LaRue

[00:00:00]Rob: Hey Sam!

[00:00:07]Sam: Hey Rob!

[00:00:07]Rob: So I heard today's episode is going to dive deeper into the world of performance PR. So I've got a fun fact for you. Hmm? Did you know that I used to do public relations for the band U2?

[00:00:18]Sam: You did?

[00:00:18]Rob: Yeah, but it was all pro bono.

[00:00:22]Sam: Okay. I think that's your first and last attempt at making a joke on Awin-Win Marketing Podcast.

[00:00:28]Rob: Welcome back to [00:00:30] Awin-Win Marketing Podcast, and today is our last episode of season one.

[00:00:34]Sam: I can't believe it. On this episode, we're discussing integrated affiliate public relations strategies or performance PR with LaRue, who've been blending these usually disparate tactics for nearly a decade.

[00:00:45]Rob: Now, we're obviously seeing a growing trend of integrated influencer affiliate campaigns, but PR affiliate is a new tactic we're seeing in the space.

[00:00:54] So why do you think that is Sam?

[00:00:55]Sam: It's a great question and I suspect largely because many editorial and media [00:01:00] publications tend to keep their earned and paid media teams separate.

Rob: Okay, so essentially it can be a challenge for brands and affiliate marketers to cross those party lines for a more holistic media approach, I guess.

[00:01:12]Sam: Yeah, exactly. But LaRue has really cracked the code on this. So let's get into some of their secrets for success.

[00:01:23]Jessy: LaRue's been around a long time. I've been in PR a long time, and throughout the years, there were a ton of [00:01:30] shifts in media. When I started, it was print media. Then it went from print to digital, then social, then influencer. And if you weren't on the front end of those evolutions, so to speak, you were, as an agency owner, getting left behind.

[00:01:41] Behind and so that's really what happened with with affiliate

[00:01:44]Sam: with me is Jessy Klein Fofana, founder and CEO of LaRue.

Jessy: I saw it kind of creep into the PR lane and thought, Oh, this is going to be the next thing and coupled with the way publishing was changing, how the traditional way that media made money, how [00:02:00] that was changing.

[00:02:00]Jessy: This seemed like the next big moment. And so I really wanted to be on the front end. And so we started. Working in affiliate maybe seven or eight years ago and really shifting the agency about three or four.

[00:02:12]Cali: I somewhere in a land far away from Jessy was coming to the Same conclusions at a traditional affiliate agency.

[00:02:18]Sam: And that's Cali Geyer, LaRue's director of affiliate.

Cali: I was seeing that we were really fighting for the attribution for the top of funnel placements. And I was thinking like we should be connecting. We should be working [00:02:30] together and not being so siloed where affiliate is trying to say we're pitching these partnerships too, and working in tandem with PR. So when we connected, it seemed like such a great synergy.

[00:02:41]Sam: So, Jessy, journalists and editorial publications keep very clear party lines between editorial or like earned media and editorial or paid media teams. What are some things that like you do at LaRue to mitigate these boundaries?

[00:02:53]Jessy: Essentially, the purpose of the agency now as a full service PR and affiliate marketing agency [00:03:00] is absolutely to solve for those barriers. Problems, you know, before they were two siloed industries and there was very little interplay. There was more competition than collaboration. If anything, I think at LaRue, it's all under one roof.

[00:03:11] You're working towards a common goal. The PR and affiliate teams are interwoven working together collaboratively on their accounts. They're doing double duty, almost coming at PR and affiliate through their respective contacts to build a very cohesive strategy. So I think in the nature of what we are, [00:03:30] we, we sort of the gate that issue, which is why we did it.

[00:03:33]Sam: Yeah, exactly. I think Cali, that's a good segue back to you. What strategy do you recommend for clients? How do you work with those like external editorial and advertorial teams and then internally at LaRue as well?

[00:03:44]Cali: A lot of times it comes down to the different partnership types. So each one can be really unique in how they like to be pitched.

[00:03:50] And a lot of times what we're doing is we're keeping in constant communication with the earn team. It's been amazing having an in house PR team and we kind of let them do a lot of the heavy lifting with a relationship [00:04:00] growing, the relationship building. And then on the affiliate side, we're empowered through, you know, discussing and meeting with the client to provide a commission really sweetens the deal for them and it gets them really excited about the partnership.

