11 Best SaaS Thought-Leader, Affiliate & Influencer Promotion Strategies (2025)

💬 Recruiting, sourcing and engaging affiliates/influencers and the likes of thought-leaders is one thing, but where the real reward comes from this strategy is on how to constantly and effective distribute through cost-effective initiatives/tactics.

That's what I share in this checklist - budget-friendly strategic areas to activate, engage and motivate key personnel to keep sharing and promoting, which in turn leads to better performance rates.

Numerous cost-friendly tactics and strategic initiatives for driving promotional performance across thought-leaders and affiliates

💬 I've incl. some example promotional references to help you with inspiration, as well as different tools to consider trialling and other recommended checklists I created for some checkpoints below (which showcases more tactics and experiments).

An tactical initiative for organic growth and distribution that I'm seeing many brands (and even individual consultants/freelancers do) are LinkedIn carousels - I've also done numerous myself before and have gotten pretty good traction.

In this checklist point, I'm suggesting to do co-branded/collab carousels with creators who have audiences - where you can cross-promote across LinkedIn organic followers/audiences.

A couple of great examples are from two brands who do organic LI well - Gong and Grammarly.

#1 - Gong

• I like this example from Gong (who are amazing at LI content btw). 
• They’ve turned a recent podcast interview with a CRO leader at PitchBook - and they got these lessons from a recent podcast. 
• Good repurposing strategy to distribute insights from an existing piece of content.

Check out the carousel post here

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#2 - Grammarly

• This is a great LI carousel post example with Grammarly working with one of their ambassadors.
• Broken down into digestible tips the ambassador recommends/suggests - great for nurturing audiences. 
• Also good distribution strategy where her followers (who probably fit as ideal ICP) may see the post.

Check out the carousel post here

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You can also do a similar distribution strategy on the likes of Twitter/X, using a similar content formula to LinkedIn carousels.

Threads on Twitter/X have been around for a while, and they still get decent views (if the content is good, of course).

And to then really bolster views/engagement and get new followers, numerous brands/creators then boost them via ads.

This is one is out of the "classic B2B playbook" to help with demand generation - as an initiative, the process of video podcasts and then repurposing across does work, but the bar is becoming higher in order to stand out and do well on any channel (especially LinkedIn and TikTok).

Really focus on getting "golden" snippets of key takeaways from the interviews/videos, and then repurpose numerous times and variations with different 'hooks' and edits.

‍Key task to do: make sure to explore what the top creators/thought-leaders do - understand the topics they talk about, hooks, and the style of the editing of their videos.

Example 1 - Hubspot

I like the podcast snippets that Hubspot have done (see example here) with their leaders, and others they’ve interviewed.

Example 2 - Gong

Now this example is from someone on Gong’s team, but love the audio snippet style (which you can do a similar style with this as well).

Quick editig/repurposing software suggestions (for non-video editing natives)

There are numerous platforms you can also use for doing ‘audiogram’ and podcast snippet content, with some of my faves including: 

• Descript (which has always been a fave of mine)
• Riverside
• And a new kid on the block being OpusClip

Many big brands are using Opus right to achieve B-roll, auto-captions, and faster podcast-style editing editing even faster… and I’ve played around with it, and I can say it’s pretty damn impressive. 

Another great promotion strategy for acquisition, nurturing and demand gen for target ICPs, is doing highly-targeted ICP audiences on LinkedIn and Meta (and even the likes of Google/YouTube ads depending on audience targeting sizes).

Focus on sharing UGC/interview-style content, where you show those with 'influence', talking about topics on how they understand the problem, use cases, features (etc.) where your product offering serves in.

Affiliates can be an awesome channel for acquisition (and usually a good quality channel too), where they're in many ways influence, but want to be incentivised for those they signup through their channels.

A big part of scaling and having an effective affiliate strategy for SaaS brands, does come down to have a reasonable incentive structure in place - and then to really capitalise with top performers, it's about finding ways to reward them further based on performance (so they stay motivated and engaged to do more, and be more creative with promotion/distribution).

Whether you reward the affiliates directly or not, this strategy can really help with demand generation and awareness of your brand.

In terms of motivating those you want to work with to share/distribute your product offering more, or content related to your brand (with some sort of CTA), you have to work on with them on a more 'custom offering' basis. In many ways, just like how you would with freelancers/consultants.

My key takeaway here to remember: work more closely with a select few thought-leaders/bloggers/content creators - it's better to focus on a few and be properly 'integrated' to help each other succeed, rather than trying to find unique people to work with each time for a campaign.

Work out incentive/offer strategies and ways to be more 'integrated' to work with community leaders, or at least those who play a big role in community-building and have influence with the target ICP audience that you're going after.

After all, if you can get them on your side and working closely together, it can be an amazing distribution opportunity, as well as helping scale referrals and increase brand equity with the right ICP audiences faster.

My biggest tip here: focus not just on providing payment/offers, but get involved and show value within the community first. Provide value first, and then form a relationship, and then share your offer.

AMAs and webinars are out of the "classic B2B playbook" (just like what I mentioned above with video podcasts), which many of us know about already - and I can say from what I've seen with clients/companies I work with, and just in general from brands I admire, that it still very much works.

However, big components of success are build-up (promo plan) of attendances with getting the right audience, as well as who the speakers are - it's all about finding those who share quality content in the first place, and have a sizeable audience.

And the real next steps kick-in with having a solid distribution strategy from the AMA/webinar - that being short-form "golden" snippet videos, LI carousels with high-level takeaways, etc.

Changing up CTAs when working with influencers/thought-leaders is worth testing - it can be a similar signup flow path, but try different value-lead offers outside of the usual "free trial" signups.

Testing various offers/CTAs can play a role in improving influencer/thought-leader content performance, where you can attract target ICP audiences and engage them in a different way.

I've seen this quite a bit with affiliates with large followings/audiences, and it can be an effective strategy to help with CRO of the offer.

Naturally, it would make sense that visitors/audiences would potentially click and signup via a dedicated landing page which features the affiliate (the person they follow/engage with their content).

In terms of a promotion/distribution strategy, consider setting up a close-group of personnel that have 'influence' within the vertical, where they can help provide feedback on your product, and then also help with promotion efforts.

Just like working with thought-leaders and influencers normally (and similar to what I've mentioned already), but forming a closer relationship to be more aligned with helping each other.

I've seen this quite prevalent with eCommerce communities, and seeing this a lot more within SaaS/B2B (always been there, but something I'm seeing even more now).