Having an influencer contract is awesome:

• You and the creator are protected
• There’s a document clearly laying out expectations
• You have directions on what to do in case something goes wrong (as does the creator)
  

But how do you create an iron clad contract? What terms should you include? How do you reduce the admin work that comes with it? This article covers everything:

• Where should you use full-fledged contracts vs. where written agreements would do just fine
• What are some non-negotiable terms you should include in an influencer contract
• How to reduce the admin work of creating & signing contracts
  

👉 If you need an influencer contract template ASAP, here it is. Click on “File” and “Make a copy” to edit it and send it to your influencer partners. You need to fill everything marked in yellow with your brand’s info.

⚠️ Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we're not offering legal advice. You should always have a legal professional look over your contracts to ensure you're protected appropriately.

3 situations where you could skip the formal contract

Having a formal contract 100% of the time for every influencer collaboration is terrific, of course. But the reality is creating, sending, and getting a contract signed creates at least some friction in your influencer onboarding workflow – even if you have ready-made templates. Sometimes, contracts are bottlenecks you can remove to move things faster.

Here are three scenarios where you could skip the formal contract entirely and instead opt for a simple written agreement.

1: When you’re doing influencer gifting

In our influencer gifting survey of 31 influencer marketers:

• 35.3% said they create no contracts for gifting campaigns
• 41.2% said they have a written agreement, but no contract

A contract or written agreement is out of the question if you’re practicing a no-strings-attached approach in your product seeding campaigns. But even if you’re doing barter deals, a formal contract might not be worth the effort unless your order value is high (whatever that means to you, e.g. $100-$200+) or there are unusual conditions at play (e.g. returning products, or royalty fees).

Influencer marketing manager, Abdullah Khan, agrees:

Generally, I don't create signed contracts for gifted collaborations because, in gifting, we are not offering a monetary fee to influencers for creating content and featuring our brand on their channels.

Abdullah Khan Influencer Marketing Manager

The only thing you risk losing by foregoing an influencer contract for gifting campaigns is your product value (and some time).

⚠️ Note: if you’re asking a creator for usage rights for their content after they post about you, draw up a formal licensing agreement. You don’t need a contract while sending the product, but if you’re using any influencer generated content (whether free or paid, short-term or for perpetuity), it’s advisable to have everything formalized.

2: When you’re running a self-serve ambassador or affiliate program

A self-serving affiliate campaign or brand ambassador program should have a “Terms and Conditions” page instead of a contract with every single influencer partner.

Take Pura Vida. It runs an extensive ambassador program. Anyone can sign up, start posting, and earn rewards. Instead of having individual contracts with every creator who applies, they have a “Help” page that includes the terms and conditions of their ambassador campaign. Anyone who’s signing up is automatically also agreeing to these conditions.

Usually, the goal with such brand ambassador programs or affiliate campaigns is to scale influencer content production, gain brand awareness, and minimize managing influencer relationships. Signing contracts with every creator who shows interest is the opposite of reducing admin work and scaling fast.

💡 Related reading: How Deeper Sonars Recruited 7k+ Brand Ambassadors In 30+ Countries

Anna Maria Klappenbach, Community and Brand Marketing Lead at Aumio, is also experimenting with cutting the contract step in her affiliate campaigns to be more efficient:

We have recently experimented with cutting the contract step in our affiliate program, as less experienced creators have more questions usually and the time spent on affiliates often doesn't lead to greater results. So we've tried to cut time here and make the program more cost-efficient.

Anna-Maria Klappenbach Sr. Influencer Marketing Manager, Modash

3: When you’re in a trial period with a new influencer

Short-term influencer collaborations might be A-OK with just a written agreement instead of a full-blown influencer contract.

Take Deeper Sonar. They work with every creator on a shorter trial period before onboarding them for a long-term partnership. During this time, they examine whether a creator is responsible and whether they can create valuable content.

Valeriia Chemerys, Head of Media Partnerships at the company, says they don’t make a contract for this trial period:

(Note: there is still a written agreement outlining deliverables etc.)

We don't sign the contract with everyone in advance, because we don't want to waste time by doing this formality and collecting signatures before we understand the capabilities of each creator and how the further collaboration with them will look like.

Valeriia Chemerys Head of Media Partnerships, Deeper

However, you must be okay with the risk of not having a formal contract with short-term influencer partners. They might ghost you after taking the products and/or the fixed-fee.

In Deeper’s case, they also skip the contract because they aren’t going to enforce the punishments with every short-term creator partner. Valeriia elaborates:

In our case, the agreement is a formality, as even if the influencer stops posting or doesn't do the requirements, we don't have any "methods of punishment" applied in such a case. We don't have lawyers who will collect the debts from them by chasing them via the phone. All we can do in such a case is to give our feedback, try to solve the situation, and if there's no way out – stop cooperating and move on.

