As paid acquisition gets harder to scale, Cleverbridge’s new offering helps companies turn creator-led engagement into measurable revenue.
Software buyers often form strong opinions before they ever engage directly with your company. They rely on reviews, creators, product experts, industry voices, and peer recommendations to understand their options and compare solutions.
At the same time, paid acquisition is becoming more expensive and harder to forecast. Google Ads cost-per-click rose 12.88% in 2025 and increased across 87% of industries, while media buyers are also navigating inflation, ecosystem fragmentation, and cross-channel measurement challenges.
For software brands, that creates a clear challenge: how do you build trust earlier in the buying journey and connect that trust to measurable demand?
Influencer marketing gives companies another way to create awareness and intent. Trusted voices and communities — on YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok, and podcasts, and in blogs, newsletters, and industry forums — can shape how buyers discover, evaluate, and act on software products long before they reach a company-owned channel.
That is why Cleverbridge is adding influencer marketing to its suite of Digital Marketing Services.
The offering helps software brands test and scale influencer programs that can increase qualified traffic, shape brand perception, and drive conversions across the entire customer lifecycle.
What is influencer marketing?
Influencer marketing is a way for brands to reach buyers through trusted third-party voices, including product experts, reviewers, educators, consultants, creators, and niche communities with credibility in a relevant audience.
For software companies, it can do more than build awareness. The right influencer program can help buyers understand a product, compare options, evaluate a category, start a trial, or even make a purchase through a voice they already trust.
The channel is also becoming a larger part of the marketing mix. In the US, creator ad spend reached an estimated $37 billion in 2025, up 26% year over year and nearly 4x faster than the overall media industry.
How influencer marketing differs from affiliate marketing
Influencer marketing and affiliate marketing are closely related, but they are not the same.
Affiliate marketing is performance-based by design: partners earn a commission only when they drive a defined action — a purchase, sign-up, or trial. The relationship is transactional, the measurement direct, and the incentive tied entirely to outcomes.
Influencer marketing operates differently. Creators are compensated for their content and reach, not solely for conversions. The value they deliver is relational — built through audience trust, editorial voice, and the ability to shape how people think about a product before they are ready to buy.
The two channels are most effective when they work together. Influencer marketing can help build awareness, credibility, and consideration, while affiliate marketing provides a way to track and reward measurable outcomes. Alongside other marketing channels, they can play complementary roles in a broader demand generation strategy.
Why this matters for software brands
As paid acquisition becomes more expensive and harder to forecast, influencer marketing gives software brands a way to generate top-of-funnel awareness and demand through voices buyers already rely on.
That matters because software buyers are increasingly doing their own research before they engage with a vendor. By the time they reach a company website, sales form, or product page, they may already have a shortlist, a preferred solution, or a strong impression of which brands understand their needs.
Influencer marketing helps software brands show up in the right moments with content that feels more useful and credible. It can support product education, category awareness, and brand perception before buyers are ready to convert.
From brand awareness to measurable revenue
The next step is giving that demand somewhere to go.
With Cleverbridge, influencer marketing can turn qualified traffic into attributable action. An influencer campaign might drive prospects to a product page, landing page, trial flow, or self-service checkout where buyers can take the next step directly.
From there, campaign reporting helps teams see which influencer activity is contributing to clicks, signups, purchases, and other meaningful buyer actions. This all matters because demand is easier to convert when the buying path is ready for it — and easier to improve when performance is visible.
The same model can also support customer moments after the initial sale. Influencers can promote new product education, renewal campaigns, upgrade offers, add-ons, and other expansion opportunities that customers can redeem or purchase through the vendor’s owned digital channels.
When demand generation, payments, subscriptions, and reporting are under the same roof, software brands can better understand which campaigns are driving performance, which audiences are responding, and where to invest next as they grow globally.
Why Cleverbridge is investing now
Cleverbridge is investing in influencer marketing because demand is becoming harder to win through paid channels alone. As acquisition costs rise and buyers rely more on AI for product discovery, software companies need new ways to reach their ICPs through trusted digital channels that connect directly to the buying experience.
By combining influencer marketing with existing Digital Marketing Services, clients can manage another channel through a team that already understands how demand gen programs and digital commerce work together in support of growth.
For clients, this becomes part of a broader digital revenue strategy designed to create demand, support conversion, and make growth programs easier to manage over time.
What we're launching
The offering gives clients access to a combined global network of more than 20 million creators, along with capabilities for creator discovery, campaign management, and performance reporting. Cleverbridge adds a digital commerce platform, demand generation, industry expertise, and attribution capabilities to help clients shape creator activity around how buyers discover, evaluate, and purchase software products.
Clients can choose between two engagement models:
Self-service
For teams that want direct access to the partner platform and influencer network. Cleverbridge helps with setup, strategy alignment, and onboarding, while your team manages day-to-day execution.
Full-service
For teams that want Cleverbridge to manage the program on their behalf. Our team supports influencer identification, campaign strategy, brief development, content review, reporting, and ongoing optimization.
In both models, every engagement starts with a collaborative strategy session. We work with you to define goals, map your target audience, identify the right creator profiles, and establish the KPIs that matter for your business.
What this means for Cleverbridge clients
For Cleverbridge clients, influencer marketing creates another way to build demand and align that activity to affiliate programs, digital commerce initiatives, and other marketing efforts already in motion.
That can mean:
- Reaching new audiences through trusted practitioners, reviewers, and creators
- Supporting brand awareness, trials, signups, purchases, and customer engagement
- Connecting influencer activity to affiliate and digital commerce programs
- Measuring performance alongside other demand generation efforts
- Testing influencer marketing without building a program from scratch
The larger opportunity is clear: for software companies, influencer marketing can create a measurable way to build awareness, drive engagement, and support conversion across the customer lifecycle.
Getting started
For current Cleverbridge clients, your account team can help you explore where influencer marketing may fit in your existing growth strategy.
For software brands that are new to Cleverbridge, you can contact us at influencer@cleverbridge.com to schedule a conversation.
