We have seen a massive rise in online shopping, and now businesses are finding new ways to get customer attention. However, to be successful and make money from affiliate links, you need to target the right audience and choose the right type of affiliate marketing. There are benefits to both a business-to-business and a business-to-consumer model of marketing. You might be wondering about the best option between B2B vs. B2C affiliate marketing: which is right for you? Today, we will be looking at their differences and their benefits. Hopefully, we can help you make an informed decision that can grow your affiliate marketing revenue.
What is affiliate marketing?
When you boil it down to the basics, affiliate marketing relies on setting up a website and using it to host links that promote products or services of another company. Affiliate links can be used for marketing purposes to build awareness, review, and demonstrate the usefulness of products. Additionally, the links also help to boost sales directly. Remember that the website owners will only get paid when they directly lead to a sale. This means they receive a commission whenever a user follows the link on their site and makes a purchase.
Once correctly set up, affiliate links can provide the website owners with recurring income. This is why we often talk about affiliate marketing on Pure Residuals since this type of advertising can lead to long-term, stable profit. If you want to earn an income from affiliate links, you should probably start by finding an affiliate program or network. The programs can vary by payment method, the commission you are rewarded, and who they are marketing to. These can all be important factors when determining which is right for you: B2B vs. B2C affiliate marketing.
Most website owners and bloggers new to affiliate marketing believe that they can only use links to market to end-users. Of course, one of the most popular affiliate networks is Amazon’s Associates program, which is a B2C network. However, you could just as easily promote products to other businesses. A simple example would be a wholesaler who reaches out to retailers and advertises products that they can carry in their stores.
The benefits of affiliate marketing
Besides providing you with a passive revenue stream, affiliate marketing has many other benefits. However, you shouldn’t take this to mean that you can just set up a few links on your website and sit back while the money rolls in. If you want to make income from affiliate marketing, you’ll need to put a lot of effort into your site. Building up an audience takes a lot of time, and you will need to host quality content. Thankfully, plenty of online resources can help you find out more about affiliate marketing programs for beginners and learn how to get started. That being said, here are the main benefits of having affiliate links on your site:
1. Low risk
Affiliate marketing presents a low-risk venture for both B2B and B2C businesses. This means that most companies will be open to collaboration with bloggers and site owners. Keep in mind that you will only get paid if people buy products through your links. However, the entire venture is also a low risk on your part. Besides producing content for your site, you aren’t investing anything other than your time. Naturally, your time is worthwhile, but no financial or other risks are involved.
2. Boosts SEO
In general, links to sites with high domain authority can also increase your own authority on that topic. Blog articles with affiliate links are also a great way to increase user engagement. If you have partnered with a large company, you can ask them to link back to your site. You can offer to guest write an article for them and place your link in that post. These essential SEO factors can improve your site’s ranking and get you more organic traffic.
3. Linking lets you build professional relationships
Besides just forming a base of active followers for your site, you will also be reaching out to various B2B and B2C companies. Nurture these professional relationships and always be on the lookout for new opportunities. Major affiliate programs often have rewards for their best marketers or may even promote your site. Networking is often the key to success in online spaces, so start mingling and hosting links.
B2B vs. B2C basics
In the world of online marketing, businesses are looking to sell their goods to either: other businesses or end-users. Therefore, we can divide them into B2B, which stands for Business-to-Business, and B2C, Business-to-Consumer. Both of these business models offer opportunities for affiliate marketing for website owners, bloggers, and influencers.
Most users will be familiar with the B2C model, where a company directly sells its products to individuals. You have probably seen ads or even affiliate links for these companies all around the web. A simple example is a travel blog linked to a travel agency that sells tickets to customers.
On the other hand, B2B companies are somewhat less obvious in online spaces since they don’t directly target users. Instead, they aim their marketing toward other businesses. You may have seen ads for businesses offering training or specialized courses for other companies. Another example would be chipset manufacturers who produce components for smartphones and computers.
B2B vs. B2C affiliate marketing differences:
1. Customer base
This is probably the most obvious difference between the two. B2C can target an almost limitless online audience; however, even their users are frequently differentiated into segments. Unlike them, B2B has a limited group of potential customers they are typically targeting. Even when they don’t directly go after leads, the audience is smaller for B2B marketing. For this reason, instead of launching broad and generalized ads, B2B programs go after very specific sectors. They may choose to target executives, managers, product developers, IT staff, or company stakeholders.
2. Different approaches to social media
Most people who go into affiliate marketing rely on social media to boost their online reach. Promoting products on social networks isn’t limited to influencers; however, they are the most visible and popular among the general public. You will quickly realize that different social media platforms are better suited for B2B vs. B2C affiliate marketing.
- B2C primarily relies on the following social networks: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok… Pretty much any platform where you can display product photos to users will work well for B2C. Keep in mind that some platforms will require that you have a business account before they let you place affiliate links in your posts.
- B2B usually goes for different platforms to reach its audience. Platforms like LinkedIn are great for networking and reaching out to individual people. Twitter can also be put to good use for link sharing with the clever use of hashtags. Specialized industry-related forums are also great for finding potential customers and building up an audience for your blog.
3. Lead nurturing and the sales funnel
The entire sales cycle is much shorter for B2C, and online users can see an intriguing ad or link and make an impulse buy. This kind of situation is much less common for B2B, and here your leads will require some guidance and nurturing before they are ready to complete a purchase. This means that in B2C affiliate marketing, you can get user attention with discount links and special offers. For B2B, the focus is more on long-term value and product support which needs to be reflected in the content where the links are posted.
