Recruit partners with previous experience

Cut back on onboarding time by working with partners who already have a baseline understanding — either about affiliate programs, your product, or ideally, both.

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THE EXPERT

"The third rung of ideal partners are the ones already participating in affiliate programs, such as competitors’ partners or your partners’ partners. Lilien explains, “They should either know about you or know about affiliate marketing. If they don’t know either, it’s a lot harder to activate them.”

Jason Lilien, VP of Client Services

SUGGESTED USE-CASES

Recruiting

Activating

Tracking

Commissioning

Optimizing

Consider:

Recruiting affiliates who already work with complementary products
Engaging customer advocates who are talking about your product
Inviting affiliates working with your partners to join your program

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A shot of SEMrush's keyword overview tool

Start with search

Think about the search terms that your customers might type into a search engine — the ones that describe the problem they might have that would lead to your software as a solution. Find the sites ranking for those keywords which in many cases will be listicles and affiliate sites who you can reach out to and pitch your partner program.
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Explore with the Partner Discovery tool

Tap into PartnerStack’s Network of high-quality B2B partners with the partner discovery tool. Search through the partner directory by filtering criteria like location, audience and industry to find right-fit partners that are pre-qualified through the top network in B2B SaaS and message them directly. Partner badges — like Top Partner or Rising Star — help easily identify standout partners.

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A screenshot of Ahrefs backlink checker tool

Conduct a backlink search to find affiliates

Find affiliate partners who are already working with your competitors or partners by using a backlink search tool to search your partner or competitors site. Search the exported backlink list for common affiliate link endings — this will lead you to the sites of affiliate partners who you can reach out to and invite to join your program.

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A screenshot of the PartnerStack marketplace

Get a head start on the search with existing partner directories

You can also recruit partners using existing public-facing partner directories. There are many partner directories available that are powered by templated partner directory services and they often share common language that make them easy to find using search or AI tools. If you search these terms (+"Find the right" +"partner") in Google, many of the results will be useful partner directories. You can collect these partner directories, and search through the ones that are adjacent to or in your vertical.

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Additional resources:
Learn how to effectively use the Partner Discovery tool to reduce your manual recruitment work.

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