What the 70/30 split means. 70% of every retainer goes to execution — the specialists actually building your campaigns, writing your content, tuning your CRM, watching your alerts. 30% goes to audit, strategy, reporting and platform. Most agencies invert that ratio and put 70% into decks and 30% into work. That's why campaigns underperform in month four when the audit euphoria wears off. Ask any agency you're evaluating what their execution:audit ratio is. If they can't answer, they haven't measured it, which means the ratio is bad.
Ad spend is separate — and paid direct. ICG does not mark up media. You pay Google and Meta directly from your own credit card or corporate billing profile, and ICG manages the account from within your ad account (not the reverse). This is a structural check on agency incentives: an agency that owns the ad account has an incentive to keep spend high even when the ROI is falling. An agency that manages from inside your account has no such incentive. Every serious healthcare account should insist on this.
What's outside the retainer. Video production shoots (₹40K–₹4L per shoot day), photography, influencer fees, event sponsorship, PR spends, and specific one-off deliverables (a new website, a full brand refresh, a rebrand). These are quoted per scope. Everything measurable and recurring lives inside the monthly retainer.
Cancellation. Foundation is 3-month min then 30-day rolling. Growth is 6-month min then 30-day. Scale is 12-month min then 60-day. The longer term isn't a lock-in — it's a match to the timeline the discipline needs to prove itself. SEO takes 4-6 months to compound. Paid takes 60-90 days to hit stable CPQL. Revenue intelligence takes a quarter of clean data before Phoenix can attribute recoverable revenue. Short terms and quick outcomes cannot both be true.
How to compare like-for-like. Multi-vertical agencies typically quote lower headline retainers (₹25K–₹40K/month for a "healthcare package") but pass through media as billing, mark up production, and charge separately for CRM, dashboards, and attribution. Add those up and the real cost is usually ₹1.2L–₹2.5L/month for the same deliverable stack ICG bundles into Growth at ₹74,999/mo. Always ask for the all-in monthly cost including tech, media pass-through, and setup fees.
