How to pay influencers using impact.com’s automated recruiting, contracting, and payment tools

In 2021, influencer marketing grew steadily to the value of $13.8 billion. With that much value, it can be complex for brands to track the partnership outcomes and payments that make it all happen. 

For brands,  influencer payments are straightforward through automated processes with impact.com’s tools. From recruiting to contracts, payouts to tracking — building influencer partnerships is easy. 

Influencers can use this handy, step-by-step video to find out how to get paid by impact.com.

The five steps to influencer payment

Here are five basic steps to follow, from recruiting to payment for success:

1. Connect with influencers who share your vision and values 
2. Negotiate contracts for influencer marketing campaigns
3. Engage in social media influencer promotional activity 
4. Automate payments 
5. Cha-Ching! Pay influencers for successful partnerships

Below, you’ll find an in-depth explanation of each step to provide clarity and ease to the process.

1. Connect with influencers who share your vision and values

Both brands and influencers need a clear idea of their visions, values, and audiences. Once brands know who they want to reach and how, they can use a platform like impact.com to find, vet, and communicate with the right influencers to meet their goals. 

Influencer marketing goals often include:

• Brand awareness
• Traffic
• Lead generation
• Social media followers and engagement
• Conversions, sales, or revenue 

Brands and influencers form ideal partnerships when the partners know and understand each other and see mutual benefits from collaborating. As you identify potential partners, keep partnership benefits and terms in mind. These terms could include: 

• Content usage rights 
• Compensation or gifting structure
• Partnership exclusivity

2. Negotiate contracts for influencer marketing campaigns

Before initiating an influencer partnership, you need to finalize contract deal terms. Historically, contract negotiations were a tedious and time-consuming process. Still, you can automate and transparently track the process when conducting contract negotiations through a platform like impact.com. 

With so many models for compensation, brands and influencers need to explore which model or combination of models will work best for that specific partnership:

• Gifting — when brands gift products or services for review or content creation.
• CPA model — cost per user action. 
• Pay-per-post — Pay a fixed rate per post.
• Combination of the CPA model and pay-per-post—-fixed payment per post with a performance bonus for specific outcomes.
• Revenue — revenue generated determines compensation. 
• Average order value — the average value of orders driven by influencer content determines compensation.

3. Engage in social media influencer promotional activity 

Once partners have finalized contracts and payout structure, the influencer can do what they do best – create promotional content their audiences love. To ensure influencers get appropriately rewarded for their value, brands can use promo codes or tracking links in their posts. Once the influencer rolls out the campaign, the partnership can flourish. The influencer’s audience becomes the brand’s audience. 

Both brands and influencers benefit from partnerships. Brands gain value from the credibility influencers have with their followers, and influencers benefit by aligning with brands whose products and values resonate with their audience. 

4. Automate payments

On a partnership automation platform like impact.com, partners automating payments become simple and secure. The platform triggers payments when influencers achieve predetermined milestones for their brand partners. For example, you can pay an influencer a percentage of every sale she drives for a particular pair of leggings. 

With impact.com, brands and influencers can both track if the terms of the contract are being met. Influencers get automatically credited when they meet these terms. 

5. Cha-ching! Pay influencers for successful partnerships

It’s time for payment to change hands. Once payment terms have been set, moving payment from brand to influencer gets automated. Influencers have options on how the payment transfers to them based on location, speed, and fees.

• ACH — an automated clearing house that deposits funds into the account without a fee. This is for influencers who live in the United States. 
• Paypal — the payment gets deposited quickly into Paypal. This is the fastest international payment method. 
• Wire transfer — Anywhere in the world, you can deposit money into the influencer’s bank account. 
• Free product — The influencer gets paid via free products. Brands can connect their storefronts with Shopify or WooCommerce to make it easier for influencers to get shipped free products.

When brands use a marketplace like impact.com, they can explore new partnerships, negotiate mutually agreeable terms, and optimize their activity based on historical performance data. Brands can view all metrics available for transparency and accuracy. Payment becomes automated. Partnerships flourish, and influencers get paid for success. 

Now that you understand the fundamentals of influencer payment, schedule a demo to learn how impact.com’s platform can help your brand strategically manage influencer contracts and payment. 

Want to know more about influencer marketing? Check out these other impact.com resources:

• Ultimate guide to influencer marketing (ebook)
• Different strokes for different influencer folks (ebook)
• Your influencer program is broken (ebook)
• Scaling influencer marketing globally (ebook)
• How to set up a successful influencer program (worksheet)