Lead generation can be an incredibly lucrative business model for affiliate marketers when done right. However, many struggle to make it work consistently and profitably. The team at AdFluential has cracked the code, generating over $100 million in revenue by promoting lead gen offers over the past 13 years.
In this article, we'll dive deep into the key strategies, insights and best practices that propelled AdFluential to this success. Whether you're a seasoned affiliate or just starting to explore lead generation, these proven tactics can help take your campaigns to the next level.
Matthew Milnes, founder of Adfluential
The power of lead generation for affiliates
Lead generation offers a massive opportunity for affiliates who are willing to put in the effort to master the model. Some key benefits include:
- High payouts, often on a cost-per-lead basis
- Ability to promote offers in a wide range of verticals
- Less restrictions and red tape compared to traditional affiliate programs
- Massive scale potential if you can dial in a winning campaign
However, the lead gen space is also has its challenges that many marketers find tough:
- High costs for traffic and usually low conversion rates
- Ensuring the leads are of high quality, which needs constant tweaking
- Dealing with the complex world of lead buyers and brokers
- Needing consistent volume and quality traffic for meaningful profits
In this article, we'll give you the knowledge and strategies you need to overcome these hurdles and create a successful lead-generation business.
The AdFluential strategy
To generate over $100 million from lead generation campaigns, the AdFluential team had to develop a tight process for building and scaling campaigns. Let's unpack the core components of their battle-tested approach.
1. Work directly with lead buyers
Perhaps the single most impactful decision you can make is to work directly with lead buyers rather than through brokers or networks. While it may seem easier to just plug into an existing marketplace, the benefits of direct partnerships are substantial:
- Align goals and set clear KPIs based on the buyer's unique needs
- Gain in-depth knowledge of their product/service and target audience
- Get lead quality feedback straight from the source to fuel optimization
- Troubleshoot issues and adapt to changes in close coordination
- Avoid the markups and communication barriers of middlemen
How do you go about finding direct lead buyer relationships? One tactic is to swipe out other affiliates' landing pages and submit test leads to see who responds. Tools like Adbeat and SpyFu are great for competitor research. You can also try searching for companies in your niche+leads on LinkedIn.
2. Own your landing pages & funnels
Controlling the entire lead flow is critical for affiliates serious about lead generation. When you rely on third-party landing pages and offers, you sacrifice the ability to meaningfully optimize your funnel.
Key reasons to keep your lead gen assets in-house include:
- Full control over page layout, copy, and design for max conversions
- Ability to match copy and creatives to the buyer's actual product/service
- Flexibility to quickly edit pages as you gather data and insights
- Capturing lead info for building audiences, email followup, and more
- Avoiding technical headaches and reporting discrepancies from redirects
Even if you have to invest a lot of resources into building your own infrastructure, it will pay dividends down the line. You'll be able to squeeze out incremental gains, adapt on the fly, and even shift your funnel to new buyers in the same vertical if needed.
3. Get (and act on) granular lead quality feedback
The only way to truly optimize your campaigns and ensure a profitable, sustainable operation is to religiously collect lead quality feedback from your buyers. Insist on getting disposition data for every single lead on a line-by-line basis.
Work with your buyer to understand:
- The full spectrum of lead statuses and exactly what each one means
- Which statuses/outcomes are positive (e.g. sale made) vs negative
- Expected benchmarks for key metrics like sales rate and revenue per lead
- How long the sales cycle typically runs before leads are fully worked
With this raw data in hand, the fun begins. Match the buyer's lead IDs back to your traffic source, campaign, and ad set data to unearth actionable insights:
- Isolate your top-performing (and underperforming) audiences and placements
- Determine what days and times generate the highest quality leads
- Identify the exact ads and landing pages that are crushing it or bombing
- Uncover which lead attributes correlate with good or bad outcomes
Armed with this intel, you can begin to make data-driven optimizations. Aggressively cut spend on traffic sources that aren't meeting KPIs. Conversely, double down on the audiences, ads, and funnels that are knocking it out of the park.
This process of collecting feedback and actioning the data in a continuous feedback loop is the true key to success. It's the only way to keep a finger on the pulse of your campaigns and make adjustments before small problems snowball into major losses.
4. Achieve mutual profitability at scale
As super affiliates like AdFluential can attest, the real rewards in lead generation come from reaching massive scale. Only by pushing high volumes can you cover your costs, diversify risk, and generate meaningful net profits.
However, it's critical to scale thoughtfully in coordination with your lead buyers. Sending a tidal wave of leads that they aren't prepared to handle can backfire spectacularly. Leads will go un-worked, quality will suffer, and you'll burn a bridge with that buyer.
