Developing business promotional strategies and

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DEVELOPING BUSINESS PROMOTIONAL STRATEGIES AND MARKETING THROUGH DIGITAL MEDIA OF IRX CORPORATE INTERNSHIP PROGRAM PROJECT REPORT SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF PGDM PROGRAM 2015-17 Submitted by Vikas Kumar Roll No: 104 Company Mentor Faculty Mentor Name: Madhurima Sil Name: Dr. Sharad Chaturvedi Designation: Sr. Digital Marketing Manager Designation: Professor Delhi

Transcript of Developing business promotional strategies and

DEVELOPING BUSINESS PROMOTIONAL STRATEGIES AND

MARKETING THROUGH DIGITAL MEDIA OF IRX

CORPORATE INTERNSHIP PROGRAM PROJECT REPORT

SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF PGDM PROGRAM 2015-17

Submitted by

Vikas Kumar

Roll No: 104

Company Mentor Faculty Mentor

Name: Madhurima Sil Name: Dr. Sharad Chaturvedi

Designation: Sr. Digital Marketing Manager Designation: Professor

Delhi

Certificate from Company

This is to certify that Vikas Kumar, a student of PGDM Programme, (2015-17) Batch of

Fortune Institute of International Business, Delhi has undertaken the Corporate Internship

Training at Quikr during 4th

of April to 30th

of June under my supervision & guidance. He

/ She has conducted a study & completed the Project on DEVELOPING BUSINESS

PROMOTIONAL STRATEGIES AND MARKETING THROUGH DIGITAL

MEDIA OF IRX.

During Training his/her work was Excellent.

Seal of Organization Signature of Company Mentor:

Date: Name of Company Mentor: Madhurima Sil

Designation of Company Mentor: Sr. D M Manager

Certificate from Faculty Mentor

This is to certify that the Project Report titled- DEVELOPING BUSINESS

PROMOTIONAL STRATEGIES AND MARKETING THROUGH DIGITAL

MEDIA OF IRX is a bonafide work carried out by Vikas Kumar of PGDM (2015-17)

Batch of Fortune Institute of International Business, Delhi as a fulfilment of PGDM

Programme.

He/ She has worked under my guidance and satisfactorily completed his/her project work.

Date:

Name and Signature of Faculty Mentor: Dr. Sharad Chaturvedi

Declaration by the Student

I, hereby, declare that the work presented in this report, entitled “DEVELOPING

BUSINESS PROMOTIONAL STRATEGIES AND MARKETING THROUGH

DIGITAL MEDIA OF IRX” in fulfilment of the requirements for PGDM Programme,

submitted to Fortune Institute of International Business, Delhi is an authentic record of my

own work and is free from any type of plagiarism, carried out under the supervision of Mr.

Ravi Chauhan and Ms. Madhurima Sil.

I also declare that the work embodied in the present report

(i) is my original work and has not been copied from any source, and

(ii) Has not been submitted for any other Degree or Diploma of any university/Institution.

Name and Signature of Student:- Vikas Kumar

Roll No.:- 104

Acknowledgement

I am using this opportunity to express my gratitude to everyone who supported me

throughout the course of this report. I am thankful for their aspiring guidance, invaluably

constructive criticism and friendly advice during the project work. I am sincerely grateful

to them for sharing their truthful and illuminating views on a number of issues related to

the project.

I express my warm thanks to Mr. Ravi Chauhan and Ms. Madhurima Sil for their support

and guidance at QUIKR.

I would also like to thank my project guide Prof. Utkarsh and Dr. Sharad Chatuvedi and

all the people who provided me with the facilities being required and conductive

conditions for my report.

Thank you,

Vikas Kumar

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Executive Summary

This project is about the use of different types of digital marketing strategies

for a business. This project is designed for understanding and giving the best

suggestion to IRX about digital marketing. IRX is a real estate company. It

helps real estate agent to connect with other agent and make their business

deal easy. IRX is a market leader in this business model. There are two more

competitors PLABRO and BROEX. This time the biggest problem in real

estate sector is trust factor. Most of the real estate agents are fake or not

registered by govt. But still they are doing business. There are many cases

over the agent for selling the same property with two other individuals. This

things were happens because there were no Govt. regulatory body. In 2016

Indian Gov.t has made an Act. Called “The Real Estate (Regulation and

Development) Act, 2016”. The Act of the Parliament of India which seeks to

protect home-buyers as well as help boost investments in the real estate

industry. The bill was passed by the Rajya Sabha on 10 March 2016 and by

the Lok Sabha on 15 March 2016. The Act came into force from 1 May 2016

with 69 of 92 sections notified.

IRX is India’s no.1 online classifieds platform. It is a place where real estate

agent can connect with each other and share their inventory. IRX is a new age

mobile aggregator company. IRX is acquired by Quikr in 2015 to make the

business large. Quikr is online classified company. Quikr is having different

vertical including Quikr Homes a real estate company. IRX and Quikr Homes

are working together. IRX is working with 35 employees only.

The title of the project is “DEVELOPING BUSINESS PROMOTIONAL

STRATEGIES AND MARKETING THROUGH DIGITAL MEDIA OF

IRX”. To understand the digital marketing strategies this project are divided in

to three objectives, “To study various promotional strategies in Digital

Marketing”, “Suggest the effective Digital Marketing practices to IRX using

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analysis” and “To study the competitors Digital Marketing practices and

analyse best practices”. In order to understand and suggest the various

promotional strategies, different types of activities are mention in this project.

The essential parts of the digital marketing strategies are

Search Engine Marketing, Social Media Marketing, E-Mail Marketing,

Content Marketing, SMS Marketing. A company must follow the above all

promotional strategies. Search engine marketing is basically the promotion of

the websites. It also includes bringing the website name on top when a user

search about the company or related to the company in search engine. Search

engine marketing also covers to bring the website rank on top. There are so

many techniques which are used to do so. When a Google search engine result

page gives the information on top then it will catch the users mind. Generally

a user clicks only on first 5 results. Now coming to social media marketing,

social media is a platform where each generation comes and spent a lot of

hour. To bringing the company information on these platform is the best ever

idea. There are so many social media platform available. Best of them are

Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube. These are different types of

social media platform. In this platform every company is doing their

promotion. E-Mail marketing and content marketing are the best part of the

digital marketing. As well said, “Content is King”. Content is most important

for any types of promotion. Because a good content create an interest in user’s

mind. If a good content will be used in E-Mail marketing then this will help a

company to grow the business. This time almost every generation is using

email. SMS marketing is also one of the best ideas. Every customer is having a

mobile phone in their hand. If a company will make a relation with their

customer by texting a good offer or new product information, then this will be

the best strategy. SMS marketing is playing a major role this time.

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Apart from all website has also been compared with its competitors. It has

been find out that the presence of IRX website on the internet less than its

competitors. This can be because of the when the company started. But

gradually IRX is working very hard to achieve the good presence on internet.

There are many tools applied to compare the websites of IRX with its

competitors.

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Table of Contents

S.No Chapter No. Contents Page No.

From - To

1. ………………… Title Page -

2. ………………… Company Certificate -

3. ………………… Faculty Mentor Certificate -

4. ………………… Declaration -

5. ………………… Acknowledgement -

6. ………………… Executive Summary I–III

7. ………………… Table of Contents / List of

Illustrations

V–VI

8. Chapter-1 Introduction to the

Sector/Company

1-11

9. Chapter-2 Review of Literature 12-20

10. Chapter-3 Project Objectives 21-22

11. Chapter-4 Project Methodology Adopted 23-24

12. Chapter-5 Data Analysis & Interpretation /

Description of the Work

Performed

25-52

13. Chapter-6 Findings 53-54

14. Chapter-7 Recommendations 55-56

15. ………………… References 57-58

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List of Illustrations

Figures

S.No Title of the Figure Page No.

