Journey Of Rasm By Muskaan – From The Lanes Of Varanasi To Being Just A Click Away | UrsDigitally

Abstract

Rasm by Muskaan is a fashion brand with a rich portfolio of Banarasi sarees & fabrics. The brand has its physical presence with a manufacturing hub & store in Varanasi. To expand its brand globally and to reach out to the connoisseurs of Varanasi sarees, Rasm By Muskaan has created a digital touchpoint www.rasmbymuskaan.com. This enables the brand to expand its footprint through an omnichannel presence leading to more visibility.

The face of Rasm, Muskaan, reached out to us to position her brand as one selling authentic Banarasi sarees and in the process doing a storytelling of the artisans responsible to craft the best possible designer sarees. According to Muskaan, the market was swamped by dealers & aggregators selling Banarasi Sarees without any quality benchmarks. As a result, customers ended up buying fake products and complaining later. Amidst this disparity between fake and original Banarasi saree, Muskaan wanted to bring something that the customers were eyeing for so long. Comprehending her concern, and with thorough secondary research, we helped the brand design a user-friendly e-commerce platform and eventually worked collaboratively with the Technology Providers to roll out the same representing the ethos of Varanasi & Fashion.

About The Company 

Rasm By Muskaan is a fashion brand selling authentic and hand-woven Banarasi sarees & fabrics. What makes Rasm different from others is the value system that the brand follows. First, Rasm aims to produce a plethora of authentic Banarasi sarees for its customers by showcasing heaps of unique designs and intricate art pieces.

Secondly, Rasm takes pride in manufacturing authentic Banarasi sarees that inform the customers about the different patterns and weaving techniques. In short, Rasm is determined to provide the most authentic and fashionable Banarsi Sarees to its consumers.

Rasm adds a human touch to make buying a Banarasi saree an emotional experience. Right from communicating with the customers, to guiding them over a video call any purchase experience with Rasm By Muskaan is a journey towards ethnic fashion.

Lastly, Rasm By Muskaan celebrates the Artisans who are behind the uber-fashionable yet rooted sarees and brings them to the fore through this platform.

 Brand Aspirations

A guided journey to ethnic fashion and a product portfolio that is an ensemble of Fashion, Authenticity & Ethnicity is the key ethos of the brand Rasm By Muskaan leading to the following aspirations

• Most sellers of Banarasi sarees do not sell authentic products. As a result, the customers spend a lot of money to buy fake items and complain later. This led Rasm by Muskaan to consult with us to capture this unsatisfied market and present them with authentic Banarasi sarees at the right price point
• Rasm did not want to be just a brand selling Banarasi sarees. Instead, it wanted to create an identity, a personal brand that goes much beyond being just an e-commerce platform. Rasm wanted to make a space in the minds and hearts of their customers

Along with resolving these pain points, our client wanted us to work on strategizing, building, and managing a digital presence of the brand. Further, they wanted us to help them in creating a unique brand positioning that communicates the brand ethos to their target audience.

Our Approach 

As a reputed and experienced digital marketing company, we promised to create a brand presence in a manner that delivers customers the following:

• Provide customers with a subtle individualism
• Impart a combination of elegance and rich culture
• Give customers a memorable experience of owning the 9 yards

To create a rock-solid brand positioning, we thought of:

• Integrating an omnichannel presence of the brand
• Using storytelling method to communicate with customers
• Highlighting Muskaan as the face of the brand and letting her use her knowledge to guide customers
• Define touchpoints like Video Calling, and Shop with Muskaan to create a guided journey
• Loyalty Program to create a virtual community of Saree Lovers
• Look Test to build a personalized space

We understood the need for a fully functional and user-friendly e-commerce website. Therefore, we connected with Muskaan, the brand owner, to create a comprehensive website strategy. We conducted a workshop to figure out the client’s requirements, and the kind of website she is looking forward to.

To form a clear idea about the industry standards, we conducted a comprehensive competitive analysis and analyzed the websites of the competitors. Further, we examined the target audience and the buyer journey to map the same with the websites.

From the thorough audit, we felt the need for including these sections on the website:

• Brand Information

A piece of detailed information about the brand gives customers an idea about the journey of the brand. Besides, customers these days are interested in knowing the behind-the-scenes stories. Talking about the struggle, hardships, and challenges that the brand has overcome to reach this level triggers the emotions of the customers.

• Product Information

Since Rasm is an eCommerce brand, it has to put forward the details of its products to make customers believe in them. Besides, purchasing products online requires calls for a piece of detailed and well-articulated product information to get the trust of the customers.

• Authenticity & Trustworthiness

While conducting the audit, we were amazed to see that the majority of the customers raised questions regarding the authenticity of Banarasi sarees. Most of the time, they failed to get an authentic product and ultimately lost trust in the brand. Considering this pain point of the customers, we tried turning it into our strength and mentioned the following on the brand’s website:

• Varanasi & Banarasi Saree
• Artistry – Manufacturing process
• Artistry – Techniques & Patterns
• Artistry – Fabrics
• Authenticity

Through all these pages, Rasm talks about their promise to the customers, their workforce based out of Varanasi, the vision of the brand owner, the quality of the products, and everything that forms a close union between the brand and the customers.

• Contemporary Fashion

Amongst the target group, we came across people of the millennial age group who wanted to wear traditional Banarasi saree but not in a conventional manner. They wanted the fabric but not the heavy work on it. Hence, we heard them and added a page to showcase a variety of lightweight and fashionable Banarasi sarees.

• Collaborativeness

To sustain in the digital platform, it is important to collaborate and build trust. So, we have put up a page showcasing different brand collaborations. A cherry on the cake is the ‘sisters society’, a loyalty program. This is a discussion forum for women to talk and share their insights about fashion and connect with Muskaan. The purpose of creating this ‘sister society’ is to build a community to leverage the brand and boost repeat sales.

• eCommerce Section

To create a user-friendly website, it is necessary to add all the features that customers look forward to. We developed a simple and easy-to-use website with the perfect images and content, eye-catching call to action, easily navigable features, and a detailed product listing.

• Marketing Honeypots

For better accumulation and use of customer data, we added marketing honeypots to the website. This would help the brand reach out to the customers on a personal level. We suggested the brands use this data to conduct email marketing. This would educate and inform the customers about the brand as well as about their products.

AS-IS State Of Rasm By Muskaan

Finally, we launched the brand digitally and currently focusing on the following to get more brand awareness and sales:

• Conducting social media management to get more engagement, promote brand awareness, and enhance its augmentation
• Onboarding the brand on various eCommerce platforms like Amazon, Nykaa, Flipkart, and Myntra to improve sales
• Running different paid ad campaigns to push traffic to the website to leverage the brand and improve its sales
• Onboarding dealers interested in buying Banarasi sarees in bulk for their retailing purpose
• Reaching out to potential boutique owners to collaborate with them and enhance the sales
• Connecting with social media influencers to ask them to create shoppable posts

 Road Ahead 

We presented to Rasm a complete digital strategy they can use to position themselves as a brand online and increase their ROI. Following this strategy, we are sure Rasm can make its mark in the online platform and reach out to customers on a global level and generate business out of it.