Instead, increase volume gradually and maintain open lines of communication along the way. If you start to see KPIs slip, tap the brakes and recalibrate. Proactively alert buyers when you're ready to open the floodgates so they can beef up their sales capacity accordingly.
It's also vital to keep close tabs on your own margins as you scale. Traffic costs will naturally rise and so will other expenses like payroll and tech infrastructure. Make conservative projections and don't overextend yourself.
Remember, lead buyers will happily hoover up as many leads as you can send them, so long as they remain profitable on their end. It's on you to make sure that you're also generating a healthy ROI. If you're optimizing their campaigns but tanking your own margins, it's time for a pricing discussion.
The key to AdFluential's jaw-dropping success has been the ability to achieve a win-win scenario with buyers. By consistently delivering leads that make buyers money, they secure higher payouts and virtually unlimited scale potential. Strive to become that indispensable partner and you'll have no shortage of demand.
Advanced tactics for lead gen affiliates
With the core strategic principles covered, let's dig into some specific tactics AdFluential has leveraged to crush the competition.
- Optimize for quality, then scale vertically
All too many affiliates fall into the trap of chasing volume at the expense of quality right out of the gate. They'll crank out ads with wild promises and outrageous clickbait just to drive cheap leads. But when quality suffers, the whole system quickly crumbles.
Instead, dial in your quality before you even consider scaling. Leads that don't convert are worthless to your buyers. Aim to become the gold standard - the affiliate that's known for sending premium leads.
Once you're consistently knocking it out of the park on the quality front, then it's time to slowly ramp up volume. Stay in your lane and scale vertically at first. If you're crushing it with Facebook lead ads in the solar niche, stick with that traffic source and offer type for steady, sustained growth.
- Comply with advertiser rules
Lead generation has earned a bit of a shady reputation over the years, with no shortage of bad actors polluting the ecosystem. Don't cut corners or resort to sketchy tactics - it's a surefire way to get your accounts banned and offers shut down.
Instead, learn and religiously implement industry best practices for compliance. Lean on your lead buyers for guidance on what is and isn't kosher. Many are subject to strict regulations on how leads can be marketed and processed.
For example, in the financial services space, there are reams of rules around what language and images you can use in ads. Violating these guidelines is simply non-negotiable. Stay above board and build your operation on a solid foundation from day one.
Advertorials, or native ads masquerading as organic content, can be incredibly effective for lead gen when executed properly. By packaging your pitch within an engaging, informational article, you can sidestep banner blindness and build trust with prospects.
The key is to make sure your advertorial content is actually high-quality and valuable in its own right. Don't just cram a bunch of thin, repackaged content with a hard sell CTA. Treat these as real editorial pieces with the same level of craft and research you'd put into your best blog posts.
Aim to educate, entertain, and illuminate a problem or opportunity for the reader. Only after providing genuine value should you artfully pivot to the benefits of your lead gen offer as a natural solution. This softer sell approach may mean a lower CTR, but the leads you do capture will be far more qualified.
- Tap into intent with search ads
While AdFluential cut their teeth on social traffic, they've also found immense success with search ads for lead generation. Platforms like Google Ads allow you to tap into high-intent keyword searches and snag leads at the exact moment of need.
For example, if someone searches for "best solar panel installers near me", you can bet they're much closer to taking action than someone just passively scrolling through their Facebook feed. By bidding on these intent-driven keywords and directing clicks to a relevant landing page, you can drive sky-high conversion rates.
The key is to match your offer as closely as possible to the searcher's intent. If the ad promises an instant quote for solar installation, make sure your landing page delivers on that specific promise. Any disconnect or friction will send your leads running for the hills.
- Diversify your offer types and verticals
As you start to conquer one type of lead gen campaign, don't grow complacent. Always be testing new offer types and exploring new verticals to future-proof your business. What works today may be obsolete or oversaturated tomorrow.
AdFluential has generated leads for everything from solar panels to life insurance to home improvement projects. By diversifying their portfolio, they're able to weather market shifts and algorithm changes that could otherwise tank an over-specialized affiliate.
Stay on the cutting edge by regularly researching emerging verticals and pouncing on opportunities before the competition catches wind. Subscribe to industry blogs, attend trade shows, and keep your ear to the ground for the next big trend.
- Amplify your reach with email marketing
Many affiliates leave money on the table by not building an owned audience of prospects to nurture. Just because someone didn't convert on your initial lead gen form doesn't mean they're a lost cause. By pixeling these visitors and capturing emails, you can bring them back into your funnel again and again.
Implement lead magnets, gated content, and exit-intent popups to grow your list. From there, you can drip out a value-packed autoresponder series that gradually warms up subscribers and entices them to take action. Affiliate-friendly email service providers like AWeber and GetResponse offer robust automation features for this very purpose.