[00:04:11]Jessy: Often I'll sit on panels at different events, and one of the questions that seems to come up over and over is where do you put affiliate? Where is it sit with marketing? Does it sit with growth? Does it sit with sales? Does it sit with ecom? And I think that's essentially what we're getting at here is that it's kind of a moving target.

[00:04:28] It always was one [00:04:30] thing, but it is evolving into many other things. And so. Brands are shuffling it around to figure out where it makes the most sense. I, of course, think it needs to sit in close proximity to PR and marketing. I see it as part of a way to develop consumer touch points and a necessity. The older school approach to affiliate maybe is not as aligned with that.

[00:04:51] So I think it's. It's changing.

[00:04:53]Sam: Definitely. I want to come back to something you said in a second, but to follow on what you were talking about, when you have these conversations with [00:05:00] like senior decision makers, how do you navigate those conversations? Like, what is the elevator pitch that you're giving brands to like really get them on this journey with you and to believe in affiliate is more than just like, The coupon cash back of the world.

[00:05:12]Jessy: It's it's so interesting. A lot of it depends on who you're talking to and what their position is. We have a few different pain points in terms of selling in how we do and and why it's beneficial. We will get brands that are coming to us with more of a PR perspective. They totally are in on the publisher piece.

[00:05:29][00:05:30] They want the top of the funnel placements that look like press, but are actually affiliate. They are squeamish about mid and lower funnel. They're scared of coupon sites. They're scared. It's going to cannibalize their brand or take away some of the cachet of their brand. And so that's one conversation about how to strategically vie for the full funnel and why that's needed.

[00:05:49] Even if you're a luxury brand. Then we get C suite members that are totally all about performance. They have had a great experience with affiliate. They've leaned into that and we're [00:06:00] trying to kind of relay how brand and brand awareness and storytelling and PR will help further drive their existing affiliate campaign.

[00:06:07] I mean, Cali was sharing a conversation that it started with a like. No coupon, no mid funnel, no lower funnel. And then by the end, the, the perspective client was like, we need it. We need coupon and full funnel if we want to get a better top of the funnel visibility. So,

[00:06:23]Sam: yeah, I think that's a good point.

[00:06:24] Like it's not, it's not an independent thing. And that comes back to something you said earlier is that you're finding [00:06:30] brands are taking affiliate more seriously.

[00:06:32]Cali: Yeah, and I was actually going to say there's even a third camp, um, the two that Jessy mentioned, but there's also those C suite and the, the people that understand that affiliate's important and they're interested in affiliate from a performance aspect, but they don't understand it at all.

[00:06:46] And that's a huge piece of our job at the agency and in my job as director is to bring in that education piece on top of funnel all the way down to mid and lower funnel of what each piece does and why it's, you know, important. instrumental to the success [00:07:00] of a strategy. I think it's exactly

[00:07:01]Sam: that too.

[00:07:02] It's that brands are just viewing it as a tactic. Yeah. And you're like, actually, it's a full funnel. Yep. It's a full-fledged strategy that you need to consider. It's not just like a one and done thing.

[00:07:11]Jessy: No, you have to build it. And I mean, Cali has great expertise in schooling. Brands because she had to help school the agency because conceptually, I knew it was the way PR was going, the way media was going, but I've never worked in affiliate marketing other than when years ago, you know, a brand would come to us and say, how do we do this?

[00:07:29] We want to get a [00:07:30] placement in Wirecutter. We came at it from a very superficial point of view. And when I saw. started this pivot, I really felt like that's what we were going to focus on only. But when you dip a toe in, you realize you can't just focus on that. You really need to holistically chase the full funnel with a strategy weave in PR, uh, and that's where you're going to have your strongest campaigns.

[00:07:50] Yeah,

[00:07:51]Sam: absolutely. I think that's actually a good segue to one of our formal questions that you have here is Kelly. I'd love to learn a little bit more from you on like, how do you then have [00:08:00] these conversations about developing the earned. And paid meanest strategy and then effectively execute on that.

