What a social media retainer should include at every price

Social Essentials starts at ₹1,00,000 a month plus GST and covers 4 to 6 videos and 12 static creatives. That is the honest floor for a brand that wants to post weekly and have the posts be worth looking at. Below it you are buying scheduling, not work.

The reason the number lands where it does is the video. A single edited vertical video, scripted, shot or sourced, graded and captioned, takes a day of somebody’s time. Six of those plus twelve statics is roughly a person for two and a half weeks a month, which is what the fee pays for.

What we will not do at that price is pretend six platforms are being managed. Pick two where your buyers actually are, usually Instagram and LinkedIn for B2B, Instagram and YouTube for consumer brands, and do those properly.

Social plus AI is ₹1,25,000 a month. It raises the count to 6 to 8 videos and 15 creatives, and adds two 30-second AI films. The extra ₹25,000 buys output volume, not a different kind of strategy.

Social plus Production is ₹2,00,000 a month and includes one shoot day plus in-house UGC. This is the only tier where original footage of your product, your factory or your staff enters the pipeline every month. Everything above the shoot day in quality terms is a separate brand video engagement.

The table below is the same comparison we show in a first meeting. If an agency cannot fill in a table like it for their own tiers, the scope is not defined and you will argue about it in month three.

Week one is planning and scripting. We agree the month’s angles against what sold last month, write the hooks, and lock a shoot or sourcing list. Nothing publishes in week one on a new account, and anyone who promises otherwise is reposting stock.

Weeks two and three are production and publishing. Videos get edited in batches, statics come off the same visual system, captions get written for the platform rather than copy-pasted across all of them. Comments and DMs get answered on working days.

Week four is the read. Which videos held attention past three seconds, which ones drove saves and shares, which ones we are putting money behind through paid media. Then the next month’s plan comes from that, not from a calendar template.

Media spend is separate and always will be. If you want 10,000 people to see a video, that is a media budget, and our management fee for running it is the higher of 15% of media or ₹50,000 a month.

Creator and influencer fees are separate too. Nano creators cost ₹10,000 to ₹15,000 a deliverable, micro ₹30,000 to ₹1,00,000, and macro or celebrity work ₹1,00,000 to ₹25,00,000. The category is real but still small: EY and Collective Artists Network’s Big Bang Social put India’s influencer industry at ₹2,344 crore for 2024, heading to ₹3,375 crore by 2026.

Also outside: paid tools you want in your own name, photography beyond the shoot day in the top tier, and ad spend on boosting old posts because a month was quiet. We would rather tell you the month was quiet.

India’s digital spend has moved to video and it is not going back. The dentsu-e4m Digital Advertising Report 2026, published 2 February 2026, puts social media at 29% of digital spend (₹21,057 crore) and online video at 28%, with online video growing 22.3% to reach a 29% share by the end of 2026.

At the same time the auction is getting more expensive. In the quarter ended 30 June 2026, Meta told investors the average price per ad rose 12% against the year before. When every impression costs more, the only lever left is how good and how varied the creative is.

So a retainer that produces twelve statics and no video is priced for 2019. Count the videos first when you compare proposals.

A shoot day earns its place when your product has to be seen being used. Food, apparel, appliances, clinics, anything with a before and after. One day with a small crew produces enough footage for a month of cutdowns, which is why it sits inside a retainer rather than being quoted as a project every time.

It earns its place a second way with UGC. In-house UGC on the day means unpolished, phone-shot, person-to-camera footage, which usually outperforms the polished cut in ads. If you need more volume than a shoot day gives, UGC packs run 5 for ₹75,000, 10 for ₹90,000 and 20 for ₹1,60,000, which is ₹8,000 a video on the 20-pack.

The two 30-second AI films in the ₹1,25,000 tier exist for the months when you cannot shoot. A new offer, a festival, a category you want to test before committing a crew to it.

Bought on their own, AI films start at ₹75,000 per 30 seconds, or ₹2,00,000 a month on a retainer producing 8 to 10 films. Inside the social tier they cost you ₹25,000 of extra retainer, which is the cheapest way to find out whether the format works for your brand before you commit a bigger budget.

Follower count is the worst number on the dashboard. Three things tell you the truth: the share of videos that hold attention past three seconds, the number of enquiries that arrive through the profile or the DM, and the cost per lead on the posts you put money behind.

Creative lifespan is short enough that the test has to run on volume, not on one hero video. Segwise’s creative fatigue guide, updated 3 July 2026, reports that Meta concepts which used to last six weeks now burn out in two or three, and that broad prospecting creative needs refreshing every two to three weeks.

Our rule is simple. By day 90 you should know which two formats work for you by name, and have them on repeat. If the agency still cannot tell you which format wins, the retainer has bought you activity and nothing else.

Ask how many of the videos are original footage and how many are edits of what you already own. Ask who writes the hooks. Ask who answers DMs and between what hours. Ask what happens to the files if you leave, because the raw footage should be yours.

Then ask for one month of a current client’s output, with the dates. Not a showreel. A month, in order, so you can see whether the quality holds up on week four.

Our full scope, tier by tier, sits on the social media management page, and the cost calculator runs on these same numbers if you want a range before you call.