Whether you’re trying to acquire B2B customers in finance, insurance, real estate, or other high-ticket, complex niches, you don’t have too many options on the table. Aside from relying on organic traffic channels and paid ads, you can buy leads from a lead generator, an affiliate network, or, for bigger and well-established companies, you can launch your own affiliate program.
Any of these options can be viable under certain circumstances. For example, a larger company may not even consider the affiliate network vs. affiliate program debate, but may do both. Purchasing leads from an affiliate network does have undeniable advantages. You get access to dozens of traffic sources, while your network ensures the quality of the leads and calls they deliver.
That said, for large-scale companies, you may want to make sure your affiliate network is sharp across the board, from attribution to tracking to pricing to other factors that determine whether the lead or phone call in question converts into a paying customer on your side. Without a doubt, it’s not just about your sales skills but also how well the lead matches your ICP and how fast and well-timed the delivery is, among many other factors.
So there’s no way around it: You have to research what software your affiliate network uses, including what insights they can share with you so you can continuously zero in on your best affiliate offers, campaigns, partners, and sources. Or, even better, you can run your own affiliate software, but that’s for bigger companies.
The Level of Scrutiny You Should Approach B2B Leads Is on a Completely Different Level
It’s no secret that B2B leads are dozens, if not hundreds, of times harder to get, with the complexity increasing as the cost of your product increases. For example, if you’re selling enterprise-grade B2B software that costs dozens of thousands of dollars annually, there will be only so many customers in this market, potentially only a few dozen large-scale companies you can realistically onboard.
So from the perspective of a company buying B2B leads, especially if you’re selling an expensive product, every lead that comes in should be pre-qualified to match your ICP to a T, not just some basic demographics or firmographics.
For example, a lead that ticks every checkbox except that they are a retail consumer who doesn’t represent a company is certainly a mismatched lead that you don’t want to buy. On the other hand, you’d probably like to get your hands on the companies that are using your competitors’ software and try to convince them they’d be better off if they switched to your system.
The bottom line is that the affiliate network you’re buying B2B leads from must use software that screens the leads they supply, sifting out irrelevant, low-quality, and potentially fraudulent form submissions and phone calls in the first place.
Or, if you really want to take full control over your lead generation and acquisition campaigns, you should get your own software that can screen B2B leads and calls in real time against your target parameters and, most importantly, before you’re buying these leads, especially if you’re in pay-per-lead affiliate marketing and paying for leads regardless of whether they convert into sales.
What Affiliate Network Software Features to Look for as a B2B Lead Buyer
Much of the success with eCommerce lead acquisition depends on targeting, how well you’ve set up lead qualification criteria and the extent to which the leads that come in fit your ICP. For example, you may want only B2B leads from the US, the UK, Canada, and the EU who represent a SaaS, finance, or insurance company with 50 or more employees and are C-level executives. In this context, you need an affiliate network that screens submissions at that level, down to every detail that matters for your business.
Likewise, it’s more important to understand where the lead came from, organic content, paid ads, email marketing, etc., so you can engage them in the right way. Naturally, someone coming from an email newsletter cannot be treated the same as someone coming from SERPs. These users are at a different stage in the sales funnel and, therefore, require a different approach.
Here are some more things affiliate network software should enable:
Multi-touch Attribution
Even though these affiliates are primarily interested in multi-touch attribution, which ensures they can receive a commission for the lead, even if the lead went through other touchpoints before being sold to an affiliate network, advertisers can benefit from multi-touch attribution indirectly by being able to evaluate the entire customer journey.
For example, affiliate network software that supports multi-touch attribution can detect when (and possibly why) leads switch marketing channels and touchpoints, how they engage at each touchpoint before submitting a form or making a call, and other valuable details. Then you can use these insights to better understand where your B2B leads are in the marketing funnel when you purchase them.
Granular Lead and Call Tracking
More often than not, affiliate network software that supports multi-touch attribution also supports in-depth consumer tracking, including real-time interaction tracking and personalizing subsequent steps based on that data.
Having access to lead and call tracking insights can give you an unfair advantage in targeting, personalization, and strategy in general.
Internal & External Lead Screening
Lead screening is a must for any affiliate network that sells traffic, including checking leads against the network’s own database and external databases such as the DNC registry.
The more thorough the pre-qualification process on the affiliate network's side, the less work you have to do on your end, checking and qualifying leads. Likewise, the rejection rates drop, and you become more cost-effective across the board.
Predictive Modeling
Advanced affiliate network software may also provide predictive modeling, which is essentially algorithms that use historical data and specific campaign configurations to simulate outcomes.
In practice, you can use predictive modeling software to test different sets of data in order to identify where and when you should run your campaigns, which lead sources to focus on, or what creative assets to use.
Infrastructure-Level Integration
Aligning affiliate network software with your existing tech stack is a big deal. At the end of the day, the more customer data you can collect and analyze, the more confident and cost-effective you can be with your lead acquisition campaigns.
Last but not least, compliance is a thing you cannot ignore. Depending on the market and industry you’re in, whenever you buy a lead or phone call, it should be provided together with a TCPA/PECR/GDPR-related consent record proving that this consumer agreed to receive marketing communication from your company. Then you can be protected against complaints and lawsuits.
The Deeper the Integration, the More Control You Have
Whether you’re going to employ your own lead tracking, distribution, and analytics software or use the one provided by your affiliate network, the end result should be a comprehensive marketing ecosystem that covers leads across channels, allowing you to personalize engagement, double down on what works, and prevent fraud while ensuring an optimal customer journey for every consumer.
You need access to software that collects customer data from the top to the bottom of the marketing funnel, organizes it into patterns, and, ideally, also interprets it into practical guidance for campaign optimization so you can improve quality, lower CAC, etc.
So if you’re relying on affiliate network software, make sure that it coordinates well with your tech stack and that you have the depth of insights you need to make data-driven marketing decisions every step of the way, not just whether to buy a B2B lead or call in question, but also how to approach them after the purchase to maximize conversions, CLV, and ROI.
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