REAL ESTATE
MARKETING.

A home search starts on a phone. Someone searches for a locality and a budget, scrolls a developer's reels of a sample flat, reads a portal listing, asks a family WhatsApp group whether the builder is any good, checks the RERA website, and only then agrees to a site visit. Real estate marketing is the work of being the clear, credible answer at each of those moments, and of turning the people who ask into site visits the sales team can close.

It is also a category where the regulator reads the ads. Since the Act's registration provisions came into force, every project advertisement in India has had to carry a registration number, and the state authorities now fine developers for creatives that leave it out. This page sets out how we run a launch, the rules we run it inside, and what we report at the end of the month.

Who we work with in real estate

Our real estate work to date is on the commercial side: Ginserv, an incubation and co-working operator. The rest of this page is how we run a launch and the rules we run it inside. Send us the brief and we will tell you where our experience is direct and where it is transferable.

What real estate marketing covers

A project has several audiences at once: end users and investors, the brokers who bring a large share of the walk-ins, the bank that approves the loan, and the existing customers whose construction updates decide whether the next phase sells on referral. Each of our services has a real estate version of itself.

For a project we plan performance marketing and social media as one calendar, because the walkthrough that buyers saved last week is the ad that gets the site visit this week.

The rules a real estate campaign has to work inside

Real estate advertising in India is governed by one central Act, the orders of each state's regulatory authority, the ASCI Code and the consumer protection law, and the platforms add rules of their own.

The Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act 2016. The Act is the spine of every launch plan. Section 3(1) bars a promoter from advertising, marketing, booking, selling or inviting purchase in a project before it is registered with the state authority, with an exemption in section 3(2) for land not exceeding five hundred square metres or eight apartments across all phases, thresholds a state may lower. Section 11(2) requires every advertisement or prospectus to mention the authority's website address prominently and to carry the project's registration number. Section 12 gives a buyer who paid an advance on the strength of a false or incorrect advertisement, prospectus or model flat the right to compensation, and the right to withdraw and get the entire investment back with interest. Section 13(1) bars the promoter from taking more than ten per cent of the cost as an advance before a written agreement for sale is signed and registered, so a "pay ₹2 lakh to block your unit" creative needs to be read against it. The penalties are a share of the project's estimated cost. Advertising or selling an unregistered project can draw up to ten per cent under section 59(1), and imprisonment up to three years for a continuing violation under section 59(2). Any other contravention can draw up to five per cent under section 61, and ignoring the authority's orders a daily penalty that may reach five per cent under section 63.

The state authorities enforce it. MahaRERA penalised 628 projects a total of ₹88.90 lakh for advertisements without the registration number and QR code, as reported in July 2024, and worked with ASCI from February 2024 to track ads that lack them, a role ASCI now plays for Telangana's authority. ASCI's 2024-25 complaints report found realty the second most violative sector, with 1,767 ads needing modification, about a quarter of all the ads ASCI asked to be modified that year, and 1,755 ads reported to MahaRERA. Its 2025-26 report put realty second again, with 643 cases and 629 Telangana ads flagged to that state's authority in five months, and noted that 97.3 per cent of the ads it scrutinised were digital.

Consumer law and ASCI. The ASCI Code requires advertisements to be truthful and claims to be capable of substantiation, and bars misleading by implication or omission. Under the CCPA's 2022 guidelines on misleading advertisements, a misleading ad can draw a CCPA penalty of up to ₹10 lakh, and ₹50 lakh for repeated violations, and the guidelines are sector-neutral, so a "ten minutes from the airport" line that is true at 3am is a risk at any hour.

Buyer data. Lead forms, WhatsApp numbers and site-visit bookings collect personal data. The Digital Personal Data Protection Rules were notified in November 2025, with the consent and notice duties applying after an eighteen-month phase-in and penalties up to ₹250 crore, so every form we build carries a plain-language notice and an unticked consent box, and the lead list is shared with brokers only where the buyer agreed to it.

We treat the registration number, the website address and the state's QR code as part of the creative template, not a line added at the end, because the developer stays responsible for every creative its agency publishes.

What the ad platforms allow for real estate

In the United States, Canada and Europe the platforms restrict how housing ads can be targeted. In India they do not. Google's personalised advertising policy applies its housing, employment and consumer finance restrictions to the United States and Canada only, and Meta's housing special ad category applies to advertisers based in the United States or reaching the United States, Canada or Europe. An Indian developer can therefore use age and location targeting, which is why the constraint on a campaign here is RERA and the CCPA rather than the ad platform.

