Earned Media Engine · Done For You

Your buyers ask ChatGPT now. We make sure it answers with your name.

Done-for-you authority campaigns for B2B SaaS & FinTech: original research, surveys, and interactive tools — pushed via digital PR to earn Tier-1 coverage, brand mentions, and AI citations. Live tracking. No black boxes.

🛡 Ship-on-time guarantee · Placements floor on every campaign · Quarterly asset cadence

12+
Years building authority
100+
PR links on a single campaign (Gigworker)
4
Interactive tools we built & shipped ourselves
§The Shift

We told you the winds were changing. They've changed.

In 2024, we were on stages and sales calls with a deck called Winds of Change, arguing two things: Google would reward demonstrated experience over churned-out content, and your buyer's journey was scattering across platforms you don't control. Some people nodded politely. Here's where that landed in 2026:

~60%
Of US Google searches now end without a single click to the open web. SparkToro/Datos, 2024
15%→8%
Click rate when Google shows an AI summary — and only 1% click the sources inside it. (Google disputes the methodology. We cite it anyway and let you decide.) Pew Research, July 2025
−61% / +35%
Organic CTR collapse on AI-Overview queries — versus 35% more organic clicks (and 91% more paid) for brands cited inside those answers. Being the citation is the new ranking. Seer Interactive, Sept 2025
$0
“The cost of producing mediocre information is now zero for anybody.” Anything an AI can write, an AI will summarize — without sending anyone to you. Cyrus Shepard, Dec 2025
The content marketing playbook your competitors are still running was built for a search engine that no longer sends the traffic. The question isn't “how do we rank?” anymore. It's “when the machine answers, does it answer with us?”
§The Thesis

AI can summarize everything — except what only you know.

Cyrus Shepard analyzed 400+ winning and losing websites in the zero-click era. The single strongest pattern: 92% of winning sites owned something difficult to replicate — unique datasets, proprietary research, or specialized software. Sites with several of these traits won ~68–70% of the time; sites with none won 13.5% (SparkToro, April 2026). His advice, verbatim: “do real world stuff, because that's what the systems are trying to reflect.”

And the demand side agrees. Ahrefs studied 75,000 brands: branded web mentions correlate with AI Overview visibility at 0.664 — roughly 3x more strongly than backlinks (0.218) — and the top quartile of brands by mentions earned over 10x the AI visibility of the next (Ahrefs, May 2025). Princeton researchers found that quotations, statistics, and citations boost generative-engine visibility by 30–40% (GEO paper, KDD 2024).

“The currency of Google search was links… The currency of large language models is not links. The currency of large language models is mentions.”
— Rand Fishkin, SparkToro “How Can My Brand Appear in Answers from ChatGPT…?”, Oct 2024

Original Research

AI can summarize existing information. It cannot run your study. Publish the numbers and AI cites you instead of replacing you.

Proprietary Data

Open-data mining and benchmark surveys create datasets journalists must attribute — your name travels with every stat.

Interactive Tools

A calculator or scorer completes the task AI Overviews can only describe. Tools earn links, mentions, and repeat visits for years.

So the strategy writes itself: build the assets only you can build, then go earn the mentions. That's the Engine.

§What We Build

Assets journalists cite, buyers use, and LLMs quote.

Every quarter, we build from this menu — chosen for your positioning, your data, and the stories your market's journalists actually want.

Original Research Reports

Industry analyses built from public and proprietary data, packaged for coverage. Example: “The 2026 SaaS Churn Benchmark Report.” Journalists need a stat to anchor a story; your report becomes the stat.

Proprietary Surveys

Designed, fielded, analyzed, and published — a dataset that exists nowhere else. Example: “What 500 Seed-Stage Founders Actually Paid to Acquire Their First 10 Customers.” No one can fact-check you against data only you own. They can only cite you.

Interactive Mini-Tools

Calculators, quizzes, scorers, and mini-SaaS apps that complete a task AI answers can only describe. Examples: a SaaS Runway Calculator, a Pitch-Deck Scorer, an “Are You Series-A Ready?” diagnostic.

Open-Data Signal Mining

We mine public datasets — government releases, filings, platform data — for stories hiding in plain sight, published under your brand. This is how Centriq grew 515% on a public database. You don't need proprietary data to start; you need someone who knows where to dig.

