How To Recruit Affiliates For Your Online Business

Guidelines on Attracting Affiliates to Support Your Business Growth

Whether you are launching your first business or expanding an existing company, affiliate marketing is a great way to grow your customer base. After all, why go through the trouble of building a promotional plan, ad campaigns, and managing relevant resources when you can get others to do it for you? By integrating affiliate marketing into your strategy you partner with third parties that offer similar products or services to their larger audience. In exchange for promoting products, services, or events through their media resources, affiliates receive a commission when users purchase a product.

However, as with any business venture, there are pros and cons to consider before rushing into affiliate marketing headfirst. On the one hand, it takes time and effort to find affiliates, maintain relationships, and coordinate contracts. You need to have certain knowledge in order to launch your program successfully and start earning from day one instead of fixing bugs and testing what might work. To ensure the right start, companies may choose to hire an experienced affiliate marketing manager or outsource some tasks to an agency. However, the rewards from running an affiliate program can be significant if done correctly. The key is finding the right people to partner with from the outset so that everyone benefits from collaboration.

Here are some tips for recruiting affiliates for your online business.

Affiliate Program in a Nutshell

An affiliate program is a marketing strategy that allows you to enlist others to promote your products or services and earn a commission for every sale they generate. Affiliates can be bloggers, social media influencers, or any thematic online shop that agree to promote your products and services exclusively. Affiliate programs let you tap into new audiences and expand your marketing reach. For example, if you sell a product aimed at entrepreneurs, you can consider recruiting affiliates that have active blogs for small businesses or individuals. By promoting your products or services bloggers create a mutually beneficial relationship that benefits everyone involved.   

What to Look for When Recruiting Affiliates

As with any business venture, it is important to look for affiliates that have an established audience. It doesn’t though mean that you should only work with nano-influencers with millions of subscribers. Your affiliates can as well be micro-influencers with a number of subscribers between 1,000 to 100,000 followers, but their audience must be engaged and genuinely interested in the vision that a media source promotes. If you are a well-established company with a world-famous product then obviously your strategy is a partnership with big brands and top affiliates only. Otherwise, you risk undervaluing your product or service.

Before you start promoting your product to affiliates, you need to make sure that the product or service you are promoting has a clear call to action so that affiliates know how to pitch it to potential customers. In affiliate marketing, it is not only the choice of affiliates that determines the success, but also that as a product owner you make it clear for users how they could use it more than once.

Top Places to Advertise Your Affiliate Program 

• Industry events

Attending networking events, affiliate marketing and ad conferences can be a great place to find potential affiliates for your business. Many businesses like marketing agencies, networks, ad technologies, and other affiliate marketing companies typically have a table at the events and are eager to meet for a conversation. 

• Affiliate forums 

Affiliate marketing forums are another great place to start looking for affiliates. There are a ton of different forums out there for affiliates to network, ask questions, and discuss their businesses. You can check the top affiliate marketing forums, where affiliates discuss industry news, trends, and challenges, share advice, look for traffic, etc. There are also a number of affiliate forums that are specific to certain industries, like travel and tourism, eCommerce, and health and wellness. 

• Landing page

Create a dedicated landing page to advertise your affiliate program. It will be the core page with all information about the affiliate program terms & conditions. You can attract new affiliates with an outstanding design and highlighted benefits of joining your program.

• Email signature 

How many emails do you send per day? If you are a business owner, especially a start-up one, we bet you get and send a lot. Why not use this as an extra promotional channel for your affiliate program. Mentioning your partner program in an email signature is one of the most unobtrusive, but memorable methods. 

• Marketplaces / Affiliate program directories

There are several dedicated marketplaces, or so-called affiliate directories, where you can submit your affiliate program to find new affiliates. These websites are full of diverse affiliates who would be more than happy to promote new products.

One of the most well-known are:

• Affiliate Program Database
• High Paying Affiliate Programs
• 100 Best Affiliate Programs
• AffiliatePrograms.com
• Affiliate Watch
• Green Affiliate Programs
• AffiliateSeeking.com.

You need to meet the requirements of these marketplaces first, but once you’re approved and you decide what products to sell, you can also use those marketplaces to find potential affiliates. You can often get in touch with the other sellers on those marketplaces and ask them to promote your products to their customers.

• Banners on your website

As another alternative, you can place a banner on your website advertising your affiliate program and inviting people to join. You don’t need to provide any details, just a simple banner with a link to your affiliate program landing page. You can place the banner on your homepage, on any sales or landing pages, and on any blog posts related to your products or services. Not all sign-ups will end up in high-performing affiliates, but you’ll anyway find potential affiliates for longer-term cooperation. So it’s definitely worth trying.

• Link in the footer

Many companies advertise their affiliate programs in the footer on the main landing page. It has grown into a popular tendency as more and more companies have it this way, which also indicates that it is a working method.

• PPC Campaigns

Running PPC campaigns for your business is a great way to attract new customers and grow your business, and you can also use this strategy to find potential affiliates for your business. Make a catchy ad with a link to the program landing page and target the campaign to your preferred partner profile. Most of the time, you’ll be able to find people who would love to promote your products or services and would be happy to link to your site or sales page in exchange for a percentage of sales.

• Reach to your existing customers

Asking your customers to become affiliates for your business can be a great way to expand your reach. However, you should be careful about whom you ask. You need to approach those who are, first, totally satisfied with the product, second, they get along with your team. Ask you customer support team for a recommendation. They are the ones who know your customers the best, thus they will be able to make a list of ones who will be eager to join your affiliate program, or may even become product ambassadors. 

Wrapping Up

If you want your affiliate program to succeed, it is important to choose affiliates wisely. You don’t want to partner with affiliates who aren’t going to promote your products, who spam around, or who don’t know anything about your business. If you follow these tips and put some effort into finding affiliates, you’re sure to find some great partners to promote your products and services. Best of luck!

And if you are looking for a platform to manage your affiliates and track campaigns, have a look at IREV Partner Platform and Lead Distribution.