HoABL’s Saurabh Jain on how 2025 pushed real estate marketing into digital-first discovery

2025 witnessed surprising entries to India's quick commerce platforms, with categories far removed from groceries and essentials making their debut. Fashion brands launched two-hour delivery services, electronics entered the instant delivery race, and real estate joined the list. The House of Abhinandan Lodha (HoABL) integrated with Zepto, allowing potential buyers to explore land offerings on a platform traditionally associated with daily necessities.

The experiment reflected a broader shift that Saurabh Jain, Chief Marketing Officer at HoABL, identifies in buyer behaviour: consumers were now exploring, validating, and even transacting online with far greater confidence than before. They are increasingly moving toward digital discovery and want immersive experiences engaging with brands.

This is one such insight that a brand like HoABL focused on in 2025. Its collaboration with Zepto generated over 8,000 enquiries for properties priced at ₹1.4 crore, primarily from Delhi-NCR. Digital-first discovery is reshaping even high-value asset purchases.

While overall sales in the real estate market declined 12% year-over-year to 202,756 units during January-September 2025, according to JLL Research, the data revealed a split. Premium housing segments grew 4% year-over-year, expanding their market share from 52% to 62% during the same period. Jain points to changing buyer priorities. Customers are demanding greater credibility in legal processes, clarity in documentation, and premium experiences over urgency-driven offers. Meanwhile, digital advertising costs rose this year, with CPCs increasing by nearly 13% across multiple verticals, and close to 60% of searches ending without a click due to AI-led overviews and zero-click features, Jain shares.

HoABL's marketing approach during the year combined spectacle with digital infrastructure. The brand created a Guinness World Record for the largest floral mosaic in Vrindavan, conducted a paramotor display in Nagpur, and introduced virtual site visits via video conference. Jain describes these as education-led and experience-driven campaigns designed to match how buyers are actually making decisions. According to him, the year's defining lesson is simple: the market rewards brands that behave like partners, not sellers. Buyers are spending more time validating processes and evaluating future liveability rather than responding to promotional messaging. This requires communication that goes deeper, educates more, and addresses questions before they are asked. The brand has also shifted from a purely performance-led model to a more balanced approach, investing in top-of-funnel visibility and SEO to build sustained demand alongside immediate conversions.

In this conversation, Jain discusses the key lessons learned from a volatile year, how rising digital advertising costs are reshaping media strategies, the role of celebrity associations in building trust for land as an investment category, and what shifts he expects in 2026 as Indian consumers become increasingly intentional in their real estate decisions.

Edited Excerpts:

This year saw a mix of macro factors, interest rate movements, consumer sentiment shifts, and rising competition in plotted developments. What trends defined the real estate buyer in 2025, and how did that influence your strategy? Could you walk me through the marketing initiatives of the year?

There is a growing preference among buyers for premium, well-planned destinations that seamlessly blend lifestyle and investment value. At the same time, customers are increasingly demanding greater credibility and clarity in legal and documentation processes. This is accompanied by a clear shift toward digital discovery and immersive experiences, with buyers now exploring, validating, and even transacting online with far greater confidence.

HoABL’s marketing mirrored these evolving trends through education-led and experience-driven campaigns. The Guinness World Record for the largest floral mosaic in Vrindavan blended culture and creativity, offering a unique way to enter a sacred market like Vrindavan. 

Speaking of competition within the branded plotted development space, each brand today offers a distinct proposition. HoABL stands apart as the only player delivering a truly end-to-end digital land-buying experience for customers across the globe. Across our campaigns, the assurance of verified titles, ready-to-build infrastructure and a structured digital journey has helped convert customer curiosity into confident purchases. With multiple projects offering plotted developments, we can deliver this experience on a scale while giving buyers a wide choice of investment-ready locations.

Your team experimented with formats such as the paramotor display in Nagpur and earlier, the Guinness World Record activation, launched land on Zepto, and more. Which initiative this year delivered results beyond expectations, and what did you learn from it?

Every launch activity at HoABL is designed not just to create a moment, but to make a statement about how we position branded land as modern, accessible and technology-led. The Zepto integration, which allowed potential buyers to discover and explore our branded plots within minutes on a familiar quick-commerce platform, delivered exactly that. It significantly widened our top-of-the-funnel reach and, more importantly, sparked high-intent enquiries, especially among digitally native buyers. In fact, the Zepto campaign alone generated over 8,000 enquiries for our Vrindavan land offerings, priced at ₹1.4 crore, with a strong concentration of interest coming from Delhi–NCR, while also piquing curiosity across other regions.

At the same time, the paramotor display in Nagpur and the Guinness World Record activation at Vrindavan built awareness and cultural resonance at scale.

The key learning for us has been the power of combining spectacle with substance. When a high-impact idea is backed by verified titles, ready-to-build design and architecture, and a seamless digital journey, it doesn’t remain a one-time campaign — it translates into real, measurable business outcomes.

2025 has been volatile for many sectors. From your vantage point, what were the biggest lessons for real estate marketers this year, both in terms of what worked and what didn’t?

