1,362 full-time staff. The 2024 filing counted about 30,000 customers. Ryan Barretto became chief executive in October 2024.
The machine, in one paragraph. A blog and a research programme, both built from the data the product collects, aimed at the social media managers who buy the product. The centrepiece is the Sprout Social Index, an annual research report that the company dates back roughly to 2013. Each edition is written and launched by a named team across content, brand, design, social and public relations, then cut into a slide deck, a toolkit and a webinar, pushed through Sprout's own social accounts, paid promotion and press, and handed to the sales team. The company measures it in net new leads against a target. The current Index is the one piece to read, and it is also the pitch.
How it started
Sprout's position is the oldest trick available to a software company and the one most of them never pull off: market the product with the product. A company that sells social media software, posting well on social media, is a demonstration. A company that sells social listening, publishing what it hears, is a demonstration too. The Index is the research version of that. It surveys consumers and marketers and combines the answers with the behaviour Sprout sees across its customers' accounts, then publishes the findings as the state of the industry the product serves.
The first edition, by the company's own reckoning in a 2022 webinar, was about nine years earlier, so roughly 2013, when Sprout was a private company a few years old. It has shipped every year since, which is the part that matters for this column. A research report is a format. A research report that has shipped for more than a decade, with a team and a target, is a machine.
The company has kept buying in the direction the content points. In August 2023 it paid US$140 million in cash for Tagger Media, an influencer marketing platform, which is my reading of where Sprout thinks social content is heading: out of brands' own accounts and into creators'. The Index is the research arm of the same bet. It tells the market what is working on social, which is also what the product is for, which is also what the company's own accounts demonstrate every day. Three things that look like marketing, research and product are one position stated three ways.
How the machine works
Nineteen named people, one launch. Sprout's entry for an industry award describes the 2023 edition's launch, which went out in mid-September 2023, and credits the people who made it. Alicia Johnston, senior director of content and campaigns, and Matilda Schieren, senior manager of brand and editorial content, lead a list of nineteen across content, creative, social, communications and demand generation. That is the useful number. The Index is not a marketing team's side project. It is a cross-functional launch with an owner.
One asset, cut four ways. The same entry describes the 2023 report being turned into a companion presentation deck, a toolkit for practitioners and a webinar, each aimed at a different use of the same findings. The report earns the search traffic and the press. The deck gets forwarded inside companies. The toolkit is the thing a social media manager downloads to do their job, which is where the lead comes from. The webinar is the sales team's warm room.
Distribution is the company's own channels first. Sprout promotes the Index through its own social accounts, which is the demonstration again, then through paid promotion and public relations. The company's filings describe the broader pattern: a blog and content programme that, with search, brings in the majority of trial sign-ups without paid acquisition.
Measured in leads against a target. The 2023 launch, per Sprout's own entry, was set a goal of 7,500 net new leads and delivered 7,700 "and counting" at the time of writing. The entry does not state the measurement period beyond the launch. It also contains a claim that the goal was beaten "by 103 percent", which does not match its own figures and which I am not repeating; 7,700 against 7,500 is about three percent over. The error is worth noting precisely because the rest of the entry is careful.
The filings carry the top line. Sprout's annual reports for 2023, 2024 and 2025 each say that the majority of its inbound trials came through unpaid marketing "due to the strength of our brand, content marketing, and search engine optimization." The 2024 report goes one step further and is the strongest single sentence in this column so far: "we generated more than 80% of our revenue from new customers in 2024 from unpaid channels."
What the record does not show: how many posts the blog ships a week, the size of the content team between launches, and any attribution finer than the launch target and the filing language.
What it moves for the business
Sprout's claims, in order of where they sit. In three consecutive annual reports: the majority of inbound trials come from unpaid marketing, credited to brand, content marketing and search. In the 2024 report: more than 80 percent of new-customer revenue in 2024 came from unpaid channels. In its own awards entry: 7,700 net new leads from one Index launch against a target of 7,500. Around those sits a business that grew revenue from US$333.6 million to US$457.5 million over the same two years, per the filings.
The limits. The filing language credits content alongside brand and search and does not separate them, so I cannot say what share belongs to the Index or the blog. The lead figure is self-reported in an awards entry, and the same entry contains an arithmetic error. "Unpaid channels" includes referrals and word of mouth as well as content. And Sprout is a listed company with more than a thousand staff, which stretches this column's definition of a scaleup; it is here because the evidence is unusually clean, not because it is small. The company also announced a 20 percent workforce reduction, about 260 people, in July 2026, which says something about the market for its software and nothing in particular about its content.
What makes the case strong is that the strongest claims were made under the obligation to be accurate, in documents the company's lawyers read before its marketers did.
What to steal
Market the product with the product. If what you sell produces data, publish the data. If what you sell is a channel, be visibly good in the channel. The demonstration is the content.
Make one report the centre of the year and give it an owner. The Index has shipped for over a decade because it has a named team and a target. A research report that belongs to nobody ships once.
Cut the one asset into the four things people actually use. Report for search and press, deck for forwarding, toolkit for the download that becomes a lead, webinar for the sales team. Plan the cuts before the research is done.
Set the lead target before the launch and publish the result. Sprout said 7,500, got 7,700, and told an awards jury. Even the arithmetic slip is more useful than most companies' silence.
Put the content claim where it has to be true. Sprout's best line is in its annual report. If your content brings in most of your new customers, say so somewhere that carries consequences.
