Digital Marketing at Dubai Holding Real Estate (DHRE)
The intention of any modern organization is attracting as many clients as possible through the available open channels. Currently, digital marketing has become one of the most common contemporary channels being used in attracting, delighting and making new customers actually engage with an organization’s operations (USEO, 2022). In Dubai’s real estate, digital marketing has been identified as an approach that will aid in building the respective organizations’ brand, maximizing their reach, bring in fast results and target the right audience. This research intends to delve into the current marketing approach implemented at Dubai Holding Real Estate (DHRE). The goal is to develop and implement a comprehensive and feasible digital marketing strategy by first looking into the current marketing approaches and improvising a better digital marketing plan that handles the inadequacies in the current plan.
Marketing Approach at Dubai Holding Real Estate (DHRE)
Considering that the organization targets different consumer groups, the organization has acknowledged using a balanced approach in their marketing approaches. Specifically, the organization uses both digital and traditional campaigns. Since traditional media still has the capability of reaching large audiences, the organization uses the media platforms for executing awareness-based campaigns and across their different product life cycles (AdAge Communicate, 2021). The messaging incorporated in those campaigns will never have promotional aspects but rather the focus is on providing credibility, assurance and making sure it is seen as a trusted brand. This would be evident in the Press Release that the organization did in 2021 in celebration of UAE Flag Day where it launched a special nationwide campaign dedicated to the Year of the 50th (Zawya, 2021). The organization noted that this campaign was focused on celebrating the success of the beautiful country and the pride it has used to its impact on the country via its innovation, collaborations and ambitions for the Good of Tomorrow. This approach was inspired by the country;s multicultural community of citizens, residents and the tourists who are evidently important targeted customers for the organization. The organization has also been using billboards across Dubai to carry out their outdoor advertising campaign for the new product, Madinat Jumeirah Living.
Conversely, their digital marketing approaches are highly personalized even when they consider factors such as geography. Considering that their operations target clients that are also outside of the UAE region including those in Asia and Europe, their digital marketing campaigns will generate content in four different languages which will be dependent on one’s product type. Through the digital campaigns, the company has been able to have personalized and targeted campaigns in its entire spectrum with the intention of going through the entire awareness-purchase cycle (AdAge Communicate, 2021). This would be evidenced through the use of three major platforms; Facebook, Instagram and Linkedin. When one looks into their Instagram page, since the organization expects to be dealing with a different target group compared to Linkedin, the Instagram page mainly promotes the luxurious lifestyle. The Linkedin page takes up a more formal approach considering that the platform mainly attracts career professionals. Nevertheless, the organization has asserted that they are still in a ‘watch position’ in regards to digital marketing (AdAge Communicate, 2021). Their plan is to increase efforts when they can have a better correlation between the consumers of their content against their investor demographics.
DHRE’s Marketing Environment
The macro-environment factors that make up the organization’s marketing environment includes the robust economic performance that see that country become an attractive investment hub for both domestic and global communities. The UAE being made of individuals from different communities means that demographics play a huge role in the company’s marketing environment. The demographic trends such as the shifts in geographic population, population diversity, age and family structures are considered during the marketing. Increased government intervention is a major macro-factor affecting DHRE’s marketing environment. Currently, the changes made in social and regulatory policies and the implementation of a vast federal and local government initiatives have become strong fundamentals underpinning performance in the UAE’s real estate sector and respective institutions (Rizvi, 2022). Regarding their micro-environmental factors, DHRE’s marketing environment is affected by the consumer markets, the international market, teh competitors, the company itself and the public. The consumer markets are determined by the demographic factors while the international markets are analyzed through the prevalent consumer trends. Its main competitors include Dubai holding, Africa-Israel Investments. Legend Holding among others.
Market Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning at Dubai Holding Real Estate (DHRE)
DHRE’s marketing strategy focuses on targeting marketing segments depending on various variables including the demographic, geographic and psychographic variables (Razzouk et al., n.d.). Regarding their demographics, the organization will consider the clients’ ethnicity could be they are either nationals or expatriates. The organization stated that Emiratis, Indians, Pakistanis, British and Russians make up its core buyer demographic with European nationals also increasing their interest in investing in Dubai’s real estate. It also considers their gender and age as a basis for customer segmentation. The company has asserted using the Burks-Sinclair formula to establish a relative proportion of the different nationalities ior demographics for the purposes of sampling and post weighting. The geographic variable is considered in terms of whether it is marketing in the country’s local markets or the international markets in Asia and Europe. The psychographic variable makes the company more likely to segment potential clients based on their consumer beliefs, values, living standard, social class and ethical norms. It is prudent to note that in the UAE, the organization will interact with expats, the ruling sheik families, the merchant class members, the new middle class made of the professionals that are benefiting from free state education, the low income groups and families especially the extended families. The behavioral variable is also considered such that the organization segments the market as per their buying behavior including one’s readiness to purchase and loyalty towards organization.
