Mumbai · Performance MarketingBOFU
A performance marketing agency for brands across India
The short answer
PMG is an Indian performance marketing agency headquartered in Andheri West, Mumbai, running paid media, search, CRM and conversion for brands across India — Mumbai, Pune, Delhi NCR, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Kolkata and beyond — and for Indian brands selling internationally.
What national brands need from a performance agency
- State and city-level planning — India isn't one market; languages, festivals and costs differ by region
- Regional-language creative — Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Gujarati and more
- Marketplace and quick-commerce strategy alongside D2C
- COD and RTO economics built into targets
- Tracking that survives scale — server-side, reconciled to the back end
- Honest measurement across many channels
How we work with clients outside Mumbai
- Remote audit and kick-off, with a visit if useful.
- Shared dashboards you can open any time.
- A WhatsApp group for day-to-day decisions.
- Weekly calls with your strategist.
- Visits for shoots, planning and reviews when they add value.
Regional planning, in practice
- North India — Hindi-first creative, wedding-season peaks, strong D2C and real estate competition in NCR
- West India — Mumbai, Pune and Gujarat: bilingual creative, Ganeshotsav and Navratri peaks
- South India — Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam creative; Pongal, Onam and Sankranti
- East India — Bengali creative; Durga Puja as the defining season
- Tier-2 and tier-3 cities — vernacular platforms, COD-heavy commerce and value messaging
How is performance marketing different across India?
India's digital audience is enormous and increasingly non-metro. The IAMAI–Kantar Internet in India 2025 report counted about 958 million active internet users, with rural India accounting for 57% and growing faster than urban India; 61% of users consumed short video and 44% had used AI features such as voice or image search (Business Standard, 2026).
For a national brand, that changes four things:
- Language. English-only creative leaves most of that audience on the table. We test Hindi and regional languages as variables, and build landing pages to match.
- Payment and trust. Outside metros, cash on delivery, WhatsApp conversations and visible returns policies matter more to conversion.
- Cost. CPMs and CPCs vary widely by state and city tier. Blending them hides where profit really comes from.
- Channel mix. Short video, YouTube and vernacular platforms carry more weight for tier-2 and tier-3 reach.
How do you plan a national budget across states and cities?
- Start from sales data. Split current revenue, new customers and returns by state and city tier. Most brands find two or three regions produce most of the profit.
- Set targets by region. Break-even ROAS or target CPA differs where AOV, RTO and delivery costs differ.
- Structure campaigns to match. Separate campaigns or ad sets for regions with materially different economics, so budget can move between them.
- Localise creative where volume justifies it. Language, faces, festivals and references.
- Read results by region every week. Shift budget toward the regions with the best marginal return, not the best average.
What does a performance marketing agency in India cost?
The Indian market uses three main models: flat retainers, percentage of ad spend and hybrids. Published 2026 benchmarks put performance retainers at roughly ₹1.5 lakh to ₹6 lakh+ a month for multi-channel work, and percentage models at 10–15% of spend, with tiered percentages falling as budgets grow (upGrowth, 2026). Smaller single-channel engagements start lower.
| Monthly ad spend | Typical structure |
|---|---|
| Under ₹5 lakh | Flat fee, one or two channels |
| ₹5 – 25 lakh | Flat fee or hybrid (base + % of spend) |
| ₹25 lakh – ₹1 crore | Hybrid, often with an efficiency target |
| Above ₹1 crore | Negotiated hybrid with incrementality testing |
Add 18% GST to agency fees. Ad spend is paid by you to the platforms. Our pricing page explains what drives cost; our retainer vs performance pricing comparison explains the incentives behind each model.
Regional calendars that change media plans
| Region | Peaks to plan for |
|---|---|
| West (Maharashtra, Gujarat, Goa) | Ganeshotsav, Navratri, Diwali, Gudi Padwa |
| North (Delhi NCR, Punjab, UP, Rajasthan) | Wedding season, Karwa Chauth, Diwali, Holi |
| South (Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh) | Pongal, Sankranti, Onam, Ugadi, Diwali |
| East (West Bengal, Odisha, Assam) | Durga Puja, Bihu, Poila Boishakh |
| National | Independence Day and Republic Day sales, Diwali, marketplace sale events, year-end |
Festive weeks raise auction costs everywhere. Creative, budgets and inventory should be ready a few weeks before, with prospecting building audiences ahead of the peak; see festive season ad planning.
