When discussing affiliate marketing, the first thing that comes to our mind is AdSense-like websites where different advertisements provide various offers and redirects to different online stores. Sometimes it reminds us of review-type sites where experienced writers present different products. But, that is not the only way affiliate marketing works. Lead generation using affiliate marketing depicts the true potential of affiliate marketing. Irrespective of the size of the company, affiliate marketing can be used for lead generation. A lot of people don’t even know that lead generation and affiliate marketing are two sides of the same coin. Lead generation using affiliate marketing is one of the most impactful ways to create a lead channel. Since Leadrop deals with the highest-quality and most credible leads, we are going to share some of the best tips on lead generation when using affiliate marketing.

Lead Generation Using Affiliate Marketing

When the goal is increasing leads, here is how brands can make sure that the B2B affiliate marketing program will drive a pipeline of growth.

Connecting with Right Affiliates: Yes, finding the right affiliate for promoting your product is indeed a tedious task. But the key to success is to partner with the right affiliates. It is better not to leverage an affiliate network that hosts thousands of affiliates while charging an excessive commission rate. On the other hand, a more practical approach to lead generation using affiliate marketing is to curate a team of affiliates that are ideally suited to represent your brand. It cannot be denied that people love to be recognized. Reach out to them without mentioning the affiliate program. Instead, engage with their brand, establish a relationship, and it will become easier to attract affiliates to join your program.

Offering a Competitive Commission Structure: The incentives for B2B affiliate marketing programs is tricky. One way is, for most of the successful B2B brands, to provide a small incentive to pass over a qualified lead. If the lead closes, then the affiliate is offered a larger commission for giving a new customer. This is effective because, when an affiliate comes to know that there is a short-term incentive involved for simply sending qualified lead, then it will remove a critical barrier for participation and ramp up the affiliate activity. The good thing about this is, it doesn’t have to be a big-budget campaign. Even if the incentives for qualified leads is low, it will still increase the lead generation activity from affiliates. And just like any other marketing techniques, with more marketing activity, you will get more qualified leads in your pipeline. Thus, you have a better chance of driving a healthy ROI.

Providing Informative Content: When it is about lead generation using affiliate marketing, you have to educate your members. You can create a step-by-step guide (a video will be better) to make sure that your affiliates are ramped up and ready to start sharing your products by maintaining your company guidelines. It is crucial to make sure that you have easily accessible digital assets and tools for your program. This will ensure that your affiliates are keeping up with your brand’s style. If you invest in educating your affiliates, it is highly likely that your program will have higher adoption rates and lasting relationships.

Identifying a Target Audience: Lead generation using affiliate marketing includes identifying a target audience that will make every other step much more effective. You have to pinpoint your ideal client, and then it will become much easier in developing campaigns that appeal to them. It will also help in recruiting affiliates with the right audience. You have to invest some time in knowing which leads will have the highest conversion rates. Are there any characteristic features that your biggest spenders have in common? You have to identify those customers that have the highest lifetime value. This will help you in targeting more customers of the same value.

Defining Measurable Goals: While increasing lead generation using affiliate marketing, it is essential to identify the outcome. If you don’t have a well-defined goal, it becomes almost impossible to measure the success of a campaign. Here are some things that you ought to ask yourself. Are you planning to capture their email address so that you can quickly sell through an autoresponder sequence? Are you looking for a phone number to set up a meeting? Do you want them to make a purchase immediately? Once you agree on the desired outcome, it will enable you to orchestrate an affiliate campaign that is designed to achieve goals. More importantly, you shall be able to define perfectly aligned commission incentives.

Partnering with High-Quality Publishers: Speaking of lead generation using affiliate marketing, know that most of the affiliate campaigns, 80% of the results are driven by only 20% of the publishers. It is tempting to approve every application and create an army of affiliates. But in reality, only a fraction of them are going to be star performers. This is why it is advised to focus on recruiting the partners that will deliver results. Bloggers and content creators that publish regularly and have a following in your target area are the ones that can deliver results. Concentrate your resources on supporting and recruiting these types of affiliates, and you shall have much better results from the campaign.

How to Choose Lead Generation Affiliate Networks?

Now that we have shared the most important tips and tactics on lead generation using affiliate marketing, let us give you some brief info on how to choose excellent lead generation affiliate networks.

• Well, you are indeed looking for customers that are interested in your products or services. Thus, you ought to go with a network that has got excellent affiliate producers in your vertical. You have to do a fundamental ‘competitive intelligence analysis’ on what your immediate competition is doing in the affiliate marketing field.
  
• Once you identify the affiliate networks in which your competitors are running their affiliate programs, you ought to analyze both the performance of those programs (rankings and conversion rates) and their structure (payout, performance incentive, cookie life and more).
  
• Finally, for lead generation using affiliate marketing, you have to consider the affiliate network where the competition is going to harvest the fruit. If their affiliate programs show success on the network, then there are affiliates available on the network that makes them successful. Of course, there will be other variables to consider, but this is going to give you an initial idea of what should be done.