1. Housing shortage in India 3

2. Organizational Chart of IRX 8

3. Alexa Rank of Top Sites in India 28

4. Google search result of IRX 29

5. Title Index of IRX 30

6. Index Pages result of IRX 31

7. Backlink Results of IRX 34

8. Keyword used by IRX 35

9. Blogs used by IRX 38

10. Official E-mail send by IRX to customer 40

11. IRX official Facebook Page 42

12. IRX official LinkedIn page 43

13. IRX official Twitter Page 44

14. IRX official YouTube page 45

15. Text Messages used by IRX 47

Tables

S.No Title of the Table Page No.

1. No. of page likes on Facebook 48

2. No. of page likes on LinkedIn 49

3. No. of page likes on Twitter 49

4. No. of page likes on YouTube 50

5. Page Rank of websites 51

6. Bounce Rate of sites 51

7. Backlink of sites 51

8. Top organic keywords used by sites 52

9. Page size and Page speed of sites 52

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Chapter-1

Introduction to the Sector/Company

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Chapter 1

___________________________________________________

Introduction to the Sector/Company

___________________________________________________

INDUSTRY OVERVIEW

The real estate sector is one of the most globally recognised sectors. In India, real

estate is the second largest employer after agriculture and is slated to grow at 30 per

cent over the next decade. The Indian real estate market has become one of the most

preferred destinations in the Asia Pacific as overseas funds accounted for more than

50 per cent of all investment activity in India in 2014, compared with just 26 per cent

in 2013.

The real estate sector comprises four sub sectors - housing, retail, hospitality, and

commercial. The growth of this sector is well complemented by the growth of the

corporate environment and the demand for office space as well as urban and semi-

urban accommodations. The construction industry ranks third among the 14 major

sectors in terms of direct, indirect and induced effects in all sectors of the economy.

The Indian real estate sector has traditionally been dominated by a number of small

regional players with relatively low levels of expertise and/or financial resources.

Historically, the sector has not benefited from institutional capital; instead, it has

traditionally tapped high net-worth individuals and other informal sources of

financing, which has led to low levels

of transparency. This scenario underwent a change with in line with the sector’s

growth, and as of today, the real estate industry’s dynamics reflect consumers’

expectations of higher quality with India’s increasing integration with the global

economy. (http://www.ibef.org/industry/real-estate-india.aspx, 2015)

Residential real estate: The real estate sector in India assumed greater prominence

with the liberalisation of the economy, as the consequent increase in business

opportunities and labour migration led to rising demand for commercial and housing

space. At present, the real estate and construction sectors are playing a crucial role in

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the overall development of India’s core infrastructure. The real estate industry’s

growth is linked to developments in the retail, hospitality and entertainment (hotels,

resorts, cinema theatres) industries, economic services (hospitals, schools) and

information technology (IT)-enabled services (like call centres) etc and vice versa.

Residential real estate industry has witnessed stupendous growth in the past few years

owing to the following reasons:

• Continuous growth in population

• Migration towards urban areas

• Ample job opportunities in service sectors

• Growing income levels

• Rise in nuclear families

• Easy availability of finance

Figure 1 : Housing shortage in India

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Commercial real estate: The commercial office space in India has evolved

significantly in the past 10 years due to change in business environment. The growth

of commercial real estate has been driven largely by service sectors, especially IT-

ITeS. Previously commercial properties were concentrated towards CBD (Central

Business District) areas in large cities.

However, with the emergence of IT-ITeS, which had huge office space requirement,

commercial development started moving towards city suburbs. It resulted in multifold

development of city outskirts and suburbs like Gurgaon near New Delhi, Bandra and

Malad in Mumbai, and the Electronic city in Bangalore. In addition, over the last 10

years, locations

such as Bengaluru, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kolkata and Pune have established

themselves as emerging destinations for commercial development, which are

competing with traditional business destinations such as Mumbai and Delhi. Tax sops

on the profits of IT-ITeS companies also led to stupendous development of IT Parks

and SEZs.

Hospitality sector real estate: India’s hospitality industry has enjoyed robust growth

over the past few years buoyed by a benign economic and political environment.

Increase in domestic, business and leisure travel has benefited hotels in India. Rising

incomes, higher weekend trips and increased access to travel-related information over

the Internet have propelled growth in hospitality. Premium segment hotels are more

prominent in major business destinations in India and are dominant in popular tourist

destinations like Goa, which attracts a lot of foreign clientele. (CRISIL RESEARCH,

2015)

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MARKET SIZE

The Indian real estate market is expected to touch US$ 180 billion by 2020. The

housing sector alone contributes 5-6 per cent to the country's Gross Domestic Product

(GDP).

In the period FY08-20, the market size of this sector is expected to increase at a

Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 11.2 per cent. Retail, hospitality and

commercial real estate are also growing significantly, providing the much-needed

infrastructure for India's growing needs.

During the first nine months of 2015, PE funds invested about US$ 2.4 billion in the

real estate sector, across 53 transactions compared US$ 1.3 billion across 57

transactions in the same period last year. Deal sizes have also increased in 2015, and

residential projects both luxury and affordable have attracted a substantial amount of

capital.

Private Equity (PE) funds and Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFCs) in India

are seen increasingly investing jointly in real estate projects, in order to hedge risk

and undertake bigger transactions. Mumbai is the best city in India for commercial

real estate investment, with returns of 12-19 per cent likely in the next five years,

followed by Bengaluru and Delhi-National Capital Region (NCR). Also, Delhi-NCR

was the biggest office market in India with 110 million sq ft, out of which 88 million

sq ft were occupied. Sectors such as IT and ITeS, retail, consulting and e-commerce

have registered high demand for office space in recent times.

India's office space absorption stood at 35 million sq ft during 20152, which is the

second highest figure in the India's history after 2011, and was driven by corporates

implementing their growth plans. India had the strongest activity in office leasing

space in Asia and accounted for half of Asia’s total office leasing in third quarter of

2015, with Delhi being the most active market3. (http://www.ibef.org/industry/real-

estate-india.aspx, 2015)

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REAL ESTATE (REGULATION AND DEVELOPMENT) ACT, 2016

The Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 is an Act of the Parliament

of India which seeks to protect home-buyers as well as help boost investments in the

real estate industry. The bill was passed by the Rajya Sabha on 10 March 2016 and by

the Lok Sabha on 15 March 2016. The Act came into force from 1 May 2016 with 69

of 92 sections notified.

The Real Estate Act makes it mandatory for all commercial and residential real estate

projects where the land is over 500 square metres, or eight apartments, to register with

the Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA) for launching a project, in order to

provide greater transparency in project-marketing and execution. Application for

registration must be either approved or rejected within a period of 30 days from the

date of application by the RERA.

The Act prohibits unaccounted money from being pumped into the sector and as now

70 per cent of the money has to be deposited in bank accounts through cheques. A

major benefit for consumers included in the Act is that builders will have to quote

prices based on carpet area and not super built-up area, while carpet area has been

clearly defined in the Act to include usable spaces like kitchen and toilets.

It will help establish state-level Real Estate Regulatory Authorities (RERAs) to

regulate transactions related to both residential and commercial projects and ensure

their timely completion and handover. Appellate Tribunals will now be required to

adjudicate cases in 60 days as against the earlier provision of 90 days and Regulatory

Authorities to dispose of complaints in 60 days while no time frame was indicated in

earlier Bill.