COD, RTO and marketplaces: the maths national brands skip
- Return to origin (RTO). A COD order that is refused costs you two-way shipping and the ad spend that bought it. If 25% of COD orders come back, the campaign's real ROAS is materially lower than Ads Manager shows. Use our RTO cost calculator.
- Prepaid nudges. Small prepaid incentives, COD confirmation on WhatsApp and address verification typically reduce RTO more cheaply than cutting COD entirely; see COD vs prepaid.
- Marketplaces and quick commerce. Amazon, Flipkart and quick-commerce apps capture demand your ads create. A national plan should read D2C and marketplace sales together; see marketplace marketing.
How we work with clients across India
- A written audit and plan before any budget moves
- Shared live dashboards with blended and channel-level numbers
- Weekly calls with the strategist who runs the account
- A WhatsApp group for decisions that can't wait a week
- Quarterly planning reviews, in person in Mumbai or at your office when it adds value
- Creative produced in Mumbai or with creators in your region
What is a performance marketing agency?
A performance marketing agency plans, buys and optimises digital advertising against measurable business outcomes — sales, qualified leads, app installs or revenue — rather than reach and impressions alone. In India that usually means Google and Meta at the core, with YouTube, marketplaces, quick commerce, LinkedIn, affiliates and CRM around them.
The defining difference from a general digital agency is accountability. Targets are set from your unit economics — break-even ROAS, target CAC and payback period — tracking is verified before budgets grow, and every rupee is judged by the incremental result it produces, not by what an ad platform claims.
The channels in an Indian performance plan
| Channel | Best for | Typical primary KPI |
|---|---|---|
| Google Search and Shopping | Capturing demand that already exists | Cost per sale or qualified lead |
| Performance Max and Demand Gen | Scaling across Google's inventory | ROAS or CPA, with brand traffic separated |
| Meta (Facebook and Instagram) | Creating demand with creative | New-customer CAC, ROAS |
| YouTube | Reach, consideration and vernacular video | View-through conversions, brand lift |
| Amazon, Flipkart and quick commerce | Marketplace and category sales | TACoS, contribution margin |
| B2B pipeline | Cost per opportunity | |
| WhatsApp, email and SMS | Retention and lead nurturing | Repeat rate, LTV |
| Affiliates and influencers | Incremental reach at variable cost | CPA, blended CAC |
Few brands need all of these at once. We start where the economics are strongest and add channels only when the core holds at higher spend.
The KPIs an Indian performance agency should report
- MER (marketing efficiency ratio) — total revenue divided by total marketing spend; the number platforms can't inflate
- New-customer CAC — what a first-time customer costs, by channel and in total
- ROAS against break-even ROAS — after COD, RTO, returns and discounts
- Contribution margin after marketing — the profit actually left over
- Lead-to-sale rate for lead-generation businesses, from CRM data
- Payback period — months until a customer's margin repays their acquisition cost
- D2C versus marketplace revenue, so channel conflict is visible
Performance marketing by industry in India
- D2C and eCommerce — creative velocity on Meta, Shopping and Performance Max, COD and RTO control, marketplace balance
- Real estate — RERA-compliant ads, optimisation to site visits, fast WhatsApp follow-up
- Education and edtech — admission-cycle planning and CCPA-compliant claims
- Fintech and insurance — regulated claims and KYC-to-activation funnels
- Healthcare — appointment campaigns within medical advertising rules
- SaaS — pipeline from LinkedIn and search, measured to revenue
- Automotive — test-drive and dealer lead programmes
- Hospitality and travel — direct bookings that cut OTA commission
How to choose a performance marketing agency in India
- Ask how they set targets — the answer should start with your margins, not a benchmark ROAS
- Ask to see a sample weekly report and change log
- Find out who runs the account day to day, and how many accounts that person handles
- Confirm that ad accounts, pixels and data will be in your name
- Ask how COD, RTO and returns are reflected in reported ROAS
- Ask how they measure incrementality, not just platform-attributed conversions
- Check minimum terms, notice periods and who owns creative if you leave
- Look for regional-language capability if you sell beyond the metros
Red flags when hiring a performance agency
- Guaranteed ROAS or lead numbers before anyone has seen your data
- Ad accounts created in the agency's name
- Reports that show only clicks, CTR and platform ROAS
- Percentage-of-spend fees with no efficiency guardrails, which reward spending more
- Long lock-ins with heavy exit penalties
- No access to CRM or back-end data for a lead-generation business
Performance marketing vs digital marketing vs brand marketing
| Performance marketing | Digital marketing | Brand marketing | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Goal | Measurable actions: sales, leads, installs | Presence across online channels | Awareness, preference, pricing power |
| Typical measures | CAC, ROAS, MER, payback | Traffic, engagement, rankings | Reach, recall, branded search, brand lift |
| Time horizon | Weeks to months | Months | Months to years |
| How PMG uses it | The core of every engagement | The channels we operate | Creative and reach that make performance cheaper |
The strongest Indian brands run both: brand work raises the ceiling on what performance channels can deliver. See performance marketing vs brand marketing.
