Performance marketing for Ahmedabad sellers

Our performance marketing services in Ahmedabad plan ad spend for textile sellers, Navratri labels and kitchenware brands before it is spent: targets from margin, budgets paced through the Gujarati year, one number a week. We plan remotely from Gandhi Nagar in East Delhi.

Before we spend a rupee on our own brands, we know what an order is worth and when we will stop. A trading business already thinks this way about stock; the plan applies the same arithmetic to advertising.

Separating online sales from the wholesale counter

Many Ahmedabad sellers run a wholesale counter and online sales from the same stock, and their books mix the two. A plan that divides all revenue by ad spend then credits Meta with a dozen sets sold to a retailer who walked in.

So the first job is a clean line between the two. Only orders on your store and marketplace accounts count towards the plan, after cancellations, returns and refused cash orders; counter sales get a line of their own.

The margins differ as well. A wholesale set carries a thin margin and no commission; sold online, the same set carries a retail price, commission, return shipping and the ad cost. The margin model uses the online figures alone.

MER, all online revenue divided by all marketing spend, is then a number you can trust, and no platform can claim a sale twice. Our guide to ROAS, ACoS and TACoS explains how each platform’s own figure relates to it.

Targets for Ahmedabad’s textile and kitchen lines

Each of Ahmedabad’s usual lines moves the break-even point in its own way, so targets are set per line rather than for the account. A figure that suits steel cookware would starve a Navratri range, and the reverse.

Dress materials need the most discipline. Buyers compare near-identical prints on price, and a short-run design can sell out before an ad pays back, so prospecting spend goes to the designs you reorder.

Navratri wear needs patience: its first result flatters it, because the returns arrive after the nine nights. Our page on selling clothes online in India covers size charts and fashion returns.

Cookware runs the other way. Heavy steel costs more to ship, and broken glass or ceramic costs freight both ways, so its break-even sits high. Our page on selling kitchenware online covers the category in full.

Holding and releasing the Navratri budget

Navratri decides an Ahmedabad apparel seller’s year, and most outfits are bought in the weeks before the first night. The budget is therefore held back from the quieter months, tested in August and released in steps, never switched on in full the week before.

1. Hold. A share of each month’s budget from June is set aside, so Navratri does not depend on whatever is left.
2. Test. Creative is tested in August, when auction prices are calmer, so the season opens with ads that have already sold.
3. Release. Spend rises in steps through the fortnight before the first night, because large jumps can send automated bidding back into learning.
4. Stop by date. Each style carries a stop date, set by the last order that can arrive before the night it is wanted.
5. Taper. The early nights catch late buyers; after them, spend falls away and the returns are watched.

Festive weeks usually raise the cost of reaching buyers, since Meta’s ad auction fills with every seller’s Navratri and sale-event budgets at once. Entering the season with proven creative is the protection that costs least.

The plan can also weight spend by region. Navratri is celebrated well beyond Gujarat, and Gujarati communities in other cities buy Navratri wear too, while the same days are Durga Puja in Kolkata, where quite different outfits sell.

A Navratri campaign is judged twice: once on the orders it took, and again weeks later, once worn, damaged and refused outfits have come back. Only the second result sets next year’s budget.

Planning the Diwali pause and the wedding months

Diwali brings the plan’s one deliberate pause. Many Gujarati traders close from Diwali until Labh Pancham, the fifth day of the new year, and ads for products nobody can pack only produce cancellations and late deliveries.

So the stop rule here is about capacity, not results. Spend pauses or slows for exactly the days you are closed, and returns in steps from Labh Pancham, starting with the lines that sold before the break.

Kitchenware peaks just before that pause. Dhanteras is a traditional day to buy metal utensils, so steel and brass budgets are held for the days before it, with a stop date set by delivery.

Gift lines may run on into the new-year visits of Bestu Varas, but only where someone is there to pack them.

The wedding months follow, from Diwali into February. Gharchola and panetar sarees, family kurta sets and wedding gifts carry higher order values and longer decisions, so they get a budget line of their own and are judged on cost per order, not on clicks.

Store, Meesho or Amazon: where ads should land

Where an ad sends its buyer is a margin decision, and an Ahmedabad seller usually has three choices: a store of its own, a marketplace listing, or the marketplace’s own sponsored ads.

• A label’s own store keeps the most of each sale, and suits Meta ads for design-led and Navratri labels with a following to build.
• Amazon and Flipkart listings suit search ads for jeans and cookware, where buyers already trust the marketplace’s delivery and returns.
• Meesho is reached mainly through its own ads, inside the panel where its price-led buyers already browse.

An Instagram reel can also send a buyer to Meesho or Amazon to search for the design, where no pixel follows. MER, read on online revenue only, is what catches that spillover.

Uttarayan, summer and the quieter months

The months between the wedding season and Navratri are where the plan does its learning. Spend is lower, auctions are calmer, and tests can run long enough to read.

Uttarayan, on 14 and 15 January, takes much of Ahmedabad onto its rooftops, so results from those two days are read with care rather than acted on. Summer heat from March moves cotton dress materials, linen blends and bedsheets up the plan.

The monsoon, from late June, slows some deliveries and gives the plan its quiet stretch before Navratri. That is when the festival’s creative is shot, briefed and readied for testing, so August is spent testing rather than producing.

Testing Gujarati, and other questions worth asking

Each test answers one question, with a fixed budget and a written result, and the Gujarati calendar decides when each question is worth the money. These are the rounds we usually propose to an Ahmedabad seller:

• Gujarati against English or Hindi, on a Gujarati occasion such as Navratri or the new year, measured on orders kept after returns.
• Movement against flat lay for chaniya cholis: the flare of a skirt in motion, against the outfit laid out with its dupatta.
• Price-led against craft-led openings for dress materials, to learn whether the print or the price sells the set.
• Single pieces against sets for steel cookware before Dhanteras, to learn which order value pays for the click.

Gujarati lines should come from, or be checked by, a fluent speaker you trust. The campaigns themselves run under our Google Ads management in Ahmedabad, against the targets set here.

What we need from an Ahmedabad seller

The plan is built from your own figures, and rough ones are a fine start. We mark estimates as estimates and replace them as real numbers arrive.

• cost by line, landed at your shop, for dress materials, Navratri wear, denim or cookware;
• a split of last season’s sales between the counter and online, month by month;
• marketplace settlement reports, and a store order export showing returns and refusals;
• read access to every ad account in scope;
• the dates your shop closes, for Diwali and anything else, so the plan pauses with you.

The weekly number, and how we report it

Every week you receive one page that opens with one number: online revenue after returns, or contribution after ad spend, against target, with a sentence on why it moved. Platform figures sit beside figures reconciled with your delivered orders.

Below the number sit spend against plan by channel, what we paused and under which rule, tests running and finished, and the decisions we need from you. Wholesale sales appear on their own line, never inside the ad results.

Reconciled figures depend on clean purchase data, which our tracking and attribution service checks against your orders before the first plan is signed off.

The monthly review sets the coming month against the Gujarati calendar: Navratri, the Diwali pause, the wedding months or the summer lines. Targets change there, unless your costs move sharply in between.

GST at 18% is added to our fee on its own line; the platforms bill your media spend directly. The full method is on our performance marketing services page.

The rest of our work for the city, from seller accounts to storefronts, is on our page about ecommerce services in Ahmedabad.

To begin, send us last season’s cost sheet and your ad account names.