If I were to summarise 2025 in one line, it would be this - The market rewarded brands that behaved like partners, not sellers. We clearly saw a shift where consumers sought guidance, reassurance and certainty before committing to a long-term decision like buying land, something HoABL has always stood for.

Buyers began spending far more time validating processes, understanding documentation and evaluating future liveability, rather than reacting to urgency-driven messaging. This meant our communication had to evolve to match the consumer’s pace - go deeper, educate more, and address questions even before they were asked.

A strong example of this evolution is our virtual site visits, where customers are taken through the project via a video conference walkthrough, experiencing the finished development, amenities and common areas in detail. This approach not only builds confidence but also mirrors the trust and transparency that today’s land buyers increasingly expect.

One of the key areas of evolution for us has been our media strategy. We started with a strong performance-led approach, which helped us scale rapidly and build a deep understanding of our core audience.

As the category matured, however, it became clear that we needed a more balanced model — one that not only drives conversions but also builds brand, shapes the category, and strengthens our SEO foundation.

By consciously diversifying our media mix and investing in top-of-funnel visibility, we’ve created a healthier, more sustainable funnel where performance, brand, and organic demand work in sync rather than in silos.

Real estate marketing in India has shifted significantly in the last few years, from high-decibel launches to digital discovery and experience-led engagement. How has HoABL adapted its marketing philosophy to this changing environment?

HoABL has been positioned as a digital-first, technologically driven, and customer-centric player in the real estate buying shift. Technology serves as the central medium for all customer interactions. We have built a brand focused on establishing land as a credible investment category, one that has traditionally been riddled with several challenges.

This is also reflected in our marketing campaigns. Our campaign ‘Zameen Se Bante Ho Aap’ was an example of how deeply resonant land is with Bharat. Our women’s day campaign ‘Land for Her’ brought together concepts of land, investment, and financial independence for women. These initiatives not only build the brand but also strengthen the positioning of branded land as a credible, premium investment alternative.

HoABL has been vocal about shaping the ‘branded land’ category. What does category building require today, especially when consumer understanding of land as a product is still evolving?

For a category to exist, people first need to understand it, and that’s where the real work for us began. Land has always held deep emotional value in India; however, the experience of buying land has historically been unstructured and complex.

From a marketing standpoint, category creation means positioning branded land as trustworthy, convenient, and aspirational. At HoABL, we focus on verified clean titles, legally vetted documentation, ready-to-build infrastructure, and a fully digital land-owning journey. Marketing plays a central role in building confidence through clear communication, educational campaigns, and storytelling, helping move buyers from curiosity to conviction and making branded land a mainstream investment choice.

We have launched multiple campaigns to strengthen the category. Zameen Se Bante Ho Aap positioned land as a legacy and a catalyst for intergenerational wealth, creating emotional resonance with consumers. Our collaboration with Zepto enabled prospective buyers to explore and view our offerings in a matter of minutes.

Our upcoming campaigns will continue to address the core barriers in land investment — trust, clarity and accessibility, reinforcing land as a positive, credible and aspirational investment choice. 

The brand also partnered with Amitabh Bachchan for a national campaign. From a marketing standpoint, how does celebrity-led communication perform in a category like land, where trust and due diligence play such a strong role?

Celebrity associations in real estate are most meaningful when they are grounded in genuine belief rather than simple endorsement. Our idea was simple – we want celebrities to be our customers first, not just endorsers.  If they genuinely believe in our project, customers will do.  This approach has led to increased customer engagement and higher conversion rates. Amitabh Bachchan came on board as a HoABL customer first, before becoming the face of our campaign. Bachchan’s decision to invest without a physical site visit, based purely on process integrity, transparency and credibility, quietly reinforces the confidence we are building in an organised, digital-first way of buying land.

Our campaign harnessed this feeling, focusing on values like belonging, intergenerational wealth, and deep emotional connection with land. We witnessed deeper engagement, greater family participation in decision-making, and a noticeable rise in first-time buyers considering branded land as a credible investment option.

The investments by Kriti Sanon and Kartik Aaryan in our Alibaug project further reinforce this trust-led narrative. This customer-first approach to celebrity association has consistently translated into stronger engagement, higher conversions and lasting confidence in HoABL’s branded land offerings.

HoABL operates across diverse geographies. What have you learned about regional consumer behaviour, and how does that shape your channel mix, messaging, and media investments? What proportion of your budget is now going into digital vs offline, and why?

Our projects are strategically chosen in locations with high growth potential where state and central governments' efforts to improve infrastructure and connectivity are strong. Some of these locations where we are present include Goa (Bicholim, Vasco, Banguinim), Ayodhya, Alibaug, Vrindavan, Nagpur, Khopoli, Neral and Anjarle. 

It is also important to note that land investments are not confined to buyers residing in these geographies. We witness strong participation across customer segments from NRIs and metropolitan buyers to regional investors, who invest in our projects located across multiple markets. This cross-border demand underscores the growing confidence in branded land as a pan-India and even global investment opportunity. 