The different customer groups targeted have the company implementing both mass marketing and differentiated marketing. Mass marketing approaches are incorporated when targeting clients with products for a wide customer group Tarawneh, 2014). Its off-plan community Villanova characterized of an open space community layouts has been regarded as one fit for Emiratis and expat buyers from the region. The differentiated marketing strategy incorporated has the company targeting every segment with a certain product such as villas being targeted for the healthy extravagant individuals that could be nationals or expatriate.The urban residential project City Walk attracts strong local and international demand particularly from Europe mainly because of its central location, green spaces, and proximity to popular tourist destinations in Dubai. These approaches ensure that the right target market is reached and customer loyalty is built considering that the company is giving them what they wanted. Regarding its positioning approach, the organization adopts an innovative brand positioning where it advertises itself under the slogan ‘For the Good of Tomorrow’. To this effect, the company constantly demonstrates its commitment towards sustainability via a diverse range of corporate and community initiatives; and reinforces its position as a socially responsible business and a driver of socioeconomic development.
Recommended Framework for The Digital Marketing Strategy
The STEPPS Framework developed by Jonah Burger, the author of Contagious: Why Things Catch On presents an effective approach that DHRE could use in the recommended digital campaign. This approach is effective in creating contagious viral content that is able to reach the target market and increase the number of their clients. The approach is made of seven elements, specifically social currency, triggers, emotion, public, practical value and stories (Yeo, 2014). The social currency relates to giving the company’s real estate products and their owners a social status that makes it appear unique, exclusive and interesting. In this case, the organization needs to provide unique features in the different homes that are not easily replicable by its competition. The second element is the triggers whereby the product is affiliated with ideas and activities in people’s lives. For instance, the organization could monopolize on different events such as the xpose happening in the country then purchasing ads that will coincide with events’ coverage on various media platforms.
The third element is emotion where the content given should evoke awe or rather the sense of wonder and amazement which happens when one is inspired by great knowledge, beauty of sublimity. Different real estate products need to evoke different emotions depending on their uses, features and the kind of clients that are more likely to purchase them. The fourth element is the public where the advertising content needs to make sure the public can talk about it and share it. Practical value and stories make up the final elements, it is important that the content is useful, provides value and that stories can be told from the content.
A comparison of this approach and the current digital marketing approach, it is evident that the latter has been failing in creating content that remains in the minds of the public and potential clients. While the digital marketing adverts attract one’s attention through the clear images and proper videos, they still fail at telling a story that is an important way of attracting the advertisements into actual sales.
Figure 1: The STEPPS Framework (Yeo, 2014)
Suitable Digital Marketing Platforms to Attain an Optimal Digital Marketing Strategy
As a modern organization, DHRE requires effective digital media platforms that could enable various sets of functions with APIs, integrations and partnerships with other applications or data sources. The suitable one for this digital marketing campaign includes the social media marketing platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and Snapchat. Modern consumers highly depend on the social media platforms and hence the organization could easily reach targeted customers. The channels allow the distribution of paid advertisements and sponsored contents which target the users depending on the respective market segments which include the demographics, location, interest, algorithms among other characteristics. Additionally, the social media platforms allow the organic promotion of products to one’s followers in conjunction with allowing direct engagement with them. The organization should take the opportunity to interact with the clients on social media by answering customer service-oriented questions to cultivate positive experiences and customer loyalty.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) marketing is another platform that could be used for content marketing. One of the functions of SEO is to increase visibility from prospects whenever they are searching for similar products. The organization should hence increase its organic page ranking so that its web pages could rank higher in the search engine result page. Increased web traffic is another function for SEO which will be evidenced through increased visibility and rankings (Digital Marketing Institute, 2021). Effective SEO will entail the identification and the use of the appropriate keywords with a high potential for search traffic, the creation of rich content that is generally useful as well as the optimization of search engines. For the users, the inclusion of links considered to be high quality as well as the measurement of results.
