Performance marketing for Kolkata brands

Performance marketing services in Kolkata plan for a year that peaks earlier than the rest of India’s. We set targets from your margin, divide the budget into Puja phases and regional lines, and report one number weekly, from Gandhi Nagar, New Delhi.

This is the planning layer. The campaigns can be run by our Google and Meta work for Kolkata brands or by your current team; the plan decides what each rupee must return, when it goes out and when it stops.

Can hosiery packs pay for their own ads?

Rarely, if each pack must pay for its ad on the first order. A low-priced multipack leaves little margin after commission, freight and returns, and the ad that won the order has to come out of what remains.

Illustration: a pack selling for ₹ 500 that leaves ₹ 100 before ads breaks even at a ROAS of 5. A handloom saree selling for ₹ 6,000 that leaves ₹ 2,000 breaks even at 3, with twenty times the room for ads.

So hosiery ads are planned around what a customer buys over time, not on one pack:

• Bigger baskets: bundles of sizes or colours, and a free-shipping line set above one pack.
• Repeat orders: innerwear buyers come back for the size that fits, so a first order’s cost is weighed against what returning buyers spend.
• Brand terms: marketplace and search ads on your own name, which reach buyers already looking for you.

Thermal sets are the exception. Priced above a basic pack and bought in a short season, they can carry prospecting ads in colder regions from November, judged on the season rather than the order.

How much a first pack may lose depends on your own reorder records. With evidence that buyers come back, a first order can run at a loss; without it, it cannot, and the plan says so.

Planning the Puja budget in phases

Split the Puja budget into phases, each with its own target and stop rule, rather than one festive pot. In Kolkata, buying runs from the marketplace festive events to Shashthi and then slows sharply, while the rest of India waits for Diwali.

• The test window, in July and August: creative and offers proven on a capped budget, judged on cost per kept order.
• The build, from the marketplace festive events to Mahalaya: full spend on proven ads, with targets set at sale prices rather than list prices.
• The cut-off: each region’s Puja ads stop on the last day an order there can still arrive before Shashthi, worked out from your shipping partner’s transit times.
• The five days: Bengal spend held to brand and retargeting while buyers celebrate rather than shop.
• The tail: after Bijoya Dashami, Bengal’s budget waits for the Lakshmi Puja and Kali Puja lines, and the national share moves to regions buying for Diwali.

Google’s seasonality adjustments are built for short events of a few days, which suits the last ordering days before Shashthi better than the whole season, so the plan marks those days in advance.

The plan is signed off only once purchase tracking has been checked, because a Puja budget that bids on broken data spends its biggest weeks learning the wrong lesson. That check sits with our conversion tracking setup.

Puja results are judged twice: once in October on platform figures, and again in November when returns and refused parcels have landed. Only the second reading decides next year’s budget.

Marketplace ads through the Puja fortnight

Plan marketplace sponsored ads with the festive events, not after them. The events usually fall close to the Pujas, so deal prices, ad budgets and stock commitments for Bengal’s busiest weeks are all settled in August.

• Each marketplace’s break-even line, worked out at the deal price, since commission comes out before the ad is paid for.
• Ad wallets and billing topped up or confirmed before Mahalaya, so no campaign stops for want of balance in the peak week.
• Brand terms defended through the events, when shoppers compare prices across marketplaces.

Sponsored product ads are bought on searches rather than places, so for a brand selling nationally they keep running through the five days while Google and Meta spend aimed at Bengal is held back.

The weekly report reads them marketplace by marketplace, with ACoS, the share of ad-credited sales spent on ads, beside total sales on each.

Setting targets region by region across the east

Give each region its own budget line and its own target, set on delivered orders. A Kolkata brand selling into Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Assam and the North-East can see markedly different refusal rates by region, and one blended target hides them.

Illustration: if one region sends back one parcel in ten and another one in four, the same spend wins fewer kept orders in the second. A target on orders placed funds both alike; a target on kept orders funds the region that delivers.

Festivals move each line at different times. Durga Puja is widely celebrated in Assam, Tripura, Odisha, Bihar and Jharkhand as well; Chhath follows Diwali in Bihar and Jharkhand; Bihu arrives in Assam in mid-April, alongside Poila Baisakh. The regional lines peak accordingly.

A regional holdout, with a channel switched off in comparable districts for a set period, shows whether spend in a region adds sales or merely claims them. It is proposed only when its answer would change the budget.

Keeping wholesale out of the ad numbers

Count only the sales your ads can reach. A Kolkata brand often sells wholesale as well, and a large trade invoice in Puja season can make MER, all revenue divided by all marketing spend, look far better than the ads deserve.

• Revenue for MER is defined in the plan: online orders from your store and the marketplaces, net of GST, cancellations and returns.
• Trade enquiries that ads produce are counted as leads on a line of their own, never added to retail revenue.
• Poila Baisakh settlements from wholesale customers stay in your ledger, not in the weekly report.

The Puja months are when the two trades most often mix, because shops restock just as shoppers buy. The plan names which invoices count before Mahalaya, not after the results come in.

The same discipline applies in Chaitra. Clearance sales lift revenue and cut margin at the same time, so their ads carry a separate target, set at the sale price, for the weeks before the Bengali new year.

Testing Bengali creative before the season

Bengali creative is tested in the July and August window, never in Puja week, so that the version which wins is the one carrying the build. Each round asks one question, Bengali or English, with the same picture and the same offer.

On Meta, an ad set can be aimed at people who use the app in Bengali. Google, since September 2026, matches Search ads to the language they are written in, so a Bengali round there needs Bengali ads, keywords and landing pages.

The verdict is cost per kept order, read by region, since a Bengali ad that wins in Bengal may do little in Odisha or Assam. Copy comes from a fluent speaker on your side; the round’s length and budget come from the plan.

Short bursts through the rest of Kolkata’s year

Outside the Pujas, the plan runs short bursts with budget lines of their own rather than a flat monthly spend. Each opens when stock and creative are ready and closes on a fixed date.

Saraswati Puja and Jamai Shashthi are the clearest cases: windows of days, not weeks, for yellow sarees and panjabis in one and gifts for sons-in-law in the other. Their ads start when stock is live and stop on the day, with no tail.

Poila Baisakh follows the Chaitra clearance, so its target resets upward the day the sale ends and full-price lines return. The winter wedding months lift silk sarees, panjabis and gifting, and get a budget line that runs from November.

Thermals and woollens, which Kolkata’s short winter barely needs, are budgeted for regions further north as their cold sets in. Gift lines across the year are covered on our festive and gifting page.

What the weekly report shows, phase by phase

One page, in the same order every week, opening with MER or contribution after ad spend.

1. Spend against the phase’s budget, by channel and by region.
2. Results as platforms report them, then on delivered and kept orders.
3. Bengal, the eastern states, the North-East and the rest of India as separate lines.
4. Stops and restarts, with the rule behind each, delivery cut-offs included.
5. Trade leads, counted apart from retail sales.
6. Decisions needed from you before the next phase.

The monthly review adds cost per new customer over time and the plan for the next season, which in July and August means the Puja plan itself.

How the planning runs from Gandhi Nagar

The plan is built from files and a weekly call: cost by product group, last season’s orders by region with refusals and returns, settlement reports, read access to the ad accounts and your stock plan for the Pujas.

Late news costs more than rough numbers. Tell us when a lot from the workshop slips, when wholesale demand will draw on online stock, or when a festive deal is agreed, and the budget moves before the spend does.

Our performance marketing services page sets out the method in full, and our guide to festive sale planning covers the stock side of the season. The rest of our work in the city is on our Kolkata page; to begin, send us last season’s numbers.