Notes for owners · Industry playbooks
How to advertise a new real estate project
Build the launch mix backwards from the site visit. Decide the bookings you need, work back to visits and enquiries, then buy only the media that reaches people who will drive there.
The GullySales team · Updated 15 Sept 2026 · 7 min read
Work backwards from the site visit. A launch is judged on visits that happen, not on leads sitting in a sheet. Decide how many bookings you need this quarter, how many visits produce one booking, and how many enquiries produce one visit. That arithmetic gives the enquiry target, and the target decides the media. Then build the receiving end first: a site office that answers in minutes, and partners who have actually seen the flat. The landing page shows the plan, the price band and the location.
The arithmetic that sets the budget
Take your own numbers, however rough, from the last project.
For example, imagine a 180-flat project in north Bengaluru that needs 24 bookings this quarter. If one visit in six books, that is 144 visits. If one enquiry in eight turns into a visit that actually happens, that is about 1,150 enquiries. At an illustrative ₹700 per enquiry across search and social, the media floor is roughly ₹8 lakh for the quarter. The figures are invented. They show the shape of the calculation, not a result to expect.
Now look at the middle number, because that is where launches are won. Moving the enquiry-to-visit rate from one in eight to one in five cuts the required enquiries by a third, and the budget with it. That movement comes from response time and from saying the price, not from better targeting.
What each channel is actually for
| Channel | Who it reaches | What it should produce |
|---|---|---|
| Search advertising on locality terms | Somebody already looking for flats in that area | Enquiries with a real intent to visit |
| Meta advertising to the catchment | People who live or work within a reasonable drive | Volume, at a quality that depends on the form |
| Hoardings on the approach roads | Drivers who pass the site every day | Walk-ins and recall when the partner calls |
| Channel partners | Buyers already talking to a broker | Visits, if the partner has seen the site |
| Your own website and project pages | Anybody who heard the name and searched it | Cheap enquiries that nobody has to pay for twice |
| Existing customers and staff referrals | Families who already trust the developer | The highest conversion in the whole mix |
Two of these deserve most of the money in the first fortnight, and which two depends on the location. A project on an arterial road takes the hoarding budget seriously. A project on an internal road in a new layout has no passing traffic to buy, so search and partners carry it.
The fortnight you cannot buy
Outdoor media in an Indian city is not priced evenly through the year. In the weeks before Diwali the jewellers and the big developers have already taken the sites at the junctions, and what is left is expensive and badly placed.
So plan the outdoor two months ahead of the festive quarter, or accept the leftovers. The same is true of the property expos: the good stall positions go early, and a corner stall near the entrance does more than any brochure design.
Launch dates matter for a second reason. Ugadi, Akshaya Tritiya and the days around Diwali are when families in Karnataka prefer to register a purchase. The visits behind those registrations happened three or four weeks earlier. Work the calendar backwards from the muhurat, not forwards from when the creative is ready.
The receiving end decides your cost per booking
Most of the money lost in a property launch is lost after the enquiry arrives.
Test it yourself. Fill your own form on a Saturday evening and time the response. In a lot of projects the first call comes on Monday, by which point the buyer has visited two other sites.
Fix four things before the campaign goes live. One number and one owner for every enquiry, with a call inside five minutes during selling hours. A first message on WhatsApp with the plan, the price band and the location pin, because that is what the buyer asks for anyway. A rule that every enquiry gets an outcome recorded: visit fixed, visit done, not interested with a reason, or follow up on a date. And a weekly review of which source produced visits rather than leads.
What does not work
Three practices survive because nobody measures them.
Buying enquiries from portals in bulk without asking which of them ever visited. Volume looks good in the weekly report and the site office knows the truth.
Running the whole budget in the launch week and then going quiet. Property decisions take months, so an enquiry from week one is often a booking in month four, and only if somebody keeps talking to them.
Advertising amenities that any project of that size has. A clubhouse and a gym do not separate you. The distance to the metro station, the school your buyer's children can reach, the floor plate, the handover date and the developer's last completed project are what get compared.
What to do next
Pull the last hundred enquiries from your current project and mark each one with the source and whether a site visit actually happened. Most developers get a shock. A source they fund heavily produced enquiries and almost no visits. That single sheet will change your next launch plan more than any creative review. If you would like it built and scored with your sales team, book the free audit.