What the platforms do police is honesty. Google's misrepresentation policy bars promotional offers that are unavailable or not easily found at the destination and claims that entice the user with an improbable result, so a "possession in 12 months" headline needs a landing page that says the same thing, and an introductory price that ended last month cannot stay in the ad. Google Business Profile has its own rule for projects: rental or for-sale properties are not eligible for a profile, but a sales or leasing office is, and Google treats real estate agents as individual practitioners who may hold their own profile. So the map listing is for the sales office, with its hours, photographs and reviews, and the project gets its page on the website.

What works for projects

The creative that sells a project is specific. A walkthrough of the sample flat with the carpet area on screen. A reel that answers the one question every buyer asks about the locality, with the answer visible from the balcony. A construction update, every quarter, shot from the same spot, because a buyer who has paid an advance wants to see the slab rise more than they want another render. A founder or project head on camera explaining why the price sheet is what it is. Festival launches still work when the offer is real and the number is on the creative; our guide to festival marketing in India covers the timing.

The campaign has three phases, each with its own job. At launch, reach and registration of interest, with the creative built around the configuration and the price band. In sustenance, search campaigns for the locality and the configuration, remarketing to people who visited the floor plans, and a fresh reason to come back every month: a show village opening, a bank tie-up, a new tower. Towards possession, resident stories and handover content that sell the next phase on referral. Knight Frank found that 54 per cent of homes sold in the eight markets it tracks were priced above ₹1 crore in the first half of 2026. A buyer at that price reads everything before they call, which is why the landing page carries the floor plans, the payment schedule and the registration number rather than a form alone.

Being found: search, AI answers and the portals

Google holds property pages to a high standard because a home is the largest purchase most people make. Its guidance on helpful content lists financial decisions among the "Your Money or Your Life" topics where experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust matter most, and says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. So we write project and locality pages that answer the questions buyers ask, keep the registration number, the carpet areas and the payment plan on the page, and mark the page up so an AI answer can quote it correctly; our guide to answer engine optimisation explains how. Google ranks local results on relevance, distance and prominence, so the sales office profile gets the same care as the website: hours that match, photographs of the actual site, and replies to every review.

The portals are not going away. Info Edge reported 99acres billings up 16.5 per cent in the quarter to June 2026, and in print, real estate was the second largest advertising category in 2025 with a 6 per cent share of ad space, behind cars, even as digital took 60 per cent of India's ad spend. We plan the portal listings, the print launch ad and the digital campaign as one, so a buyer who sees the hoarding, searches the project name and lands on the page finds the same price, the same registration number and the same offer in all three places.

From lead to site visit

A real estate lead is worth nothing until someone visits, so the work between the form and the visit is where we spend the most time. Every lead form asks the qualifying questions: budget, configuration, timeline, whether a loan is needed. Every lead is scored on those answers and on behaviour, such as which floor plans were opened, before it reaches the sales team, so the first call goes to the person who downloaded the price sheet twice. Follow-up runs on WhatsApp, where a reply within 24 hours to someone who messaged you from a Click to WhatsApp ad opens a 72-hour window in which messages are free. Marketing messages have been charged per message since 1 July 2025, so each nurture sequence has a visible unit cost and is written to earn it. India had 481 million Instagram users and 500 million YouTube users in late 2025, by the platforms' own advertising tools, so reach is rarely the hard part; the follow-up is.

Commercial, co-working and co-living

Offices, retail and co-working are a lead-and-tour business with a different buyer: an admin head, a founder, a franchisee or a landlord's broker. Knight Frank counted 48.0 million square feet of office space transacted across the eight markets it tracks in the first half of 2026. For a co-working or co-living operator, the campaign is LinkedIn and Google Search for the people deciding where a team sits, a tour that can be booked from the ad, pricing that is clear about what a seat includes, and content about the community inside the building. The RERA advertising duties are written for projects being sold; for a lease or a membership we work to consumer law and the ASCI Code, and the same honesty rule applies to every seat count and every "fully furnished".

How we measure real estate marketing

The number a developer cares about is a booking, and the number before it is a site visit. So we track qualified leads, site visits booked, site visits completed, broker-sourced versus direct, and bookings, tag each one to the campaign, post or page that brought it, and report them beside cost per lead and the engagement numbers. A walkthrough is judged on whether people watched to the end and opened the floor plans; a search campaign on cost per site visit and on the localities and configurations people typed; a project website on how many visitors reached the price sheet and booked a visit.

The report also carries what we are changing next month and why. For a project, that often means fewer creatives and clearer ones, because the regulator and the buyer agree on this: say what is in the sanctioned plan, quote the carpet area, and put the number on it.

What it costs

We quote against the brief, because one project needs a launch campaign for six weeks, another needs a website and a year of sustenance campaigns, and a developer with four projects needs all of it and a brand. Ad budgets are paid to Google, Meta and the portals from your own accounts, and GST at 18% applies to agency fees.

If you run a developer, a project or a property brand, send us the brief. We reply with what we would do, which rules apply to it, and roughly what it would cost.