7 Must-Haves for Your Social Media Marketing Contract Template

Are you a social media marketer, or do you run an agency? Then make sure your social media marketing contract template includes the crucial terms to protect your business, money, and energy.

Being a social media marketer or running an agency means you can work for clients all over the world, but if you're anything like me, you want to ensure your business, money, and energy are protected across the globe. As a lawyer myself who drafts contracts for social media marketers and agencies like you, I am giving you all the crucial terms you need in your social media marketing contract template.

You will learn about the critical terms you must include in your social media marketing contract template, giving you all the protection you need in your social media freelance contract template so that you have a solid social media agreement for clients from anywhere in the world.

After learning all about the important provisions you need in your social media marketing contract template, your business, money, and energy will be protected so you can focus on creating killer marketing campaigns!

This post is all about the important terms every social media marketing contract template must have for social media marketers and digital marketing agencies.

Fundamental Social Media Marketing Contract Template

Key terms every social media freelance contract template must have

1. Include all services in scope with essential specifications

What's more common than not with any social media marketing contract template is that it just has a blank space for the scope. You just have to put the entire scope of your marketing services for each specific marketing campaign yourself. That is where the danger lies. Because, likely, one or all of the following issues will arise:

• the description of the marketing services is too vague,

• not all the marketing services are described, and/or

• essential parts of the marketing services are not specified.

Your social media marketing contract template should at least specify the following:

• You must specify the number of consultations you will have with your client, including the maximum length of each consultation and the medium you use (phone calls, Zoom, Google Meet, etc.).

• You must include how often you will provide reports, including a specification on what metrics are included in your reports and on which days you will provide those reports (for example, within 5 days after each month or 10 days after each quarter).

• You must specify not only on which social media platform(s) you will run the marketing or advertising campaign but also for which account. Your client may have multiple accounts and expect you to run ads on all of them.

• You should also clarify all the other things you do in the background that the client may not see, like monitoring engagement and conversions, creating and changing strategies, identifying and analysing the target audience, and analysing other metrics, like click-through rates.

2. Clarify what is NOT included in your scope

Another essential element that I often do not see in a social media marketing contract template is what services are not included.

Even if you have clearly stated what marketing services are included in your scope, your client may assume that more is included, such as the following:

• Distribution of the marketing materials on other social media channels of the client.

• Social media management services, like actually managing the entire social media account of the client or certain elements of social media management.

• Branding services, like brand design and strategy.

• Copying other marketers' or agencies' work (basically breaching the intellectual property rights of others).

• Making any changes to the marketing campaigns already agreed upon.

To avoid any misunderstandings and, thus, a smooth collaboration with your client, your social media marketing contract template should clarify what is NOT included in your scope.

3. Specify what the marketing campaign is about

Your social media marketing contract template should also specify what you are marketing for:

• Does the client have a new product or service that it wants you to market?

• Is there a line or a certain set of existing products the client wants you to promote?

• Or does the client want you to market the brand as a whole, not just a specific product?

Again, to avoid misunderstandings and creating a whole marketing campaign around the wrong thing, you want to have the purpose of the marketing campaign specified.

4. Specify whether approval is required

Depending on your marketing strategy and your way of working with clients or the wishes of the specific clients, you may agree to: 

• have the marketing materials you create for the client approved by the client first so that if the materials contain incorrect information or breach certain marketing or advertising laws, the client only has itself to blame, or

• not need any approval from the client at all for any of the marketing materials you create so that you don't have to go through a whole approval process, and move fast and have free rein in your creativity.

There are pros and cons to both strategies, but whatever you decide with the client, you need to have this explicitly stated in your social media marketing contract template. 

As is the case with the scoping, what is not specified may be assumed by the client. The client may assume you share everything with the client for approval, even if your contract does not contain an approval procedure.

5. Indemnities for breach of marketing and advertising laws

Another essential element for your social media marketing contract template is the indemnities for breach of marketing and advertising laws.

Especially when you have clients in different countries, you do not want to be responsible for the breach of any laws you don't even know about. 

However, what I often come across in the templates available online is that they only refer to the laws of a specific country (often just the US) and not the laws of other countries.

But even if you are located and registered in one country, the governmental authorities of another country can still target you. Or the authorities of your client's country will fine your client, and the client may demand that you compensate the client for that fine.

Social media is not limited to the borders of one country, and thus, you need to be fully protected on a global level.

Therefore, your social media marketing contract template should include a comprehensive indemnity clause that will protect you across the globe.

6. Lock in the advertising budget but make it flexible too

Another thing you will usually not find in a simple social media contract template is a specification of the advertising budget. 

Perhaps you do not do paid marketing but organic marketing. In that case, this advertising budget is irrelevant to you.

But if you do provide social media marketing services to your client that involve paid advertising, you want:

• to be on the same page about the budget the client will make available for advertising,

• have the client commit to that budget, and

• have clear when the client will make the budget available.

Your social media marketing contract template should also include the option to have the advertising included in your fee or to state the advertising budget separately.

7. Include options for one lump sum fee and periodic fees

Now, let's talk about your fee. In any case, you want to have the fee paid upfront. Especially in this industry, the risk is bigger that the client may be unwilling to pay you if the client does not get the conversions it wants. Therefore, I always recommend having the fee paid upfront. 

But there are two ways in which you could provide your services, which require a different fee and payment system:

• You could just be doing one marketing campaign that is a one-off project and not an ongoing project. In that case, you can charge one lump sum fee.

• You could also have an ongoing project that is on a monthly basis or for an indefinite period. In that case, you can charge a monthly fee.

Your social media marketing contract template should contain both options so that you have a comprehensive template that can be customised for each individual client and campaign type.

Do you want a social media marketing contract template free of fluff?

Do you want a social media marketing contract template free of fluff? But a comprehensive template that includes all the crucial terms discussed in this blog post? 

I sell a social media marketing contract template in my contract shop that has all the crucial terms you need for all your digital marketing campaigns! My template includes all the crucial protections and boundaries for not only social media marketing but all types of digital marketing. 

So, if you are still looking for an understandable social media marketing contract template free of fluff, you need to get my template on this page of my contract shop!

Are you using another social media agreement for clients?

Maybe you do not have the budget yet to purchase a social media marketing contract template, so you're getting a free one. Or, you have already purchased another social media agreement for clients.

In that case, you can use this blog post as a checklist to ensure your social media marketing contract template includes all the scoping terms, protections and boundaries you need!

This post was all about the essential terms every social media marketing contract template must have to protect your business, money and energy.

You can find my social media marketing contract template (including all the scoping terms, protections and boundaries you need) on this page of my contract shop!