Affiliate Competitor Analysis: Top 5 Strategies

Looking to start recruiting your own affiliates?

Before you do that, you gotta do your competitor research and find affiliates that are working with your rivals.

After that, you can either direct your affiliate marketing efforts towards “neutral” potential affiliates or vice versa—try to win your competitors’ affiliates over to your program.

In this article, we’ll be walking through our top 5 affiliate competitor analysis relevant to 2024.

Link building cheat sheet

Gain access to the 3-step strategy we use to earn over 86 high-quality backlinks each month.

Download for free

What is Affiliate Competitor Analysis?

Okay, just kidding.

The big question is not what affiliate competitive analysis is – but rather how it’s done.

There are two ways to find your competitor’s affiliates – and both involve affiliate links.

The first one is to find other affiliate marketers’ articles that mention your competitors in some way (preferably reviews and “top 10” articles).

You can either do this yourself or delegate the task to your affiliate manager.

Then, click on their link and check whether it has an affiliate tag or leads to a custom partner page.

If it does – bingo, you just found an affiliate partner of your competitor.

Note: You don’t have to focus on direct competitors only, a healthy affiliate campaign includes potential partners sourced through different means and strategies.

The second one involves using backlinking monitoring tools such as Ahrefs and Semrush to go straight to the source and export their affiliate links without having to do any manual prospecting.

Then either reaching out to them manually or using a tool like Respona to automate the most tedious tasks – such as contact finding, personalization, follow-ups, etc.

Who Can Be an Affiliate?

Technically, everybody – even your grandma.

But in this article, we’ll be focusing on a special type of affiliates: bloggers and influencers.

As a B2B SaaS business, these are our perfect match for a very specific reason – our audience.

Which is often composed of industry professionals, decision-makers, and potential customers who are more than likely already using another SaaS product and wouldn’t mind considering an alternative.

While not as “flashy” as YouTube influencers in B2C niches with their fancy unboxing videos and hilarious sponsored ads than often stand on their own as a piece of entertainment,

B2B influencers have the power to affect an entire industry’s buying decisions, as opposed to just one customer at a time.

That’s why they’re such a sought-after marketing channel.

In other words, that’s where the money’s at.

Competitor Affiliate Analysis Tools

Now, as I’ve mentioned just above, you can find potential affiliate partners with all but a search engine query – but there’s a little more to it.

Smaller campaigns can definitely be executed manually.

But, if you’re aiming high and would like to recruit as many affiliates as possible in the shortest time, you’ll need to look into automation tools.

Respona

Respona speeds up affiliate competitor analysis in three ways:

• By finding potential affiliate partners through Google
• By finding their email address and LinkedIn profile
• By personalizing your outreach email with AI and automating outreach

In fact, it includes tailor-made campaign outreach templates for every marketing strategy on this list.

All you need to do to use them is fill out a few simple fields and Respona will handle the rest.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is an all-in-one SEO suite that’s also a great affiliate competitor analysis tool.

But as far as affiliate competitor analysis goes, we’re interested in its backlink checker.

It’s great because it hands you all of your competitor’s affiliates on a silver platter.

Provided you can find which affiliate tags they’re using.

But more on that later.

Google

Google’s advanced search operators are an awesome prospecting tool – although figuring out how to use them takes a little time.

For our purposes, we’ll be using these search operators:

1. Inurl:blog – It will only return pages that are published as part of a blog.
2. Intext:keyword – Will only return pages that mention your target keyword somewhere in the content.
3. Intitle:keyword – Same as above, but works only for the title.
4. “–” – The minus sign reverses the function of any search operator it’s placed in front of.

So, for example, if we were looking for a blog post that mentions link building but it’s not the main target keyword of the article, we’ll need to reverse the intitle:”link building” to NOT pull pages that have link building in the title.

The full string would look like this:

Inurl:blog intext:”link building” -intitle:”link building”

The exact combination of search operators would be different for every strategy.

In this guide, we’ll focus on how to conduct each competitor intelligence strategy with Google.

If you’d like to see how Respona can speed each of the strategies up, check out our videos at the start of each section.

Product Reviews

Product reviews are fantastic for both affiliate recruitment and boosting highly targeted traffic to your site, which can and will translate into more sales.