COMPANY PROFILE

Quikr, a cross category classifieds business, has acquired Indian Realty Exchange

(IRX), a mobile-first aggregator of real estate agents. The investment towards this

acquisition is a strategic move that enables Quikr to strengthen its real estate

marketplace and recently launched vertical, Quikr Homes. This acquisition will allow

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it to dive deeper into the real estate market and increase long-term engagement with

the broker community. Quikr Homes currently connects customers from over 1,000

cities and towns across India. It helps conclude two lakhs plus transactions per month.

IRX is India’s no.1 online classifieds platform. It is a place where real estate agent

can connect with each other and share their inventory. IRX is a free platform. It

doesn’t charge a single rupee to its customer. IRX is a new age mobile aggregator

company. It is founded by Vikram Dhawan and Karan Jindal on 7th

march 2015. IRX

is a working with the vision for real estate agent to meet online and transact offline.

Today IRX have over 1,00,000 listings and have generated over 50,000 replies.

Headquartered in New Delhi, IRX operates from more than 5 cities and is accessed by

more than 50,000 unique users and more than 10,000 brand new customers per month.

IRX have created an online community which is simple and secure. IRX is constantly

innovating so that users can buy and sell in the easiest and most convenient way

possible. IRX recognized that getting a fair price could be a hurdle for our customers,

and it developed a Maximum Selling Price (MSP) calculator to help users estimate a

reasonable price range.

IRX tags agents and brokers with real time projects and locations and also helps users

connect with them to buy and sell property. IRX helps users connect to the agents for

buying and selling property, and updates listings with locations in real time and

features agent reviews, rankings, trust networks and a chat platform for agents to

exchange inventory and requirements with users and other agents.

(http://www.indianrealtyexchange.com/aboutus.php, 2015)

IRX is independently working in New Delhi with 35 team member. IRX is working

hard to connect all real estate agents through online and mobile portal. It will increase

the transparency between the agents. It wants to connect pan India real estate agent in

to the one platform. IRX is the no.1 mobile aggregator for real estate agent. It has

more than 1,000 good feedbacks about its quality services and product.

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COMPANY’S MISSION AND VISION

IRX has established itself as one of the key player in the Indian real estate industry.

Its basic purpose is to provide an app based platform where a real estate agent can

showcase their inventory and get the best deal.

Mission: To be the most preferred brand for the real estate agent in the app based

segment.

Vision: To delight our customer by providing quality app services through continuous

innovation.

ORGANIZATIONAL CHART OF THE COMPANY

Figure 2 : Organizational Chart of IRX

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BUSINESS MODEL OF THE COMPANY

IRX – Indian Realty Exchange working team has been divided on two sides, Offline

and Online.

Offline: IRX is having an offline marketing team of strength 5 (full time employee)

and 25 (Part time employee). These part time employees are managed by full time

employee. They do a market research and find out a real estate agent. They made a

meeting with them and explain about their company and product. After completing

the meeting, they convince the agent to download the app and post their requirement

and property over that. After downloading the app and posting requirement by the

agent marketing team do visit to the agent again and providing an IRX VERIFIED car

sticker. This sticker reflects that this agent has been verified by IRX.

Online: Online team are divided in to three categories:

1 Digital Marketing

2 Support

3 Technical Team

Digital Marketing: Digital Marketing team are working online to promote the

company. They are working on four domains, SEO, SMO, Content writing and

Graphics Design. In SEO they are targeting to generate more traffic on company

website and make a good page rank over internet. In SMO they are promoting

company over social media platform like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. In Content

writing they are writing an eye catchy content to generate an interest in the real estate

agent mind. In Graphics Design they are making a good graphics that can go viral on

social media. The whole team of digital marketing are working together and

developing a good blog, articles, social media post. Quikr homes has mention that

IRX is more active on social media platform as compare to its patent company Quikr.

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Support: Support team is working to provide solution to the real estate agent when

they face any issue on app on phone call. They also verifying the agent when they

sign up on app. This kind of activity makes the quality. Support team regularly

connected with agent so that it can reflect a good image. Support team working on

standard working hour only not 24 hr.

Technical team: Technical team are working to develop the application on various

platforms like, Android, IOS and Windows. They also develop IRX website and

managing them.

COMPETITIVE SITUATION

IRX is not the first company who is working on this business strategy. There are two

market leader in this sector PLABRO (www.plabro.com) and BROEX

(www.broex.in).

Plabro is working to build a communication channel for Real Estate Sector. The

product will change the way real estate agent works and bring professionalism in the

community. The company is funded by the top investors in India and US with the

experience of the world famous products. The founders themselves have experience

with working in start-ups and big corporations at key positions. Plabro is founded by

AADITYA JAIN and PANKAJ GARG in 2015. Its headquarter is in Bangalore.

Plabro get funded by two great investors “Binny Bansal” and “Sachin Bansal”.

Oku Tech is redefining the business of real estate in India. A venture founded by IIT

alumni, Oku Tech powers BroEx, the largest and fastest growing brokers' network in

India. Available over Android and iOS platform, BroEx is the largest go-to

application platform for Real Estate Brokers to connect with each other to network

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and collaborate with each other to fulfil their business requirements reliably and

quickly. The team at Oku Tech includes alumni from top institutions including IITs

(Kanpur, Kharagpur, Bombay, Delhi), IIMs, ISB, DCE, etc. It is a bunch of highly

driven individuals determined to transform the way business is done. The extended

team at Okutech includes our investors - Lightspeed Ventures, Pvt. Ltd. and a number

of industry veterans who are part of our team as advisors and angle investors. BroEx

having a unique feature that is “News feed”, “Search properties”, “Auto match alerts”,

and “Broker network”.

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Chapter-2

Review of Literature

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Chapter 2

___________________________________________________

Review of Literature

___________________________________________________

In order to find out the gaps in research, the literature already available pertaining to

the problem is to be reviewed. This project is all about the promotional strategy

through digital media. All literature review added here are describe about why and

how different types of strategy is important for digital marketing. All reviews are

added here are taken from Websites article and Reports. Their respective sources are

also mention in citation.

1. Social Media Marketing Report

Shih 2015

Shih states in his research that marketing in social networking websites is the most

popular in their niche. There are millions of active users across sites like Facebook

(1700 million), LinkedIn (1000 million) and Twitter (1300 million). These websites

are enabling brands to engage the right people in the right conversation at right time.

Marketing the brands through social media is becoming precise, personal, interesting,

interactive and social. (Shih, 2015)

2. A Report on Social Media Marketing

Borges 2014

Today's buyers want to be engaged differently than in years past and many traditional

marketing tactics simply do not work anymore. Social media marketing is a

revolutionary way to build solid relationships with buyers. Low cost, brand building,

staffing advantages, loyalty and level playing field are key benefits of social

networking sites as a successful marketing media. (Borges, 2014)

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3. Role of Social Media on Digital Marketing

Brinlee 2015

Visitors to social networking sites are significantly more likely than average to visit

jewellery, luxury goods, accessories, consumer electronics and apparel. Heavy social

networking visitors are defined as the top 50% of visitors based on time spent on

social networking sites. People typically enjoy sharing their experiences with these

products, whether it is to talk about their new product. Social networking sites offer

the venue for those conversations to occur. Social media advertising is ideal for

promoting brand recognition, although click-through rates are not so strong. Still,

there is no doubt that advertising via social media sites is an effective way to increase

your overall revenue stream. (Brinlee, 2015)

4. 10 Digital Marketing Trends in 2015 that will Boost your Strategy

Neil Patel 2015

Some content experts moan that there is too much content out there. Content, often

referred to as “king” is so essential to digital marketing that it can’t be dismissed as a

