Strategy #1
Affiliate programs are untapped opportunities to reach niche audiences.
We've found this tactic to be massively successful for SaaS companies and its a simple concept -- leverage someone with a huge following of a niche audience and get them to sell your product for you.
For some reason, if you do not know what an affiliate program is, its when you create a system to provide people outside your organization a commission for a paid user. There are tons of systems out there to make this turn key or you can build it into your platform. Basically it's giving them a link with a unique identifier to them and when a visitor comes, signs up and ultimately purchases, they get credit - and some cash from you.
In many cases with SaaS, the affiliate can earn a monthly commission on subscriptions. For affiliates, this is their dream life of having a lot of small recurring revenue streams.
Now, what is in it for your B2B SaaS? Access to targeted audiences. There are "influencers" ( we hate that word ) out there that have built huge focused audiences. Think of these couple examples:
- A real estate investor podcast with 500,000 subscribers.
- A sales guru youtuber with 1,000,000 subscribers.
- A customer service author and conference speaker with a 30,000 person mailing list.
And this list could go on and on of the types of folks out there that have built and audience of some sort. Depending on your niche and target audience, that could be micro communities of a couple thousand people or huge communities of hundreds of thousands.
The key here is that these audience pay attention to and trust the person they follow. So, why not tap into that trust and focused expertise with a target audience and exploit it.
For concrete proof, we have seen several B2B SaaS companies that have seen hockey stick growth from finding the right affiliate to sell their product for them. One mention a month to a 500,000 person audience that turns into 100 to 200 monthly trials. And since the audience is so niche, a high percentage of those trials become paid subscriptions.
So how does this affiliate tactic relate to Social Media for SaaS?
There are a number of reasons that we consider this part of Social Media as well as its own strategy.
First, typically these affiliates are leveraging Social Media to build and communicate with their audiences. The right affiliates will have larger numbers of followers or members of groups on Social channels. Therefore, one of the key ways to find and evaluate good potential affiliates is to research social channels for people that not only have large communities but have engaged communities.
Second, if you are going to leverage an affiliate that has a large social community, you should have a strong social presence as well. Why? A lot of these referrals will find their way to your social channels and evaluate your business on the frequency, quality of content and engagement.
There are countless brands that have been able to leverage the reach and trust of social media creators or trusted industry personalities to work on their behalf. Affiliate marketing is a significant source of branding and lead generation for brands in industries ranging from consumer goods to SaaS.
One example of a SaaS brand that used the reach and established reputation of industry experts to boost their social strategy is Monday.com. Following the start of the pandemic, Monday.com saw the opportunity remote work could provide their project management application. They knew it was an important moment to try and increase their market penetration.
Monday.com set out to recruit top industry experts to promote their brand, and use the platform of the affiliates on their behalf. Monday.com used organic social posts, blog content, and virtual panels that included these well-known industry figures to spread their brand. While details on the payment structure Monday.com reached with the experts wasn’t released, information on the results were.
Monday.com drew more than 300,000 organic impressions on social media and had more than 3,000 unique viewers on their live stream featuring these experts within the first week. The combination of Monday.com’s great product with industry leaders led to massive results, pushing Monday.com closer to their goal of becoming a leading project management software.