Influencer Marketing Agreement – Learn All About It
Shane Barker
Founder @TraceFuse.ai | Amazon Review Expert | E-commerce Strategist | Influencer Marketing Specialist | Speaker
Have you been working with influencers? Or perhaps you’re planning to collaborate with them soon? Either way, do you realize the importance of influencer marketing agreements or contracts when partnering with influencers?
If your answer is no, this mini-guide will tell you everything you need to know about them. 86% of marketers are using influencer marketing today as a key marketing strategy. And influencer marketing agreements can determine the success (or failure) of your campaign.
Such agreements serve to protect a company’s interests as well as the rights of an influencer.
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An agreement in black and white ensures that the collaboration is implemented effectively. It leaves little to chance, and ensures that the expectations and deliverables are clearly outlined.Let’s take a closer look at what it must include, and how you should go about creating one.
What is an Influencer Marketing Agreement?
It’s a standard agreement that outlines the details of your partnership with an influencer. It includes basic information such as the names of all parties involved, deliverables, costs, and deadlines. Make sure it is thorough but also easy to understand.
Why is an Influencer Marketing Agreement Essential?
Two reasons. Without a written agreement, the content delivered by your influencers may end up being drastically different from what you had in mind. That paves the way for a waste of resources and a bad experience for both you and your influencer. Also, when both of you agree to the terms and sign a contract – both are legally bound to hold up their end of the bargain.
Confused?
Consider the following situation.
Say, as a business owner, you wish to promote your products to a larger audience. Your marketing team identifies relevant influencers for your campaign. Each has an impressive portfolio, a decent follower count, adequate engagement, and seem to understand your campaign objectives.
After your initial discussions with them, everything seems perfect. So you instruct the influencer to go ahead and create the content. You’ve already agreed upon the payment terms too.
However, once the content has been published, you find that it doesn’t meet your requirements. In fact, it’s quite different from what you had asked for, which negatively affects your campaign results. Or perhaps the influencers fail to deliver on time, or don’t display the content for as long as they were supposed to.
This leads to dissatisfaction. You’re still obligated to pay the influencer even though the content didn’t meet your expectations. And if you refuse to do so, it will create serious conflict between you and the influencer.
Your relationship with the influencer is negatively affected, as well as the overall experience. You may even refrain from running influencer marketing campaigns in future, and miss out on the benefits they have to offer.
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So, what do you think went wrong in this situation? The expectations and deliverables were not penned down on paper. Many open-ended topics were not discussed or touched upon. This created a huge mess for both parties involved.
That’s exactly why you need a written contract – to avoid landing up in such situations and to ensure you have everything under control.
Here are 12 essentials you need to include in your influencer marketing agreement.
1. Basic Elements
First, get the basic elements of your agreement right. Mention the name of the influencer you’ve partnered with for your campaign. The agreement should also have your brand name mentioned as a customer. It should mention the effective date of the agreement and a short description of the campaign.
2. Duration of the Agreement
Influence marketing proves to be truly effective when it is implemented for a longer duration. So, mention how long you plan to associate with the influencer. Is it for a single campaign or a certain number of campaigns? Make sure that your agreement mentions this duration.
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3. Specifics about the Content You Expect
Of course, you need to provide creative freedom to your influencers so that they may deliver their best work.
However, there are a few guidelines you need to include in your contract:
- What type of content you would like them to create? Videos, Instagram posts, or blog posts?
- How long should their blog posts or videos be?
- What are the important points they should mention in their content?
- When (date and time) should they post the content?
- How long should the content be displayed on their social accounts/blogs?
- How many such posts do you require from your influencer?
Image via Instagram
4. The Channel for Publishing Content
Your choice of a platform will depend on your target audiences and the type of products or services you offer. Of course, whichever platform you select, you need to make sure that your influencer has a decent presence there.
Image via Instagram
Your influencer marketing agreement needs to state where you want the content to be published. It should also mention:
- Whether the same post would be shared on other platforms too.
- Whether a separate post will be created for every social channel.
Read the full post on Shane Barker's Influencer Marketing blog.