Newsjacking Desk

Flagship tier only: SignalIQ-driven monitoring of breaking data and news, so your asset — and your commentary — lands while the story is live.

§How It Works

Build the asset. Earn the coverage. Extract five returns.

One framework, seven steps — repeated every quarter. You watch all of it happen in a live tracking sheet, same as every DMR engagement. And the delivery mechanism is the one channel the research keeps pointing back to:

“I am such a PR fan. The industry's been moving away from PR for, what, 30 years now… I still think PR is where it is at. I think AI makes PR more valuable than ever. I think mentions make PR more valuable than ever.”
— Rand Fishkin Interview with Edward Sturm, May 2026
01

Authority Audit & Angle Map

We map your defensible point of view, your data exhaust (product data, support tickets, public datasets in your space), and the journalists who cover your category. Output: a quarterly asset roadmap you approve before anything gets built.

02

Build the Asset

Research report, survey, or mini-tool — designed, produced, and reviewed with you. Ship-on-time guaranteed: if an asset misses its scheduled date, that month is free.

03

Package for Citation

Stats pages, quotable data points, schema markup, and citation-friendly formatting — the structure shown to boost generative-engine visibility by 30–40%. Every number gets a sentence a journalist can lift verbatim.

04

The Digital PR Push

A dedicated campaign per asset: personalized pitches to named journalists, blacklist-screened targets (the same 700+ domain standard as our Booster), sample-pitch approval before anything goes out, and every reply forwarded to your inbox.

05

The Distribution Layer

Social posts, an email sequence, visual packs, and — because LLMs over-weight them — seeding into the communities that train the models: Reddit, YouTube, podcasts, niche forums.

06

Extract the 5 Returns

Every placement gets worked through our 5-Return Framework: SEO authority (the link), AI/LLM citation (the mention), sales collateral (“as featured in”), investor proof (credibility VCs can Google), and social signal (share-worthy coverage).

07

Track, Report, Repeat

Live tracking sheet for placements and mentions; AI-citation tracking across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews (tier-dependent). What worked gets doubled; the next quarter's asset gets smarter.

§What You Get

Six compounding returns on one engine.

🏛

Reputation

Tier-1 coverage and named citations build the kind of credibility that can't be bought with ad spend — because everyone knows ads are bought.

🤖

AI Visibility

Your brand inside the consideration set when buyers ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google's AI. Top brands appear in 55–77% of AI answers in their category — that set is real, and it's winnable.

🧠

Brand Equity

Mentions and co-occurrence: your name appearing next to your category, across hundreds of documents, is how both humans and LLMs learn you're the answer.

💰

Conversions

Brands cited in AI Overviews earn 35% more organic and 91% more paid clicks. Authority isn't a vanity layer; it's pipeline.

🧲

Magnetism

Citable assets keep working: journalists return to your data, your tools collect links and leads for years, and inbound replaces some of your outbound.

🕊

Liberty

This is the done-for-you lane. You approve the roadmap and the sample pitches; we do everything else. Your founder hours go back into the product.

§Real Results

We've been building citable assets since before LLMs could read them.

Look at our case studies through the assets-and-mentions lens and the pattern is obvious — the wins came from things that were hard to replicate.

Centriq · SaaS · raised $11M+
+515%

Organic growth built on a public DATABASE — a citable data asset, years before “GEO” had a name. The asset did what assets do: earned links, mentions, and compounding traffic.

View Case Study →
National Tyres · Auto Retail
$160K→$1.2M

Monthly revenue, on one earned-media + organic campaign. Earned coverage compounds; paid ads stop the moment you pause spend.

View Case Study →
Gigworker · Gig Economy Platform
DR 0 → 63

100+ PR links · 45K+ keywords · 30K+ monthly visitors. Authority built from zero, in public.

View Case Study →
Ridester · Gig Economy / Affiliate
460% growth

DR 43 → 58 · 50+ links · peak 1.5M monthly visitors.

View Case Study →

We don't just recommend interactive assets. We build them — for ourselves.

SignalIQ, PressIQ, CoverageIQ, and JournoCollabIQ are live, free, public tools we designed, built, and shipped. When we say “we'll build you a mini-tool,” that's not a subcontractor promise — it's our own production line.

§Fit

Built for founders with a point of view. Not for content-calendar shoppers.

