Sterling Vail

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP of growth marketing at Affirma, a full-service technology consulting firm specializing in mobile, cloud, business intelligence, custom development, and marketing automation. We’re focused on delivering measurable business value and high customer satisfaction.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Sterling Vail to accomplish for Affirma?

We hired Sterling Vail to enhance our brand visibility by ensuring companies are cited by AI.

SOLUTION

Can you describe the scope of their involvement in this project?

Sterling Vail provided 125 non-operational authority-building responses per week, 6–8 targeted subreddits, five zero-click guides per month, four original posts per month in the top three high-impact subreddits, five AI parsing and extraction-friendly posts per month, one verified AMA per quarter, and sentiment tracking and optimization. 
They also handled AI context mentions in relevant conversations, sentiment, intent, and keyword targeting, tracking, and optimization, AI overview reverse engineering, multi-node consensus engineering, and semantic AI query maps.

What is the team composition?

We worked with 2–5 teammates from Sterling Vail.

How did you come to work with Sterling Vail?

Someone referred Sterling Vail to me. I chose them over other options because they had high ratings, were close to my geographic location, had pricing that fit our budget, had a great culture fit, offered good value for the cost, and had company values that aligned with ours.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from January 2023–January 2026.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We saw an 82% ROAS with full attribution, and our revenue influenced by Reddit grew 257% in 2025. We also saw a 53% increase in purchase actions YoY, a 131% increase in spending YoY, a 5% increase in last-click attribution share, a 41% higher ROAS, and a 17% lower cost per purchase.

How did Sterling Vail perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicated via in-person meetings, virtual meetings, and emails or messaging apps.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Sterling Vail’s knowledge, expertise, transparency, and results were impressive.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there weren’t any.