“trend.” While individual publishers may be overextending themselves by publishing

too much, there will always be content. It will always be important. Therefore, there

will always be the need for great content creators, including writers, developers, video

producers, podcasters, and speakers. The need for quality content will spotlight the

importance of professional writers. (Patel, 2015)

5. Why is Content Marketing important for your Business?

Sarah Smith 2015

Most of us research products and services online before making a purchase. People

want good content that helps them make good decisions, but they don’t like being

sold. Consumers are less responsive to traditional advertising and old-school sales

tactics, and this is true for both B2C and B2B customers. 70% of consumers prefer to

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learn about companies through articles instead of advertising. 80% prefer to get

information about a prospective purchase from articles instead of advertising. 70%

say content makes them feel closer to the sponsoring company and 60% say content

helps them make better buying decisions. Publishing fresh articles, and updating your

existing content, will help you maintain a strong showing on search engine results

pages (SERPs) and keep people coming back to your site. Effective content can help

you build customer relationships while avoiding less effective “hard sell”

tactics. (Sarah Smith, 2015)

6. The Role of Content Marketing in your Digital Strategy

GER Hayden 2014

Content must have a clear start, middle and end. Keep it light; if it is boring, the

visitor will be on your competitor’s page in about 10 seconds. Content Marketing

pretty much affects all of the Digital Marketing elements in your integrated digital

strategy whether it is PPC (creating inciting ad text), Email (creating short, light and

informative content), SEO (Google loves relevant content), Social Media or Article

Marketing. (HAYDEN, 2014)

7. How Important Will Content Marketing be

McCoy 2015

It is no secret that Google wants to provide its users with the best quality content

that’s found around the web. In fact, Google finds content marketing important

enough to base algorithm updates around the strategy. Google’s Panda update is

centralized around ensuring that quality content wins on Google. You might think that

you are safe from Panda if you are not creating any content at all, but that’s not

exactly the case. In fact, Panda actually penalizes websites that sit stale. Panda looks

for fresh and quality content; if you aren’t delivering on the freshness factor, don’t

look for any sympathy from Panda. (McCoy, 2015)

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8. Role of Content for Website Traffic

Julia 2015

A great content will generate good web traffic over internet. It will also give a lot to

the company like, “Establishes Your Brand”, “Boosts Your Website Rankings”,

“Conquers Link Building”, “Drives Social Engagement”, “Makes You a Thought

Leader”, “Keeps You on Top of Industry Trends”. (Julia, 2015)

9. The Importance of SEO in Internet Marketing

Irina Kalonatchi 2016

SEO is one of the most popular buzz words in Internet marketing. Well known search

engines such as Google rank websites according to complex algorithms which are

designed to determine which websites are most relevant for particular search terms.

Therefore, taking the time and effort to optimize your website for relevant search

terms may result in you being rewarded with high search engine rankings for these

terms. This is important because most Internet users rely heavily on these rankings. It

is not uncommon for Internet users to only review the first few results when they

search for a particular term. This means if your website ranks high enough to appear

on the first page of the search results you will likely enjoy increased website

traffic. The algorithms used by search engines can be rather complex and include a

number of different factors. Some of the common factors in the equation

include keyword density, META tags, Titles, Inbound links, Website traffic and

Content. (Kalonatchi, 2016)

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10. What is Search Engine Optimization and why is it important

Alex Chris 2013

Search engine optimization is essential because:

The majority of search engines users are more likely to choose one of the top 5

suggestions in the results page.

SEO is not only about search engines but good SEO practices improve the

user experience and usability of a web site.

SEO is also important for the smooth running of a big web site.

SEO can put you ahead of the competition. If two web sites are selling the

same thing, the search engine optimized web site is more likely to have more

customers and make more sales.

SEO is not a static process but rather a framework with rules and processes. SEO can

be broken down into 2 main stages:

On-site SEO: What rules to apply on your site to make it search engine friendly and

Off-site SEO: How to promote your web site or blog so that it can rank better in

search results? (Chris, 2013)

11. Brand mention and its importance to SEO

Jomer Gregorio

There could be a hundred different reasons why Google is giving importance to brand

mentions and citations. The point to understand from all this however is this – if it’s

important for Google, then it’s important for SEO. Here are some of the possibilities:

It Provides a Better Measurement for Brand Authority

It Provides Better Protection Against Manipulation

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It Can Be Used to Leverage Social Signals for SEO

It is Already Important for Local SEO (Gregorio, 2014)

12. Social Media’s Role in your Digital Strategy

Klint Rudolph

Klint Rudolph had written in his article that Social media today is the ultimate word-

of-mouth marketing. “word of mouth” has always been considered one of the most

powerful forms of marketing for a business.

Social media’s role in your overall digital strategy comes down to four main things:

1) Building a fan base: To cultivate a successful social media presence, everything you

share needs to have some value to those you are trying to engage with. Businesses

with successful social media accounts have one thing in common: they offer a steady

stream of interesting content to information-starved followers. To stay top-of-mind,

posts should be made on a regular basis and sent evenly throughout the week. When

done correctly, Social Marketing helps businesses find interesting content that their

customers will want to share with their friends. Once you are able to curate interesting

content that your followers engage with, the road map for your own content creation

becomes clear and the idea of social link building can begin.

2) Reputation monitoring: Reputation monitoring is not a new concept but in social

media marketing its new. It shows businesses what all of these customers are saying

and helps them improve their visibility in local searches. Some of the top things you

should be monitoring for your company’s online reputation. (1) Data accuracy,

Customer response and comment.

3) Conducting customer service: Successful customer service is about two-way

communication. By engaging in conversations on social media, your customers won’t

feel the frustration of automated phone systems or emails that seem to disappear into

the abyss. More than 51% of Facebook users and 81% of Twitter users expect a

response to an online complaint or question within one day.

4) Generating leads: social media marketing is the ability to find relevant leads based

on searches for keywords and phrases. It can build your brand, strengthen your

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presence on search engines, deliver real-time insights to your business and provide

leads and a measurable ROI. (Rudolph, 2014)

13. The Top 10 Benefits of Social Media Marketing

Jayson DeMers

Social media marketing is the “next big thing,” a temporary yet powerful fad that

must be taken advantage of while it’s still in the spotlight. According to Hub spot,

92% of marketers in 2014 claimed that social media marketing was important for their

business, with 80% indicating their efforts increased traffic to their websites. And

according to Social Media Examiner, 97% of marketers are currently participating in

social media, but 85% of participants aren’t sure what social media tools are the best

to use. Here’s a look at just some of the ways social media marketing can improve

your business:

1. Increased Brand Recognition

2. Improved Brand Loyalty

3. More Opportunity to Convert

4. Higher Conversion Rates

5. Higher Brand Authority

6. Increased Inbound Traffic

7. Decreased Marketing Costs

8. Better Search Engine Ranking

9. Richer Customer Experience

10. Improved Customer Insights

(DeMers, 2014)

14. 10 Laws of Social Media Marketing

Susan Gunelius

Susan Gunelius has been argues that power of content and social media marketing can

help elevate your audience and customer base in a dramatic way. She had written in

her article that 10 laws you should follow on social media marketing.

