The short answer
In two stages. Before the project is registered, where the RERA Act applies, the project itself cannot be advertised, so the work is everything around it: measurement, audiences, the developer's brand, the creative bank and the follow-up desk. After registration and before sales open, the job is to arrive at launch day with a qualified list big enough for the inventory you need to move, and an ad account that has already finished learning. Most launch-week cost-per-lead problems are pre-launch problems that surfaced late.
Two windows, two sets of rules
| Window | Where the project stands | The marketing job |
|---|---|---|
| Approval window | Applied for registration and approvals, not yet registered | No advertising of the project where the Act applies. Build measurement, audiences, developer brand, content and the creative bank. |
| Pre-launch | Registered, price list set, sales not yet open | Capture and qualify expressions of interest, let the ad account learn, brief channel partners. |
| Launch | Sales open | Convert the list first, then buy volume on top of it. |
The line between the first two windows is the registration. Under the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016, a project within its scope has to be registered before it is advertised, marketed, booked or offered for sale. Collecting expressions of interest with money attached is booking by another name, and belongs after registration, not before.
This is marketing guidance, not legal advice. Thresholds and exemptions vary by state and change by circular. Have counsel confirm what applies to a specific project before anything goes live.
What to do in the approval window
- Put the measurement in first: the pixel, the Conversions API, server-side tagging, source tagging in the CRM and the offline conversion upload. Attribution cannot be added to a launch after it happens; the launch data is simply lost.
- Build audiences without project claims: past-project enquirers, website visitors, and people engaging with developer or locality content.
- Publish on the developer and the micro-market: track record, the locality's infrastructure, how to check any project's approvals. This is what earns search and assistant visibility, and it takes months to compound.
- Produce the launch creative bank now. An account needs a steady supply of new creative, and launch week is the worst time to discover you have three ads.
- Set up the follow-up: WhatsApp templates approved, telecaller response targets agreed, CRM stages defined. Launch-week volume arriving at a desk sized for a normal week is how contact rate collapses.
How big the pre-launch list needs to be
Work backwards from the inventory, not forwards from the budget. Decide how many bookings launch month has to produce, then divide by the two rates between a lead and a booking.
Leads needed = target bookings ÷ (qualification rate × booking rate of qualified leads)Say launch month has to move 40 units, qualified expressions of interest book at 10%, and 40% of leads qualify. You need 400 qualified people on the list, which means about 1,000 leads over the pre-launch period. If the campaign is on track for 600, you know that weeks before launch rather than during it.
Why the ad account should start before launch
Meta's published guidance is roughly 50 optimisation events per ad set in a seven-day window before an ad set leaves the learning phase. An account switched on on launch day spends launch week learning, on cold audiences, at the moment inventory is most valuable. Pre-launch leads are what the account learns from, so by launch day it already knows what an interested buyer for this project looks like.
What usually goes wrong
- The ads start on launch day, so launch week is spent in the learning phase paying auction prices for cold traffic.
- Pre-launch is judged on lead count rather than qualified expressions of interest, so the list looks large and books small.
- Creative promises launch pricing that does not match the registered price list. Prices in advertising have to match what is registered.
- The follow-up desk is sized for a normal week and meets launch-week volume, so contact rate falls exactly when every lead is most valuable.
- Channel partners are briefed after the public campaign starts, and end up competing with it for the same buyers.
Questions people ask
- Can you advertise a real estate project before RERA registration?
- Where the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 applies, a project has to be registered before it is advertised, marketed, booked or offered for sale. Before registration the work is developer and locality brand building, audience building without project claims, content, measurement and preparation. Thresholds and exemptions vary by state, so confirm the specifics with counsel.
- How long should a pre-launch campaign run?
- Long enough for two things: the ad account leaving the learning phase, and the list reaching the size the inventory needs, which you can calculate as target bookings divided by qualification rate times booking rate. The approval window before it should be used for groundwork, however long it turns out to be.
- Should pre-launch pricing be advertised?
- Only once the project is registered, only at prices that match the registered price list, and only if the pricing really is time-limited. Urgency that turns out to be invented costs you trust with the buyers most likely to come back for a second visit.