For the SaaS industry, affiliate product reviews can be a goldmine for finding affiliates.

You can often spot an affiliate disclaimer just under the article title or in the footer, marking the author as an excellent candidate for affiliate opportunities with other brands in the same niche.

Pro tip: Even if an article doesn’t have an affiliate disclaimer or any affiliate links, don’t dismiss it right away.

A blogger might still be open to joining your affiliate program or, at the very least, reviewing your product, which gives it valuable exposure to a new audience.

To find these opportunities on Google, try search strings like:

intitle:”competitor” intitle:review intext:(blogger outreach tool) -site:competitor.com -“your product”

intitle:”competitor” intitle:guide intext:(seo tool) -site:competitor.com -“your product”`

intitle:”competitor” intitle:vs intext:(link building tool) -site:competitor.com -“your product”

So, if we’re looking for reviews on other blogger outreach tools, the search string might look something like this:

intitle:”BuzzStream” intitle:review intext:(blogger outreach) -site:buzzstream.com -site:respona.com

Using these advanced search operators, you can quickly find high-quality reviews that are perfect targets for outreach.

Here’s also a solid affiliate email marketing template for your inspiration:

Once you have your list of potential affiliate partners, you can reach out to them manually or automate the process with Respona.

Product Alternatives

Just like with the other strategies we’ve talked about, the product alternatives strategy is a two-for-one deal: it’s designed to recruit your competitor’s affiliates and get you listed as one of their alternatives.

This approach works wonders in all niches, but it’s especially effective in SaaS.

So let’s get our hands dirty and look up alternatives for one of the SaaS giants – Ahrefs.

For example, consider this article on Traffic Think tank. At first glance, there’s no obvious affiliate disclaimer:

However, if you click through the links, you’ll notice the link is clearly a partner tracking link:

What does this tell us?

We have a solid chance of not only securing a spot in the article as one of the alternatives but also recruiting the website as our affiliate.

Pro Tip: A lot of these “alternative” pages are hosted on review and comparison sites like G2 or TrustPilot. These platforms often let you list your product or service for free. And while they may not always entertain affiliate program invitations, getting your product out there for free is always a win.

Finding these alternative product placement opportunities on Google is a piece of cake.

Use this search string:

intitle:”competitor” intitle:alternatives intext:(keyword) -“yoursite” -site:yoursite.com -site:competitor.com

Replace “competitor” with your competitor’s name and “keyword” with your niche keyword.

Here’s a template to get you started:

Listicles

Listicles, or “Top X” articles, are usually chock-full of affiliate links.

In fact, the ability to put a bunch of affiliate links in the post is what makes bloggers bank.

Which means they’ll more likely than not agree to put you up on their list, for an invitation to your affiliate program.

And if that listicle is getting traffic, you’ll be making bank next.

Finding these listicles is pretty straightforward with a few advanced search operators.

Here are some you can use:

intitle:(“top” OR “best”) intitle:(keyword) -“your company”

intitle:”top” intitle:”[keyword]” -“[Company name]” -[Company domain]

intitle:”best” intitle:”[keyword]” -“[Company name]” -[Company domain]

intitle:”the only” intitle:”[keyword]” -“[Company name]” -[Company domain]

intitle:”Most popular” intitle:”[keyword]” -“[Company name]” -[Company domain]

intitle:”[keyword]” intitle:”ranked” -“[Company name]” -[Company domain]

intitle:”[keyword]” intitle:”reviewed” -“[Company name]” -[Company domain]

intitle:”[keyword]” intitle:”compared” -“[Company name]” -[Company domain]

intitle:”top” intitle:”[keyword]” -“[Company name]” -[Company domain]

Just replace the placeholders in the brackets with your target keyword and your company information and you’ll tap into the goldmine of potential affiliate partners that are bloggers.

Pro Tip: Even if the listicle author isn’t currently an affiliate for any of the tools on their list, they can still be swayed to join your program with a good pitch.

And if they’re hesitant about joining as an affiliate, consider proposing an indirect link exchange instead.

For example, you could offer them a backlink from an upcoming guest post on your site.