1. The Law of Listening

2. The Law of Focus

3. The Law of Quality

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4. The Law of Patience

5. The Law of Compounding

6. The Law of Influence

7. The Law of Value

8. The Law of Acknowledgment

9. The Law of Accessibility

10. The Law of Reciprocity

Success with social media and content marketing requires more listening and less

talking. It’s better to have 1,000 online connections who read, share and talk about

your content with their own audiences than 10,000 connections who disappear after

connecting with you the first time. Social media and content marketing success

doesn’t happen overnight. While it’s possible to catch lightning in a bottle, it’s far

more likely that you’ll need to commit to the long haul to achieve results. Focus less

on conversions and more on creating amazing content and developing relationships

with online influencers. (Gunelius, 2014)

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Chapter-3

Project Objectives

22

Chapter 3

___________________________________________________

Project Objectives

___________________________________________________

The main objective of the project is:

To study various promotional strategies in Digital Marketing

Suggest the effective Digital Marketing practices to IRX using analysis

To study the competitors Digital Marketing practices and analyse best

practices

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Chapter-4

Project Methodology Adopted

24

Chapter 4

___________________________________________________

Project Methodology Adopted

___________________________________________________

It was difficult to find out the digital marketing promotional strategies through

primary research and also if it will conduct it won’t give the right result. Because this

research is fully based on online marketing strategies and internet is the best part to

find out the solution. Secondary research has been conducted to complete this project.

To find out the different strategies, practices and competitive analysis, various online

articles, websites journal, industry report, online tools have been used. To understand

deeply about the competitor’s practices, their official websites have been used.

Research Design: This project is fully based on secondary research. This research is

exploratory as well as causal research. Online comparison tools, official websites, and

industry reports have been used to complete this project. Various data and other useful

information will be collect by these sources to meet the objective.

Data Collection: To understand the competitor’s best practices, their data will be

downloaded by various useful sites. This data will be genuine and real time data.

Current data and reports will be used for comparison. This data can be collected from

online sources only. There is no other option.

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Chapter-5

Data Analysis & Interpretation/Description of the Work

Performed

26

Chapter 5

___________________________________________________

Data Analysis & Interpretation/Description of the Work

Performed

___________________________________________________

Digital Marketing broadly categories by 3 terms:

1. SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

2. SMO (Social Media Optimization)

3. Content Marketing

SEO (Search Engine Optimization): Search engine optimization is the process of

affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a web search engine's unpaid

results — often referred to as "natural," "organic," or "earned" results. SEO may

target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video

search, academic search, news search and industry-specific vertical search engines.

As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work, what

people search for, the actual search terms or keywords typed into search engines and

which search engines are preferred by their targeted audience. Promoting a site to

increase the number of backlinks, or inbound links, is another SEO tactic.

SMO (Social Media Optimization): Social media optimization (SMO) is the use of a

number of social media outlets and communities to generate publicity to increase the

awareness of a product, brand or event. Types of social media involved include RSS

feeds, social news and bookmarking sites, as well as social networking sites, such as

Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and video and blogging sites. SMO is similar to search

engine optimization in that the goal is to generate traffic and awareness for a website.

In general, social media optimization refers to optimizing a website and its content in

terms of sharing across social media and networking sites. The idea is to strategically

create interesting content that encourages and entices people to engage with a website.

Common examples of social media engagement are liking and commenting on posts,

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retweeting, embedding, sharing, and promoting content. Social media optimization is

also an effective way of implementing online reputation management (ORM).

Content Marketing: Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and

distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly

defined audience with the objective of driving profitable customer action.

Promotional strategies in Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is an umbrella term for the marketing of products or services using

digital technologies, mainly on the internet, but also including mobile phones, display

advertising, and any other digital medium. The way in which digital marketing has

developed since the 1990s and 2000s has changed the way brands and businesses

utilize technology and digital marketing for their marketing. Digital marketing

campaigns are becoming more prevalent, as digital platforms are increasingly

incorporated into marketing plans, and as people use digital devices instead of going

to physical shops.

Digital Marketing activities are:

1. Search Engine Marketing

2. Content Marketing

3. E-mail Direct Marketing

4. Social Media Marketing

5. SMS Marketing

The above mention all are the best promotional strategies in digital marketing.

By using these all strategies a company can differentiate itself at best position.

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Search Engine Marketing: Search engine marketing is a form of Internet

marketing that involves the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in

search engine results pages (SERPs). SEM may incorporate search engine

optimization (SEO), which adjusts or rewrites website content and site architecture to

achieve a higher ranking in search engine results pages.

Search engines are used in India are: Google(www.google.com, www.google.co.in),

Bing(www.bing.com), Yahoo(in.yahoo.com). As per Alexa rank google and bing are

on top. But we all know that google is the search engine of all time. More than 90% of

user use google for any search. Google is like a house hold name in internet user’s

mouth. In India Google is not only use to search an item over the internet but to check

the internet connectivity. Google is more famous because of the mouth marketing. As

a beginner level to the expert their first choice is Google than any other search engine.

Google is not having only search facility but more than that. Now google is providing

cloud storage of 2GB data free. These are the value proposition makes google on

Rank 1 in India as well as Global. Below are the Alexa screenshot which shows the

rank of google, yahoo and bing in India.

Source: http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries;1/IN

Figure 3 : Alexa Rank of Top Sites in India

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Alexa.com provides the Rank of search engine rank in India. It clearly shows that

google at no.1 while yahoo on no.6 and bing on no.37.

Now coming to the search engine marketing part all company majorly focus on

google. They struggle to become first on position on google result page while a user

search about the particular company or related to that term.

Below screenshot shows that by searching “IRX” on google, it shows result of IRX at

first. 1st result is IRX official website, 2nd and 3rd is the backlink of IRX and 4th is

play store link where a user can download IRX official APP.

Source:

https://www.google.co.in/search?q=irx&oq=irx&aqs=chrome..69i57j0j69i60j69i61l2j0.1791j0j7&sourceid=c

hrome&ie=UTF-8

Figure 4 : Google search result of IRX

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As above screenshot shows the result of IRX while search on google. Bringing

Keyword IRX on top of the search result is a part of SEO activities. SEO is called as

Search Engine Optimization.

There are many activities comes under SEO.

1. Title - Indexing

2. Backlink ( Bookmarking, Press Release, Third Party Blogs, Directories)

3. Keywords

4. Tagging

Title – Indexing: Every website is having a title. When a user search on google by

the title keyword then the first result will appear will be the particular website.

Title indexing is very important in search engine optimization. It brings the site on top

of the result page.

Source: view-source:http://www.indianrealtyexchange.com/

Figure 5 : Title Index of IRX

The above picture shows the source file of the (www.indianrealtyexchange.com) IRX

site. Here it shows that in html source file IRX – Indian realty Exchange is already

written. Show that when a user searches IRX on google then google easily identify

this website and shows it on at first.

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Source: https://www.semrush.com/info/indianrealtyexchange.com+(backlinks_pages)

Figure 6 : Index Pages result of IRX

The above image shows that there is only one webpage is available which is having

“IRX – Indian Realty Exchange” as an index. The above screenshot captured by the

online tool. Link is given in source.

But other websites those who are having information of IRX they were having other

Title – Indexing. To bring those on top on result page Crawling and Indexing have

been used.

Crawling and Indexing are a part of Google Algorithms. Google apply this algorithm

to give a user the best result when he will search for anything.

How Crawling and Indexing works?

Google use software known as “web crawlers” to discover publicly

available webpages. The most well-known crawler is called “Googlebot.”

Crawlers look at webpages and follow links on those pages, much like you

would if you were browsing content on the web. They go from link to link

and bring data about those webpages back to Google’s servers. The crawl

process begins with a list of web addresses from past crawls and sitemaps

provided by website owners. Crawlers visit these websites; they look for

links for other pages to visit. The software pays special attention to new

sites, changes to existing sites and dead links. Computer programs

determine which sites to crawl, how often, and how many pages to fetch

from each site. Google doesn't accept payment to crawl a site more

frequently for our web search results.

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The web is like an ever-growing public library with billions of

books and no central filing system. Google essentially gathers the pages

during the crawl process and then creates an index, so Google know

exactly how to look things up. Much like the index in the back of a book,

the Google index includes information about words and their locations.

