Offering Affiliate Referral Deals On Your Website

Depending on the business model of your company, offering affiliate referral deals on your website may be an excellent way to generate additional revenue. If your business has active online properties such as a blog or social media, than offering affiliate referral deals is something worth evaluating.

There are thousands of companies offering affiliate referrals for leads, everything from simple banner ads that pay revenue per click to ads that pay per email sign up. The options are endless and savvy business executives can establish their own business relationships outside of the typical ad networks and negotiate direct deals with companies that are interested in offering affiliate referrals for a better rate versus going through an ad distribution company. If you're interested in sampling this revenue strategy, evaluate a few companies that have products and services that compliment your business and place their information prominently on your blog and social media sites and see what type of reaction your users have.

Test your Referral Deals

It's very important when you start running affiliate referral deals on your blog or website that you test different options until you determine the types of product offerings your users are responding to and what type of ad works best for converting them into sales. The easiest methods initially are to sign up with a major ad network such as Commission Junction and its relevant ad programs. You'll get immediate results on the numbers of clicks and sales conversions. Make changes quickly if you're not seeing the desired results. Over a longer period of time you'll be able to evaluate whether using this type of affiliate revenue opportunity works as part of your business model or not.

Variety of Affiliate Referral Programs

There are a variety of sites you can sign up with to get data about the types of products and services your user base actually care about. After you have solid analytics you can pursue an independent model to generate a larger percentage of each sale from the leads you are delivering. Amazon and eBay both have affiliate advertising networks and carry huge product catalogs. After you evaluate what works, reach out to companies in your local area that provide those specific products and create strategic business partnerships for your affiliate marketing.

If you already have an online presence that's driving traffic, quickly evaluate affiliate offers that will not distract your customers from your products or services. Instead choose offers that complement your existing offerings and are a natural fit for your blog and social media accounts. Writing a post about an affiliate product will likely be a turn off your for your existing users if they get the feeling they're simply being sold to. However; if you can take a consultative angle and help educate them about a product or service, this will enhance your image as a thought leader in your industry and earn additional revenue on the side. Be ready to kill affiliate offers that don't work or ramp them up depending on the reactions you get from your users.

Tools For Maintaining A Referral Network

When maintaining your referral network there are a few online tools essential for maintaining a healthy and active network that actually drives quality leads. You likely already have the basic business essentials setup and in use for customer engagement, tracking, and support. However; make sure to leverage these tools with business partners that send over referrals. Every business referral network partner should be included in your customer relationship management database, connected on social media sites like LinkedIn and Twitter, and depending on the individual's role in your referral network, be part of your project management system.

Tracking Leads is Essential

Tracking the success of each individual in your referral network is critical and the most logical place to store this data is in your customer relationship management system. Depending on the sophistication of your system you may be able to have a field for leads associated with the contact who referred them and then follow that lead all the way through your sales process to know if the deals are closing or not. Generating a monthly report from your referral network partners will help you manage your activities and know who you owe a referral fee to or at the very least who deserves your time and future business leads according to the agreement you share.

If you do not have a CRM system deployed for your small business, check out the low cost solutions from Zoho or Salesforce. Depending on the needs of your business both are excellent solutions. Using Excel spreadsheets, notepads, and other means just won't cut it if you're getting more than one or two leads per week. It would be worth the time, money and effort to invest in a CRM system to manage your contacts properly. Neglecting to track the success or failure of referral partner's leads means you'll lose important data that can help your business grow.

Engage with Partners Socially

One way to remain at the forefront of your referral network partner's minds is to engage with them through social media sites such as Linkedin, Facebook Pages and Twitter. These sites are extremely beneficial as your referral partners are likely to be connected with other business leaders who have followers that are also focused on business in your industry. When your referral partners post, tweet, comment or participate in online discussions you have the added value of additional exposure to new potential partners, clients or customers. This will help make sure you are familiar to the ecosystem of people that associate with your referral network. Additionally, when you have something relevant to share be sure to do so. Remember the key to social media is engagement with the online community your business is a part of.

Leverage online tools to enhance the effectiveness of your referral network. Make sure you track communications and engage in conversations that can help develop your brand in the community. Referral networks can drive high quality leads when managed properly. Be sure to interact on social networks and take advantage of the excellent low cost solutions available to small business owners to engage hundreds and thousands of individuals in your industry.