Competitor Mentions

Competitor mentions is a highly effective affiliate and overall market research method because if someone’s talking about a product or company that isn’t theirs, they’re probably not doing it for free.

And more often than not, it’s tied to an affiliate link.

If they are featuring something purely because they use and like the product, they’re probably interested in that industry—and might be open to promoting another tool in the same space.

Let’s say Respona’s competitor is BuzzStream.

Our goal would be to find web pages mentioning BuzzStream that might be open to also featuring Respona.

This would be our search string:

inurl:blog intext:”buzzstream” intext:(affiliate marketing) -site:buzzstream.com -site:respona.com -“respona”

Template:

Checking Affiliate Links

Let’s take things up a notch.

This advanced affiliate marketing strategy involves using Ahrefs (or a similar backlink monitoring tool) to get straight to the source and find your competitors’ affiliates.

Affiliate links stand out from regular backlinks because they include affiliate tags – a dead giveaway that someone is an affiliate.

Some of the most common affiliate tags include:

• ?fp_ref
• ?via
• ?deal
• ?_from
• ?_by
• ?_get
• ?_go
• $r
• ?ref=
• ?tap=
• ?gspk
• utm_source=partnerstack
• utm_source=referral
• ?fpr
• grsm.io
• ?fp_ref=

Each company uses different affiliate tags, so you’ll need to do some digging until you spot a pattern.

Here’s a step-by-step breakdown of how to do that with Ahrefs:

Start by logging into your Ahrefs account. Enter the domain of one of your competing affiliate programs in the search bar.

Then, navigate to the “Backlinks” section to view all incoming links to your competitor’s site.

You can start looking for affiliate links by applying a filter.

Given that most affiliate tags contain the special character “?”, start with that. Use the “Target URL contains word or phrase” filter and enter a “?” to see affiliate links that include URL parameters.

Scroll through the list and pay attention to URLs.

Once you detect an affiliate tag, such as `?ref`, `utm_source=partnerstack`, or any from the common list above, note it.

Then replace the “?” in your filter with the identified affiliate tag.

If, for example, the tag was `?ref`, you would use this tag to filter the URL list further, ensuring you only pull up links that are affiliates.

Then, export the list and do your outreach, or import it into Respona to handle it for you.

Link building cheat sheet

Gain access to the 3-step strategy we use to earn over 86 high-quality backlinks each month.

Download for free

Now Over to You

In our opinion, the fastest way to do affiliate competitor analysis is the last – to export all of their affiliate links through a backlink monitoring tool.

But if you don’t have access to automation tools, the manual Google approach can work too – especially if you get in touch with big names in your niche.

Need help scaling up your affiliate recruitment efforts, don’t hesitate to start your 14-day free trial with Respona to see how we can help!

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

What is affiliate competitor analysis?

Affiliate competitor analysis involves examining your competitors’ affiliate and content marketing strategies to understand how they recruit and engage affiliates.

This analysis helps identify potential affiliates, effective tactics, and opportunities to improve your own affiliate program.

Why is affiliate competitor analysis important?

Conducting affiliate competitor analysis allows you to uncover valuable insights about successful affiliate recruitment and engagement strategies used by your competitors.

By learning from their strengths and weaknesses, you can enhance your own affiliate and digital marketing efforts, potentially leading to increased affiliate sign-ups and revenue.

How can I identify my competitors’ affiliates?

You can identify your competitors’ affiliates by using tools like Ahrefs or Semrush to analyze their backlink profiles.

Look for specific affiliate tags in the URLs or use advanced search operators in Google to find mentions of your competitors in various content pieces.

What tools are useful for conducting affiliate competitor analysis?

Tools such as Respona Ahrefs, Semrush, and Google search with advanced operators are highly useful for conducting affiliate competitor analysis. These tools help you discover competitor mentions, track backlinks, and find potential affiliate partnerships.

How can I use the findings from affiliate competitor analysis to improve my affiliate marketing program?

Use the insights gained from competitor analysis to refine your affiliate recruitment strategies, enhance your outreach efforts, and offer competitive incentives.

Additionally, identifying successful affiliates working with your competitors allows you to target and recruit them, thereby strengthening your affiliate network.