Most budget calculators ask for your revenue and hand back a percentage. This one asks what you actually want done, subtracts what running it costs, and shows you the number that really matters: how much of your money is left to buy reach.
Management fees are Nex2Link’s own 2026 starting prices, not market averages. Retainers carry a three-month minimum and ads management adds a performance commission confirmed before anything goes live. Enquiry estimates use 2026 India benchmark click costs. GST not included.
This is the thing that catches almost everybody out, and it is why two quotes for what sounds like identical work can differ by a factor of three.
The management fee is what the agency receives. It covers strategy, campaign build, audience research, creative production, optimisation and reporting. It is a people cost, and it barely moves whether you spend ₹20,000 or ₹2,00,000 on ads.
The ad spend is what Google and Meta charge to actually show your ads. You approve it in advance and the platforms bill you directly. None of it reaches the agency. It is the only part of your budget that buys impressions.
So a business paying ₹15,000 in management and ₹40,000 in ad spend has a total monthly outlay of ₹55,000, of which the agency receives ₹15,000. Ask any agency you are evaluating one question, and ask it early: is ad spend inside this number or on top of it?
An agency advertising complete digital marketing at ₹25,000 all inclusive may be taking ₹10,000 as a fee and putting ₹15,000 into ads. In a competitive category that is a genuinely small amount of reach, and it is why those packages disappoint so reliably. The headline number was never the problem. The share of it that bought impressions was.
That is the whole reason this calculator shows you the split instead of a single figure. A budget you cannot see inside is a budget you cannot judge.
The enquiry ranges are what the ad spend buys at benchmark click costs and typical landing page conversion rates for your industry. They assume the money is spent competently on a page that converts. Send the same budget to a slow, unconvincing landing page and the real number falls well below the bottom of the range, which is why a website build sits in the calculator as an option rather than an afterthought.
Every fee the tool subtracts is a real Nex2Link 2026 starting price, published in full rather than quoted on request.
| Service | Monthly | What that covers |
|---|---|---|
| Social media — Regular | ₹30,000 | 12 reels, 4 statics, content calendar and scheduling, community management, 2 planned shoot sessions, monthly analytics report |
| Social media — Advance | ₹50,000 | 17 reels, 4 to 5 statics plus 2 carousels, 1 dedicated shoot a month, 4 planned sessions, festive coverage, competitor benchmarking, bi-weekly strategy calls |
| Social media — Advance+ | ₹1,00,000 | Custom content volume, full brand audit covering positioning and competitor mapping, premium brand shoot, ongoing shoots, dedicated account manager, weekly reporting |
| Ads — Base | ₹15,000 + commission | One platform, campaign setup and structure, audience research and segmentation, ad copy and creative coordination, monthly review and optimisation |
| Ads — Scale | ₹30,000 + commission | Meta and Google together, continuously refreshed targeting, creative for expanded ad sets, AI voice calling with 3,000 credits a month for lead qualification, high-frequency reporting |
| Website build | ₹30,000 one-time | Fixed professionally designed page set, mobile-responsive, basic on-page SEO, fast build and deployment |
Nex2Link’s own 2026 starting prices, not market averages. Retainers carry a three-month minimum commitment. Ads commission is performance based and confirmed against your campaign and spend before anything goes live.
The same money buys very different amounts of attention depending on what you sell and where you spend it. These are the benchmarks the calculator runs your remaining budget through.
| Industry | Enquiries per ₹10,000 on Google | Enquiries per ₹10,000 on Meta | Google cost per enquiry |
|---|
Ranges compiled from published 2026 India benchmarks and our own campaign data. Your city, competition and landing page all shift these.
Most businesses do not need the biggest scope. They need the one that matches where they actually are.
A business putting its first real system in place: regular social, one ad platform running properly, and a website that converts. If you are choosing between doing this and doing three channels badly, do this.
For proven demand that needs volume: heavier content production, Meta and Google together, AI lead qualification, a customised build. You should reach this stage because the starter scope ran out of headroom, not because it felt slow in month two.
Established brands defending a position: custom content volume, a full brand audit, a dedicated account manager, weekly reporting.
Narrow it rather than thinning everything out. One channel run well beats three channels run at a third of the effort each. Ads-only at ₹15,000 in management is a legitimate starting point, and so is social-only at ₹30,000. What does not work is buying a little of each and expecting all of them to perform — which is exactly what the calculator will tell you when the fees eat the budget.
Below roughly ₹10,000 a month in actual ad spend, campaigns rarely gather enough conversion data to optimise against, so the real result usually falls short of any estimate. At that level, fixing your Google Business Profile and posting consistently tends to pay back faster than running thin campaigns.
There is no single right number, and the percentage-of-revenue rules of thumb you will find online were written for much larger companies. A more useful way to set the budget is from the bottom up: decide which services you actually need, add up what running them costs, and treat whatever is left as the money that buys reach.
If you want someone running your marketing rather than selling you a logo pack, a working range is roughly ₹30,000 to ₹1,30,000 a month in management, with ad spend as a separate bill on top. The full breakdown is in our guide to digital marketing costs in India.
Usually not, and this is the single most common misunderstanding in Indian agency pricing. The management fee pays the team. The ad spend is what Google and Meta charge to show your ads, and the platforms bill you for it directly.
A business paying ₹15,000 in management and ₹40,000 in ad spend has a total outlay of ₹55,000, of which the agency receives ₹15,000. Always ask whether ad spend is inside the number or on top of it.
There is no fixed ratio, because the fee is driven by production volume and the spend is driven by how expensive your clicks are. A jewellery brand and a pest control business on identical budgets should not end up with the same split.
What matters is that you can see the split at all. An all-inclusive package at ₹25,000 a month might be ₹10,000 of fee and ₹15,000 of ads, which is a genuinely small amount of reach in a competitive category. That is usually why cheap bundles produce nothing.
Narrow the scope rather than thinning out everything. One channel run well beats three channels run at a third of the effort each. Ads-only at ₹15,000 a month in management is a legitimate starting point, and so is social-only at ₹30,000.
Set the services to “Not this month” one at a time in the calculator above and watch what happens to the ad spend. That number is the real test of whether a scope is affordable.
The management fees are Nex2Link’s own published 2026 starting prices, not market averages, and they carry the same terms as anywhere else on this site: a three-month minimum commitment on retainers, and a performance commission on ads management confirmed against your campaign and spend before anything goes live.
The click costs and conversion rates used to estimate enquiries are compiled from published 2026 India benchmarks and our own campaign data — the same figures behind the Google Ads Budget Calculator and the Meta Ads Budget Calculator. Everything the tool produces is a planning range, not a quote.
No. It runs entirely in your browser. There is no signup, no email wall, and nothing you type is sent to Nex2Link or anyone else.
Send us what the calculator gave you and we will tell you honestly whether the scope fits the budget, or which part to drop first if it does not.
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