[00:08:04]Cali: Yeah, it is an all hands on deck strategy, and again, I kind of mentioned my experience. I came from a, an agency that was just affiliate. We didn't really have the top of funnel approach, and we were reaching out to some of these publishers trying to get a partnership with them, trying to get anything from them.

[00:08:21] It was tough to penetrate, and so having that in house allows us to develop a strategy for the full funnel. So what we do, our, our [00:08:30] approach at a high level is to allow Earned to do their thing. Um. Affiliate there as a supportive arm, especially at the top of funnel and then build mid and lower funnel partnerships to support the growth of top of funnel.

[00:08:42]Sam: That's really interesting actually to say that like top of funnel, you're really leaning into the early opportunity and affiliate comes in like mid and then lower funnel.

[00:08:49]Cali: And it's definitely something that like prior was so separated and it was very difficult that other agencies working direct with other brands, we would have affiliate contacts and they're great [00:09:00] to connect with, but they're not necessarily.

[00:09:02] In charge of like informing the commerce strategy and how so you have this touch point that you're reaching out to, but they're not necessarily the ones who are deciding what gets printed, what gets, you know, pushed out and having earned in house is has been instrumental in the success of these brands.

[00:09:17]Sam: Yeah, I think that's an interesting point and something I'd love to ask both of you is obviously LaRue has. really integrated, earned, and affiliate, or earned and paid. Are you finding that there's been a shift in the brands that you're working with now that they're integrating more [00:09:30] of their internal teams, or even at these editorial houses, or is there still externally, quote, unquote, a bigger separation of church and state, for lack of a better term?

[00:09:38]Jessy: I mean, I think it's a moving target more and more brands are coming to us with the intention of wanting both PR and affiliate and recognizing the importance of both maybe two years ago, they would start the conversation with one area of interest and we would be able to like over time indoctrinate them to the full strategy in my mind, you know, having weathered sort of [00:10:00] all the shifts in publishing for the past 25 years.

[00:10:04] This is one that I think is not going anywhere. And I think it's going to be the way that media continues to evolve. So everyone needs to kind of get on board.

[00:10:12]Sam: Cali, tell me, did you get any pushback from brands and PR teams who are maybe more commercially minded? This is probably just me having

[00:10:19]Cali: rose colored glasses.

[00:10:20] Like pushback to me spells that There's a missing piece there and there's an inroad to educate them more on like what those things mean. So any pushback we get [00:10:30] is like a signal to me that like there's some room to grow here in terms of how I'm explaining this and that is dynamic in Affiliate, which is an attractive thing, but also like allows you to, you know, always stay sharp.

[00:10:42] But coming to brands and being informed on, like, a way forward for them is paramount. I can imagine, too. It

[00:10:48]Sam: depends on, like, who within the organization you're talking to. You know, we work with traditional agencies, and the conversations that we have with our day to day AM contact and affiliate manager contact is very different.

[00:10:59] From [00:11:00] then, like the CMO or the founder conversation as well? Yeah.

[00:11:02]Jessy: Yeah. I, I think by and large now a lot of the conversations and the response we get is refreshing. I think there have been struggles in trying to marry these two things as they've moved closer and closer together, and so we are offering a solution.

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[00:12:07]Sam: Okay, Cali, you've mentioned data. Is there a good rule of thumb for earned to paid media in general?

[00:12:10]Cali: It's not a one size fits all. You know, at the beginning of when we start working with clients, we discuss what their strategy is, what they're most interested in, and a lot of brands will come in and they all want the top of funnel.

[00:12:23] They all want the commerce pitching. They're all very excited about that aspect, and it's my job to come in and to show [00:12:30] them the data and to say. Here's why this is successful for you incrementally. Here's why we need to be working with all of these different partnership types while we still make sure that we're increasing top of funnel.

[00:12:41] And so we use data to leverage those decisions and to leverage those choices and to inform strategy.

[00:12:48]Sam: We commissioned a Forrester study at Awin recently and relationship management with an affiliate was ranked as like one of the toughest challenges, um, which was interesting and then also like brand [00:13:00] management and brand consistency.

