7 Reasons Why SaaS Affiliate Marketing Boosts Sales!

You have an early-stage SaaS startup, and you are looking for customers to try out your product. Like many other startup entrepreneurs, you reach out to your ‘good’ friends in the same field, hoping they can help you find new customers. Instead, they only explain how all startups fail. Thanks a lot! Here’s a way you won’t have to convince your friends’ connections on LinkedIn to try out your product: SaaS Affiliate Marketing.

Click here and go straight to the 7 Reasons

Let’s start with the basics. What is affiliate marketing for eCommerce stores?

Suppose I have an online store that sells orange toys. ↓ I have little money to advertise my store, and my SEO efforts haven’t shown results yet. In short, no one knows about me. Despite my best efforts, no one is buying even one orange balloon. This is exactly why affiliate marketing was invented. ‘Affiliates’ are like your salespeople; they promote your products within their digital sphere in exchange for a sales commission.

How? They share your product through unique links in their media (which includes websites, blogs, apps, social media, YouTube channels, links in podcast descriptions, and basically anywhere you can place a link). Now, we just have to wait for someone to make a purchase. If someone buys through an affiliate link, we transfer a percentage of the sale amount to the affiliate. In our example, if an orange train is sold for $100 through a link from an affiliate’s website, and the pre-agreed percentage of the sale is 20%, then $20 will go to the affiliate.

Who can be an affiliate? Everyone! However, the best affiliates are those with a lot of influence—whether it’s a viral TikTok, a fantastic YouTube channel with millions of views, or a recommendation site with significant traffic. The main goal is to sell.

Affiliate marketing is responsible for 16% of global eCommerce sales.

What is SaaS Affiliate Marketing (In 3 Steps)

1. Finding ‘affiliates’ who will distribute your SaaS product through their media (which includes websites, blogs, apps, social media, YouTube channels, links in podcast descriptions, and basically anywhere you can place a link) is essential.
2. Provide affiliates with unique links to your website. Each affiliate is given a different link so that you can later identify in Google Analytics exactly which websites the customers came from.
3. Agree on a commission, usually between 10% and 30% of the sale. Whenever a sale occurs through the unique link on the affiliate’s site, the pre-agreed commission goes to the affiliate.

7 Reasons Why SaaS Affiliate Marketing Boosts Sales!

1. Test the Product
2. SEO
3. Generate Revenue Fast
4. Word of Mouth
5. Accurate calculation of Cost
6. Freelance Salespeople
7. Low entry and exit costs

1. Test the Product

When using SaaS affiliate marketing, especially for early-stage startups, a multitude of sales channels suddenly opens up, allowing us to reach many potential customers. If there are no sales or only a few sales relative to our expectations, it indicates that there is a problem with our SaaS product. Something is not working, and we need to understand exactly what it is—and preferably as soon as possible. Expert affiliates have valuable insights when it comes to SaaS products, and they will be happy to help emerging startups. Some may even agree to promote the product only after they have subscribed and tried it out themselves.

2. SEO

If only we could bring Google flowers and chocolate and be done with it. Google’s search engine is the largest display window in the world, and everyone wants to appear on it. And not just to appear, but on the first page, of course! So the question of what Google wants today is important as well as tricky (because Google changes its mind every few months). But what is certain is that, for now, Google still loves backlinks, and if it notices that links from your site appear on other sites, it ranks your site higher on Google. When we use affiliate marketing, we share our site links on other sites, which gets us one step closer to the first page of Google search results.

3. Generate Revenue Fast

When we use affiliate marketing, we can’t use the excuse that no one knows us. Good products are, in most cases, sold through affiliate marketing, primarily through expert “affiliates.” Affiliate marketing is an excellent sales channel for instant revenue when we need to Generate revenue fast and do not want to wait forever until all our marketing initiatives work.

4. Word of mouth

The dream of every startup company is to be talked about. Word of mouth, as they say. Without PR, without marketing, and without spending a single penny on advertising. Just for the fun of it. I really wish all readers that this would happen to them. That everyone will talk about their SaaS product just because they want to. So if your startup is in the waiting phase for word of mouth to start working (long wait), I suggest you start with SaaS affiliate marketing. Although you pay the “affiliates” a percentage of the sale, they still encourage dialogue about the product. And if the product is good, maybe the dream that everybody will talk about your product might come true.

So, if your startup is in the waiting phase for word of mouth to start working (which can be a long wait), I suggest you begin with SaaS affiliate marketing.

5. Accurate calculation of Cost

Yes. Accurate calculation. Not pay per click, not pay per visit, and not pay per impression. You pay a commission! Fixed and pre-agreed percentage of the sale.

6. Freelance Salespeople

In Affiliate Marketing, the “Affiliates” are the company’s salespeople, but they are not the company employees. The Affiliates will sell the product as freelancers. There is no need to recruit, train and hire salespeople. The best affiliates are great salespeople.

7. Low entry and exit costs

Getting into a SaaS affiliate marketing program is pretty easy. One can easily connect to one of the leading affiliate marketing platforms or work directly with the most prominent affiliates. No entry fee, just subscription-based. If you are not satisfied, there is no commitment and no additional costs.

Click here for the best SaaS Affiliate Marketing Software

Question-based recommendations for SaaS Affiliate Marketing tools:

Which software is best for SaaS affiliate marketing? (Top 5)

PartnerStack – the most recommended SaaS marketing software.

OSI Affiliate – one of the best SaaS affiliate marketing software.

LeadDyno – one of the best SaaS affiliate marketing software.

Everflow – one of the best SaaS affiliate marketing software.

Impact – one of the best SaaS affiliate marketing software.

You’ve reached the end of the post:  7 Great Reasons Why SaaS Affiliate Marketing Boost Sales! Hope you got the answer to What is SaaS affiliate marketing?

To read more posts on SaaS Startup Marketing, click here – in my SaaS Marketing Blog

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