The PR world has been long overdue for a massive shake-up. Thanks to one entrepreneur’s vision, the inevitable overhaul — and it’s incredibly exciting and lucrative aftermath — it is finally here. Dreamday’s Founder, Lauren Kleinman, is the original creator of Performance PR, a method that drives measurable, and data-driven results.
The old-school PR playbook just doesn’t meet the needs of modern, data-driven businesses. PR remains integral to a business’s success, but yesterday’s rules no longer apply. Brands are no longer satisfied with the previously nebulous black box and lack of data and metrics regarding their return on investment, and they rightfully demand more.
For instance, look at how most traditional agencies rank the press they secure. Inflated impressions and UVPM metrics tend to indicate a feel-good metric of millions, if not, alleged billions, of eyeballs that news outlets are purported to receive. This touted data point is often supported by little to no transparency or tracking, in terms of actual lift on site traffic or revenue.
Did an article that ran in Glamour result in any verifiable purchases? Or did it just give the company’s brand awareness a potential nudge? Questions like those have historically been headscratchers. With the introduction of Performance PR, brands have unlocked insights and opportunities that they can finally digest and benefit from.
Bridging the gap between PR and affiliate marketing
Coined by entrepreneur Lauren Kleinman in 2019, the term “Performance PR” encompasses a marketing practice that transcends the limitations of traditional PR. Kleinman’s award-winning agency, Dreamday, is the original creator of the Performance PR process, and it’s pioneering the movement.
Drawing from her deep expertise in both the PR and affiliate marketing fields, Kleinman and her team of over 25 employees have merged full-service PR with full-funnel affiliate marketing. Rather than being two separate (and often siloed) marketing pathways that often compete with each other for press and results, PR and affiliate marketing are synergistically joined in Performance PR. The tactic enables publicists to make more informed decisions with regard to which publications are resonating and moving the needle and provides clients with tangible performance data on the press they are garnering. In addition to top-tier press and publications, the agency recruits mid-funnel partners such as influencers and sub-affiliate networks, and lower-funnel partners. It ensures those lower-partner partners are driving true incrementality and are not promoting in a way that is detrimental to overall brand integrity.
To get a sense of how Performance PR works, consider the marketing needs of a typical direct-to-consumer (DTC) beauty brand. The brand wants exposure, credibility, and recognition. At the same time, it wants to generate awareness and convert sales. A synergistic Performance PR strategy enables both outcomes to happen by selectively and appropriately choosing publications and partners to pitch. These aren’t your typical pitches; they include an affiliate angle that incentivizes and rewards publishers, as well as promises a 360-degree view of press performance. For publishers who are focused on commerce revenue and sales, it’s what’s interesting and compelling about a brand, with the business opportunity for partnering with said brand. It’s a design where everyone wins.
Because of the innovative approach, Dreamday’s clients keep winning. To date, Dreamday clientele earn more press than when working with their previous agencies, which may have relied solely on traditional PR methods.
Reimagining PR for the evolving media and marketing landscape
Several key differentiators help Dreamday’s transformative Performance PR model amplify brand exposure and awareness, drive conversions, and provide quantifiable data such as site traffic, return on ad spend (ROAS), and press-driven revenue.
1. Companies aren’t duplicating marketing efforts.
It’s a common story: A marketing department’s PR, advertising, and affiliate management teams all work independently of each other. As a result, they duplicate tasks and outreach and do not leverage the synergies of each function.
Performance PR aligns PR and affiliate marketing, allowing all PR and affiliate-based campaigns to maintain a single objective which ladders up into the brands overarching strategy and goals. All teams are on the same page and can move toward the same mile markers, ultimately collecting data to inform future decisions, for example: which publications are converting? Which angles are resonating? What types of audiences are driving the most impact?
The streamlined nature of Performance PR can pay off handsomely. With the primary KPIs for clients being quality of press and quantity of press, those numbers showcase exactly why Performance PR is becoming the modern standard among forward-leaning PR and marketing teams.
2. Performance PR pieces retain their quality and editorial standards.
Top-tier, trusted publications and brand partners want to maintain their editorial integrity. If they don’t, they’ll lose authority with readers. In the past, that’s why many companies hired PR and affiliate agencies separately. The PR pros could run interference with editors and creators, and the affiliate marketers could sell clickable ads and sponsored content.
With Performance PR, the aim is still to place stories with trustworthy sites and influencers. But Performance PR isn’t a “pay to play” structure. For instance, Dreamday’s client stories revolve around product reviews, insights, or newsworthy events. They’re earned media that amplifies a brand’s equity and work with commerce editors who have trusted authority. Certainly, affiliate links accompany the content, but they don’t drive the narrative, as all editorial pieces are approved by publishers internally.
Kleinman is passionate about making sure that every piece of Performance PR-placed content has authenticity and editorial integrity. In fact, she co-founded a performance marketing agency, Quality Media, and a review site called The Quality Edit to serve up content with journalistic integrity and monetize through affiliate revenue. This showcases how publications are eager to feature the most relevant products and brands for their audience, while also earning revenue through affiliate commissions from product sales. At The Quality Edit, the team is pitched Performance PR pitches every day which are converted into reviews and features on the site that generate affiliate commissions for both parties in a mutually beneficial way. In just four years, the site has continued to double in year-over-year growth.
3. The content can be measured and leveraged.
Dreamday’s Performance PR techniques aren’t designed to only work today. They have far-reaching ramifications, such as obtaining earned media destined to become part of a brand’s go-to library of evergreen content. As marketers know, evergreen content has tremendous potential as a marketing vehicle–driving up cache, credibility, trust, and awareness with customers, as well as long-lasting SEO benefits.
As each new Performance PR piece of content is released, it becomes another avenue to drive branding, exposure, sales, and backlinks. That’s appealing for any company that’s serious about unlocking as much potential from each marketing strategy as possible. Leveraging third-party content to earn customer trust, in a time where every search and social platform in the world is prioritizing authenticity, becomes a truly symbiotic partnership between brand and creator. It is a relationship built on mutual trust with a common goal to deliver the best possible recommendations to a shared audience.
PR is far from past its prime. It just needs a new course. Dreamday’s Performance PR is a key playbook for data-driven brands that want to future-proof their marketing efforts.
