Small businesses, in particular, have a hard time making a mark in industries that are dominated by big corporations that have money to spend on everything from billboards to a marketing team. For this very reason, having a solid B2B affiliate marketing strategy can be an affordable way to take those first few steps of growth as a new company. What Exactly Is Affiliate Marketing? Affiliate marketing is a process within which the affiliates of a company earn a commission through the direct result of their own marketing. The affiliate will promote the company’s products and services and for each customer or website visitor that they refer back to the company, they receive a certain percentage of the sale or a set amount. Some companies like Bluehost, for example, accept anybody as an affiliate while other companies like Walmart or Lenovo have an application and approval process wherein they only approve a few. Post was g en er at ed with the he lp of GSA C on tent Gen er ator DEMO !
Affiliate marketing is a win-win for companies because if an affiliate manages to refer a customer or visitor, they only have to pay the affiliate a tiny commission and if they do not refer any new customers, there is no loss to the business since they do not have to pay them anything. Now that you have understood the importance of having an affiliate marketing strategy for your business, let us talk about how you can set your strategy in motion. There are a few steps you can take to make your affiliate program as profitable as possible for your business. As a B2B company, it is important that you attract the right affiliates. In comparison to a B2C company, it is a little harder to find affiliates that convert well. Since you are not selling products for people but rather for businesses, you need affiliates that have relationships with businesses. Bloggers tend to be a good place to start for B2B businesses when looking for affiliates.
They normally have a great reach and will be able to talk about your product to the right people. A great example of this is Bluehost, a web hosting company, that targets newbie bloggers in specific. A lot of Bluehost’s most successful affiliates are bloggers themselves that create content geared towards newbie bloggers. You will very often see that their affiliates will include Bluehost as a recommendation in their ‘How to Start a Blog’ guides or listicle articles that rank different web hosting services. These listicle articles will normally rank Bluehost as the best option and they do very well because they are attracting the right audience. Another good example is Ryan Robinson, a blogger, that does pretty well for himself and he has a very similar post. If you take a look at his income reports, you can see that a big portion of his income is coming from being an affiliate for Bluehost. It would be a good idea to reach out to your potential affiliates instead of hoping that they are going to come to you.
You can do this by sending them a quick email outlining your terms, commission rates, and how you would love to work with them. Once you figure out who your ideal affiliate is (just like Bluehost has), you can use that information to reach out to the right people and create a strong network of affiliates that promote your company. For a lot of B2B companies, their own customers serve as the best porn affiliates (https://www.crakrevenue.com) since they have a ton of connections within the industry. If you have made sure to provide them with great customer service in the past, there is a good chance they will want to team up with you in the future. It is not a bad idea to reach out to your own customers asking them if they would be willing to promote your products in exchange for a commission. This could be profitable for them as well and you would be able to grow your affiliate network.
A mistake that I often see businesses make is not approving all affiliates or keeping the affiliate program very small so that it comes across as more ‘premium’. Businesses that do not have an approval process for affiliates and accept anyone who applies simply have a better chance of getting referrals. There is no real benefit to rejecting affiliates. Even if they are really tiny bloggers with no reach, you could still make a sale out of the relationship. Even if you do not, it does not take much effort or money to allow that tiny blogger to create an affiliate account on your platform. Limiting who can join your network of affiliates only limits your own earning potential. According to 99firms, the majority of affiliate marketers (42.17%) prefer to promote between 1-10 products. This means that you are competing with every other company they are an affiliate for. For example, if you are a webinar software and one of your affiliates was creating a listicle post that covered the best webinar platforms, you would want to be on the top of that list because that would mean generating more leads for your company.