[00:13:01] And it comes back to something I think you said. Earlier, Jessy, is that these conversations you're having with brands and Cali, you too, they're not realizing necessarily affiliate is equally important in that brand consideration and brand building phase and the relationship management phase is a true like, Hey, here's a commission.

[00:13:17] I want you to like post this or do this and like, it's not just a one off thing.

[00:13:21]Cali: Yeah, definitely. I think that traditional affiliate can be transactional. We are providing something, you are either guaranteeing something or [00:13:30] we're hoping for something in return and earned is. Much more of the long game in the relationship building.

[00:13:35] I've had to learn a lot more about how to build those relationships. And I think the PR team has had to learn quite a bit more about why affiliate is important to commerce strategy and the synergy between the two. Yeah, for sure.

[00:13:48]Jessy: There's things about affiliate as someone who's coming from PR that I loved.

[00:13:53] They were really refreshing. Like actually the parts of it that are transactional were compelling to me because it's just less, less [00:14:00] cause and effect. Right. But I think as affiliate has entered the PR arena, that need for Cultivating relationships and storytelling has gotten more and more important. I think you're right that it's leveling out.

[00:14:14]Cali: Coming from an agency that only did affiliate, those relationships were like almost impossible to penetrate. So we were reaching out to these contacts that we had. That were affiliate only contacts and we kind of touched on this earlier in the chat, but I didn't have anywhere near the types of connections [00:14:30] that the earned team has and they're able to really like get the foot in the door and then, you know, we discuss strategy and then my job is really to make sure that the pot is sweetened with like a high commission.

[00:14:40] What do you think the difference is with the ease that the earned team has to build relationships versus coming from a true affiliate background? I think it's that earned is pitching to editors who are used to being pitched to, where affiliate, it's kind of this new piece that these partners and these publishers are now starting to have to think about the affiliate piece and they're not like [00:15:00] gatekeeping necessarily, but I don't know if they're used to having those types of relationships the way that the earned team and the publishers have.

[00:15:07]Jessy: I think it's that. I think it's editors that are used to PR are absolutely used to getting pitched. And publicists and people that work in PR are used to gearing their pitch specifically to the editor based on what they cover, what vertical they're in. So I think there's a lot of newness and uncertainty and maybe the subtleties of how to pitch from somebody that's worked in traditional affiliate is, there's a [00:15:30] learning curve.

[00:15:30] There, maybe, you know, the other thing is like we're an agency that's been around a long time. So, and a lot of the earn team has been at LaRue for 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 years. And so these are seasoned pros that have put in the time to develop relationships. So I think it's, it's, it's a pretty high benchmark we set just because of.

[00:15:53]Cali: We've been managing the Bando affiliate program for about two years, and we've been managing PR for them [00:16:00] since before I was even at the agency. Five or six years. Yeah. Um, when I started managing the brand, they were really interested in increasing their commerce strategy. So. What I did is I looked in and to see who was actually already driving for them, who was working really well for them, and we didn't put any paid budget towards it.

[00:16:16] But what we did is we reached out to the partner who's the strategist, and we just said, like, we'd love to offer you a commission increase. No strings attached. We just want you've been a wonderful partner, and we hope we can continue to grow this [00:16:30] partnership. And we did. We saw a large increase, I think, just over 200 percent increase in placements.

[00:16:36] You know, we were excited to see that and that obviously led to a very successful last few months.

[00:16:41]Sam: Talk us through a little bit the decision to like, no, we don't have a ton of budget. We want to increase the commission. And why did you think that that was a good tactic and would lead to success?

[00:16:50]Cali: This is a broader conversation of brands How they look at affiliate and how they look at top of funnel strategy because a lot of brands are [00:17:00] interested in being in some of these placements, like the Strategists and the BuzzFeeds and the guaranteed placements can be kind of pricey and they're looking at what's the row as what's the ROI.

[00:17:09] What can I get out of this? The key is to definitely set expectations there. What I like to do prior to Suggesting that they give a flat fee spend, let's increase the commission, let's see where we're at in three to six months, and then let's make a decision based on that. And so seeing that increase, you know, keeps their [00:17:30] ROAS high and keeps their spend low, and then they can kind of get a gauge on like what they might see if they did do a paid campaign.

