8 Reasons Your SaaS Business Should Build an Affiliate Marketing Network
Affiliate networks mean big revenue growth for SaaS companies, so it is a no brainer to start one. Here are all the reasons it should be at the top of your strategic plan.
Connects You to a Highly Targeted Audience
SaaS affiliates with a trusted audience are constantly seeking opportunities to monetize their viewership. Choosing high-quality, relevant affiliates who relate to your business or are industry experts will bring targeted traffic to your site. Not to mention, utilizing new channels can be a major cost for your company, but affiliates can promote your service, software, or product by connecting with leads through their podcasts, blogs, forums, social accounts, groups, or other channels; name recognition goes a long way.
Generate More Leads and Sales
Setting up an affiliate program is a great way to grow your marketing efforts quickly. Because affiliate marketing is a commission-based model, it’s in the best interest of the partners that you work with to generate as many leads and sales as possible. The diversification of your audience through affiliate marketing will maximize your reach and get customers through a myriad of channels you might not be actively targeting with your own marketing efforts.
Costs Close to Nothing
Low-cost marketing strategy? Sign me up…
You don’t need to invest your own funds into advertising your products, your affiliates essentially take care of that for you. And you only pay for successful conversions. The main upfront cost of setting up an affiliate program starts at less than $100 per year.
Enhances Existing Marketing Efforts
An affiliate program is not a standalone marketing method, but it can be used to improve your already existing, and potentially traditional, campaigns. Setting up an affiliate program can also help boost your website or services SEO as it can increase your domain authority.
Improves ROI and Reduces CAC
Because running an affiliate marketing program does not require large upfront investments and you just financially contribute to conversions you choose and take, they can improve your return on investment (ROI). While instituting an affiliate program can increase your ROI, it can simultaneously decrease your customer acquisition cost (CAC) because your affiliate network is contributing to that legwork.
Increases Brand Awareness and Visibility
It is vital that you are consistently building a good reputation for your SaaS business. There are almost 600,000 tech companies in the United States, making it really difficult for new businesses to accelerate quickly and distinguish themselves from the competition.
However, having a myriad of affiliates talking about your product or service on a wide range of platforms will help build brand awareness and improve visibility for your business. Additionally, utilizing the influence of affiliate marketers, you are able to provide social proof that your business is reliable and reputable.
Fosters Low Risk / High Reward
Because it is so easy to set up an affiliate program, the legwork ultimately comes from identifying ideal programs to enlist your business in. This is a process that should be done with performance data analysis, trend monitoring, and identifying audiences you wish to target. Once you have your strategy narrowed, it’s a matter of interpreting which influencers or bloggers to target, review sites to find stake on, etc. It’s also incredibly easy to scale; there is no new need to hire more sales reps or marketing strategists to keep up with demand. Instead, your business can create an excellent program, add more high-quality affiliates, and watch the results roll in.
Free Trial Users
Content creators and marketers more often gravitate to a SaaS product or software that has a free trial. If your business offers a free trial, your product will be more attractive to both marketers and their audiences because website visitors driven by affiliates are more likely to join your network or sign-up if they can test your service, product, or software for free first.