Valeriia Chemerys Head of Media Partnerships, Deeper

Ghosting is a part-and-parcel of the influencer marketing industry (unfortunately). It’s worth asking if you’re going to chase content, do lawsuits, etc., if an influencer doesn’t live up to their end of the deal – especially if the fixed-fee payment and the product value aren’t extremely high. If you’re not going to go through that trouble, written agreements are just as good as an influencer contract.

It’s also worthwhile to note that as you progress in your influencer marketing campaigns, you’ll pick up the skills of vetting creators thoroughly. You’d be able to determine who’s trustworthy by speaking to creators, evaluating their metrics, and picking up their overall vibe. Poorly produced content and unmet expectations will still be a thing, sure, but those instances will hopefully become fewer & fewer as you get more experience under your belt.

The 7 non-negotiable components to include in your influencer contract

1: Details related to the deliverables, content approvals, goals, and timelines

There should be a section that discusses five aspects of your influencer collaboration:

1. Expected deliverables: share details about which social media channel(s) you expect the creators to post on, how many posts they should share, which type of posts (images vs. videos vs. Stories), length of videos you expect, which link or code they should use etc. Be as specific as possible to avoid any confusion.

2. Timelines: include the whole campaign’s timeline and when you expect the creator to post about you within that time period. If it’s unclear at the time of drafting your contract, use a tentative date. This can also be the age of the contract (until you renew it) and how long the influencer relationship lasts. Don't forget to allow time for content approvals & revisions, if needed.

3. Content approvals: include how many rounds of edits are included with the payment, what are the charges for any additional changes, and when you’ll provide creative input in the workflow.

4. Goals & performance data: it’s essential to include your goals with the influencer marketing campaign so the creator can understand what’s expected of them. Mention the metrics you’re measuring (like leads, engagement downloads, etc.) and how you’re calculating influencer marketing ROI from the influencer collaboration. If creators should hit a certain quota to renew their partnership with your brand, mention that too. If creators need to send their performance data to you regularly to measure performance, specify that as well. Do you need access to Google Analytics? Or are screenshots sufficient? Again, be as clear as possible.

5. Any other brand rules: include any brand-specific expectations in this section of your contract. For example, if you sell jewelry that tarnishes in water, include a guideline not to shoot your products in any bodies of water.

2: Usage rights and exclusivity terms

In usage rights, include the following details:

• whether or not you can use the influencer content after it’s live
• if yes, how long do you have the usage rights for, and how much you’re paying for it (if you are)
• where can you repurpose the influencer content – on your own social media, landing pages, other marketing assets, etc.
• who has the final copyright – are you getting permission to use the influencer content for a specific period or do you own it?

In influencer exclusivity, you need to include:

1. Whether you need complete exclusivity or category exclusivity: the general approach is to have some level of both. For example, you could ask creators not to post any sponsored content for 24 hours before and after your branded post goes live. And posting no competing brands’ content for even longer (like 30 days).

Influencer marketing pro, Katie Stoller, also recommends including a section about no political commentary for 24 hours or so.

Often, you can’t expect influencers to stay silent about the political situations in their country or state (like during elections). The idea is to not go to extreme lengths to control what an influencer is posting, but to avoid sandwiching your sponsored posts with a lot of unrelated content. Stoller explains:

You can’t dictate what they [an influencer] post because you’re paying them to post a sponsored post. You have to be okay with them being political. If you’re working with an influencer, you need to be okay with the other content that they post.

Katie Stoller Founder, Katie Stoller

This point also reinforces the need to thoroughly vet an influencer before collaborating with them. If they have posted political content in the past, they’ll likely do so again. Remember that creators today are a marketing channel for many politicians, so finding creators who never speak about political situations might be unrealistic.

2. Working with competitor brands: be specific on who your competitors are (give a few examples) and your exclusivity terms relating to them. For example, can a creator post an Instagram Story with a competing brand after 30 days if you have a 90 day exclusivity window? What if they’re using a competing product in a “GRWM” style video, but not specifically mentioning the name of your rival brand?

The more detailed you are, the better. At Deeper, for instance, Valeriia learned that the brand needs exclusivity for not just other competing sonar brands, but for the whole product category to maintain their authenticity:

I learned that in the contract, we have to demand exclusivity not in using other sonar brands, but rather exclusivity in the product category. It’s a category of portable sonars that you can use from the bank/small boat/kayak/ice fishing. It will not look authentic if the influencer uses the same type of product as ours.

Valeriia Chemerys Head of Media Partnerships, Deeper

3: Everything related to payments

Your payment section needs to answer the following questions:

• How much money are you paying the influencer? Include a breakdown of the fixed-fee and the affiliate percentage.
  
