I have a legal question about customer acquisition.
I have been doing some freelance on the side. I have been thinking of contacting marketing managers of companies who might want to hire me, and offering them a sort of affiliate commission if they recommend me to their company and their company buys my services.
Something like, if your company buys my services, you can get 10-20% of the sale as an affiliate referral. For the underpaid marketing managers, they might see this is as a nice way to earn some extra cash.
My question is, could this be considered bribing the marketing manager, or is it just affiliate marketing? Does anyone know the legality of this?
Now, if that Marketing Manager were connecting you to a completely different company as a side gig (one that doesn’t compete with their own company), and if they had no loyally or responsibly to said company, then that would be a completely okay.
As a Marketing Manager, it is their responsibility to bid for contractors that would be a good fit for their company, in terms of price vs. quality of service offered. If that Marketing Manager chose you over another contractor who could have provided the same or better service for a lower price, their company would certainly have grounds to look into why they did that. If the company found out that manager accepted a kickback, that would certainly be grounds for termination.
However, I’m not sure if the company would have any grounds to take legal action against you. Just to be safe, it might be better for you to state “I offer an affiliate commission for referring anybody to me” and not explicitly specify “for referring your company to me”.
Another approach, instead of a monetary commission, would be to offer that Marketing Manager a “free personal trial” of your services in a way that would both benefit them personally, while also incentivize them to refer your services to their company.
As an example, hotel sales people often approach administrative assistants (or whoever is in charge of making travel arrangements for the boss) and offer complimentary hotel stays to them as a gift, both as a way for them to assess the quality of that hotel for their boss, but also as an incentive for them to consider that hotel for their future bookings.
This won’t work for all industries though, depending on the nature of the services you offer.
I don’t see how it’s bribery if the person gets a commission for referring you to a colleague from another company. Because you aren’t talking about assigning you cases from this person’s company, right?
Illegal, and the marketing manager will be fired if caught (since he is pocketing company money).
If you want to give them something legally, invite them to your company’s year end party and give them a hong bao.
You know depending on the company you could be prosecuted for making this offer, i think some industries/ organisations are legally obliged to report things like this.
(I know they are in my home country)