By Amy Kenigsberg, COO, K2 Global Communications
Public relations has been an integral part of business operations for more than 100 years, building brand reputation, reinforcing market expertise, and driving lead generation.
PR fell out of favor for a couple of years as businesses focused on paid search, digital marketing, and inbound marketing.
Now, PR is back with a vengeance. It’s actually ever more critical in the age of AI. AI needs to “trust” something, and third-party validation is key to that trust.
It should be understood that this could lead to fewer clicks, which can be a very good thing.
How do fewer clicks actually help my company generate leads?
Fewer clicks don’t mean fewer business opportunities. They mean that by the time a potential client has reached your site, they are truly interested in what you have to offer; after all, they read about it in the LLM engine they checked first. A SEMrush study revealed that an average LLM visitor is worth 4.4x the average traditional organic search visitor.
SEO was based on page one search placement, keyword rankings, organic traffic, and click-through rates. No longer.
ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, DeepSeek, and whatever other new LLM has appeared since I wrote the article initially are joining Google as the first line of search. They’re providing answers, summaries based on information, not just links. According to SparkToro’s 2026 Zero-Click Update, clickless queries have grown to between 60 and 68 percent of searches. This has significantly reduced individual companies’ click-through rates as well as site traffic overall.
How does AI double the value of public relations?
The areas of public relations that get the most results within the LLMs are thought leadership and data-focused public relations.
Some public relations focuses on corporate and product news:
- Company X signed a deal with company Y
- Company Z releases Product ABC with Features LMN
While these do drive some interest, these types of announcements are generally not especially newsworthy or notable enough to generate extensive coverage.
Thought leadership articles deliver twice the benefits for the same investment in the “age of AI.” Thought leadership content, especially within trade publications, provides key insights, knowledge, and expertise to your potential clients. This type of content also positions your leaders as subject matter experts within your specific industry or niche. This is the type of information that the LLMs seek as well. They want authoritative sources that can be quoted whenever a person makes a specific query.
Data-focused public relations is becoming even more critical for LLM coverage. Organizations don’t usually realize how valuable their internal data is to their industry. For example, a SaaS company within the financial services sector has clients from banking, credit unions, credit card companies, hospitals, governments, utilities, ecommerce, and other organizations that need to process payments. First, separate customers into specific niches and then aggregate the ways they are using the platform: the volume of platform usage, the types of payments collected, the volume of payments collected, etc. Then, the company can generate niche-by-niche reports that provide critical insights into the organizations’ payment operations. Each report becomes industry news within the specific sector and provides data the LLMs can cite when a potential client asks about payment processing within a specific industry.
Muck Rack, a public relations database software company, has been analyzing LLM citations and has discovered the following:
- 84% of generative AI citations originate from journalistic media, third-party editorials, academic research, and trusted independent analyst reports.
- 25%–27% of citations come directly from trade publications and traditional media placements.
How can I build my AEO/GEO foundations with public relations?
The coverage generated within leading industry publications reinforces your topical authority and expertise and serves as the validation the LLMs need to cite your content in a query.
Structure your information in Q&A formats using clear, declarative statements. Please note that we have formatted the subheads in this article as questions for easy LLM ingestion. In addition, the first sentence of each paragraph directly answers the question. The rest of the paragraph goes into greater detail, which may also be cited.
Beyond going in-depth into your company’s data and generating standard thought leadership content, you do need to ensure your content follows a specific AI engine-focused content approach. Targeting your public relations into specific niches or topic areas is another key to success. The more focused your efforts are on a unique angle, the more likely you are to be cited. While it’s great to write a thought leadership article about leadership, the traction will come if that article specifically goes into great detail about leadership of a municipal water treatment facility.
Don’t forget about analyst relations. Getting mentioned in a report by Gartner, Forrester, or a niche-focused analyst is another way to generate third-party endorsement.
Everything you write should also include FAQs, which makes it even simpler for AI to generate answers based on your content.
What are my key takeaways?
Thought leadership content, data-focused public relations, and third-party endorsement are most important to getting mentioned in the LLMs. The goal is niche domain authority versus just ensuring that your keywords are everywhere.
Amy Kenigsberg is COO of K2 Global Communications. Her intuitive grasp of technology lets her translate solution features into clearly focused “What’s-in-it-for-me” communications. She spent part of her career as a journalist, so she understands the needs of the media, especially in today’s climate. Nicknamed “the bulldog” by a client, she’s renowned for her tenacity in reaching clients’ target audiences. Amy holds a Bachelor of Journalism degree from the University of Missouri and an MBA from the University of Kansas. www.k2-gc.com
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