What social media management costs in Kenya — and what you should actually get for it
Retainers in Kenya run from a few thousand to six figures a month for work that looks identical on the invoice. Here is how to tell what you are buying before you sign.
Social media pricing in Kenya is the least transparent number in the industry. Published retainers run from around KES 15,000 a month to well past 150,000, and the invoices describe the same thing: "social media management."
We charge KES 20,000 a month for 5 videos and 2 static posts every week, posted across all platforms, and KES 35,000 for 8 videos and 3 statics. Meta ads management is KES 5,000 a month on top, with your ad budget going straight from you to Meta.
Here is what actually separates a 20,000 retainer from a 100,000 one, so you can work out which you are being sold.
Where the money actually goes
Three things, in order of how much they cost to do properly.
Production. Shooting and editing original video is the expensive part, and it is the part most often quietly skipped. There is an enormous difference between someone filming your business and someone reposting stock clips with your logo on them. Ask to see raw footage from another client. It is a fair question and the answer is instant.
Strategy. Anyone can fill a calendar. Deciding what the content is for — which posts are meant to reach strangers, which are meant to build trust, which are meant to close — is the difference between posting and marketing.
Management. Actually posting on schedule, across platforms, and answering the comments and DMs that come back. This one sounds trivial and is where most retainers silently fail. Content that goes out but generates an unanswered inbox is worse than no content, because you have paid to create an impression of neglect.
The question that sorts good from bad
Ask any agency this: "What is your content mix and why?"
If the answer is a number of posts, walk. If the answer describes different kinds of content doing different jobs, keep listening.
The mix we work to has three parts:
- Awareness content — made to reach people who have never heard of you. It has to be interesting on its own, before anyone cares who posted it.
- Educational content — made to make the people who now know you trust you. This is where you demonstrate that you know your trade.
- Direct sales content — made to convert the ones who are ready. Price, offer, how to order.
Run only awareness and you get a large audience that never buys. Run only sales content and reach collapses, because nobody shares an advert. The proportions are the actual skill.
What you should get every month
A report. Not a screenshot of follower growth — a document that answers four questions:
- What went out? Every piece, with dates.
- What reached people? Which formats and topics travelled, which did not.
- What converted? How many enquiries, and traceable to what.
- What changes next month because of it?
That fourth one is the whole point. A report that describes the past without changing the future is an invoice with charts on it. If three consecutive reports say the same thing, nobody is reading them — including the agency.
On Meta ads
Two rules, and they are not negotiable.
The management fee and the ad spend are separate. The fee pays for building and optimising the campaign. The spend goes to Meta. Ours is KES 5,000 a month and your budget never passes through us — you pay Meta directly, from your own account, and you can see every shilling.
Be careful with any arrangement where the agency holds the budget. Not because everyone doing it is dishonest, but because you lose the ability to check, and the incentive quietly points the wrong way.
You should own the ad account and the page. If the relationship ends and you cannot take your audience, your pixel data and your ad history with you, you were renting your own marketing.
What to expect, and when
Honest timelines, because the alternative is you firing someone who was doing fine.
Month one is production and testing. You will not see much. Content is being made, formats are being tried, the baseline is being set. Judging results here is like weighing a cake at ten minutes.
Month two is where patterns appear. Some formats reach, some do not. The mix starts adjusting to reality rather than theory.
Month three is the first fair judgement. By now you should be able to see which content produces enquiries, and the report should be telling you so with numbers.
If someone promises results in week two, they are either going to buy followers or they are going to run a discount campaign that eats your margin and calls it success.
The uncomfortable part
Social media will not fix a business problem. It amplifies whatever is already true.
If your product is good and nobody knows, marketing fixes that. If people find you and do not buy, content is not the problem — your pricing, your photos, your delivery, or your reply time is. We have talked businesses out of a retainer more than once because the honest answer was that they needed a working checkout before they needed more traffic.
Which is the last question worth asking any agency before you sign: have you ever told a client they did not need you yet? The ones who say no have told you everything.
Questions people ask us
- How much does social media management cost in Kenya per month?
- Published Kenyan retainers range from roughly KES 15,000 a month at the low end to well over KES 150,000 for full-service agency work. Biziirise charges KES 20,000 a month for 5 videos and 2 static posts weekly across all platforms, and KES 35,000 for 8 videos and 3 statics weekly.
- Is ad spend included in a management fee?
- It should never be. A management fee pays for the work of building and running campaigns. The ad budget goes from you to Meta directly. Our Meta ads management is KES 5,000 a month and we never hold your budget.
- How many posts a month do I actually need?
- Volume matters less than consistency and mix. Five videos and two static posts a week, sustained, beats twenty posts in one week and silence for a fortnight. What matters more is that the content does three different jobs: awareness, education and direct selling.
- How long before social media brings in customers?
- Expect three months before the pattern is readable. The first month is production and testing, the second shows which formats work, and by the third you should be able to see which content produces enquiries. Anyone promising results in week two is selling you something else.
- What should be in a monthly report?
- What went out, what reached people, what converted, and what is changing next month because of it. Reach and follower counts alone are vanity numbers — the report should connect content to enquiries.