Accepting contracts
Digital marketing consultant in Bengaluru
I am Vikram M A A. I live and work in Bengaluru, I have spent 10+ years running SEO, Google and Meta ads, organic social, content and lead generation, and I am accepting contracts to help brands grow. If your marketing is running and the revenue number is flat, that is the problem I am best at.
This page is about working together. If you would rather see how I think before you talk to anyone, the blog and the expertise notes are a better use of your time, and they are free.
The local picture
What is actually different about marketing in Bengaluru
Most "digital marketing in Bangalore" pages could be about any city in India with the name swapped. Here is what genuinely differs, from working in this market rather than from a template.
The Rs 25,000 retainer that produces a report
It is the most common thing I see here. An agency is engaged, a monthly fee goes out, and what arrives is a PDF of impressions and reach with no line connecting any of it to revenue. The work is not necessarily bad. Nobody ever agreed what it was supposed to produce, so there is no way to tell. I have written up the red flags worth checking in a proposal and what to do when an engagement is going nowhere.
Half the companies here are not selling to anyone in Bengaluru
A SaaS or services company in Koramangala selling into the US or Europe has no use for local SEO at all. Its buyers are nowhere near the map pack. That business needs content, search visibility and now AI search citations, which is a completely different programme from the one a restaurant in Indiranagar needs. Getting this wrong is the most expensive mistake in the city, because both companies get sold the same package.
WhatsApp is where the lead actually goes
The ad gets the click, the enquiry arrives on WhatsApp, and nothing in Google Ads or GA4 ever knows it happened. So the account looks like it is failing while the phone is busy. Most of the "our ads do not work" accounts I have opened in India turn out to have this underneath them. More ontreating WhatsApp as the sales channel it already is.
Quick commerce is eating D2C website traffic
If you sell a physical product, the customer who used to land on your site now opens Blinkit or Zepto instead. Your organic traffic chart looks like a failure of SEO. It is not. It is a change in where the category is bought, and the response is a different one. I went through that properly inquick commerce versus D2C.
GST sits on top of your ad spend
Which means the cost per acquisition your dashboard reports is not the one your accountant sees. It is a small thing that quietly changes whether a channel is actually profitable, and it is routinely left out of the maths.
Being honest about proximity
When hiring someone local actually matters
When it helps
- The first conversation, which settles more in an hour across a table than in three calls
- The afternoon where marketing and sales finally agree what a qualified lead is
- Retail, clinics and restaurants, where I should see the place before writing about it
- Anything that needs me in a room with people who disagree with each other
When it does not
- SaaS and B2B selling outside the city, which is most of the work
- SEO, paid media and content, all of which happen in the accounts
- Reporting and review, which are better written down than presented
Most of what I have done has been remote or hybrid, including an art brand in Canada that ran end to end without meeting once. So being in Bengaluru is a convenience if you are here, not the reason to hire me. Be suspicious of anyone who tells you proximity is the main thing, including me.
Working together
What a contract looks like
I work with brands under contract across SEO, AI search, paid media, social, content and lead generation. A small number at a time, because the point of hiring one person instead of an agency is that the person you spoke to is the person doing the work.
How a contract is scoped
One or two problems, not everything at once. A flat fee agreed before anything starts, never a percentage of your ad spend. One number the work is held to, written down at the start so it cannot quietly change later.
Who it works for
Companies already spending real money on marketing, with someone internal who can make a decision. Founder-led teams somewhere between first traction and a full marketing department. B2B, D2C, local services and SaaS.
Who it does not
Anyone who wants a guaranteed ranking, a guaranteed lead count, or page one in thirty days. And if the diagnosis says the problem is your product or your sales follow-up rather than your marketing, I will tell you that instead of selling you a retainer.
What I take on
The disciplines, and how I think about each
Each of these has a page of notes behind it rather than a list of deliverables. If one of them is your live problem, read the notes first and then say which one.
SEO
Most sites do not have an SEO problem. They have three at once, and fixing one without the other two is why the work appears to stall.
Notes on SEO →AISEO
AISEO is not a separate discipline from SEO. It is SEO done with more discipline about structure and more honesty about substance.
Notes on AISEO →Performance Marketing
Ad accounts rarely fail because of bidding. They fail on audience, creative and the landing page, in that order.
Notes on Performance Marketing →Social Media Marketing
Posting consistently and getting nothing back is a content mix problem, not a frequency problem.
Notes on Social Media Marketing →Content Marketing
Content fails at one of two ends: nobody defined the audience precisely enough, or nobody planned how it would be read.
Notes on Content Marketing →Lead Generation
Most lead generation problems are qualification problems wearing a different hat.
Notes on Lead Generation →Marketing & Sales Alignment
Marketing reports lead volume, sales says the leads are junk, and both are right, because nobody wrote down what qualified means.
Notes on Marketing & Sales Alignment →Work in this market
Projects run in India
Two of the three projects in the portfolio were run here. The full breakdown of each, including what the numbers do and do not prove, is on the portfolio page.
Around the city
Where clients have been
Bengaluru and Bangalore are the same city and the same search, so both spellings turn up on this page. These are areas clients have actually been in, not a list written to catch searches. If you are somewhere else in the city, or outside it entirely, that changes nothing about whether I can help.
FAQ
Questions I get asked in Bengaluru
Direct answers. If yours is not here, ask it by email or WhatsApp and you will get the same kind of answer.
Are you available for work in Bengaluru?
Yes. I am accepting contracts to help brands grow. I live and work in Bengaluru, so this is my home market, and I take a small number of contracts at a time. Email vikram.1996523@gmail.com, call or WhatsApp +91 70199 90776, or message me on LinkedIn.
Do you work with companies outside Bengaluru?
Yes, and most of the work I have done has been remote or hybrid across time zones, including an art brand in Canada that ran end to end without a single meeting in person. Being in Bengaluru is a convenience for clients here, not a restriction on everyone else.
What does a digital marketing consultant cost in Bengaluru?
Bengaluru rates run roughly 20% to 30% above the national average. Published figures put freelance retainers somewhere around Rs 20,000 to Rs 80,000 a month and hourly rates between Rs 500 and Rs 3,000, with senior specialists above that. My own fee is a flat amount scoped to the work and agreed before anything starts, never a percentage of your ad spend, so it comes out of the first conversation rather than a price list.
Are you an agency?
No. One person, working directly. That is the actual difference: there is no account manager between you and the work, and nobody gets handed down to a junior, because there is not one. The trade-off is honest too, which is that one person has no bench, so if you need five channels running at once an agency is the better structure.
Can we meet in person?
Yes, anywhere in the city. It is genuinely useful for a first conversation and for the afternoon where marketing and sales finally agree what a qualified lead is. Most of the work after that happens remotely regardless, because that is where the work actually is.
How quickly can you start?
It depends on what is already running. I take a small number of contracts at a time, so the honest answer is that sometimes there is room immediately and sometimes there is not. I will tell you which in the first reply rather than holding a slot and hoping.
Say hello
Marketing running, revenue flat?
I am accepting contracts to help brands grow, and I am equally happy with a conversation that never becomes one. Email, LinkedIn, WhatsApp or a call, whichever is easiest. Tell me what you are running and what it is failing to produce, and you will get a straight answer on whether I am the right person for it.
Or call +91 70199 90776.