4. Preferred content
Promoting links on social media is an important approach for any marketing campaign. However, social networks move at a brisk pace, and content can get outdated or quickly forgotten. Besides just posting links on social media accounts, most affiliate marketers typically set up a blog or a website. This lets them post in-depth content, and then the affiliate links can provide more value over time.
Product reviews are a form of content that will surely be viable for both B2B and B2C affiliate marketing. However, due to the consumerist approach of B2C, customers will generally be more interested in the wow factor of a product. Unlike them, the B2B crowd will be more curious about product features, shipping, distribution models, product line support, and the returns policy. It would be an understatement to say that B2B requires significantly more researched and detailed content.
5. Customer lifetime value and sale cycle
Sales in B2C are typically a one-and-done affair. How often do you see the same customer buying the same article through one of your links? We have the opposite situation for B2B, where sales are usually of a larger volume. This means that the payout or compensation you receive for each purchase will be much smaller for B2C than for B2B. Not only that, but B2B customers who are satisfied with their purchase will keep coming back to the same seller. Depending on your affiliate network and how they offer compensation, you could be receiving payments for a long time from a single deal.
Unfortunately, the conversion time for a B2B purchase is also much longer than with B2C sales. For a large company to make a purchase, they will need approval from their management, time to draft contracts, and set up the whole supply chain. This can take months; however, the payout is usually worth the wait time. Contrary to that, in B2C, it won’t take too long for customers to make up their minds about a purchase.
6. Ad types
When you are constructing ads for your B2B affiliate marketing, you should mainly focus on an objective approach and try to educate your audience. Avoid the repetitive, high-impact, and low on the content style of ads that are typically employed when targeting end-users. B2C ads can be flashier and promote the value of the deal to your audience.
How to choose B2B vs. B2C affiliate marketing: which is right for you?
Due to their differences and the specific approach required for each, only you will be able to know what the right decision is. However, we can give you a few pointers to help you. As you have seen from our above points, there are distinct advantages and disadvantages to marketing to a B2B or B2C audience. Have a brainstorming session and ask yourself the following questions:
1. What are your interests?
If you are going to be doing extensive research on a topic, it will be much easier to pick a niche where you already know a lot. Depending on the subject matter, your interests could naturally swing you towards a B2B or B2C program. When you decide on the niche that you would like to run a blog for, do some research and see which affiliate networks are available. Your passion and knowledge about a particular sphere could be wasted if there are no products or businesses you could promote. Ideally, it would be best to look for something with considerable overlap of your interests, consumer spending, and companies needing promotion.
2. Do you already have an audience?
Things will be much easier if you already have a website or social media profile with a large following. You can start your career as an affiliate marketer with an audience already eager to hear what you have to say. However, a large following will probably benefit you more for a B2C affiliate program. This is simply because B2B marketing requires a specific audience rather than a general public following.
Of course, any kind of established following will be helpful, but you should do research into your audience. See which market segment they belong to and what types of affiliate networks would like to have them as their customers. The way you promote the links will be very different based on which demographics your audience is composed of.
3. How much time are you ready to devote?
Doing research to appeal to a B2B audience will take a lot of time. Additionally, the payout could also take much longer to happen. Ask yourself how much time you are willing to devote to affiliate marketing and how long you can wait until you have something to show.
There isn’t going to be any guaranteed timeframe before you see money from B2C marketing, but the expected wait will be much shorter. This is especially true if you promote new or popular products to an interested base of customers. However, for this reason, you will also want to be one of the first people who write about new products for your niche.
Whichever way you look at it, you will need to invest time and effort into affiliate marketing for it to produce measurable results. You will want to be responsive and act quickly for B2C to benefit from current trends. And when it comes to B2B, you will need to put in a lot of time upfront and then be patient when waiting for a commission.
4. What kind of content can you produce?
Do you have any content creation skills which could be helpful? Perhaps you are a talented writer or a decent photographer. Different types of content will be more or less important for B2B vs. B2C. These differences come from the platforms you will be using to reach your audience and the preferred ad types. You will need to be a good researcher with solid writing skills for B2B. On the other hand, photo editing and knowledge of vertical video will be constructive for promoting B2C on social networks. Additionally, there will probably be more room to express yourself and let your personality shine in B2C marketing because B2B will require a more grounded and factual tone.
Keep in mind that whatever kind of content you end up producing, it needs to be both interesting to users and optimized for search engines. User-friendly SEO content will let you stand out and reach a larger crowd, which is always necessary for any form of marketing.
The bottom line
As you can see, there are multiple approaches you can take if you want to start making money from affiliate links. There isn’t one universal answer for B2B vs. B2C affiliate marketing: which is right for you? Carefully evaluate your skills and expectations before deciding which type of network you want to promote. Although there are many similarities between B2B and B2C, there are also huge differences between how you use the tools you have available and how you communicate with your audience. We suggest that you play to your strengths and pick a form of affiliate marketing that speaks to you.
About the Author
Jerry Goldman is a Senior Marketing Manager for WP Full Care, where he loves helping individuals and businesses stand out in online spaces. When he isn’t brainstorming creative catchphrases, Jerry spends his time drinking too many cups of coffee and getting lost in his favorite novels and TV shows.
