How To ELEVATE Your SaaS Growth With Affiliate Marketing

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Much like B2B marketing, software as a service (SaaS) products are part of a fast-growing industry. As our advances in technology increase, so do our options to choose from - so, it’s hard to figure out the best way to stand out from the crowd and grow your business as a SaaS brand.

I’ll save you some time - the answer is in Affiliate marketing. 

Even though the industry is tailored to e-Commerce, marketing for SaaS providers has been overlooked for quite some time. But, SaaS businesses have plenty to offer affiliates - from free trials to co-branding, it’s as if Affiliate marketing was MADE for SaaS.

So much so that we’ve launched our ELEVATE Summit for publishers, affiliates, affiliate managers and SaaS suppliers who work within the partnership economy. This event is dedicated to helping you navigate future trends and gain practical insight from industry experts who openly share their knowledge and experience in a live format.

Find out more about ELEVATE at the end of this newsletter, but until then, let’s get back to it…

As a SaaS brand, your potential customers are turning to influencers, communities and associates to help them wade through the excess of information in their social feeds, inbox and even on the street.

But, Affiliate marketing looks different for SaaS.

From partnership programs, social influencers and even distribution, things get a little bit more complicated when it comes to digital solutions. But, that doesn’t mean that it’s not worth it. So, let's tap into my top tips to hack your growth with Affiliate marketing…

1. Go Back to Basics: Determine Your Goals and KPIs

Before you do anything else, you need to have a plan of action. When it comes to Affiliate marketing, this comes in the form of your KPIs, or your key performance indicators. They help you find the right balance between profitability and ROI, whilst being able to easily compare and contrast your results over time. Essentially, they let you see what’s working and what isn’t at a glance.

There are plenty of different ways to measure your performance over time, but the key ones to follow are:

• Sales conversion rate
• Click-through rate
• Cost per acquisition
• Average order value
• Revenue per day

These statistics will help you to stay on top of your goals and optimise your campaigns throughout your program, so don’t ignore them.

2. Know Your Market: Identify Niche Affiliates

I touched on this earlier, but Affiliate marketing looks a little different for SaaS - and that’s most noticeable in your partners. Instead of scouting out regular Instagram famous influencers, SaaS partners are more likely to be found among industry associations and business communities. 

This means that the best places to find these influencers are a bit more broad. Think speakers at industry events, contributors on Reddit threads and short-form content creators - TikTok and YouTube are some great platforms for this.

As with regular influencer marketing, you’ll need to do your due diligence here. SaaS solutions are much more complex than the regular run-of-the-mill retail product, so you’ll need to source a range of metadata about prospective partners to be sure that the affiliates you choose align with your service.

3. Structure for Success: Evaluate Your Pricing Strategies

The secret sauce for accelerating your growth as a SaaS brand is in your pricing structure. The first step is in figuring out if you want one-time or recurring pricing - but, for maximum growth, combining both into your Affiliate program is a winning strategy.

The trick is in offering a one-time payment in your funnel structure, where your affiliates will send traffic. These are limited paid promotions that are, obviously, very attractive to your prospective customer base. Enforcing usage limits or restricting access to certain features is important, however, as this will then drive traffic to your lifetime deal package where you can upsell on subscriptions.

The key is in ensuring your recurring revenue (i.e. your subscriptions to premium features) has to outgrow your one-time purchase revenue to keep your model sustainable. 

Integrating an Affiliate marketing program into your SaaS marketing strategy provides your brand with an additional source of revenue in a low-risk and low-cost way. 

Used correctly, it can become a worthwhile marketing investment for any SaaS provider.

If you’re interested in hearing more Affiliate marketing insights, then we’ve got you covered.

Running on the 18th and 19th of July 2023, ELEVATE is a live-streamed virtual 2-day summit - bringing the best and brightest Affiliate and performance marketing practitioners together to help you grow your Affiliate marketing program and partnerships.

The Summit will give you a chance to connect with experts, get your questions ANSWERED and dive deeper to learn new skills in our Masterclasses, all whilst learning about new tools and tech to help you scale and reach your targets! 

To learn more about ELEVATE and sign up, visit this link - we can’t wait to see you there!

And, if you missed our last webinar with ScoreApp, you can find the replay here on YouTube - it was full of some great discussion. And, here’s the link to the free trial and template - it’s an amazing tool, so make sure to check it out!

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