The Engine is for you if
  • You're a venture-backed B2B SaaS or FinTech company, seed through Series B, with founder-led buying
  • You have a defensible point of view — or data exhaust (product metrics, customer patterns, industry observations) we can turn into one
  • You want your brand in the AI consideration set before your category's answers calcify without you
  • You'd rather own citable assets than rent impressions
It's not for you if
  • You want “10 blog posts a month.” That's commodity content — the thing this entire page argues is now worthless
  • You need guaranteed placement in a specific publication. Nobody can promise the NYT; anyone who does is lying to you
  • You're pre-product with no operating history and no data — start with the Booster, or learn the system first
  • You're in healthcare. Not our lane
§Investment

Transparent tiers. Assets ship quarterly, billed monthly.

A standalone proprietary research study runs $25K+ on the open market. Data-led PR campaigns run $5K–$30K each. Mid-tier PR retainers run $5K–$15K/month — usually as a black box. Here's exactly what we charge and exactly what ships. A real asset plus a real PR push is a 60–90 day cycle, so assets ship quarterly — agencies that promise “an asset a month” are describing blog posts.

Ignition
$4,000/mo
quarterly cadence · 3-month minimum
  • 1 major asset per quarter — open-data research report or interactive mini-tool
  • 1 digital PR campaign per asset
  • Social posts + email sequence per asset
  • Citation-friendly formatting (stats pages, schema, quotable data points)
  • Live tracking sheet · inbox forwarding · sample-pitch approval · 700+ domain blacklist
  • 10-placement floor per campaign, work-until-won
Book a Strategy Call →
Recommended
Momentum
$6,500/mo
quarterly cadence · 3-month minimum
  • 2 assets per quarter (e.g., report + mini-tool)
  • 1 digital PR campaign per asset (2/quarter)
  • Everything in Ignition, plus:
  • Visual pack + ghostwritten founder LinkedIn posts per asset
  • Monthly AI-citation tracking — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews
  • 10-placement floor per campaign, work-until-won
Book a Strategy Call →
Flagship
$10,000/mo
quarterly cadence · 6-month minimum
  • 3 assets per quarter, incl. 1 full proprietary survey (design → field → analyze → publish)
  • 1 PR campaign per asset + always-on newsjacking desk (SignalIQ-driven)
  • Everything in Momentum, plus:
  • Podcast + community seeding (Reddit, YouTube, niche communities)
  • Quarterly GEO audit & brand co-occurrence report
  • Monthly strategy call
  • 10-placement floor per campaign, work-until-won
Book a Strategy Call →

Pay quarterly upfront and take 5% off. Survey panel/respondent costs (Flagship) are passed through at cost, with a cap agreed upfront — transparent, like everything else here.

🛡️

Two guarantees. And one thing we refuse to guarantee.

1 — The delivery guarantee. Every asset ships on its scheduled date, or that month's fee is waived. We control this 100%, so we guarantee it 100%.

2 — The performance guarantee. Every PR campaign carries a 10-placement floor — earned placements and mentions, blacklist-screened to the same 700+ domain standard as our Booster. If a campaign hasn't hit its floor within 90 days of asset launch, we keep pitching at no charge until it does. Still below half the floor at day 150? Pro-rated refund on that campaign's PR fee.

What we will NOT guarantee — read this part. We will not guarantee placement in a specific Tier-1 outlet, and we will not guarantee AI/LLM citations. Nobody controls what a model ingests. SparkToro's January 2026 study (600 volunteers, 2,961 runs) found AI tools return the same brand list less than 1 time in 100 — they're “probability engines.” Anyone guaranteeing you a ChatGPT citation in 2026 is selling you something they cannot deliver. What we do instead: build the assets the research says earn citations, then track your AI visibility every month and show you the trend line.

§The Alternatives

Earned Media Engine vs. everything else you could do with the budget.

FeatureEarned Media EngineContent AgencyTraditional PR AgencyDIY
Core output Citable assets (research, surveys, tools) + earned coverage Blog posts on your own site Press releases & relationship pitching Whatever your team has time for
AI-era logic Built for mentions, citations & co-occurrence Commodity content AI summarizes for free Mentions, but rarely formatted or tracked for AI Usually invisible to LLMs
Transparency Live tracking sheet, inbox forwarding, pitch approval Content calendar & monthly report Black box; monthly call Total (it's you)
Guarantee Ship-on-time + placements floor with work-until-won Deliverables, not outcomes “Best efforts” None
What you own after Assets, data, tools, coverage — forever Articles on your blog Relationships leave with the agency Everything, if you finish
Typical cost $4K–$10K/mo, asset included $3K–$10K/mo $5K–$15K/mo retainers “Free” (your founder hours)
Time to value First asset + campaign within a quarter 6–12 months of compounding (maybe) 30–90 days per placement Depends entirely on you
§FAQ

Common questions.