[00:17:37]Sam: Follow up question to that is, obviously, traditional affiliate teams, as you said, are very, like, sales focused. When you're talking about this integrated strategy, are there different KPIs that you are finding resonate with the affiliate teams that you're tracking versus, like, a more true PR team?

[00:17:53] Cali: Definitely, I touched on ROAS and ROI because that's something that it's always so easy and fun and exciting [00:18:00] to call out because someone who's newer to affiliate will see all of this revenue and like, that's exciting. Okay, here's an extra layer. You only spent what you what you got, like super exciting.

[00:18:12] That is any company's dream, right, is to have a strategy that You know, it's very lean.

[00:18:19]Jessy: I also think with like a brand like Bandeau, we had a great relationship. We've been working with them on the PR side for a long time, and they were working in an affiliate but hadn't really optimized. [00:18:30] And so they're an ideal kind of case study because it's product focus.

[00:18:34] It's gifty. It's a brand people know. And so it really was a matter of like smart strategy and amplifying what they were doing and doing it with a little bit more experience and, and it took off.

[00:18:48]Sam: Yeah, definitely. Would love to understand coming from a traditional PR background and how you've measured and tracked PR.

[00:18:55] How has that had to evolve over the years, bringing affiliate into your business, and how have you [00:19:00] navigated that internally and then with those conversations as well externally?

[00:19:03]Jessy: I mean, the thing is, is PR is not known for being trackable and data focused, right? PR, you're coming from almost, it's, it's like a, A gut check, right?

[00:19:14] Like did this placement on the New York Times dot com move the needle? Did you see a spike in sales? Did your social go up? Was there just more buzz? It's all this very sort of

[00:19:25]Sam: it's a correlation.

[00:19:26]Jessy: It's like it's Yeah, it's brand awareness. It's brand awareness. [00:19:30] And the innate hurdle is if you are not talking to someone who believes in brand awareness as an important tactic, you're never gonna sell them on PR.

[00:19:39] So for me, affiliate comes with all this, like, hard data that's amazing, and at times we can even use it to reverse engineer metrics around PR, right? Uh, and that's very refreshing, and it's made me, as a business owner and as somebody trying to scale an agency, Super cognizant, very focused on what's missing in PR [00:20:00] and trying to solve for those.

[00:20:01] So we have designs on building out maybe some software that will do a better job of tracking the true PR placements.

[00:20:08]Sam: Are there certain affiliate metrics that you find lend themselves really nicely to then measuring PR?

[00:20:14]Jessy: I mean, all of them help. I mean, you know, we're talking top of the funnel. You know, you can draw a conclusion, make a case for the power.

[00:20:22] Of a placement that you got that maybe isn't affiliate now, granted, it might not have the Same amount of traffic or visibility, but you can [00:20:30] look at a publication as a whole and kind of surmise from there. The power of a placement.

[00:20:34]Sam: And then Cali, I think Same question to you is how do you merge these like very disparate attribution tactics for all of Jessy's challenges?

[00:20:44]Cali: The affiliate team rode in on a white horse and said, behold, a tracking link, which will tell you what all your efforts are doing, as long as there's a link, of course, and there's these networks to do it through and these tools [00:21:00] that we get to use to tell us how successful you are. These placements were, um, and we didn't have the Same challenges as the PR team.

[00:21:09] Our challenges came from what we spoke about earlier with like the relationship building and penetrating those contacts. But yeah, tracking was like an exciting thing to bring into the mix. And then the relationship building was an exciting thing for Myself and the team, I, uh, shares the Same sentiments of being at affiliate only agencies and [00:21:30] not having those contacts and really fighting to get those contacts.

[00:21:33] And then we came in and brought in KPIs and, and ROAS and all of the acronyms that are really exciting. Yeah, CAC, LTV, all of the acronyms and the exciting metrics that are important to brands. More so now than ever, because PR is wonderful, but people want to know, like, okay, I was in Forbes, like, so what, you know, and we're able to quantify or at least support in quantifying the hard earned [00:22:00] efforts.

