Terms and Conditions

Last updated: November 2026 · Applies to: realmarketing.co.za and the services of realmarketing (Pty) Ltd

1. Who we are and what these terms cover

These terms and conditions (“terms”) apply when you use realmarketing.co.za and when we provide marketing services to you. “realmarketing”, “we”, “us” and “our” mean realmarketing (Pty) Ltd (registration number 2019/258346/07), a digital marketing agency based in Cape Town, South Africa. “You” means the person or business using our website or our services, and “client” means a business that has engaged us.

• Address: 10C Welgemoed Plaza, 28 Bakker Street, Welgemoed, Cape Town, 7530, South Africa
• Email: info@realmarketing.co.za
• Phone: +27 82 924 9126
• Director: Hugo Coetzee (sole director)
• Information Officer: Hugo Coetzee, Founder and Managing Director, hugo@realmarketing.co.za

If we have a signed agreement with you, such as a digital marketing retainer, a scope of works or an accepted quote, these terms apply together with it. If they conflict, the signed agreement wins. Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle personal information.

2. Using our website

• General information only. The content on our website is general information about our services. It isn’t professional advice for your business. We work to keep it accurate and up to date, but we don’t guarantee that it is complete or current.
• Fair use. Please don’t use our website unlawfully, try to gain unauthorised access to it, interfere with how it works, or upload harmful code.
• Our content. The text, design, logos, images and videos on our website belong to us or to the people who licensed them to us. You may share links to our pages and quote short extracts with credit to realmarketing. Search engines and AI assistants are welcome to read and summarise our pages. Please ask us before you copy our content for any other purpose.
• Other websites. We link to other websites and platforms. We aren’t responsible for their content or how they handle personal information.

3. Our services

• Scope and fees. What we will do, when and for how much is set out in your quote, proposal, scope of works or agreement. We quote additional work separately, and start it once you have accepted it in writing.
• How we work. We provide our services with reasonable skill and care, using suitably experienced people.
• Specialists. We may work with specialist consultants and service providers, for example in photography, video or paid media. We remain responsible for their work, and they are bound by confidentiality terms at least as strict as ours.
• Ad spend. Unless we agree otherwise in writing, the money spent on advertising platforms is separate from our fees.

4. Your responsibilities

To help us do good work for you, you agree to:

• give us accurate and complete information, briefs, feedback and approvals in good time;
• give us the access we need to your website, accounts and brand assets;
• only give us materials (such as logos, images, text and data) that you have the right to use, and that we may use to deliver the services;
• make sure that any personal information you share with us was collected lawfully and may be shared with us for the services (for that information, you are the responsible party under POPIA);
• tell us about any laws, industry codes or platform rules that apply to your marketing, for example in health, financial services or alcohol advertising; and
• review and approve our work as described in section 6.

5. How we use AI tools in our services

We use AI tools to help us work faster and better. We use Grok (xAI), Claude (Anthropic), ChatGPT (OpenAI) and Gemini (Google), where applicable, including AI agents (bots) directed by our team. We use them to improve our SEO, GEO (generative engine optimisation) and AEO (answer engine optimisation) work, and to help with content, reports and improving our services. Our Privacy Policy (section 10) gives more detail. We will give clients 30 (thirty) days’ written notice before we use any AI tool not named here, and you can opt out before the change takes effect.

When we use AI tools on your work:

• Real people lead. Our team sets the strategy, directs the work, reviews everything AI helps with and signs it off before anything goes live or is sent to you as final.
• Only what a task needs. We share only the information a task needs, and remove names and contact details where we can.
• Training off where available. Where a tool lets us, we switch off the setting that lets the provider use our data to train its AI models.
• Your confidential information. We plan to move to enterprise-grade accounts. Until they are in place, we don’t put your confidential information into any AI tool unless you have signed our AI addendum.
• Your customers stay out of it. We never share your customers’ personal information (for example, your leads, customer lists or CRM records) with these AI tools.
• No automated decisions. We don’t use AI to make decisions about anyone that have legal or similarly significant effects (POPIA s71).
• Security and retention. Only our team can access these accounts, which are protected with strong passwords and, where the tool offers it, multi-factor authentication. We delete prompts, files and outputs when the work no longer needs them, where the tool allows.

The companies that provide these tools may process information outside South Africa. We only transfer information to them as POPIA section 72 allows.

AI built into YouTube, Google Ads and Meta. These platforms have their own built-in AI and automation, for example automated bidding and automatically created ad assets. It runs inside your own accounts under the platform’s terms and is not covered by the opt-out in section 8. We will explain these features when we recommend them and, where the platform allows, we won’t use a feature you ask us not to use, although this may affect results or limit the campaign types available.

