Using affiliate marketing for lead generation is one of the most genius practices since slathering jam on sliced bread.

And we mean that quite literally.

From lightening the load on your marketing team to gaining access to niche audiences, affiliate marketing has many benefits.

If you’ve been wondering if affiliate marketing could be an effective avenue to help your brand boost sales, but you’re still on the fence, you’ve come to the right spot.

In today’s article, we’re peeling back the curtain on three core reasons you should use affiliate marketing for lead generation.

We’ll also give you three bonus tips to help you make the most of your affiliate marketing campaigns.

Ready to learn more?

Let’s begin!

3 Reasons Why You Should Use Affiliate Marketing For Lead Generation

1. To Skip The Trust-Building Process

Gaining new leads takes work and strategy. It takes a marketing team that not only knows what they’re doing but also has a passion for building trust with cold audiences.

But here’s the deal with trust …It doesn’t happen overnight.

If you stop to think about the brands you know and love, you may have forgotten about a time when you, too, felt skeptical about giving them a try. But, over time, these brands won you over through consistent nurturing, personalization, and valuable content.

Related: 3 types of content you should be creating every day

Now, you may be unable to imagine your routine without the products and services you’ve purchased from said brands.

But with affiliate marketing? You get to skip all of that.

Because when you partner with affiliate marketers, your brand can come in front of established, curated audiences — without lifting a finger toward the trust-building process.

In other words, affiliates have already done the hard labor to grow their audiences, so why not reap the benefits of it?

For instance, in SaaS marketing, it can be a challenge to get people to subscribe to use a tool if no one is recommending it or talking about how useful it is.

That’s when affiliate marketing truly shines.

Prospects not only get a chance to read through SaaS recommendations and reviews by affiliate marketers — they also get the chance to become more familiar with the benefits of using those tools and learning how they work.

Brands that sell sensitive products, such as minoxidil, antidepressants, etc., may also find it difficult to earn trust. But when an affiliate shares their personal experience about how a product improved their life, it can help audience members struggling with the same issue feel seen and lean into the possibility of seeking relief.

To help affiliates nurture more trust-building when promoting your brand, consider asking your happy customers for positive reviews and hand these over to your affiliates.

Bonus points if you can gather video testimonials, like the example in the PetScreening testimonial below.

In this example, the testimonial features a solid text quote from a happy customer, their name and title, and a corresponding video of the customer gushing about their love for PetScreening.

Affiliates can embed testimonials like these in sales pages, landing pages, blog articles, and more!

2. To Increase Your Business Valuation

Building up your lead list isn’t just a marketing strategy. It also contributes to your business’s overall worth, an especially important benefit if you sell your business one day.

To put this in perspective, imagine yourself as an investor.

Let’s say, you’re interested in acquiring five businesses by the end of 2024.

As you venture out to discover your first brand to invest in, you come across a few options:

A luxury apparel brand with a small, but loyal customer base and a robust, warm lead list
An organic soda company with a decent customer base and some social media followers, but no established lead list or lead list in the works
A new eCommerce store without an established customer base and a decent lead list

Given these three options, which one would you choose?

If you’re thinking what we’re thinking, you’d probably choose option one, because:

It’s a luxury brand, so its products have wider profit margins.
A loyal customer base is extremely valuable and can take years to curate.
Its robust, warm lead list means the business has a high scaling potential.

And that’s why affiliate marketing is an invaluable strategy.

When experienced affiliate marketers work toward building up your lead lists, they fast-track your brand’s scaling potential. The more high-quality leads they provide, the more conversion (and overall growth) opportunities you have.

3. To Save Time and Money On Marketing

And speaking of building up your lead lists, have you ever stopped to calculate the amount of money your business spends on lead generation?

Even if you have a decent ROI, you can still reduce costs further by starting an affiliate program.

How so?

Because affiliates only get paid if they bring you a customer.

When you work with affiliates, they run lead generation campaigns and work to convert leads as soon as possible. You then pay affiliates a commission based on the customers they brought in or their sales.

That means you get the benefit of grabbing contact information from the leads they acquire for free, and you only pay them if they make a sale.

What a genius way to save time and money on marketing, right?

3 Tips To Make The Most Of Your Affiliate Marketing Campaigns

Now that we’ve broken down the core reasons you should use affiliate marketing for lead generation, let’s look at how to make the most of your affiliate marketing campaigns.

1. Set Goals and Monitor Performance

Boost your affiliate program’s ROI by setting specific goals and monitoring performance.

Then, consider using a tool like Plus to track and organize data based on your campaign stats. By tracking how your affiliates perform, you can use the dashboard to effectively strategize and make marketing decisions elsewhere in your business.

To make the most of this tip, consider meeting with your affiliates one-on-one to set realistic performance goals together and brainstorm campaign ideas.

2. Set Affiliates Up For Success

While affiliates are pros on their own, there are still ways you can support them to set them up for success.

So, first things first. Hand over any necessary branding elements, images, and content you’d like them to include in their affiliate marketing campaigns when promoting your business.

Make sure your affiliates also have access to any necessary tools they’ll need to design and manage campaigns.

For instance, if you’d like them to include images, ensure they have access to relevant stock image sites, graphic design apps, and photo editing tools.

Related: What are the best photo-editing apps for Instagram?

It’s also important to make sure your affiliates have access to lead management tools they can use across a variety of marketing channels.

For instance, if they’re heavy on social media marketing, provide access to tools and integrations that can help automate lead generation campaigns across social channels. Consider using a comprehensive tool like LeadsBridge to gather and manage leads from various channels, using its powerful integrations.

It’s also important to make sure the time affiliates spend marketing your business is worth it to them.

How much you decide to pay your affiliates will depend on your unique business model, but don’t be stingy!

Meet with an accountant or business advisor for insight on how much to charge affiliates per sale.

A good rule of thumb? The higher the sale, the higher the commission.

While affiliates wouldn’t expect to earn $50 for selling a 20-dollar toilet brush, they would expect a generous commission for selling products and services at higher price points as they’re more difficult to sell.

For instance, Tailor Brands, a one-stop shop for starting a small business, offers an effective affiliate program that allows affiliates to earn up to $500 per referral.

That’s because Tailor Brands offers a wide array of products and services that could easily cost a business owner hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars.

Since each new customer has the potential to cultivate a high CLTV, Tailor Brands values its affiliates deeply and pays them accordingly.

3. Secure Your Campaigns and Protect Sensitive Data

Web application firewalls (WAFs) are an important tool for protecting websites and the data they collect.

In the context of affiliate marketing for lead generation, a WAF can provide an additional layer of security for any data affiliates collect via online forms and marketing channels.

This can help ensure that the data is accurate and secure, and can be used to create effective and secure lead-generation campaigns.

Bottom line?

Always secure your campaigns and protect sensitive data.

Final Thoughts

Using affiliate marketing for lead generation is a strategic way to skip the trust-building process, increase your business valuation, and save time and money on marketing.

With affiliates on your side, you can scale your business quicker, remove some of the burdens off your marketing team, and — of course — build your lead list strategically and sustainably.

If you’ve been looking for a sign to implement affiliate marketing into your business, this is it.

Are you ready to embrace the power of affiliate marketing for lead generation?

Here’s to your success!

Digital Marketing Blog