If your business regularly engages with Influencers to promote your products or services, you might have wondered how you can reduce your risk, keep it professional and continue to move forward without delays. Here you will find 10 tips for contracting with Influencers to make your life easier.
1. Know the legal basics for contracting with Influencers
If you don’t know the legal basics when it comes to influencer marketing campaigns, seek advice. These basics will form the basis of your agreements with your chosen Influencers. You can read all about some of the legal basics in some of our other blog posts on this website.
2. Decide on your strategy
Not all influencer marketing campaigns are the same. Decide if there’s a certain strategy or several strategies you wish to adopt and create customised Influencer Agreements to reflect those strategies. You can read more about strategies here. Also decide on your risk appetite for each campaign as this will impact on your contract negotiations.
3. Determine the legal relationship
Sometimes a collaboration involves more than just an Influencer helping to advertise your products or services, and instead of the Influencer simply providing a service in exchange for a fee, they become more like a partner or a joint venturer rather than an independent contractor. It’s important to determine the relationship early in the arrangement to ensure that the relevant issues can be addressed in the agreement that will govern the arrangement.
4. Create an Influencer Agreement
Having a draft Influencer Agreement you can propose when negotiating with an Influencer will help you to expedite the negotiations and ensure that all of the relevant issues are considered and agreed. It will also save a lot of time and show that you are ready to do business and know your desired terms.
When contracting with Influencers, your Influencer Agreement should be customised to your intended campaign strategy and, for ease of contracting, should ideally contain a schedule which can be completed with the specifics for each Influencer. It is then simply a matter of completing the schedule with those specifics and proposing your draft Influencer Agreement to your chosen Influencers.
It’s important to note that using a template Influencer Agreement which has not been customised for your intended campaign strategy is unlikely to provide you with your desired level of protection or ease of contracting. Instead look to create Influencer Agreements which are customised to your campaign strategy and risk appetite, but still allow you to easily and quickly amend them based on your negotiations with each Influencer.
5. Create a “Contracting with Influencers Guide” to assist in negotiations
This is a document which, when created, is intended for internal use within an organisation only. The purpose of the document is to set out desired positions of the business owners in relation to certain contractual issues, such as, for example, ownership and usage of intellectual property rights in the deliverables created by the Influencer. The document may also include a short explanation for each of the positions to aid whomever within the organisation is leading the negotiations.
It is likely that there will be some negotiation in relation to your proposed draft Influencer Agreement, and preparing a document setting out your risk appetite and “the deal breakers” can help to save time as you grow and others are assisting in the initial stages of the negotiations. This document can also set out where to escalate certain issues for approvals in larger organisations.
6. Seek a uniformed approach where possible
When you are contracting with multiple Influencers, try to keep a similar approach with each Influencer, wherever possible, when it comes to invoicing, payments and other administrative operations. Using your own customised Influencer Agreement for each campaign will go a long way to ensure that each campaign is on similar standard administrative terms. This will save you both time and energy during each campaign.
7. Get it signed
Make sure your Influencer Agreement is enforceable by ensuring that you obtain a copy signed by the correct parties to the agreement. Also make sure you provide a duly signed copy of the agreement to the Influencer. If the document is being signed and exchanged in counterparts electronically, the agreement should allow for this in the terms.
8. Ensure your team knows the terms
If you have a team, it is important that anyone involved with the campaign understands what has been agreed. For example, whoever is posting to your social media accounts needs to know what can be done with each piece of content created by the Influencers. Some content may be able to be used in any way and others may involve certain restrictions. In larger campaigns, a contract management plan can assist in this process and ensure that everyone understands the position.
9. Deal with variations quickly
If the recent COVID-19 pandamic has taught us anything, it’s that sometimes the best thought out plans need to change. If a situation arises that requires a variation to the terms of your Influencer Agreement, follow the process in your Influencer Agreement to agree a variation. In most cases, variations will need to be agreed to by both parties and they will need to be in writing. If you have decided to create a contract management plan, don’t forget to update it, as well as your team.
10. Comply with the terms
There is little point in going to the effort of creating an Influencer Agreement if you do not comply with the terms. Failing to comply with the terms will most likely result in a dispute with the Influencer, which may cost you time, money and potentially reputation.
There you have it. 10 tips to make your life easier when you’re contracting with Influencers. If you need any help with implementing any of these tips, contact us for assistance and advice.
