Performance marketing for Varanasi sellers

Our performance marketing services in Varanasi decide what a Banarasi saree label can spend to win each order, and when, before any budget moves. Targets come from your margin; spend is paced across Meta, Google and the marketplaces; one number is reported weekly.

We run brands of our own as well. The plan for a Varanasi label starts where ours do, with a margin sheet, before anyone opens an ad account.

What a Banarasi order can afford in ads

A Banarasi order can afford in ads what it leaves after every other cost, and silk sarees carry more of those costs than most products. Work out the margin per design, then set a break-even line and a target above it.

• The saree. Yarn, zari, weaving and finishing, or the price you paid the weaver or the gaddidar.
• Selling costs. Commission and fees on a marketplace, or gateway charges on your store, plus packing.
• Freight both ways. Out to the buyer, and back again for every return.
• Returns and swaps. The share of orders that come back, and the part of a swapped saree no claim recovers.
• Sale discounts. What you fund in the autumn events, where a deal price applies.

Swaps deserve a line of their own. Where some swapped sarees are recovered through claims, count only the share actually paid, never the share filed, or the margin looks better than it is.

Illustration: a saree sells for ₹ 10,000 net of GST and leaves ₹ 2,500 after every cost except ads. Spending ₹ 2,500 in ads breaks even, a return on ad spend (ROAS) of 4; a target of 5 spends ₹ 2,000 and keeps ₹ 500.

Our break-even ROAS calculator does the same sum for each design. Heavy wedding sarees and value powerloom lines rarely share a target, so each gets its own, set by the method on our performance marketing page.

Single pieces, collections and what to advertise

Advertise what can still be bought next week. A handloom saree that exists once can sell in an hour and leave its ad pointing at an empty page, so single pieces are better advertised as collections, while repeat designs and powerloom lines carry product-level ads.

• Collections. Katan wedding sarees, organza for the festive season, tissue for receptions: one ad set each, landing on a page that always has stock.
• Catalogue ads. Fed from a product feed in which sold pieces drop out once their stock reaches zero, so no ad shows a saree already gone.
• Repeat designs. Product ads with stock behind them, paused before the count runs out rather than after.
• Sponsored listings. On designs with ratings and stock, on the marketplaces where your account sells them.

Briefing and running the campaigns sits with our Google Ads and Meta Ads management; the targets, the budget split and the pacing sit in the plan.

Pacing a Varanasi budget around Puja and weddings

A Varanasi label’s year has two peaks a national plan can blur: Bengal before the Puja, and the north before its wedding months. Budget is held for each, raised in steps as the date nears, and cut once a parcel cannot arrive in time.

Budgets move in measured steps. Meta sends an ad set back into the learning phase after significant edits, large budget changes among them, and Google advises small, spaced changes to budgets and targets while a campaign is new.

The north Indian wedding calendar has its own pauses, so we read the year’s dates rather than assume one long season, and hold budget back for the weeks that matter to your buyers.

Hindi, Bengali and the words buyers type

Buyers search for Banarasi sarees in more than one language and more than one spelling. Google matches Search ads to the language they are written in, so Hindi and Bengali searches need ads written in Hindi and Bengali.

• Spellings. Banarasi, Benarasi and Banarsi all turn up in searches; ads and keywords cover the ones your buyers use, for sarees entitled to the name.
• Fabric words. Katan, kora, organza and tissue come from buyers who know the trade, and say more about intent than a broad saree search.
• Mixed scripts. Hindi words typed in English letters are common, and the search terms report shows which to add and which to exclude.
• Meta. Meta can still show ads to people by the language they use in its apps, which suits Bengali creative before the Puja.

Bengali creative is worth testing before the Puja: a caption and headline in Bengali set against the same video in English, shown to buyers in Bengal on a fixed budget. The answer decides next year’s split as well as this year’s.

Exclude what does not buy: searches for weaving jobs, for wholesale lots if you sell retail, and for how-to content. Each week’s search terms decide the new exclusions.

Store or marketplace: where the ads should land

Send buyers where the sale leaves the most margin and the least doubt. For a Varanasi label, that usually means its own store for single handloom pieces and collections, and the marketplace listing for repeat designs that already carry ratings there.

• Your store. No commission, room for the story of the weave, prepaid checkout for costly sarees; every visitor has to be paid for.
• A marketplace listing. Buyers already trust the platform and its returns, so it often converts better, even after commission.
• Both. Meta can send traffic to either; the plan states which campaign goes where, and why, as a decision with a margin attached.

Cash on delivery changes the answer. A refused wedding saree costs freight both ways and weeks of a single piece’s selling time, so ads that send buyers to a store usually lead with prepaid offers rather than COD.

Creative that shows the weave

Saree ads earn their cost when they show what a still photograph cannot: the drape as it falls, the pallu opening, zari catching the light, and the reverse of a kadhua motif for buyers who check it. Each test round answers one question.

• Drape or flat? On-model video against flat close-ups of the weave.
• Occasion or fabric? “Wedding saree” openings against “pure katan silk” openings.
• Price shown or not? For value lines, a visible price; for heavy silk, often not.

Each round has a fixed budget and a written result before the next starts, and the losing idea is recorded so it is not paid for again next season.

Stop rules written for silk sarees

Spend stops by rule, written into the plan before launch, so nobody has to argue for a pause in the middle of the wedding rush. These are the rules we propose for a Banarasi label; you can tighten or loosen each.

• Below break-even. A campaign under its break-even line for the agreed review period is cut back, then paused if it stays there.
• Sold or short. A single piece that sells comes out of every ad the same day; a repeat design comes out before its stock runs low.
• Return spikes. A design whose returns cite colour or weight is paused until its listing and photographs are fixed.
• Past the date. Wedding and Puja creative stops once an order can no longer arrive before the day.
• Broken tracking. If purchases stop recording, or record twice, spend that depends on automated bidding is held until the data is fixed.

Every stop appears in that week’s report with the rule that triggered it and the condition for restarting, and restarts come back in steps.

Measuring sales that end in a return

A saree sold in the wedding rush can come back weeks later, worn or swapped, after the ad platform has counted it as a sale. We report each platform’s figures beside sales reconciled with your orders after returns, and judge targets on the second.

• Tracking. GA4, the Meta Pixel and Conversions API on your store, checked with test orders, so each sale is counted once.
• Returns. Earlier weeks restated as their returns land, so last month is judged on final numbers.
• Cash on delivery. COD orders counted as sales only once delivered and paid.
• Marketplace spillover. Meta ads that move marketplace sales no pixel sees, read through total sales and branded searches.

Our conversion tracking setup builds the measurement these reports rely on.

How planning runs from Gandhi Nagar

The plan is written before spend changes, and everything after it runs from your ad and seller accounts, with permissions you grant. Nobody needs to travel; shoots happen with your photographer in Varanasi, to briefs we write.

1. The numbers. Cost sheets, return history and past ad results, rebuilt into a margin per design group.
2. The plan. Targets per channel, a monthly budget range, stop rules and the season’s dates, for you to approve.
3. The pacing. Weekly moves inside the range, against results, stock and the calendar.
4. The report. One page each week, headed by the margin left after ads and returns.

Media spend is billed to you by Meta, Google and the marketplaces, and our fee carries GST at 18% on its own line.

The accounts these ads lean on are covered by our marketplace account management in Varanasi, and the city’s wider picture by our Varanasi page. To begin, send us your cost sheet, your ad accounts and your calendar.