A first-quarter plan for a national D2C brand
- Weeks 1–2: foundations. Server-side tracking and the Conversions API, a unit-economics sheet with break-even ROAS by region, and RTO data by pin-code tier.
- Weeks 3–6: prove the core. Meta creative sprints of 10–15 concepts, Google Shopping and brand search, prepaid nudges and WhatsApp COD confirmation.
- Weeks 7–10: regionalise. Hindi and regional-language variants for the two or three states with the best margins; separate budgets where economics differ.
- Weeks 11–13: extend. Performance Max with brand exclusions, YouTube Shorts, marketplace ads balanced against D2C, and a festive-season plan with MER targets.
Digital marketing services for businesses in India
Every engagement is built from the same components — chosen and weighted for your category, budget and customers in India. Most clients start with two or three of these and add more once the economics are proven.
Performance Marketing
Full-funnel paid media run against your margins. We set break-even ROAS and a target cost per acquisition first, then plan Google, Meta and other channels around what customers in India actually respond to. Budgets move every week toward whatever produces the cheapest incremental sales or qualified leads — not the loudest platform numbers.
Google Ads
Search, Performance Max, Shopping, YouTube and Demand Gen campaigns built around high-intent searches in India. We fix conversion tracking first, separate brand from non-brand, use location and language targeting deliberately, and report on cost per qualified lead or sale rather than clicks and impressions.
Meta Ads
Facebook and Instagram campaigns driven by creative testing — new hooks, formats and offers every week — with the Conversions API for reliable signals and audiences shaped for India. Lead campaigns route straight to WhatsApp or your CRM so your team can follow up within minutes.
SEO
Technical SEO, content and authority building aimed at the searches buyers in India make before they contact a business. We fix crawl, speed and indexing problems first, then build service, location and comparison pages that can rank in Google and be cited in AI answers.
Local SEO
Google Business Profile optimisation, review generation, consistent local citations and location pages, so customers in India find you in the map pack and on "near me" searches. Essential for clinics, restaurants, showrooms and service businesses.
Social Media Marketing
Content calendars, Reels and short video, community management and paid amplification on the platforms people in India use most — planned around local festivals, events and languages rather than a generic national calendar.
WhatsApp Marketing
WhatsApp Business API set-up, click-to-WhatsApp ads, chatbots and broadcast flows for lead qualification, order confirmation and repeat purchases — consent-based, and built around how customers in India prefer to talk to businesses.
Marketplace Marketing
Amazon, Flipkart and quick-commerce advertising and listing optimisation, balanced with your own website so you grow sales in India without handing all your margin to marketplaces.
Web Design & Development
Fast, conversion-focused websites and landing pages — clear offers, trust signals, mobile-first forms and proper tracking — so the traffic you pay for in India actually turns into enquiries and sales.
AEO & GEO (AI Search)
Answer engine and generative engine optimisation: answer-first content, clear entity information and structured data that help your business appear in Google's AI features, ChatGPT and other assistants when buyers in India ask for recommendations.