You can even double-dip by monetizing these email sequences with related offers. For example, if you're generating leads in the home security niche, you could also sprinkle in pitches for DIY security systems or home automation tech. Just be sure to comply with all email regulations and include clear unsubscribe links.
We wrote more about this strategy in this article.
Q and A with Matthew Milnes, Founder of Adfluential
Q: Matthew, you've built an incredibly successful lead generation business over the past 13 years. Can you tell us a bit about your journey and some of the key milestones or learning experiences along the way?
A: Absolutely. My lead generation journey really took off in 2014 when I co-founded Lead Stream. Within a few years, we became the largest supplier of life insurance leads in the UK market. At our peak, we were generating over 3,500 leads per day.
One of the biggest milestones was developing our direct relationships with lead buyers. By cutting out the middlemen like brokers and networks, we were able to have open dialogues with buyers to truly understand their needs and KPIs. This allowed us to build highly optimized campaigns that delivered profitable results for both parties.
Another key learning experience was the importance of collecting and acting on lead feedback data. Early on, we made the mistake of focusing solely on our own marketing metrics and ROI. But once we started tying buyer feedback to each lead and marketing source, it was a game-changer. We could see exactly what was working and rapidly optimize our funnels. That data-driven approach has been pivotal to scaling.
More recently, in 2022 I founded AdFluential and we've applied those same principles to new verticals like solar, home improvement, and B2B. In the solar space, we're now generating over 1,000 leads per day in the UK alone. So while the industries may change, the fundamentals of success in lead gen remain the same in my experience.
Q: You mentioned AdFluential has generated over $100 million worth of leads in the last 13 years. To what do you attribute that impressive level of success?
A: I believe our success comes down to a few core factors:
First and foremost, our relentless focus on lead quality and buyer ROI. We know that if our buyers can't make a profit, the business isn't sustainable. So we're constantly collecting feedback, monitoring lead statuses, and optimizing our traffic sources, ads, and funnels to drive not just quantity but quality.
Secondly, our direct relationships with buyers have been key. By partnering closely with buyers and aligning our goals, we build a lot of trust and transparency. We're able to have frank discussions about what's working, what's not, and how to improve performance. That collaborative approach means we all win together.
Our team's experience and data-driven methodology is also crucial. Having generated over 9-figures worth of leads, we have a wealth of data to leverage. We know the signs of a profitable campaign and red flags to avoid. We can spot trends quickly and adapt.
Lastly, I attribute a lot of our success to our in-house technology and constant testing. We build all our own landing pages and funnels which lets us endlessly optimize UX and conversions. We're religious about split testing everything from ad copy to lead forms. Even small optimizations add up to huge gains at scale.
So in summary, it's our buyer-centric mentality, our systematic use of data, our strong partner relationships, and our team's veteran experience that have fueled AdFluential's growth to over $100M in lead sales. It's been an incredible ride and we're excited to keep pushing the boundaries of what's possible in the lead gen space.
Q: For affiliate marketers looking to get into lead generation, what is the number one piece of advice you would give them?
A: My top advice for affiliates getting into lead gen would be to prioritize lead quality and buyer relationships above all else.
It can be tempting as an affiliate to focus purely on your own ROI and massaging the metrics in your favor. But in lead generation, the buyer's results are what matter most. If your leads aren't converting profitably for them, the campaign will eventually fall apart.
So from day one, work to establish direct lines of communication with your buyers. Don't be afraid to ask questions and collect detailed feedback on lead outcomes. Build your campaigns backwards from the buyer's ideal cost-per-acquisition.
Collaborate with your buyers to develop a deep understanding of their sales process, their top performing lead profiles, their product nuances, compliance needs, and so on. Use all of that intel to craft hyper-relevant ad copy, high-converting landing pages, and targeted media buys.
Optimize relentlessly based on the feedback data to cut waste and scale what's performing. Be fully transparent with your buyers about what you're seeing on your end.
By putting lead quality and buyer relationships at the center of your strategy, you'll build a strong reputation and partnerships that go the distance. You'll be able to rapidly scale and sustain that growth over the long term.
Lead gen can be an incredibly lucrative category for affiliates. But it demands a collaborative, data-obsessed mindset. Master that and you can absolutely crush it in this space.
Forging your own lead gen success story
By learning from and copying the successful AdFluential method, you can also grab a profitable share of this market.
The most important thing is to aim for a win-win situation. Lead buyers want consistent and reliable leads more than anything else. If you show that you can consistently provide high-quality leads, you'll have buyers lining up to work with you.
It won't happen right away, but with determination, smart strategies, and a bit of boldness, you can build a lead-generation business as successful as the AdFluential team. The key is to stay hungry, avoid shortcuts, and keep optimizing your processes.
