How to Launch a B2B Affiliate Marketing Program

Even if you've never used affiliate marketing yourself, the idea is so well-known that you undoubtedly already have some understanding of it. The concept behind affiliate marketing is that you pay someone else to promote the goods that your business sells. You might not be aware of the variety of affiliate marketing choices available, such as business-to-business and business-to-consumer, or B2B and B2C. Could you benefit from a B2B affiliate marketing program? What information is necessary to construct one? Here is a detailed how-to.

What Is B2B Affiliate Marketing?

First of all, what is B2B affiliate marketing?

B2C affiliate marketing is what most people are familiar with. Here's where you give an affiliate money to tell customers about your product. Consider sponsored Instagram posts, YouTube ad reads, and sidebar-linked blogs. These are all business-to-customer transactions, with the consumer being the one who views the advertisement and ultimately purchases the goods.

In contrast, B2B affiliate marketing compensates an affiliate for recommending your product to other companies. This is especially typical if your product is mostly used by other businesses as opposed to clients. For instance, you're more likely to require B2B affiliate marketing than B2C if you're a wholesaler trying to sell your products to a company that will resale them.

Top Reasons to Do B2B Affiliate Marketing

The main reason that B2B affiliate marketing is a good idea is simply that it works. According to SaaS Scout, a data research group, up to 30% of advertiser sales in 2022 came through affiliate programs. The better your affiliate programs, the better your sales, and with an impact on around 30% of your sales, you’ll benefit significantly from investing in this type of marketing.

B2B affiliate marketing also tends to have an extremely valuable customer lifecycle. The idea behind a lot of affiliate marketing is to raise brand awareness and create loyal customers. Eventually, the customer will likely come directly to you without stopping past the affiliate on the way through. That means you don’t have to pay the affiliate, and you have a loyal repeat customer.

It’s important to remember that B2B affiliate marketing also typically takes longer than B2C affiliate marketing. HubSpot specifically notes that your contacts will often be searching for a solution some time within 12-24 months. That means you need to get started as soon as possible, so you can turn those contacts into sales more quickly.

How to Get Started With B2B Affiliate Marketing

Now that you’re interested in B2B affiliate marketing, it’s time to actually set up your affiliate marketing processes. Here’s a quick three-step process to creating a thriving B2B affiliate marketing program for your company.

Step 1: Set Up a Service Geared Toward Quality Affiliate Partners

Quality affiliate partners are the first step to creating a thriving B2B affiliate marketing program. Stagnant and uncaring affiliates are one of the top reasons you might be having a hard time with your program overall. According to AM Navigator, 10% of your affiliates are responsible for 90% of your affiliate activity, which typically happens because you have low-quality affiliate partners or partners who don’t really want to push your information.

Step 2: Advertise Your B2B Marketing Program

Although you can certainly reach out to affiliates directly, it’s much easier to get affiliates to come to you instead. To grow your B2B affiliate marketing program, it’s important that you advertise the program to affiliates who may have connections with businesses that will enjoy your products. Create a great landing page with a prominent call to action. Make sure you quickly respond to people who answer that call to action.

Step 3: Maintain Motivation Over the Long Term

B2B affiliate relationships need to be long-lasting. It’s important that you build long-lasting relationships for all affiliate partners, but in B2B affiliates, where the customer may not be looking to act for as long as 24 months, it’s critical that you keep up with your affiliates. Consider creating referral tiers, where higher numbers of referrals increase the percentage the affiliate receives or publishing an affiliate newsletter to keep your affiliates in the loop. 

For Simpler B2B Affiliate Marketing, Collaborate with an Affiliate Marketing Technology.

You can automate the affiliate process with the use of affiliate marketing technologies. Although it is technically feasible for you to manually monitor every visitor to your website and then calculate the amount of commission each visitor will require, doing so is labor-intensive and usually ineffective. For this reason, affiliate marketing technology is used by the majority of businesses.

You can monitor every aspect of your affiliate marketing campaign when you utilize an affiliate marketing solution like Refersion. Some examples of this could be the commissions you pay affiliates, their typical conversion rate, and the overall revenue you receive from your affiliates. This might aid in the general development of your affiliate marketing campaign.

Many businesses find great benefits from affiliate marketing, so it's critical to optimize your business' affiliate marketing strategy. This is the ideal technique to create a B2B affiliate marketing strategy, if that's the appropriate decision for your company. You'll be well on your way to developing an affiliate marketing initiative that truly succeeds if you follow these suggestions.