When a user searches at the most basic level, Google algorithms look up

your search terms in the index to find the appropriate pages. The search

process gets much more complex from there. (Published by Google)

Backlink: A backlink for a given web resource is a link from some other website to

that web resource. A web resource may be a website, web page, or web directory. A

backlink is a reference comparable to a citation. The quantity and sources of backlinks

for a web page are among the factors that Google's PageRank algorithm evaluates in

order to estimate how important the page is. The PageRank score is, in turn, one of

the variables that Google Search uses to determine how high a web page should go in

search results. This weighting of backlinks is analogous to citation analysis of books,

scholarly papers, and academic journals.

Backlink are also called as: Incoming link, Inbound link, Inlink, Inward link

Backlink” is one of the most used words in the world of search engine optimization.

Backlinks are incoming links to a webpage. When a web page links to any other page,

it’s called a backlink. In the past, backlinks were the major metric for the ranking of a

web page. A page with a lot of backlinks tends to rank higher with all major search

engines, including Google. It is important to have backlinks from quality sites, and the

backlinks should be contextual. If, for example, For a Real Estate sites, creating links

from other niche sites, these will be of no use. Goal should be getting links from

authoritative and relevant sites.

For Real estate related best backlink sites are:

1. www.stumbleupon.com

2. www.pinterest.com

3. www.resaas.com

4. www.valuecom.com

5. www.forbes.com

6. www.realestateabc.com

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7. Redfin Forum

8. www.realtrends.com

9. www.abcrealestatedirectory.com

10. www.tumblr.com

11. www.activerain.com

12. www.digg.com

13. www.delicious.com

14. www.newswine.com

15. www.folkd.com

Below image shows the backlink of IRX websites:

Source: https://www.semrush.com/info/indianrealtyexchange.com+(backlinks)

Figure 7 : Backlink Results of IRX

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As we can see that there are total 329 backlinks are available for the IRX websites. In

the list top backlinks are present which is having higher Page Score i.e, 7. Based on

the page score these backlink present on 1st. Extracting all backlink information is not

possible because it was charge premium subscription for that account.

When a user open a link of IRX through any of these backlink then it will increase the

IRX official websites traffic. The user will be redirected to the IRX official site. This

technique is very useful and best ROI strategy. Not every user is well known about

your company websites. But by getting information of your websites by this link will

make this user as a customer for your company.

There are many types of generating backlinks likes, social bookmarking, Press

release, Third Party Blogs and Directories. The above images that shows the backlink

information is having these all categories.

Keywords: SEO keywords are the key words and phrases in web content that make it

possible for people to find site via search engines. A website that is well optimized for

search engines "speaks the same language" as its potential visitor base with keywords

for SEO that help connect searchers to site. Keywords are one of the main elements of

SEO basics. A company need to know how people are looking for the products,

services or information that they offer, in order to make it easy for them to find

otherwise, they'll land on one of the many other pages in the Google results.

Implementing keyword SEO will help site rank above the competitors. This is why

developing a list of keywords is one of the first and most important steps in any

search engine optimization initiative. Keywords are intended to act as shortcuts that

sum up an entire page. Keywords form part of a Web page’s metadata and help search

engines match a page to with an appropriate search query.

Keywords are collection of words that a user type on Google to search a particular

items or sites. A company should do a well research on internet to find-out the best

suitable keyword and similar keyword for their sites. After that they should

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implement these keywords in their sites. To implement this keyword in website a site

must have well information about the keyword. Writing a blog, writing an article

related to that keyword is best method. Google also provides some keywords related

to the site. There are many tools available on the internet that tells about how a user is

searching your sites. This tool gives a strategy to the company to catch that keyword

and focus on that.

The below picture shows the Keyword used to search for IRX websites.

Source: https://www.semrush.com/in/info/indianrealtyexchange.com+(by+organic)

Figure 8 : Keyword used by IRX

The above data shows that there are only two keywords present over the internet used

by a user, INDIAN REALTY and INDIA REALTY. Traffic generated by “INDIAN

REALTY” is 87.50% while 12.50% by “INDIA REALTY”. CPC is also present

there. For “INDIAN REALTY” it is 1.13$ and 0.34$ for “INDIA REALTY”.

Tagging: Tagging is related to Keywords. If a company is publishing an article,

writing a blog, or implementing any content, then they can use the related keyword

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with that article. For writing such blogs or article many tools available over the

internet. The best tool is “Word press”. If an article tagged by some useful and related

keyword then it will increase the presence of the site. That keyword will have more

density related to that post. More no. of times using the same keyword with different

blogs or article will give more value of the websites. If a user will type that keyword

on search engine then that published article will be comes under the result tab.

Example: For real estate article, these are the tagging keyword can be used.

1. Property

2. Property Management

3. House

4. Real estate Market

5. Housing

6. Real estate business

7. Broker

8. Realtor

9. Realty

Content Marketing: Content marketing is any marketing that involves the

creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire and retain

customers. Content marketing is also defined as a strategic marketing approach

focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to

attract and retain a clearly-defined audience and, ultimately, to drive profitable

customer action. Content marketing can further be characterized as a step from earned

to owned media. This means that by establishing own brand channels, brands

increasingly act like media companies and fulfil corresponding functions like

entertainment, information and social interaction. Ultimately, brands can become their

own communication-medium and thereby replace paid-media channels. The type of

content businesses share is closely related to what they sell. However, the content's

main focus is on the needs of the prospect. This information is consistently delivered

and can be presented in a variety of formats, including news, video, white papers, e-

books, info graphics, email newsletters, case studies, podcasts, how-to guides,

question and answer articles, photos, blogs etc.

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Content is king. Every user connects only by seeing visual or content. It gives a 1

Minute thought in user mind to open this link, if and only if that content is

Eye-catchy. One line comments is enough to create awareness in user mind.

A good marketing strategy says:

1. Shareable content drives create awareness for the brand. If content engages readers

they will share it via their social accounts, email or word-of-mouth as a

recommendation.

2. Content drives results from SEO. Content became, and still is, king since websites are

content and being found relies on content.

3. Content drives purchases. We base our decisions on online content when shopping

online or researching for offline purchases.

4. Content drives purchases. Content marketing strategy is much broader than your site

though, and includes content on social networks, online publishers, comparison sites,

blogs and many other types of site which help engagement and influence sales. Buyer

behaviour has changed; now they want to reference wider opinion from others like us

about products and services, whether rating sites, blogs or social networks. Buyers dig

out content to help their decision making.

Blogs writing also comes under content marketing. Many company write blogs related

to their business field to create awareness in user minds. This blogs are related to what

happens in past or industry trends. Useful blogs convert users in to customer.

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Below image shows the blogs of IRX.

Source: http://www.indianrealtyexchange.com/blog/

Figure 9 : Blogs used by IRX

In the above image it clearly identify that it has article about “Retirement Homes: A

Concept that is fast gaining popularity”. This type of one line subject line will create

awareness in old age people. When they will click over the title of the blogs, a new

window will open. This will increase the traffic of the websites.

Google has a content algorithm called, Google Panda and Penguin.

Many sites owner puts some links for their websites. Most of the time they puts their

site link to some other non-useful sites just to get traffic. Most of the time they just

wrote something different and after clicking over that, it redirect to somewhere else.

A user will never understand these things. At ends he goes somewhere else. But this is

39

how it will impact the Google. A user has trust on google. He knows that google gives

always relevant information.

Google identify these things and created Panda and Penguin just to penalize those

sites and decrease the site ranking.

