Pulling off a fruitful influencer collaboration involves ticking off a few crucial steps – and few are more important than the influencer contract.
Creating a comprehensive, airtight contract may seem intimidating at first, but as with all things, tackling it step-by-step is the simplest path to success. Let’s take a look at all the components of a good influencer contract plus some tips and tricks along the way.
1. Preparation: Understanding Your Goals and Needs
Before putting your foot on the pedal and heading off to kick off your next influencer marketing campaign, you’ll need to lay some groundwork; that is, outlining your campaign’s objectives, goals, and ultimately your desired outcomes from the collaboration at hand.
It’s vital to have these clearly set in the beginning, as they’ll dictate the actions you (and the influencers you hire) will undertake throughout the campaign. They will naturally also influence the type of content influencers will need to post, the platforms they’ll be posting on, and how frequently these posts will be uploaded. This is all information that will need to be stated in the influencer contract, so it’s best to make sure your aims are loud and clear.
Some examples of common goals include brand awareness or an increase in sales; respective objectives might be to hit a target of a certain number of engagements or reach for all influencer posts in the campaign, or to get a specific number of clicks-to-conversions in terms of a sales link that influencers include in their posts.
2. Gather Information: Know Your Influencer
Naturally, influencers form a pretty important part of your campaign. They act as your brand representatives, the bridge between you and your desired target audience – so getting the right creators on board can make or break your efforts.
Thus, it’s imperative that you take the time to adequately research and look into a variety of suitable influencers that align with both your brand’s values and messaging, as well as your preferred audience. Some relevant information to take into consideration includes the content creator’s audience demographics, engagement rates, and past collaborations (particularly those with brands similar to yours).
Taking a further deep-dive might be worth your while as you can find out about general audience sentiment, as well as any non-branded content the creator posts about – this could affect your brand and reputation after all, so it’s best to be as informed as possible!
Top tip: Automated influencer marketing tools make all the difference here. HypeAuditor’s Influencer Discovery tool takes care of finding the perfect content creators for the job, while the Influencer Analytics feature covers all of the details you need to make the right choice.
3. Negotiation of Clauses: Draft the Contract
This is where the heavy lifting comes in: creating the actual influencer contract. Luckily, this is made a whole lot easier by understanding the components that should be included. This may vary slightly depending on the scale of the campaign as well as any intricacies related to your brand, but it’s a great baseline to get you started and cover the most important aspects of contract creation.
(Spoiler alert: HypeAuditor’s CRM tool can aid you with brief creation for this entire process, so if you need an extra helping hand, you know where to find it!)
Introduction: Clearly state the parties involved (i.e. the brand and the influencer), the purpose of the contract, and the campaign details. This should be clear and without any room for misinterpretation.
Scope of work: Explicitly specify the type, frequency, and format of content expected from the influencer. This includes explicitly outlining the deliverables such as captions, hashtags, or any other campaign-specific aspects that need to be featured in posts.
Compensation: Ensure that you detail not only the form of payment as well as the amount but also the method in which payment will be carried out as well as the scheduling of payments (i.e. when it should be expected).
Exclusivity: This can often be quite a sticky subject when it comes to collaborations, so it’s best to get everyone on the same page when it comes to exclusivity. Here, you should clearly define whether the influencer can work with other brands or competitors during the campaign’s tenure.
Ownership and usage Rights: Be sure to clarify exactly who owns the rights to the content created and how it can be used. This will come into play in the future should you as the brand want to reuse influencer-created content for promotional purposes, or other marketing-related content on your own profile. Making sure both parties understand how content can be used will help keep relationships smooth-sailing well into the future.
Performance metrics: Outline the key performance indicators (KPIs) that will be used to measure the success of the campaign so that everyone is on the same page. This could include conversions, sales, and reach among many others,
Confidentiality: Include a clause to protect sensitive information shared during the collaboration. You might not want certain aspects of the product to be shared during the campaign (as is the case with embargos for film and gaming media, for example), so be clear to ensure the influencer is aware to safeguard yourself in the instance of a breach.
Termination clause: Plain and simple, specify the conditions under which either party can terminate the contract should the need arise.
Dispute resolution: Finally, it’s also important to have a process in place for resolving disputes that may arise during the partnership.
Extra top tip: Our CRM tool has a pre-created draft ready and waiting for you to use and populate with the needed information to make contract drafting that much easier. If you’d prefer to handle things yourself, you can simply upload your own contract into the HypeAuditor CRM platform to distribute as needed with influencers.
4. Review and Approval: Seek Legal Advice (if necessary!)
We’re all professionals in our respective fields, and sometimes it's best to leave the job to those who know best. Consulting with legal professionals can help to ensure that the contract is legally sound and compliant with relevant regulations (and allow you to rest easy knowing that you’re all covered on a legal front).
Once that’s done, you should be sure to review the contract with the influencer and address any concerns or questions they may have. This includes allowing them to give the contract their own legal review to make sure both parties are comfortable.
HypeAuditor’s contract draft in our CRM tool is already verified, so no need to worry if you decide to go that route!
5. Signing the Contract: Formalize the Agreement
Once both parties are satisfied with the terms of the contract and happy to continue, all that’s left is to sign the contract and make things official! This can be done either physically or, more commonly, digitally using e-signature tools such as DocuSign or, a scanner app that provides eSignature for free.
It’s crucial to ensure that all parties involved receive signed copies of the contract for their records. This way, everyone can be sure that they have an agreed-upon version of the contract with no changes or amendments made after the signing was made.
6. Monitoring and Compliance: Track the Collaboration
Now that all the preparation, planning, contract drafting, and signings have been completed, it’s time to hit go on your influencer marketing campaign. Now’s the time to keep a close eye on how the collaboration is going and regularly monitor the influencer's content to ensure it aligns with the terms that all parties have agreed upon.
In this step, you’ll be tracking performance metrics to assess the success of the campaign based on the predetermined KPIs that were outlined in the influencer contract. Maintaining an open communication policy is the best way to go about this, as you can address any issues or adjustments that may be needed. This goes both ways, of course; the more the influencer feels that they can check in with you and let you know how the campaign is going on their end, the better!
HypeAuditor helps to take the stress out of this step by offering campaign monitoring tools as well as seamless communication channels that keep all your influencer chats in one place – the perfect way to stay on top of a busy campaign that involves multiple influences.
7. That’s a Wrap
By carefully following this step-by-step guide, you can create a well-structured and detailed contract that establishes clear expectations, safeguards both parties' interests, and fosters a fruitful collaboration. Just be sure to take it one step at a time, and get a few extra pairs of eyes on your contract to make sure everything looks right, and you’re good to go!
Now get out there and make your next influencer marketing campaign a success!