• How often will the influencer be paid? Share your payment terms & invoicing details to help the influencer understand when they can expect the payment. For example, when can an influencer expect to receive payment after invoicing? After 15 days? 30 days?
  
• Which currency are you using to pay the creators? Specify which currency an influencer will get paid in – especially if you work with global creators.
  
• Which payment method will you use to pay creators? There are many ways to pay influencers, which one will you use? Do they need to enter their banking details into a software or will you do a direct bank transfer? Anna Maria Klappenbach from Aumio includes multiple payment methods since different creators prefer different modes of payment.
  
• Which party will bear the transfer fees and taxes? Many tools charge a transfer fee when you pay outside of your home country. Many places like the EU have VAT and GST. Specify who’s responsible for these fees. Anna from Aumio, for example, includes their VAT ID in the contract to help creators include it in their invoices.
  
• What is the payment workflow? Mention to whom the creators should send an invoice and when. If they’re doing multiple posts a month, should they invoice at the end of the month or after submitting each deliverable? Where should they mention their banking info? Write the invoicing process as thoroughly as possible.
• ‍Non-monetary payment terms and conditions: if you’re inviting an influencer to an event or gifting them an extremely expensive product that they have to return after shooting, specify these conditions under the payment section. Mention the value of your product, what costs you’d cover if you’re inviting a creator to an event, etc. If an influencer has to return the product, also include the timeline by when you want the product back. Also include damage charges, in case there are any from the creator’s end.

For example, Deeper Sonar recently launched a new product called the Deeper Quest, which came with newer obligations – like returning the product if you’re no longer an ambassador for the company. So, Valeriia modified the contract to reflect these terms:

Deeper Quest Annex is the first contract where we have "a penalty" – if someone is no longer our bait boat ambassador, they have to return the bait boat to us. Because the product itself is expensive (1699 eur), and overall, we have only 1 ambassador of this product in our main markets.

Valeriia Chemerys Head of Media Partnerships, Deeper

4: Governing law and dispute resolution

This is a safety measure clause. If there’s any dispute or lawsuit, you need to specify which country or state’s laws will apply and where the law proceedings will take place. This section is especially critical to include if you work with creators across the globe.

5: FTC responsibility

Add a statement that the influencer has to ensure they’re displaying the ad partnerships label correctly and in line with the current laws – like #ad or #sponsored. It’s best to specify these terms for various content types, too, since missing ad disclosure on Instagram Stories can be a gray area.

6: Termination terms

What are some valid reasons both parties can terminate the influencer contract? Andreea Moise, founder of Hype Maven, suggests also including a breach of content posting deadlines for more than 30 days as a valid reason to end the relationship.

This ensures you get content on time without chasing and keeps the influencer accountable.

Andreea Moise Influencer Marketing Consultant & Founder, Hype Maven

Adding specific instances and examples (like failing to provide the services) helps set crystal clear expectations. You can also allow for termination without mentioning any reason if it’s informed well in advance.

7: Other legal clauses

Apart from the six agreements above, there are some standard legal clauses you should include to make your influencer contract legit:

• Confidentiality: influencers might learn sensitive information about your brand and products while collaborating with you. This clause should include any details you don’t want the influencer to disclose publicly.
  
• Independent contractor: you need to specify that the influencer is getting hired as an independent contractor, not an employee. This means they can't claim any company benefits or classify themselves as your employee for legal purposes.
  
• Force majeure: this standard contract clause covers unexpected circumstances that prevent either party from fulfilling the contract. Typical examples would be a natural disaster, war, or a pandemic.
  
• Morality clause: this clause basically ensures appropriate behavior – like a creator can’t do a sponsored post today and bad mouth you tomorrow. You also don’t want to look like your brand is talking poorly about competitors or other people via the influencer content.

The ultimate influencer contract template (and how to use it)

While the sections in this influencer contract template should include everything you need to draft a rock-solid contract, it’s advisable to have your legal team do a quick run through of this document. This’ll help you ensure no conditions are missing, no wording is ambiguous, and no brand details are incomplete/incorrect. This template isn’t legal advice.

(Click to make a copy!)

Now, you have your own editable Google Doc version. Edit everything in yellow with your company’s info and download it as a PDF for e-signing – Docusign, Yousign, and PandaDoc all provide services for e-signing important contracts and documents securely.

Getting a contract signed is just the beginning

Don’t assume contracts are a replacement for communication. Creators often skim influencer contracts and sign quickly to get them out of the way and begin the content creation work. So you still need to communicate with creators about deliverables, the scope of work, expectations, usage rights, etc., outside of the contract.

And after making things official via a contract, your work is just beginning. Now you can focus on nurturing solid creator relationships, providing actionable feedback, and improving your bottom line.

Here are some articles to help you with just that:

• How To Monitor Influencer Content Automatically
• How to Build Great Influencer Relationships
• How to Measure Influencer Marketing

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