Affiliate marketing in the B2B arena
I read an interesting post by Bruce Clayton on the UK Affiliate Marketing Forum where he talks about the greater use of affiliate marketing in B2B sales, while touching upon some of the issues preventing as much traction in the B2B environment.
I think the issue goes beyond affiliate marketing. B2B online selling needs to first really take off to a level that people begin to believe in it again : there was a time about 5-6 years ago, when all and sundry talked about B2B online sales, with the formation of so many exchanges, portals and auction platforms specifically targeted at this segment [most of which are dead and buried]. May be they were ahead of their time. More likely that these sites & services did not take into account the decision making processes, procurement rules and guidelines and multi-person involvement that went into actually consummating a B2B sale {even in the small-medium business sector, let alone the large enterprises}.
As many companies already recognize, the most likelihood of success with online marketing in the B2B space is with lead generation and may be sale of low-ticket items. Affiliates can play a huge role in lead generation; may be if merchants were to work out a structure where affiliates get additional attractive reward for the leads that convert {through other channels, including offline} within a certain realistic time frame, more affiliates would be interested in targeting such a segment, since the expected revenue per unit sale could be much higher. There may be some stumbling blocks such as trust and trackability, but these are by no means new or insurmountable.
I feel that the convergence of various technologies, particularly Internet and telephony, will provide a reasonable (and much needed) impetus to the B2B online marketing segment (as it will further drive the B2C segment). Watch out for some serious developments in this area 
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