Is this GEO / AI-SEO?

It's the part of GEO that actually works — without the snake oil. Most “AI-SEO” services tweak on-page formatting and call it a day. The research says visibility in AI answers comes from brand mentions across the web (0.664 correlation vs. 0.218 for backlinks, in Ahrefs' 75,000-brand study), and mentions come from having something worth citing. We build the citable thing, then earn the mentions. Formatting is step three, not the strategy.

How is this different from Earned Media Booster?

The Booster wins you links from journalists' existing stories — we pitch your expertise into coverage that's already being written. The Engine builds the research, data, and tools that make journalists — and AI models — start their stories with you. Reactive vs. proactive. Many clients run both: the Booster for steady link velocity, the Engine for category authority.

Do you guarantee AI citations?

No — and nobody honestly can. SparkToro's 2026 study ran 12 prompts 2,961 times: there's less than a 1-in-100 chance an AI returns the same brand list twice. These are probability engines. What's real is visibility % — how often you appear across many runs — and that's exactly what dense, widespread brand mentions improve (top brands in a category appear in 55–77% of responses). So we guarantee what we control: assets ship on time, and campaigns hit a placements floor or we work free until they do. AI citations we track and report monthly — we'll show you the trend, not a fantasy “ranking.”

What if I have no data?

You have more than you think, and we can create the rest. Open-data mining turns public datasets — government releases, filings, platform data, job postings — into stories under your brand (that's the Centriq playbook: +515% on a public database). And surveys manufacture proprietary data: we design, field, and analyze them for you. “We have no data” is a starting condition, not a blocker.

Why quarterly assets instead of monthly?

Because a real research report or tool plus a real PR push is a 60–90 day cycle. Agencies promising an “asset” every month are shipping blog posts with better fonts. We'd rather ship one thing journalists actually cite than four things nobody does.

Who owns the assets and the tools?

You do. Reports, survey data, and coverage are yours permanently. For interactive mini-tools, ownership and hosting are agreed per engagement — we build to hand off, or host and maintain on your subdomain. Either way, the asset is yours.

Do backlinks still matter, or is it all mentions now?

Both — and we'd be lying if we said otherwise. Google rankings remain the strongest single predictor of ChatGPT brand mentions (0.65 correlation, per Seer Interactive), and links still drive rankings. The good news: a citable asset earns both at once. Journalists link to data, and the resulting coverage creates the brand co-occurrence LLMs reward. Links AND mentions, from one asset.

How much of my time does this take?

A few hours per quarter. You approve the asset roadmap, review sample pitches before anything goes out, and (if you want) lend a quote. We handle research, build, pitching, distribution, and reporting. This is the done-for-you lane — that's the point.

§One System, Three Ways In

Reactive links. Proactive authority. Or learn the system itself.

Everything we sell runs on the same earned-media methodology. The only question is who operates it. Pick your lane — every one is pay-for-proof.

DFY · Reactive

Earned Media Booster

We pitch your expertise into journalists' existing stories. $449 per live link, 10-link minimum.

Explore the Booster
DFY · Proactive

Earned Media Engine

We build original research, surveys, and tools — then earn the Tier-1 coverage and AI citations they deserve. From $4,000/mo.

You are here
The System

Earned Media OS

The methodology behind both services — installed in your team, so the capability stays in-house forever. From $2,000.

Explore EMOS
For B2B SaaS & FinTech Founders

The AI consideration set in your category is forming right now. With you or without you.

Every quarter you wait, more answers calcify around competitors' names. Build the assets only you can build — and let us earn the mentions they deserve.

Questions? Email us at irfan@dmr.agency

30-minute call · No pitch deck, just an honest fit assessment · Quarterly cadence, transparent tiers

§Book a Call

Pick a time that works for you.

30 minutes · Google Meet · No pitch deck, just an honest conversation.