So we mainly partnered with what I would call "very relevant influencers"
The way we like to do it is by aligning interests.
The more the business grows, the more they get.
Also, we never partnered just for the "influence" part of it. We rely on our partners to contribute to the business in many ways, by acting more like marketing generalists with ideas to promote the product in general.
An example structure would be :
- You can get up to X% of the business
- As the business reaches revenue milestones, you get closer to X
- You don't have to be full time, but we expect you'll put in the effort to reach each milestone.
- It's not just about posting a tweet. It's about leveraging all your channels and participating to the marketing strategy.
- We meet on a weekly/bi-weekly basis to discuss
So we didn't actually reach out to potential partners thinking they were going to become partners
Actually, we just sent JK access to Tweet Hunter, and he replied "I want in"
we targeted him (and tens if not hundreds of others) just because they were pretty influential in our market
So then we had a couple calls to talk about it.
What was really important is he would get 0% until we reached a rather challenging revenue milestone, one that would have probably taken us 6-12 months to reach if we did it alone
But overall, you could feel he was really excited about the project
And it was the same with Alex on Taplio, he reached out to us
so you could tell he had motivation
the only people we proactively reached out to didn't show as much interest
This falls in line with Casey Hill podcasts theory of borrowing distribution and turning that borrowed distribution into owned distribution - (Course - https://amplifiedmasterclass.com/)
So the play is to build rapport with influencers and offer them equity to promote SaaS to grow MRR while you continue to work on products based on rapid feedback loops
Then once you have the industry leader/influencer is involved you get them to promote the affiliate program on top of the other promotions
You create a growth loop of people promoting the product
For this, to work you need to make sure that the audience is a part of your ICP otherwise conversions will be low
Summary: In the same way you add value to Twitter, add value to community founders in your niche - then have a grand slam offer for partnering with them. Yes, you give up some MRR, but if you charge enough and you are offering it to already paying community members - they are more likely to bite. Frankly, they only get revenue if the partnership is successful.