Affiliate Partnerships: Why business should consider them and how to get started?

Affiliate marketing is an important marketing tactic that is often seen on social media. It is estimated to reach $5.4 billion in 2017 and is expected to reach $8.2 billion by 2022. Affiliate partnerships create an opportunity for businesses to connect with audiences who are most likely to want their product, and to advertise through someone who has a vested interest in whether or not their audience buys. In influencer marketing, a company pays for a sponsored post, or the service of an influencer promoting the product on their page, but with affiliate marketing, the influencer knows that more financial compensation is available if they can get their audience to purchase with their code. This inevitably ups the ante of the content's quality.

In this article, Fordeer'll give you reasons you should consider affiliate marketing as a business operator.

What is an Affiliate Partner?

An arrangement between your affiliate program and another affiliate program, person, or company to jointly market each other's products is known as an affiliate partnership. This strategy offers a variety of advantages:

• The reach of your brand can be increased. With very little effort on your part, you can increase the size of your audience by collaborating with an associate partner.
• Both brands are capable of gaining credibility. You'll be able to establish your brand's credibility and emerge as a more dependable alternative for customers as more companies and brands partner with you.
• You take advantage of a growing opportunity. Working with your partners will teach you skills that you can use to expand your company in the future.

You can see that a reliable affiliate partner can give you excellent results. Hence, you can expand your company spontaneously and with little work (aside from setting up the partnership and maintaining that relationship).

Why should business consider the Affiliate Partnership?

Add affiliate opportunities to influencer relationships

Create an affiliate partnership opportunity to pitch to influencers and ask for them to promote your product in exchange for freebies. Mandy Jones with AffiliateWP recommends creating co-branded landing pages that feature both the influencer and your product on backpages of your website, and personalizing the web address to make it easy for influencers to relay the info efficiently. This can be done with any affiliate, but as public figures, influencers will appreciate and make good use of this kind of personalization.

Partner with big name brands

Affiliate partnerships go beyond individuals and influencers, and can be extended to big name brands or similar companies. Home Depot has an affiliate partnership with product recommendation site Consumer Search, which is a win-win for both parties. Danial Daychopan, the founder and CEO of Plutus, recently rolled out affiliate partnerships with Amazon, AirBNB, Nike, and others through their "Plutus Perks" program. This partnership allows Plutus users to earn 5% back on cryptocurrency for any purchase made on Amazon. Plutus Programme members are then incentivized to purchase from Amazon over competitors because of the cashback opportunity. Know what your company can uniquely offer to these brands and use this insight in your discussions with them.

Take advantage of backlink opportunities

When engaging with influencers, it is important to look beyond what they can do on Instagram. One way to do this is through blogs or articles with backlink potential, which is an easy way to partner with influencers who don't usually promote products or do advertising. Some influencers or content creators look for these opportunities on affiliate aggregators like VigLink, which automates access to more than 30,000 affiliate programs and monetizes the links on their site for them. Using a site like this will make it easier for you to manage these partnerships if many bloggers or influencers sign up. Affiliate marketing is a must for more targeted exposure, so consider which of these options works best for your company and what you're selling.

Who can be a SaaS affiliate partner?

Affiliates are a wide variety of people, businesses, and organizations that can help a SaaS company grow their reach and make their program more successful. The most common affiliate partnerships for SaaS companies are ambassadors, content and comparison sites, influencers, communities and associations, strategic brand-to-brand and native integrations, traditional affiliates, and packaged software companies.

Ambassadors can incentivize people to evangelize for your product, such as Dropbox, which went from 100,000 users to 4,000,000 users in 15 months. Content and comparison sites incentivize authors to include your product in more content and provide more thorough solution explanations. Influencers can be found among consultants and thought leaders who use your products or could benefit from them.

Communities and associations can be referral partners, such as trade associations and civic groups. Traditional affiliates include coupon, deal, and loyalty sites. Packaged software companies have long had a presence in traditional affiliate channels.

The most effective SaaS affiliate networks emphasize a variety of partners. Given that different partner types produce varied results, your organization must determine the best combination of partners to achieve its business objectives.

Certain collaborators, like affiliates and native integrations, can present your brand in front of your target market at the appropriate point in the buying cycle. Later on, other people might be more helpful in influencing renewals, retention, and expansion. Your optimum partner mix will depend on your target industry, region, and maturity.

How to create successful affiliate partnerships?

Seeing the value of an affiliate program is one thing; knowing clearly how to set one up is a whole different game. Let’s find it out with these great ways as below:

Participate in industry events

Industry events can provide two partnership-related benefits: meeting influencers and meeting program managers. To network successfully, it is important to prepare for the event, be genuine, follow up with leads, and get involved in community groups online. Facebook Groups is a great way to make meaningful connections with others.

Reach out to compatible programs

Compatible programs are those that have similar audience and goals to you, but have complementary differences that will benefit both brands. They can have two main benefits: expand your reach through your partner's audience and extend authority to you through association. To find a compatible program, use social listening, find programs with strong followings, and highlight the benefits of starting a partnership. With a compatible program on your side, you can now work to expand your reach even further and grow your own affiliate program.

Start a brand ambassador program

A brand ambassador program involves recruiting social media influencers and paying them to market your brand to their audience. It can have numerous benefits, such as expanding your brand's reach and boosting your brand's authority. To get started, it is important to understand your target demographic, find social influencers that fit your demographic, and offer irresistible benefits such as free "merch" and other incentives. When looking for influencers, don't get too hung up on follower numbers, as high engagement can be worth their weight in gold.

Conclusion

For every business, affiliate marketing may not be appropriate. That might not make sense, for instance, if your profit margins are low; it would be challenging for a business owner to pay affiliates while still making a profit.

Depending on the promoter's strategy for promoting your products, affiliate programs need to pay a share of each sale in order for it to be worthwhile for the promoter's time and money. Checking to see if other businesses in your field have developed affiliate programs is one of the greatest methods to determine if they are a good fit for your company.

When your business expands, creating trustworthy partnerships should be your first priority. The same might be said for your affiliate partners as a result, therefore investing time in them is essential.