Beyond Paid Ads: Why You Should Be Investing in Influencer Partnerships for Customer Acquisition

For many experienced media buyers, media buying can be separated into two distinct phases: pre-iOS 14, and post-iOS 14. 

We’re currently in the latter. And (spoiler alert) running ads is no longer as easy or as affordable as it used to be before Apple released its privacy updates, effectively making detailed targeting and tracking null.

On top of all of that, the average consumer sees 5,000 ads per day on social platforms. So, it’s no surprise that they’ve grown quite averse to ads.

Does that mean that digital marketing as a whole has gone bust? No.

Has it changed? Tremendously.

That’s where the power of real people comes in. Instead of relying on platforms with unpredictable costs and updates, leverage real people (influencers) as brand advocates.

That’s why brands are striving to make influencer partnerships one of their key marketing strategies. In fact, a 2024 survey revealed that companies are investing 10% to 20% of their marketing budget into influencer marketing, which is huge! 

Today, we’re going to dive into how influencer partnerships can improve your ecommerce store’s customer acquisition and how you can maximize the results by combining it with an affiliate-first approach.

What are influencer partnerships?

Influencer partnerships are strategic collaborations between brands and influencers aiming to promote the brand’s products by leveraging the influencer’s reach.

Here’s how it works - influencers create content like social media posts, videos, or blogs that feature the brand's products in front of their audience. 

In return, the brand compensates them with monetary payments like commissions per sale, bonuses, free products, or discount codes. Sometimes, influencers will charge brands a fee per-post.

Here’s why you should implement an effective influencer marketing campaign for your brand too: 

• When influencers vouch for your products, it feels more genuine and reliable than traditional ads, leading to improved brand credibility and higher conversion rates. 
• They usually have a niche audience, meaning that you’re targeting people with the same interests in one-go.
• Influencers are expert content creators (be it visual or written content) with knowledge of what exactly appeals to their audience. 

The downfall of Paid Ads

A few years ago, DTC businesses relied heavily on paid ads. They would run ads to bring in new customers and often saw a 5X ROAS (Return on Ad Spend).

However, this changed drastically in the past few years. Here are a few reasons why: 

• Consumers stopped paying attention to traditional ads, with many using ad blockers to avoid them entirely. An IAB report noted that 26% of desktop users and 15% of mobile shoppers use ad blockers.
• With the growing importance of social proof, customers are now more skeptical about brands boasting about their own products through ads. 
• Modern customer journeys are more complex and nonlinear, which has made ad attribution less reliable. 
• CPM (Cost per mile) has become expensive due to the increased competition in the ecommerce market. 

A study conducted by Neil Patel’s team revealed that more than 78% of marketers failed to drive profit through paid ads.

That’s why focus on ROAS took a backseat while brands started prioritizing contribution margin instead. They started looking for alternative customer acquisition channels to mitigate the downsides and risks of paid ads. 

This gave rise to the popularity of influencer marketing for customer acquisition, since it offered brands a more predictable customer acquisition cost. 

Since ads have grown to be less reliable, brands are forced to find alternative ways to acquire customers. This is where influencer affiliates come into play.

In a Quora answer, Mario Peshev, CEO of DevriX, beautifully explained why influencer marketing is so popular.  He said:

The rise of micro and macro influencers also made it easier for smaller brands to leverage influencer marketing within a limited budget. While these creators may not have millions of followers, their niche fans trust their judgment and advice.

How to maximize customer acquisition through influencer partnerships

There is no denying that influencer marketing works extremely well for ecommerce brands. But, there is a caveat.

Traditional influencer marketing has mostly focused on building brand awareness through content creation, not on driving sales directly. 

That’s why the creator space as a whole is gradually shifting towards affiliate marketing. 

In fact, with TikTok Shop now being a part of the influencer marketing space, brands are often partnering with creators exclusively on an affiliate basis, as opposed to requiring an upfront fee for posting.

KPIs like attributable revenue and new customer acquisition rate have become the key metrics ecommerce brands are tracking from their influencer partnerships.

However, most influencer marketing solutions are designed with content and brand awareness in mind, treating affiliate sales as a secondary bonus. 

To solve this problem, we launched Social Snowball as the first influencer platform with affiliate marketing at its core. 

Our focus is to optimize ecommerce brands' influencer partnerships with an affiliate marketing structure. 

This way, your partnered creators don't just boost brand awareness—they also drive sales and customer growth. Plus, they get rewarded well for their efforts.  

On Social Snowball, you can manage all your influencer partnerships through the comprehensive dashboard and automate the management of them. It eliminates the need for cumbersome spreadsheets and manual processes, offering you a centralized hub to manage all aspects of your partnerships.

With our tool, you can: 

• Create and manage custom influencer programs with just a few clicks.
• Have accurate attribution for influencer referred sales.
• Automate bulk payouts and offer flexible reward options.
• Prevent affiliate codes from leaking to coupon sites.
• Streamline product seeding and gifting to incentivize performance.
• Simplify onboarding and maintain clear communication channels with affiliates.

• Set up reward levels for influencers to earn gifts when they hit performance goals.

This transition in the influencer space to affiliate partnerships has just begun. 

With the rise of YouTube shopping, Meta shops, and TikTok shops, the only way to maximize your influencer partnerships’ profitability is to blend them with affiliate marketing.