Penguin: Some of the time when a user click on some links they redirected to the

other sites or non-relevant sites. Penguin is designed to penalize those who cheat buy

purchasing links from ‘link farms’ or ‘link exchanges’ back to their website.

Panda: Some of the time user faces non-relevant pop-ups and ads on the sites. It was

terrible and a user just wanted to leave that sites. Panda updates are focused on

penalizing the ranking of sites with a poor user experience and improves the ranking

of sites with a positive user experience.

E-Mail Direct Marketing: Email marketing is directly marketing a commercial

message to a group of people using email. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a

potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. It usually involves

using email to send ads, request business, or solicit sales or donations, and is meant to

build loyalty, trust, or brand awareness. Email marketing can be done to either sold

lists or a current customer database. Broadly, the term is usually used to refer to

sending email messages with the purpose of enhancing the relationship of a merchant

with its current or previous customers, to encourage customer loyalty and repeat

business, acquiring new customers or convincing current customers to purchase

something immediately, and adding advertisements to email messages sent by other

companies to their customers.

Generally e-mail marketing is of two types: Transactional emails, Direct emails.

Transactional e-mails: Transactional emails are usually sending based on a

customer’s action with a company. Transactional messages include dropped basket

messages, password reset emails, purchase or order confirmation emails, order status

40

emails, reorder emails and email receipts. The primary purpose of a transactional

email is to convey information regarding the action that triggered it. Transactional

email is having high open rates as compare to newsletter. Because a user will

definitely open that mail because subject line includes what he has done just a

moment before.

Direct E-mail: Direct email or interruption based marketing involves sending an

email solely to communicate a promotional message or newsletter. Companies usually

collect a list of customer or prospect email addresses to send direct promotional

messages to, or they can also rent a list of email addresses from service companies.

This email does not impact too much as compare to transactional email. Open rates

are lower than as compare to transactional e-mail.

Below image shows the transactional e-mail of IRX

Source: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/#search/irx/15553a4a56229864

Figure 10 : Official E-mail send by IRX to customer

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The above image shows the transactional e-mail send by the company IRX. In this e-

mail IRX is informing their user that thank you for using our company app. In this

mail they have given a nice subject line “Welcome to the largest verified real estate

professional’s community in India”. By reading the subject line it will create

awareness in the user’s mind that this e-mail is about the verified real estate

professionals. Then definitely he will open the mail. There are more chances that he

will visit the link that is given below. These links are for social media links.

Social Media Marketing: Social Media Marketing describes “an

interdisciplinary and cross-functional concept that uses social media to achieve

organizational goals. Companies address several stakeholders through social media

marketing including potential customers, employees, journalists, bloggers and the

general public. On a strategic level, social media marketing includes the management

of the implementation, governance, scope and the establishment of a firm’s desired

social media culture. This requires marketers to incorporate user-generated content

into their strategic approach.

There are many social media platform available on internet. Some of them are very

large scale as global level while some of them are only particular geographical level.

As a user perspective social media is just a fun. To connect with friends and

entertainment that’s it. But it is a strategy of a company to target that audience from

social media platform and convert them in to customer. Social media platform is

having a large no of people. Social media is a trend, now each and every information

is available over the internet. In India people use lots of social media platform. But

some of them are useful only. In India famous social media platforms are

“FACEBOOK”. LINKEDIN”, “TWITTER”, “YOUTUBE”.

This platform is useful to do marketing.

Facebook is having all types of user in India. Doing a business over Facebook is a

smart choice. This time almost every organization is having an official account on

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Facebook. Facebook started paid marketing from last two years. For paid marketing

there is a daily budget that a user has to fix over that. Then they have to target the

right audience by selecting the nature of audience. When a company post some news

or information over their page it will visible to the right audience.

IRX is having own official Facebook page. Screen shot is available below.

Source: https://web.facebook.com/indianrealtyexchange/?fref=ts

Figure 11 : IRX official Facebook Page

Above screenshot shows the official Facebook page of IRX with title “IRX – Indian

Realty Exchange”. The total no. of pages likes is 2995. There is lots of option

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available on button “More”. By using “More” button a company can use more than

just pasting content.

LinkedIn: LinkedIn is also another form of social media platform. LinkedIn is

covered by professional people. It is totally different as compare to Facebook. But just

like Facebook a company can promote their business information over that. But

LinkedIn is having some restriction that they cannot share irrelevant information. If a

company page is about Real Estate and the page is having information about

Bollywood, or Hollywood, then LinkedIn will give warning to the page owner to use

relevant information. LinkedIn is having strict rule. If a person is having more than 2

accounts then they will receive information that they are violating LinkedIn terms and

services.

Source:

https://www.linkedin.com/company/3994369?trk=tyah&trkInfo=clickedVertical%3Acom

pany%2CclickedEntityId%3A3994369%2Cidx%3A3-1-

6%2CtarId%3A1466928207949%2Ctas%3Airx

Figure 12 : IRX official LinkedIn pag

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The above screen shot shows the official LinkedIn page of IRX. On the right side it is

showing no of follower. In Recent Updated section recent posts are present. These are

the good strategy to showcase the company on internet.

Twitter is also a kind of social media platform. It is the largest blogging platform in

the world. Twitter is having a large scale of audience.

Source: https://twitter.com/IRX_Connect

Figure 13 : IRX official Twitter Page

Like other social media platform IRX is having its official twitter page. Image

showing there are 1953 tweets are posted by IRX. IRX is following 48 pages while

269 are following IRX page.

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There is video sharing platform is also available over the internet. YouTube is one of

them. YouTube is famous globally. YouTube engage its audience by just providing

the right kind of information. YouTube provides two types of pages. One is free pages

with limited access while paid pages with a wider facility. Companies use YouTube

as an information sharing platform. They provide product knowledge, product

information over YouTube as a video format.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqyZsQSDufNAT8NiFqdOIzQ

Figure 14 : IRX official YouTube page

Above image shows the official YouTube page of IRX. The video mention here are

belongs to how to use IRX App. IRX is proving an information like, How to

download App, How to post property, How to add other Realtor, How to add someone

in private group, How to do chat. So this is a great strategy to engage audience.

SMS Marketing: SMS Marketing is also called as Direct Text Marketing. This

includes using a medium which involves text messaging over a mobile device and can

be done from a mobile phone or in bulk using an SMS Aggregator and distributor

online. Some businesses provide the entire service including creating the messages

and sending them via an aggregator on behalf of a business.

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Companies and businesses can benefit from using this form of modern marketing by

sending either promotional content, reminders or discount coupons via text format

directly to individuals via their personal mobile phones or WhatsApp. Since mobile

phones or WhatsApp are very personal technologies, you'd think text spamming is

usually out of the question. Services of sending promotional or coupon discounts are

usually an opt-in service, which means a business cannot send any content to an

individual's mobile device unless requested by the individual who owns the mobile

device. 82% of Indian adults own a cell phone, Blackberry, iPhone or other device

that is also a cell phone.

Strategy behind SMS Marketing:

1) Fill the gaps: This is user engagement strategy. A company regularly send a message

to the customer related to the new changes in the company or just an update to the

customer.

2) Lead Generation: SMS Marketing is also used as a lead generation purpose. If a user

read the message and buy a product of the company then he will become the customer

of the company.

3) Customer service: After sales Services Company used to send a service related

information to the customer. This strategy makes the user engage to the company.

4) Organising events: If a company is going to organize some events then by sms

marketing they can send information to the customer. There are many customers who

doesn’t use internet on regular basis. So sms marketing is best for that type of

customer.

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Below screenshot shows the SMS used by IRX for promotion.

Figure 15: Text Messages used by IRX

In the above picture we can see that IRX is using different types of text messaging. In

each message there is different peach. Each message shows different action.

