February 21, 2023

S1E3 - Affiliate Marketing Simplified With Evan Weber

43 minutes

Why should you care about affiliate marketing for your B2B SaaS?

We talk with Evan Weber who has been in the industry for a very long term since the inception of affiliate marketing. He has been consulting for over 350 companies in the last 15 years, doing media buying and managing the ad campaign on the agency media platforms. He has plenty of references in B2B, thus one of the direct consumer and digital marketing advertising experts. In addition, he has traveled extensively, which allows him to know what would work.

Our guest emphasizes that conversion rate should be a key focus area of the company. Continuously strive to increase your conversion rate by growing the number of people registering and becoming paying customers. An excellent conversion rate effectively improves digital advertising and makes money for their affiliates. Before launching an affiliate program, ensure you have an excellent conversion rate. It is only then that the affiliates can make meaningful returns. A takeaway quote from him is:,

"You will not be able to scale without a conversion rate optimization being an active activity of the company months on end."

What is affiliate marketing? Affiliate marketing refers to a third-party referral to clicks that converts to leads or sales. These include bloggers, influencers, other companies, or donors that a company can turn into affiliates. Since affiliates are often not the company's customers, striving to convert your customers and free users into affiliates who, in turn, give you referrals is crucial. It is, therefore, important to push your Saas affiliate marketing program to people in a friendly way that offers them clear benefits such as free trials or payouts.

Spend money to make money. It would be best if you made it highly lucrative for other people to recommend your company in exchange for paid clients or new leads through commission or kickback fee. Some SaaS affiliate companies can pay their affiliates for a given period (say a year), while others may opt for a more lucrative customer lifetime payment.

What are the benefits of a B2B SaaS company having an affiliate marketing program?

It is performance-based marketing that only pays affiliates for the traffic they drive to your website. To make business sense, the payment to the affiliates should be between 20% - 30% of your revenue. Also, the SaaS affiliate program is risk-free in the sense that you do not risk your advertising dollars in an expensive digital marketing campaign.

The right time is when you have increased your conversion rate adequately and run other traffic sources to the website to try to get them to convert. He suggests 3-6 months before setting up a SaaS affiliate program. An affiliate program is not the company's savior but rather an important complement to other organizational efforts, such as successful conversion rate and outreach.

What are the common mistakes that companies make in affiliate marketing? One of the main problems is launching an affiliate marketing program before the company is ready and expecting to work. It should not be the first go-to alternative before an enabling environment exists at the company. Secondly, it often boils down to how the company strives to bond with its affiliates or find other companies to have a reciprocal relationship with SaaS companies often benefit from reverse affiliate marketing on their dashboard, often non-competitors with a similar audience. You only need a few affiliate companies because 2 or 3 a month can be regarded as a success. This way, you can benefit from dashboard swaps, email swaps, the partnership offers, SaaS blogs, influencers, or video content creation with other B2B SaaS affiliate companies.

This show is hosted by Joran Hofman, founder of Reditus.

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