Masterclass: Executing Performance-Based PR Campaigns

Some 20 years ago, putting earned and paid media under the same editorial house would have been the boldest of bold moves.  

Challenging long-held beliefs about journalistic integrity, blurring the lines between advertising and editorial, and forcing teams with fundamentally different goals to collaborate under one vision would be three concerns, straight off the bat.  

Today, at well-established agencies, that convergence has already happened and is breathing life into a previously print-dominated industry ready to embrace change.  

Our latest masterclass is all about integrated affiliate public relations strategies, also known as “performance PR”. For this topic, we called on the experts at full-service PR agency LaRue, who've been blending these usually disparate tactics for nearly a decade. 

Jessy Klein Fofana (Founder, CEO - LaRue) and Cali Geyer (Director of Affiliate - LaRue, now of Acceleration Partners) joined us for a special episode of Awin-Win Marketing Podcast.  

Listen to the episode or read the summary below.  

How did we get here? 

If convincing journalists to run a story wasn’t tough enough, it seems unthinkable that their publications would entertain a pay-on-performance partnership. But as Jessy explains, that’s precisely where we are.  

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 shifts in media. When I started, it was print media. Then it went from print to digital, then social, then influencer. If you weren't on the front end of those evolutions, you were getting left behind. I saw it [performance marketing] creep into the PR lane and thought, ‘Oh, this is going to be the next thing’.” 

Looking to get on the front foot, Jessy started experimenting with performance PR “maybe seven or eight years ago” before recently putting in firmer actions at LaRue. During this period, Cali observed affiliate and PR teams battling each other for coverage, rather than working collaboratively toward the same goal. 

Cali: “I was seeing that we were really fighting for the attribution for the top-of-funnel placements and was thinking ‘we should be connecting’. We should be working together and not being so siloed, where affiliate is trying to pitch these partnerships too, and working in tandem with PR.” 

How to get buy-in for performance PR  

When it comes to negotiating with brands and selling the idea of performance-based PR, it’s up to agencies like LaRue to educate on one end of the connection, depending on their background.  

Jessy: “We get brands coming to us with more of a PR perspective. They want top-of-the-funnel placements that look like press but are actually affiliate. They are squeamish about the mid and lower funnel and scared of coupon sites cannibalizing their brand or taking away some of its cachet… Cali was sharing a conversation that started with ‘no coupon, no mid-funnel, no lower-funnel’. By the end, the prospective client was like, ‘we need it. We need coupon and full-funnel if we want to get better top-of-the-funnel visibility.” 

The situation flips when talking to clients who are “all about performance”. They already know the affiliate channel and how it works. The challenge here is educating on the importance of building awareness, not just chasing sales.  

Jessy: “They've leaned into that [affiliate marketing] and we're trying to relay how brand awareness, storytelling, and PR will help further drive their existing affiliate campaign.” 

How do you execute earned and paid media? 

To truly execute a full-funnel campaign, it’s up to affiliate and PR departments to use the tools at their disposal (contacts on one side, commission on the other) and devise more comprehensive pitches.  

Cali: “I came from an affiliate agency. We didn't really have the top-of-funnel approach, and we were reaching out to publishers, trying to get a partnership with them, trying to get anything from them. It was tough... I didn't have anywhere near the types of connections that the earned team had. They're able to get the foot in the door, then we discuss strategy. My job is really to make sure that the pot is sweetened with a high commission. Our approach at a high level is to allow earned to do their thing, have affiliate there as a supportive arm, to then build mid and lower-funnel partnerships to support the growth of top-of-funnel.” 

What makes earned so adept at finding a way in? For Jessy and Cali, speaking for the in-house team that has spent anywhere between 7-12 years honing their craft at LaRue alone, it boils down to experience and skills.  

Cali: “I think it's that earned is pitching to editors who are used to being pitched to, whereas affiliate, it's kind of this new piece that these partners and these publishers are now starting to think about. They're not 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.” 

Jessy: “I think it's that. I think editors who are used to PR are absolutely used to getting pitched, and publicists and people who work in PR are used to gearing their pitch specifically to the editor based on what they cover and what vertical they're in. 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 means there's a learning curve.” 

Examples of performance PR success stories 

Since 2017, LaRue has generated over 42 billion media impressions while doubling affiliate revenue and traffic for media and lifestyle brand ban.do.  

A mix of top-of-funnel placements on major publications like Cosmopolitan and dynamic commissioning has transformed what was previously a mature but bottom-funnel-focused program into a high performer.   

Cali: “When I started managing the brand [band.do], they were really interested in increasing their commerce strategy. I looked to see who was working really well for them, and we didn't put any paid budget towards it. But what we did is reach out to the partner [product review site ‘The Strategist’], and we just said, we'd love to offer you a commission increase. No strings attached. You've been a wonderful partner, and we hope we can continue to grow this partnership. And we did. We saw a large increase, I think just over a 200% increase in placements. That obviously led to a very successful last few months.” 

Increasing commission is one example of how affiliate has encouraged publications to embrace the earned and paid convergence happening at the same agencies they work with.  

Cali: “This is a broader conversation of brands looking at affiliate and how they look at top-of-funnel strategy. A lot of brands are interested in placements at ‘The Strategist’ and ‘BuzzFeed’, and the guaranteed placements can be pricey... What I like to do prior to suggesting a flat-fee spend is 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. Seeing that increase keeps their return on ad spend (ROAS) high and keeps their spend low. Then they get a gauge on what they might see if they did do a paid campaign.” 

How should you measure performance PR? 

While every brand has a different action to drive, for Jessy and Cali, performance PR is all about seeing the outcome from the outlay. It’s a novelty in a space where, according to Jessy, a “gut check” can suffice as a method of measurement. 

Cali: “I touched on ROAS and ROI because that's something that is always so easy and fun and exciting to call out because someone who's newer to affiliate will see all of this revenue. That's exciting. ‘Okay, here's an extra layer. You only spend on what you got’.” 

Jessy: “I mean, the thing is, PR is not known for being trackable and data-focused… ‘Did this placement on the New York Times move the needle? Did you see a spike in sales? Did your social go up?’ It's ‘brand awareness’, and the innate hurdle is, if you are not talking to someone who believes in brand awareness as an important tactic, you're never going to sell them on PR. Affiliate comes with all this hard data. That's amazing, and we can use it to reverse engineer metrics around PR. It's made me, as a business owner and as somebody trying to scale an agency, super cognizant and very focused on what's missing in PR.” 

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 to tell us how successful you are… And then we brought in KPIs and ROAS, CAC, LTV – all of the acronyms and the exciting metrics that are important to brands… We're able to quantify or at least support in quantifying the hard-earned efforts.” 

Performance PR: passing trend, or the new norm? 

Performance and PR haven’t quite tied the knot. One of the recurring themes of our conversation with LaRue was around the challenges paid teams have when building relationships with earned media.  

As far as next steps go, the deepening collaboration within established agencies like LaRue will only help each side take learnings from one another.  

Cali: “I think that traditional affiliate [marketing] can be transactional. We are providing something, you are either guaranteeing something, or we're hoping for something in return. Earned is much more of the long game in relationship building. I've had to learn 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, for sure.” 

So, is performance PR really here to stay?  

Jessy: “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 over time indoctrinate them to the full strategy in my mind… 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 get on board.” 

 

For more marketing masterclasses, check out Awin-Win Marketing Podcast.