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Competitive Analysis

As discussed above there are two competitors of IRX i.e, “Broex” and “Plabro”.

To understand the different promotional strategies of competitors and analyse the best

practices some tools have been used. These tools are web based free tools. As

mentioned above there are mainly two digital marketing strategies are important that i

have learned so far in my internship period. So here I will mainly compare these two

things with competitors.

Social Media comparisons:

Facebook – Page likes/Subscriber

Company No. of Page Likes/Subscriber

IRX 3,046

BROEX 11,275

PLABRO 7,707

Source: https://web.facebook.com/indianrealtyexchange/?fref=ts,

https://web.facebook.com/BroExApp/?fref=ts

https://web.facebook.com/platformforbrokers/?fref=ts

Table 1: No. of page likes on Facebook

In the above table it can be analyse that, BROEX is having more followers (11,275)

on Facebook as compare to IRX and PLABRO. IRX is on last position with number

(3,046). The more no. of followers reflects more engagement as well as more reaches

to viewers for a post.

49

LinkedIn – Page likes/Subscriber

Company No. of Page Likes/Subscriber

IRX 273

BROEX 4

PLABRO 362

Source:

https://www.linkedin.com/company/13189328?trk=tyah&trkInfo=clickedVertical%3Ashowcase%2CclickedEntityId%3

A13189328%2Cidx%3A2-1-2%2CtarId%3A1467918928267%2Ctas%3Abroex,

https://www.linkedin.com/company/3994369?trk=tyah&trkInfo=clickedVertical%3Acompany%2CentityType%3Aentit

yHistoryName%2CclickedEntityId%3Acompany_3994369%2Cidx%3A1,

https://www.linkedin.com/company/9473950?trk=tyah&trkInfo=clickedVertical%3Acompany%2CclickedEntityId%3

A9473950%2Cidx%3A2-1-2%2CtarId%3A1467918972790%2Ctas%3Aplabro

Table 2: No. of page likes on LinkedIn

The above table shows the data of LinkedIn page likes of all three companies. Broex

is on bottom. This data clearly shows that the broex is not active on linkedIn.

Twitter – Page likes/Subscriber

Company No. of Page Likes/Subscriber

IRX 272

BROEX 147

PLABRO 48

Source: https://twitter.com/PlaBro_, https://twitter.com/BroExApp, https://twitter.com/IRX_Connect

Twitter data shows that IRX is more active. Plabro is no more active.

Table 3: No. of page likes on Twitter

50

YouTube – Page likes/Subscriber

Company No. of Page Likes/Subscriber

IRX 19

BROEX 21

PLABRO 19

Source: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqyZsQSDufNAT8NiFqdOIzQ,

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxphsaeQywv9uxxp5NTVNxg,

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCA3zc2I8Ts5Lgyv2q4TUH2g

Table 4: No. of page likes on YouTube

On YouTube no one is more active. The no. of followers is clearly reflects that they

are having less content on YouTube.

The above all analysis is a competitive analysis of IRX, BROEX and PLABRO. The above

data shows that how much a company is active on social media platform. More active on

social media will give more ROI for a company. But it was clear that all companies are more

active on Facebook. As compare to youtube and twitter they are very less active on these

platforms. So, It can be analysed that facebook is a right platform for these companies. They

are targeting facebook as a promotional channel. Facebook is a platform which is having all

types of viewers. So for finding and suggesting the best social media platform for IRX,

facebook is best platform.

Search Engine comparison:

As compare to which company is more active on search engine marketing and what

are the practices a company is using, online tools has been used.

There are many search engine marketing activity presents on internet. Best part of this

has been discussed above. The best search engine marketing activity will analyse

here, and best practices will be suggested to IRX.

51

Official Websites Rank:

Company Global Rank Rank in India

IRX 1,739,647 203,455

BROEX 580,685 43,179

PLABRO 1,516,276 143,099

Source: www.Alexa.com

Table 5: Page Rank of websites

The above data shows the global as well as India rank of websites. IRX is having the

poor rank as compare to its competitors. BroEx is on top in global as well as in India.

Bounce Rate:

Company Bounce Rate Time on site(In minuts)

IRX 58.60% 2:56 mnts

BROEX 57.40% 2:29 mnts

PLABRO 53.30% 1:03 mnts

Source: www.Alexa.com

Table 6: Bounce Rate of sites

Above table shows the bounce rate of site. Here IRX bounce rate is good. The average

user time on website is 2 minutes and 56 seconds. As compare to other sites IRX is

having a good user engagement. A viewer is spending around 3 minutes of their time

when he is visiting IRX sites.

Backlink:

Company Backlinks

IRX 358

BROEX 7

PLABRO 17

Source: www.semrush.com

Table 7: Backlink of sites

52

The above table shows the backlink generated by the company. IRX is on top with

358 backlink while broex and plabro both are having very poor count. The more no.

of backlink generated by company means more promotion of the websites.

Top Organic Keywords:

No. of

Keywords

IRX BROEX PLABRO

1. Indian Realty Real estate agents

network

Real estate agents

2. India Realty Property dealers in

Gurgaon

3. Real estate dealers

4. Real estate agents India

5. Real estate brokerage

firm

Source: www.semrush.com

Table 8: Top organic keywords used by sites

The above table shows the organic keywords used by a user to search a particular site.

Plabro is having 5 organic keywords while IRX is having only 2.

Page size and Page Speed:

Company

Name

Page Size Page Speed

IRX 842 KB 3.7 Sec

BROEX 483 KB 3 Sec

PLABRO 1.3 MB 3.9 Sec

Source: website.grader.com

Table 9: Page size and Page speed of sites

The above table shows the strength of page. The size and speed depends on the data

of the sites. The less speed will engage more users. Less page speed will increase the

site traffic.

53

Chapter-6

Findings

54

Chapter 6

___________________________________________________

Findings

___________________________________________________

From the above various data it has been find out that:

IRX is well established platform over the internet. It is having the good

presence over the internet.

The presence of IRX over the social media is well enough. IRX is active on

almost all Social media platform. It has huge no of followers on social media.

IRX website ranking is good in global ranking and in India. Since the

company has been founded in 2015 only and in one year it has achieve a good

score over the internet.

When compare to LinkedIn and YouTube IRX competitors are not so active

on this platform. But LinkedIn and YouTube have a large user database.

In SEO part the keyword used by user to find out the IRX over google is less

as compare to its competitors. It has only two keyword i.e, Indian Realty and

India Realty.

Backlink generated by is more than its competitors. This is one of the reasons

that IRX become more popular over the internet.

Bounce Rate of IRX is not good as compare to its competitors. This may be

the reason of IRX website is not having a good content or eye catchy material.

Because an average user is standing over the site only for 1 and 2 minute. This

count is very less.

BroEx and Plabro presence over the internet is good as compare to IRX. Their

global rank and India rank is good. This may be the reason that this company

started before the IRX.

55

Chapter-7

Recommendation

56

Chapter 7

___________________________________________________

Recommendation

___________________________________________________

It has been recommended to IRX that it should focus on this area because in

analysis it has been find out that IRX is weak in this area.

(a) Organic keyword of IRX is very low. For beating the competitors it should

increase its organic keyword. This can be done by doing SEO activity.

(b) Bounce Rate is not good. IRX should implement a good content on its

website to improve the bounce rate. A user should spend more time over

the site so that its bounce rate will be good.

(c) Global Rank and India Rank is low as compare to its competitors. This

rank is low because of the SEO activity. IRX should do good SEO activity

so that its site rank will be increase. Site rank is very important.

57

___________________________________________________

References

___________________________________________________

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