Marketing for businesses that sell in DMs
Most small businesses in Pakistan sell the way their customers buy: a post, a message, an address, cash at the door. We build the marketing around that, not a checkout nobody uses. Meta ads in your account, billed in rupees where Meta allows it, creative made in Karachi, the sale counted where it closes. The Gallery returned $5.20–$6 for each $1 of ads on every campaign to July 2026.
In detail
Why does selling in DMs change how the ads are built?
Because the ad's job is to start a conversation, not to send someone to a page. A campaign built for a checkout optimises toward people who buy on websites, and in Pakistan that is a small slice of the people who buy. So the creative asks a question the buyer wants to answer, the campaign is set to bring messages rather than clicks, and the reply is written before the ad runs: price, sizes, delivery, how to pay. The sale is logged in the inbox, by hand if needed, so the number we report is orders and not conversations.
How we set a Pakistani business up
- 01
Fix the page before the ads
Profile, highlights, a pinned post with prices, a saved reply for every question people ask. A buyer decides in the few seconds after they open your profile.
- 02
Make the creative here
Shot in Karachi, in Urdu or English or both, in the light and the homes your customers recognise. Not a stock image with a Lahore address pasted on.
- 03
Run the ads in your own account
We set the account up in your name, billed to your card in rupees where Meta allows it, and we never route spend through us. You can see every rupee.
- 04
Count the sale where it closes
Orders are logged from the inbox and matched to the campaign that started them, including cash on delivery, so refusals at the door come off the number too.
- 05
Cut, rebuild, report
Every week the losing creative is cut and the winner rebuilt. You get the number in a message you can read in a minute.
What The Gallery showed
The Gallery sells personalised newborn wear, the kind of product that needs a conversation: the spelling of a name, a date, a photo of the cot. The checkout was already the inbox, so a campaign built to push traffic at a product page would have measured the wrong thing.
We built ten creatives with one job, which was to start that conversation, set the campaigns to bring messages, and tracked the sale where it happened. The ads returned $5.20–$6 for every $1 spent on every campaign to July 2026. Not an average across a good quarter; every campaign. The spend behind it is not published, and we say so rather than letting the multiple do more work than it should.
What we do not do
- Sell followers. A bought follower never buys anything, and Meta can tell.
- Guarantee a number. Anyone who guarantees sales before seeing your account is guessing with your money.
- Take a cut of your ad spend. The fee is flat and the spend is yours, so we have no reason to spend more of it.
- Hold your accounts. The page, the ad account and the creative are in your name from the first day.
- Post for the sake of posting. If a week has nothing worth saying, the ads do the talking and the feed waits.
Is an agency worth it for a small Karachi business?
Only when the product already sells and the owner's time is the thing running out. If you are taking a handful of orders a week and answering every message yourself, you do not need us yet; fix the profile, run one simple message campaign and watch what people ask. If orders are arriving faster than you can reply, or you are spending on ads with no idea which post paid for itself, that is where we earn a fee. We built ehsaan, a thrift marketplace app, for a category that had lived entirely in Instagram DMs; we know this market from the inside.
Cash on delivery, or paid before dispatch?
| Cash on delivery | Paid before dispatch | |
|---|---|---|
| What the buyer feels | Safe. They pay when they hold it. | Exposed, unless they already trust you. |
| What it costs you | Refusals at the door and the courier's return fee. | Fewer orders, but every one is real. |
| How we count it | Delivered and paid, not ordered. | At payment. |
| When to use it | New customers, lower-priced items. | Repeat buyers, personalised or made-to-order pieces. |
The questions that follow.
Do you work with businesses outside Karachi?
Yes. Lahore, Islamabad and anywhere a courier reaches. The creative is made in Karachi; the ads do not care where the office is.
Can the ads run in Urdu?
Yes, and often they should. We write in the language your customers message you in, and we test both where the audience is mixed.
Is the fee in rupees or dollars?
The fee is published in dollars because our clients are in four countries. Pakistani businesses are invoiced in rupees. The ad spend is separate and always yours.
How soon do we see results?
Work starts in week one, the first creative is live in week three and the first honest number lands around week four. Anyone promising sooner is promising before they have looked.
Do you build websites and apps too?
Yes. ehsaan's marketplace app, brand and launch were built here, in Karachi, for a Pakistani audience. For most small businesses the inbox comes first and the website later.
The price is published.
Where this leads.
No deck. No discovery theatre. One metric, one date, in the contract.