[00:22:00] Cali

[00:22:00]Sam: came

[00:22:01]Cali: in like a

[00:22:01]Sam: white knight on a horse, a knight on a horse with her tracking link, and Jessi had the relationships from the PR side, like what, what is next for, I think you called it performance PR when we first spoke or like integrated PR affiliate, like what do you think is the next big thing?

[00:22:16] We call it performance

[00:22:18]Jessy: driven media strategy, performance driven media strategy. We're going to continue to refine, you know, and make it better. I think an area to conquer next is influencer. So as a PR agency, we [00:22:30] work really heavily in influencer, brand ambassadors, celebrity events, all of those things. We have a lot of brands coming to us and wanting to run it through affiliate.

[00:22:39] And so there's some inherent difficulties with that, that we don't have to go into here. So it's trying to maybe streamline that and to figure out a way to manage different parts of Influencer, some through the PR side and some through the affiliate piece. So Influencer is definitely on my radar as something to delve deeper into.

[00:22:56]Sam: Cali, Same question for you. What is next? I have to agree, of course, with everything [00:23:00] Jessy said, because we are seeing Influencer kind of come into the fold a little bit more. And it is a great channel that can collaborate well with, with Affiliate. But I'm going to kind of take it a step further and just say like more is more.

[00:23:11] And I personally had, have a taste of what's it like for Affiliate to work with PR. Next, we're talking about what's it like for Affiliate to work with Influencer. And My thought is, what's it like for us to work with other paid channels and for other marketing channels? Like, we should all be communicating more.

[00:23:29] I want [00:23:30] to understand, of course, what Earned is doing, but I also want to understand, like, what's Direct doing? Like, what are your other paid strategies? Because that all does fold in very well with the strategy overall of affiliate NPR.

[00:23:41]Sam: I think it's a nice point to affiliate, is it's almost, you can view it as like the channel of all channels.

[00:23:46]Cali: Definitely.

[00:23:47]Sam: Okay, so. Question we're asking on every podcast. Jessy, I'm going to ask you to start. What is your best singular piece of advice for brands wanting to get started with?

[00:23:58]Jessy: O think my best piece of advice is, of [00:24:00] course, to find a good partner that can help you build the program to make sure that you have reasonable expectations and that the person that you're working with is presenting a comprehensive, a full funnel strategy, unless there's a very specific reason you're not interested in that.

[00:24:14] I think you can't expect affiliate to work in a bubble. You need to make sure that there's. Paid search, paid social, PR. And if you can't afford all of those things because you're a startup or an emerging brand, pick and choose, but nothing works in a vacuum. So I think it's, it's finding a [00:24:30] good, a good partner.

[00:24:30]Sam: Cali, Same question for you.

Cali: Yeah. Be open to testing new partnership types. Um, and that's not, that doesn't just go for the full funnel as many people listening to this will know affiliate is such a dynamic industry. There are. Constantly new partners, new platforms always coming on the scene and understanding that it's such a performance driven channel, like be open to testing, try new things, like see what happens and know that you're not having to throw [00:25:00] a ton of money or budget to test these really exciting opportunities.

[00:25:04] So always remain. Open to testing different partnership types.

[00:25:13]Sam: This officially brings us to the end of episode eight season one of Awin-Win Marketing Podcast. It's been a pleasure for Rob and I to chat with all of you about the incredible world of affiliate marketing and what it can do for your business.

[00:25:25]Rob: We'll be back in the early new year for season two. Until then, if you need more [00:25:30] affiliate marketing insights to tide you over, take a moment to browse our archives on Spotify or Apple.

[00:25:35] Additionally, we're going to be releasing a special affiliate trends 2025 predictions episode in the coming weeks.

[00:25:42]Sam: Thanks again for listening to Awin-Win Marketing Podcast, where we show you how affiliate partnerships always offer a win win.

[00:25:51]Sam: Okay. I think that's your first and last attempt at making a joke on Awin-Win Marketing Podcast.

[00:25:58]Rob: Can we put some canned laughter [00:26:00] in there as well? Perfect.

[00:26:02]Sam: Or crickets. No, put some crickets in there. I think.