In regional and emerging markets, land decisions are driven as much by emotion and legacy as by information. While digital touchpoints initiate discovery, storytelling, community validation, and a credible physical presence create the strongest impact.

While we maintain a healthy mix across direct and indirect (channel partner-led) channels, direct investments have consistently remained strong from the outset, enabling us to actively build and strengthen the category.

With search traffic being affected by Google’s AI overviews, how have you seen the costs of CPCs evolve? Industry reports showed a sharp rise in CPCs this year. What have been the key drivers behind this inflation from your perspective, and how has it impacted your overall marketing strategy?

From our perspective, CPC inflation is really a case of more brands competing for progressively shrinking real estate on the search platforms.

With Google Ads CPCs rising by nearly 13% year-on-year across multiple verticals, and close to 60% of searches now ending without a click due to zero-click features and AI-led overviews, a growing share of consumer attention is no longer reaching publisher sites. As a result, marketers are increasingly forced to pay to access audiences they once reached organically through search.

When more brands deploy automated bidding tools to compete for the same high-intent keywords, the outcome is inevitable—cost per click continues to rise.

At HoABL, our growing emphasis on brand campaigns and SEO reflects a strategic shift from a purely performance-led model to a more holistic brand-building approach. While performance marketing drives immediate outcomes, brand and organic visibility are what build long-term trust and sustained demand, especially in a high-involvement category like land. By strengthening the top of the funnel and owning critical organic search moments, we are creating a marketing engine that not only converts efficiently today but also steadily compounds brand equity for the future.

What shifts do you expect in performance marketing for real estate, and how do you see brands balancing rising costs with the need for continuous demand generation?

Much like every other sector, performance marketing in real estate is undergoing rapid transformation. Rising acquisition costs and changing discovery patterns mean that brands can no longer rely solely on clicks or last-touch conversions. Our approach has evolved toward building a seamless journey that integrates both awareness and action. Today, campaigns must go beyond mere promotion; they need to communicate value, build trust, and make the experience of buying land both aspirational and credible.

We see performance marketing moving from purely transactional metrics to a full-funnel approach, where storytelling and immersive brand experiences work in tandem with digital outreach. High-impact initiatives go beyond momentary visibility.  They capture imagination, drive deeper engagement, and translate into genuine, high-quality enquiries. In an environment of rising costs, our focus remains firmly on quality over volume, ensuring that every consumer touchpoint reinforces credibility and accelerates high-intent interest.

With land being a low-repeat category, what does customer relationship building look like for the brand?

At HoABL, our relationship with customers is inherently continuous. We view land ownership not as the end of a transaction, but as the beginning of a long-term journey. For us, branded land is about building and servicing thriving communities. Every development is thoughtfully master planned, with a strong focus on infrastructure, intuitive design and world-class amenities that elevate everyday living.

Our offerings from serviced villas in Alibaug to the waterfront Marina in Nagpur go beyond ownership to create curated lifestyle experiences. These experiences demand ongoing support, which we deliver through robust facility management, digital support systems and personalised assistance, ensuring every buyer feels connected, cared for and confident in their investment. While repeat purchases are traditionally low in this category, our 29%+ repeat-customer rate stands as a strong testament to the trust we’ve built.

Our commitment to customers extends well beyond selling land. From managing and maintaining developments through comprehensive facilities management, to enhancing on-ground experiences via our hospitality offering Miros and enabling buyers to build their dream homes through our dedicated build programme, we offer a truly end-to-end ownership ecosystem. At HoABL, customers don’t just buy a plot; they step into a fully supported, long-term ownership journey.

Our hospitality offering, Miros, exemplifies our commitment to elevated post-purchase engagement. Designed to service Imperial Goa and our lifestyle-led developments, Miros brings highly personalised, hospitality-driven experiences to our communities. Launched in response to the rising demand for boutique, detail-driven stays, it caters to a discerning segment of Indian and global travellers seeking curated, premium lifestyle experiences that go far beyond conventional accommodation.

As you look ahead to 2026, what shifts do you foresee in how Indian consumers discover, research, and invest in land? What areas of marketing will need the most reinvention?

If we look at the last two years, one trend is unmistakable.  Real estate buyers have become far more intentional, and this behaviour is only set to deepen in 2026.

Discovery is increasingly shifting to digital-first, fact-based decision-making, where buyers look beyond inspiration and actively seek ease of purchase, premium offerings, transparent policies and, most importantly, trustworthy developers.

At the same time, education is emerging as the real driver of conversion. Marketing is moving from persuasion to explanation, helping buyers understand location readiness, infrastructure, legal processes and long-term value creation. Confidence, rather than urgency, is becoming the true catalyst for purchase. Our third-party research further reinforces this shift, revealing that a significant majority of buyer awareness today is being driven by online channels.

At HoABL, we see these shifts as a powerful opportunity. For us, marketing will continue to evolve from selling to partnering, enabling people to make informed choices, not rushed ones.