B2B Affiliate Marketing: A Practical Guide to Getting Started and Driving Results
Affiliate marketing can be effective for B2B, but there are a few key points to consider before diving in. Here’s what worked (and didn’t) for me.
Getting Started with B2B Affiliate Marketing
When setting up a B2B affiliate program, there are a few important factors to think about:
In-house vs. third-party: Will you build the program internally or use an external provider?
Incentives: What kind of reward will you offer, and how much?
Partner sourcing: Where will you find partners to join your program?
When I started my affiliate program, I had a limited budget—about $1,000 per month—and had six months to show a positive ROI. At first, I didn’t treat it like another paid marketing channel, which was a mistake. I wanted to prove that spending $1,000 per month would directly generate that amount or more.
However, I should’ve compared affiliate marketing with other paid channels like Facebook or TikTok ads, where returns can also vary. When I began presenting affiliate marketing this way to leadership, it made more sense to invest in it.
Though affiliate marketing wasn’t directly my responsibility, I believed it had potential for our company, and no one else was willing to try. So, I decided to give it a shot myself.
Early Challenges & Key Decisions
The first few months were tough since building the program took time and didn’t show immediate results. One of my first decisions was whether to develop the program in-house or go with a third-party vendor. This was an easy choice for me: since this was just a proof of concept, I didn’t want to invest our R&D resources. After some research, I chose PartnerStack (no affiliation, just sharing my experience). They were easy to set up, handled partner payments, and already had a network of partners. Their customer success team was fantastic, and they really felt like partners on the road to getting this to work.
Next, I had to think about incentives. Leadership and I agreed that I needed to generate enough revenue to at least cover what we spent, or the program wouldn’t continue. I decided to offer partners 50% of all payments for the first year. This gave them a long-term incentive to bring in high-quality, sticky users.
Sourcing and Managing Partners
Finding the right partners was critical. PartnerStack allowed partners to apply, and I spent about 30 minutes a week reviewing applications. In the beginning, I approved most applicants, but I became stricter as I learned what worked. Additionally, I spent an hour weekly reaching out to potential partners, both on and off the platform. Since this was a side project for me, I didn’t want to dedicate more time than that.
Building a Solid Foundation
Here’s what I had to set up to get the ball rolling:
Onboarding Emails:
I set up a three-email sequence for new partners:Email 1: Welcome, important links, and an overview of the partnership.
Email 2: Marketing materials for partners to use on their own channels.
Email 3: Tips for success.
Marketing Materials:
I uploaded resources to help partners understand our company, ideal customer profile (ICP), and marketing materials they could use.Terms of Use (TOU):
We created a TOU document with the legal team, ensuring partners understood how they could market us without competing for the same keywords we were targeting.
Overcoming Obstacles
After setting everything up, I saw partners sign up and leads come in, but sales weren’t following. It became clear that only offering a revenue share wasn’t enough. Partners needed to see earlier results in the funnel, but our sales process took time—sometimes users converted only after 2-3 weeks.
Determined to keep trying, I shifted focus to supporting and educating the partners. I aimed to:
Educate and empower partners with more resources about our company.
Provide tools to highlight the strengths of our product.
Offer more incentives for their audiences.
Strategies That Worked
Here’s what I did to improve performance:
More Resources: I uploaded additional marketing assets (documents, presentations, videos) to help partners understand our ICP and buyer journey.
Webinars: I worked with our PMMs to create a recorded webinar, which didn’t get much live traction but gained some views after being shared.
Exclusive Discounts: I offered a three-month discount to users coming from specific partners, framing it as a personal offer.
Clearer Incentives: Initially, I said partners would earn “50% of all payments for the first year,” but many didn’t understand what that meant. I started sharing actual dollar amounts (e.g., “earn up to $2,000”), and that worked better.
Final Takeaways
In the end, I reached a positive ROI and got approval to increase the budget. The project required a full-time person, so I handed it over to our paid marketing team. One tactic that really helped was reaching out to potential partners outside of the PartnerStack network, where I found some of our best partners.
Looking back, there’s more I would have liked to try—especially rewarding earlier funnel actions—but overall, it was a rewarding experience with great potential.
Key Lessons Learned:
Treat affiliate marketing like any other paid marketing channel.
It takes time to build strong partnerships—commit to at least 6-12 months before evaluating.
If you’re just starting, use a third-party tool to handle payments and tracking.
Work closely with your PMMs and marketing teams for needed resources.
Dedicate time weekly to actively finding and managing partners.
Be clear and specific when presenting your reward structure.