Why businesses in India work with PMG
- Measurement first. Break-even ROAS, target CAC and clean tracking before any budget is scaled.
- You own everything. Ad accounts, data and creative stay in your name, and ad spend goes straight to the platforms.
- Senior people on your account. The strategist who runs your campaigns is the person you talk to every week.
- Weekly transparency. A scorecard, change log and test board every week — no vanity metrics.
- Short minimum terms. We would rather keep clients with results than with contracts.
- Local-language creative. Campaigns written for India audiences in Hindi, English, Marathi and Gujarati — never machine-translated.
Cities and areas we serve in India
We plan budgets and creative city by city, because costs, competition and customer behaviour differ even within India. Campaigns regularly target:
- Mumbai
- Delhi NCR
- Bengaluru
- Pune
- Hyderabad
- Chennai
- Kolkata
- Ahmedabad
- Jaipur
- Lucknow
- Indore
- Kochi
- Chandigarh
- Surat
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- Tracking check
- Pixels, Conversions API, GA4 events and offline conversions — what is firing, what is double-counted, what is missing.
- Wasted spend
- Search terms, placements, audiences and overlap that cost money without producing qualified leads or sales.
- Conversion path
- Landing page speed, message match, form friction and follow-up time — where interested people drop off.
- 90-day priorities
- The three changes we would make first, with the metric each one should move.
Frequently asked questions
Do you have offices outside Mumbai?
No — our only office is in Andheri West. We work remotely with clients elsewhere and travel when it matters.
How is PMG different from other Indian performance agencies?
Targets from your margins, verified tracking before scaling, blended business metrics above platform metrics, and senior operators running accounts. See how we work.
Do you work with international clients?
Yes — Indian brands selling abroad and international brands entering India.
Can a Mumbai-based agency run campaigns effectively for other states?
Yes. Media buying, analytics and most creative work are location-independent. What matters is regional planning — language, festivals, costs and logistics — and access to creators or shoots in the regions that need them.
Which platforms work best for tier-2 and tier-3 cities?
Meta and YouTube carry most reach, with short-video formats and regional-language creative. Google Search remains strong for high-intent categories. Vernacular platforms can add reach for specific audiences; see ShareChat and Moj ads.
Do you run campaigns in regional languages?
Yes — Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Bengali and others, with native-speaker review of every script and landing page.
What is a typical minimum budget for a national campaign?
To test several regions properly on Meta and Google together, most brands need at least ₹5–10 lakh a month in ad spend. Below that, focus on the one or two regions with the best economics first.
How do you handle data protection for customer lists?
Customer data used for audiences or conversion imports is hashed, shared only with the platforms that need it and handled in line with India's Digital Personal Data Protection framework, whose obligations phase in through May 2027 (PIB).
What is the difference between a performance marketing agency and an ad agency?
Traditional ad agencies focus on brand ideas and media reach. A performance agency is accountable for measurable outcomes such as sales and qualified leads, and optimises spend every week against them.
Do performance agencies in India work on a pay-per-result basis?
Some offer it, but pure pay-per-result models tend to push agencies toward cheap, low-quality leads. Most use a retainer, a percentage of spend or a hybrid with a performance-linked component once tracking is reliable.
What is MER and why does it matter?
Marketing efficiency ratio is total revenue divided by total marketing spend. Because it uses your own sales data, platform attribution can't inflate it — a useful check on reported ROAS.
Can you take over campaigns from our current agency?
Yes. We audit the existing accounts, keep what works and plan a transition that avoids resetting platform learning unnecessarily.
How long does it take to see results from digital marketing in India?
Tracking fixes and search campaigns often show improvement within two to four weeks. Prospecting on Meta or YouTube usually needs three to six weeks of creative testing, and SEO compounds over three to nine months. We agree leading indicators for each channel so you are never guessing.
Do we need to sign a long contract?
No. Minimum terms are short, because we would rather keep clients with results than with contracts. Ad accounts, data and creative stay in your name throughout.
Will we own our ad accounts and data?
Yes. Campaigns run in your own Google, Meta and other ad accounts with partner access for PMG, and you can see everything at any time.
Also in Mumbai
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