Everything you need to know about LaRue’s 360° approach to PR & brand strategy.

Think of them as three different channels that, when run together, cover every stage of how your customer discovers, researches, and decides to buy.

Public relations builds credibility and awareness through earned media: stories written about your brand in publications your audience already trusts, like Vogue, Forbes or Well+Good. It’s the foundation of brand authority.

Influencer marketing activates real people with real audiences to bring your brand into the conversations your customers are already having. The right creator partnership doesn’t just reach people, it convinces them.

Affiliate marketing closes the loop. It’s a performance-based model where partners — publishers, creators, loyalty platforms — earn a commission when they drive a sale. It’s PR that pays for itself.

Do you need all three? If you’re serious about growth, yes. The brands winning right now aren’t choosing between awareness and conversion. They’re running a strategy that does both, and LaRue is one of the only agencies built to manage all three under one roof, with a single integrated strategy connecting every channel.

AI/Generative Engine Optimization, or AEO/GEO, is the practice of optimizing your brand’s presence so it gets cited, recommended, and surfaced by AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews. It’s the evolution of SEO, and it’s already reshaping how people discover brands. Here’s the shift: people used to Google a question and scroll through links. Now they ask an AI and get a single, synthesized answer. If your brand isn’t part of that answer, you’re invisible to an enormous and growing portion of your audience.

AEO/GEO matters because visibility is no longer just about ranking on a search results page. It’s about being the brand an AI tool trusts enough to recommend. That trust is built through earned media coverage, consistent brand authority and smart, optimized content that AI systems recognize as credible. LaRue was early to this: our AI Visibility service was built specifically to close the gap between where brands show up today and where their audience is already looking.

Want a free AI audit to see how you’re showing up in these engines? Get in touch today →

This is one of the most important questions a brand can ask right now, and most agencies don’t have a real answer. We do. AI tools surface brands that have three things: earned media coverage from credible publications, a consistent and authoritative brand narrative across the web, and content that directly and thoroughly answers the questions your audience is asking.

In practical terms, that means getting your brand covered in the publications and outlets that AI systems recognize as authoritative sources, building an owned content strategy that answers specific, high-intent questions in your category, and ensuring your owned content is structured in a way that AI crawlers can actually read and index. LaRue’s approach connects your PR strategy directly to your AI visibility, so every placement, every piece of thought leadership and every brand mention is working to build the kind of authority that gets you cited, not just covered.

The honest answer is: it depends on what you’re measuring and what kind of results you’re after. Media placements can start appearing within the first 30 to 60 days of an active campaign — especially if your brand has a strong hook and your agency has the right relationships. But meaningful brand authority, the kind that compounds and actually moves business metrics, requires time and investment.

The brands that get frustrated with PR are usually the ones measuring it too narrowly, too quickly — counting clips instead of tracking what those clips produce. At LaRue, we set clear benchmarks before a campaign launches and track PR performance by what it actually does: inbound inquiry volume, branded search trends, AI citation frequency and conversion rate movement on key pages. Coverage is a means to an end, not the end itself — and we make sure our clients always know the difference.

Press clips and impressions are the floor, not the ceiling, of PR measurement. Here’s what actually matters:

• Branded search volume: are more people searching for your brand by name after a campaign?
• Inbound lead quality: are you attracting better-fit customers and partners?
• AI citation frequency: is your brand showing up when AI tools answer questions in your category?
• Conversion rate changes on landing pages that receive PR-driven traffic.
• And for brands with affiliate or commerce infrastructure in place, direct revenue attribution from media placements.

LaRue builds custom performance dashboards for every client so results are never a matter of interpretation. If your agency is handing you a monthly PDF of logos and links and calling it a report, that’s not measurement, that’s decoration. You deserve to know exactly what your investment is producing, and we make sure you always do.

Your brand is ready for influencer marketing when you have a clear product, a defined audience and the infrastructure to convert the attention influencers generate. If your website doesn’t convert, if your narrative doesn’t carry through all channels, your product photography isn’t strong or you can’t fulfill orders at scale, influencer marketing will expose those gaps fast.

Finding the right creators is not about follower counts. It’s about audience alignment, authentic fit and the creator’s ability to actually influence purchasing behavior — not just generate TikTok views. Micro-influencers with 10,000 to 100,000 highly engaged followers in the right niche consistently outperform mega-influencers with broad, disengaged audiences.

The vetting process matters as much as the discovery process. LaRue evaluates engagement quality, audience demographics, past brand partnerships and conversion track record before recommending a single creator to a client, because the wrong influencer partnership doesn’t just waste budget, it can actively work against your brand.

Influencer marketing pays for reach, content, and brand association. Affiliate marketing pays for results: a commission is earned when a sale is made. The most effective programs in 2026 combine both — a creator is compensated for their content and also earns on performance, which aligns incentives and makes every partnership more accountable.

If you’re early-stage and need awareness, start with influencer marketing. If you have awareness but need to convert it into revenue, build an affiliate program. If you want both — and you should — build a hybrid model where your best creators become your highest-performing affiliates. LaRue structures these hybrid programs from the ground up, so the same creator relationship that builds your brand is also building your revenue channel.

Brand partnerships are strategic collaborations between two non-competing brands that share a target audience. Done right, they expand your reach, strengthen your positioning, and create cultural moments that neither brand could generate alone. The best partnerships start with audience overlap, not just brand aesthetics. LaRue identifies brands whose customers are your future customers, whose values reinforce yours, and whose collaboration creates a story worth covering. Then we structure the partnership — whether that’s a co-branded product, a shared campaign, an event or a content series — to maximize exposure for both sides and give the media a reason to pay attention.

Look for an agency that measures outcomes, not outputs. That understands the full picture — earned media, influencer, affiliate, AI visibility, not just media relations. That can show you real client results with real numbers, not a deck full of logo walls. Ask them how they measure success beyond placements. Ask them what their AI visibility strategy looks like. Ask who will actually be working on your account day to day. And ask them to show you a brand they’ve grown, not just covered. LaRue’s client results are public, specific and built on the same integrated approach we’d bring to your brand from day one.

Start with the right partners, not the most partners. A focused affiliate program with twenty high-quality, well-aligned publishers and creators will outperform a bloated program with five hundred low-quality ones every time. Structure your commission to reward the outcomes you actually want — not just last-click conversions, but content that builds awareness and consideration earlier in the funnel. Brief your affiliates like partners, not vendors. Give them the assets, the story, and the context to promote your brand authentically.

LaRue manages affiliate programs end-to-end: from partner recruitment and commission structure to creative briefing and performance reporting, so every element is working toward the same revenue goal. And measure it properly. Track customer acquisition cost, average order value, and revenue per affiliate, not just clicks. The affiliate programs that drive real, compounding revenue are the ones built on strategy, not volume.