6. AI-assisted work and your review

• What may be AI-assisted. Drafts, copy, ideas, images, page titles and descriptions, structured data (schema), FAQs, research summaries and reports may be prepared with help from AI tools. A person on our team always reviews and edits this work before we send it to you.
• Your review and approval. Please check everything we send for approval, especially facts, prices, product and service claims, legal or regulatory statements and anything specific to your industry. Unless we have agreed otherwise in writing (for example, an approved monthly content calendar), we will ask for your sign-off before anything is published or goes live.
• What approval means. Your approval confirms that you are satisfied the work is accurate and suitable for your business. It doesn’t limit our responsibility for our own mistakes.
• Images and video. We will tell you if an image or video we deliver is substantially generated by AI. We won’t create realistic images of real, identifiable people without their consent.
• Originality. AI tools can produce material similar to material produced for others. We edit and check AI-assisted work so that what we deliver is original to you and, as far as we know, doesn’t infringe anyone’s rights.
• Reports. Our reports rely on data from platforms such as Google and Meta, which may include estimates or modelled figures. We check key figures before we share a report.
• No guaranteed results. Search engines and AI platforms decide their own rankings and answers, so we can’t guarantee rankings, appearances in AI-generated answers, traffic, leads or sales.

7. Intellectual property and who owns the work

• Your materials. Your names, logos, content, data and other materials stay yours. You allow us to use them only to deliver our services to you.
• What we create for you. Once you have paid for them in full, the deliverables we create for you, including AI-assisted work, belong to you, to the extent that we hold rights in them. Until then, you may use them for review only.
• Our tools and know-how. Our existing know-how, methods, templates, prompts, workflows and reporting frameworks stay ours. Where they form part of a deliverable, you may keep using them as part of that deliverable.
• AI and copyright. The law on copyright in AI-generated material is still developing in South Africa and elsewhere. Because our team directs, edits and reviews the work, we expect our deliverables to be protected in the usual way, but we can’t guarantee that every AI-assisted element is protected by copyright or can be registered as a trade mark or design. For logos, brand names and other key brand assets, we recommend substantial human design work and trade mark advice before you rely on them.
• Third-party material. Stock images, fonts, music and similar material are licensed under their owners’ terms. We will tell you about any limits on how you can use them.
• Your accounts. Advertising, analytics and social media accounts that we set up for you are created in your name and belong to you, together with their data.
• Our portfolio. We will only show your work or name in our portfolio or marketing with your consent.

8. Opting out of AI-assisted work

You can opt out of our use of AI tools on your work at any time, at no cost.

• How to opt out. Reply “opt out” to our email about AI tools, or email our Information Officer, Hugo Coetzee, at hugo@realmarketing.co.za, or your account manager.
• What happens next. We will confirm in writing and stop using AI tools on your work within 5 business days. We record your choice so that everyone on our team follows it.
• No change to your service. Your service, fees and quality standards stay the same. Some work may take longer, and we will tell you if a timeline changes.
• Work already done. Work delivered before you opted out stays as it is. Where the tool allows, we delete your information from our AI tools.
• Not covered: YouTube, Google Ads and Meta. Opting out covers the AI tools in section 5. It doesn’t cover the AI built into YouTube, Google Ads and Meta, which runs in your own accounts. We will discuss your options for those features with you.
• Partial opt-out and opting back in. If you would rather limit our use of AI than stop it (for example, no AI-generated images), tell us and we will agree it with you in writing. You can opt back in at any time.

9. Confidentiality and personal information

• Confidentiality. We keep your confidential information confidential and use it only to deliver our services to you, during our work together and afterwards.
• Personal information. When we process personal information on your behalf, for example in your ad accounts or CRM, you are the responsible party and we are your operator under POPIA. We process it only on your documented instructions, keep it secure, and tell you without undue delay if we suspect a breach (POPIA sections 19 to 22).
• Our own records. Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle personal information about you and your team.

10. Platforms we don’t control

Much of our work happens on platforms owned by others, such as Google, Meta, LinkedIn, Microsoft and website hosts. Their terms and policies apply, and they can change features, rules or prices, or restrict accounts, without notice. We aren’t responsible for their decisions, but we will help you deal with them.

11. Limits on our responsibility

• As far as the law allows, we aren’t liable for indirect or consequential loss, such as loss of profit, revenue or data.
• As far as the law allows, our total liability for any claim connected with our services is limited to the fees you paid us in the 1 (one) month before the claim arose.
• Nothing in these terms limits liability for fraud, gross negligence or wilful misconduct, or any rights you have under the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 where it applies.
• We provide our website “as is”. We do our best to keep it available and secure, but we can’t promise that it will always be available or free of errors.

12. Ending our services

Your quote or agreement sets out how either of us can end our services. If it doesn’t, either of us can end them by giving 30 (thirty) days’ written notice. You pay for work done up to the end date. When our services end, we will give you full administrative control of the accounts we manage for you and return your confidential information.

13. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms from time to time. We will change the “Last updated” date at the top and, if the changes are significant, tell our clients directly. Changes to the fees or scope in a signed agreement need your written agreement.

14. Law and disputes

South African law governs these terms. If there is a problem, please talk to us first so that we can try to resolve it. If we can’t, either of us may refer the dispute to a South African court with jurisdiction.

15. General

• If any part of these terms can’t be enforced, the rest still applies.
• If we don’t enforce a right straight away, we haven’t given it up.
• Emails and other electronic messages between us count as written communication, as the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002 allows.

16. Contact us

• Company: realmarketing (Pty) Ltd (registration number 2019/258346/07), 10C Welgemoed Plaza, 28 Bakker Street, Welgemoed, Cape Town, 7530
• General enquiries: info@realmarketing.co.za
• Information Officer (privacy requests and AI opt-outs): Hugo Coetzee, Founder and Managing Director, hugo@realmarketing.co.za
• Phone: +27 82 924 9126