Digital Marketing Campaign for the Digital Marketing Tool and Platform
Fig 2: Digital Marketing Campaign for the Digital Marketing Tool and Platform
Suitable Metrics and Baselines for Performance Tracking for The Digital marketing Campaign
The performance metrics will be considered on the basis of the overall site traffic. This metric requires determining a baseline before adding any new components to the current marketing efforts. The sites considered will be the social media pages and the actual organization’s website. The second metric will be the impressions which are how often the advertisements were shown to the targeted audience (Kerley, 2022). The impression share will show the marketing team how well their advertisements did penetrate the targeted audience. The third metric will be the Click-Through-Rate which is the percentage of clicks on the advertisements compared to the total impressions (Kerley, 2022). The main objective is to set a benchmark for the campaign then gauging the impact of getting the people to engage with the advertisements and brand.
Performance Analysis and Monitoring of the Digital Marketing Campaign through Google Analytics
Google Analytics allows tracking the performance of the websites and marketing efforts. Google Analytics will aid in measuring the return on investments from Google Ads and SEO. The Google Analytics tool comprises eight sections: the dashboards, shortcuts, intelligence events, real-time, audience, acquisition, behavior and conversions (Amber et al., 2022). Nevertheless for this digital marketing campaign, three elements will be considered; acquisition, audience, and behavior.
The acquisition section will inform which social media platform or search engine is bringing in more visitors. It comprises five subsections that is overview, all traffic, campaigns, cost analysis and keywords. For the audience, the analytics is to look into the users’ behavior. Specifically, the aim is to consider the site content which tells whether it is engaging, valuable and user-friendly (Amber et al., 2022). The site speed describes the page load time and the time taken before a website displays the complete content. The site search aids in determining the name of the fields and categories that many visitors will normally use. Finally, digital marketing with Google Analytics also brings in visual assessment features that allows scrutinizing how the visitors interact with the website visually and determining whether the present content is eye-captivating.
References
AdAge Communicate. (2021). DHRE’s Alexander Davies: “We’re Beginning To See Some Maturity Come Into Real Estate Marketing Content.” Retrieved 22 April 2022, from https://communicateonline.me/category/industry-insights/post-details/dhres-alexander-davies-were-beginning-to-see-some-maturity-come-into-real-estate-marketing-content
Amber, S., Jain, O., & Samuel, N. (2022). Digital Marketing with Google Analytics: A Comprehensive Guide – Learn | Hevo. Retrieved 22 April 2022, from https://hevodata.com/learn/digital-marketing-with-google-analytics/
Digital Marketing Institute. (2021). What Is SEO & Why Is It Important?. Retrieved 22 April 2022, from https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/blog/what-is-seo-and-why-is-it-important
Kerley, J. (2022). Measuring Digital Marketing Success: Choosing the Right Metrics | Top Floor. Retrieved 22 April 2022, from https://www.topfloortech.com/blog/measuring-digital-marketing-success/#gref
Razzouk, N. Y., Seitz, V., & Al-Shamsi, R. A. MARKET SEGMENTATION IN THE UNITED ARAB EMIRATES: AN EXPLORATORY INVESTIGATION.
Rizvi, M. (2022). Dubai real estate continues to soar in Q1 as government policies boost investor confidence. Retrieved 22 April 2022, from https://www.khaleejtimes.com/property/dubai-real-estate-continues-to-soar-in-q1-as-government-policies-boost-investor-confidence
Tarawneh, S. A. (2014). Marketing for Service Quality-Contractors’ Perception: UAE Case Study. Marketing, 6(16).
USEO. (2022). The Importance of Digital Marketing within the Real Estate Sector in Dubai. Retrieved 22 April 2022, from https://www.unitedseo.ae/the-importance-of-digital-marketing-within-the-real-estate-sector-in-dubai/
Yeo, D. (2014). Contagious content: STEPPS and the science of shareability. Retrieved 22 April 2022, from https://www.searchlaboratory.com/2014/07/contagious-content-stepps-and-the-science-of-shareability/
Zawya. (2021). Dubai Holding celebrates UAE Flag Day with launch of special nationwide campaign dedicated to the Year of the 50th. Retrieved 22 April 2022, from https://www.zawya.com/en/press-release/dubai-holding-celebrates-uae-flag-day-with-launch-of-special-nationwide-campaign-dedicated-to-the-year-of-the-jq7r2avq
