Housing.com is an Indian real estate portal that allows users to search for properties. It was founded by 12 IIT Bombay graduates and now has over 2,500 employees and listings in 50+ cities. Housing.com's strategy involves encouraging brokers to list properties and providing filters for users to search. They have mapped over 650,000 homes in India and seen success raising funds from investors. Their goal is to make the home buying process as easy as online shopping.

1. Kritika Jain
Rajeev Ranjan Singh
Soumajit Nag
Shikhar
Wajid Ali

2. Introduction to Digital Marketing
1) Communication is bidirectional. The customer also can ask
queries or make suggestions about the business products and
services.
2) Medium of communication is mostly through social media
websites, chat, and email.
3) There is always a fast way to develop an online campaign and
carry out changes along its development and digital tools
makes it easier.
4) The content is available for general public. It is then made to
reach the specific audience by employing search engine
techniques.
5) It is best for reaching global audience.
6) It is easier to measure the effectiveness of campaign through
analytics.

3. About Housing.com
 Housing.com is a Mumbai based popular real estate search portal
that allows prospective customers to look for housing property
based on filters like geography, number of rooms etc.
 This real estate portal was formed by 12 graduates from IIT
Bombay.
 Currently it has 2500 employees and presence in more than 50
cities.
 Vision statement of Housing.com states ‘At Housing, we have
initiated change — change for the best. There vision is to help the
world live better.
 They are here to get to the root of every challenge, find a solution
and deliver to you a world that’s filled to the brim with optimism,
innovation, transparency, and advancement. Live better with
Housing’.
 There mission is ‘Innovation and Optimism for Housing’.

4. Business Objectives
 The objective of the company is to become number one in the
real estate search portal space.
 Its long term dream is to become like an e-commerce
company where the customers will be able to buy properties
similar to the ease with which they buy products from e-
commerce sites.
 It also want to bring down the pain points in home buying and
selling through ensuring listing of homes for buying, selling
and rentals.

5. Methods to attract customers
Initially to set up an attractive content in the Web, the
things needed to be done are as follows:
1) Creation of Google+ business account.
2) A Facebook fan page.
3) A twitter profile for “Housing.com”.
4) Creation of a pin up page for number of likes in pinterest
website.
5) Creation of both the organic and inorganic mode in the
webpage for increase in clicks.
6) Creation of a side bar pop-up and wide bar display page in
LinkedIn.
7) Putting up videos and attractive contents in youtube,
dailymotion, vimeo; etc.

6. Promotional activities
1) To get the video on the top of Google for almost any keyword.
2) Making the search engine compatible with the keywords like:
 New homes “Housing.com”.
 “Housing.com” home builders.
 Home builders “Housing.com”.
3) To make more videos of the “Housing.com” content and expose
it to the world in youtube, dailymotion, vimeo, real media to
build traffic and therefore increasing the number of views and
likes.
4) Use of Bing Ads and Google Adwords for paid search.
5) Creation of Google Alerts to entertain and reply to the positive
and negative comments, blog posts, articles.

7. Approach/Strategy adopted
 Housing.com encourages brokers or owners to list the
properties and they plot the same on an interactive map in
their online portal.
 Customers can filter the search result based on parameters
like available rooms, lifestyle ratings, child friendliness
index (CFI) and area based pricing.
 Housing.com’s Data Science Lab (DSL) has generated a
number of “Heat Map” algorithms and demand flux maps
based on these filters.

8.  The CFI heat map shows child friendliness of different areas
and it measures neighborhoods on three different criteria
which are
1. Number of schools
2. Number of hospitals and parks
3. Proximity of these facilities to the area.
 Improving the overall ecosystem and thereby creating a digital
identity.
 Improving the conversation on factors like:
1. Expertise.
2. Knowledge.
3. Negotiation skills.

9. Location Based Marketing
1) Adding of the business and the address to Google+ local for
“Housing.com”.
2) When the social media accounts are set then moving to the
link of www.google.com/local/add , and following the steps.
3) Making sure that the customers who are either loyal frequent
visitors and casual visitors writes as many reviews as possible
on the “Housing.com’s” Google+ local listings, because they
show up in search engines.
4) Use of Pay-Per-Click advertising to target relevant keywords
that will drive leads and eventually deliver sales.
5) Running a mobile paid search campaign for “Housing.com”
and therefore registering the business on location-based
services.
6) Building up links from related local businesses and local
bloggers to increase search in frequency for “Housing.com”.

10. Tests that enhance visibility for
“Housing.com”
1) Adding the word Free in the ads for “Housing.com”.
2) Creation of an explainer video for “Housing.com”, thereby
increasing homepage conversions that explains different
models of Houses and various services in-built in it.
3) Creating a signup button scroll with the visitor.
4) Removal of some form of fields to enhance visibility like:
 Name
 E-mail
 URL
 Revenue
5) Offer time-based bonuses i.e. early search and sign-up with
“Housing.com” that will be in eye-catching colour and
moving on to the payment page.

11. Results Achieved By Them
 Housing.com has tied up with more than 6000 brokers and
operated in more than 40 cities in India including Mumbai,
Bangalore, Kolkata and Delhi. The company has mapped
approximately 650,000 houses in India.
 The company has mapped over 80,000 houses in Mumbai
and 50,000 houses in Bangalore which constitutes over 5%
of the total houses in both cities. They are also using drones
to collect this data which includes aerial surveys and
photographs. Their innovative way of doing business has
helped them in raising fund from a series of investors like
Nexus Venture, angel funding, Soft bank etc.

12. Current Updates
 Housing.com aims to turn profitable in next 18-24 months.
 Housing.com, which has raised over USD 100 million from
various investors including Softbank and has restructured the
business, today said it expects USD 10 million revenue in the
current fiscal.
 "Uber will be integrated into the Housing.com app, allowing
consumers to directly book a ride after identifying a property of
interest. This will save consumers the hassle of finding
locations of different sites.
 Dilip Tuli who is appointed as VP will assist with strategy and
oversee new business initiatives such as transaction facilitation
and fulfilment services.

13. Benefits
1) Apps can be a crucial piece and they are a great engagement
tool to inspire participation from customers.
2) Forming consultancy groups across varied regions delivers
real insights that help improve continuously.
3) Search engine optimisation helps further diversification and
commercializing the services and activities.
4) Creating engaging, shareable and visually stimulating content
with strong execution to appeal the customers.
5) Forming partner with different social media platform
generates real insights content display and getting revenue out
of it.

14. Key learning's
1) Bringing innovation in the portal like life style
ratings, child friendliness index (CFI), and area
based pricing.
2) Combining knowledge, passion and technology to
drive innovation.
3) Setting up of new benchmarks for excellence.
4) Online view rate increase only when the customer’s
OUT SEE, OUT THINK, OUT DO
5) Conducting aerial surveys and collecting data along
with photographs.

15. Conclusion
1) It is best for reaching global audience.
2) Improving the overall ecosystem and thereby creating a
digital identity.
3) Making the search engine compatible with the keywords like:
 New homes “Housing.com”.
 “Housing.com” home builders.
 Home builders “Housing.com”.
4) Building up links from related local businesses and local
bloggers to increase search in frequency for “Housing.com”.
5) Creation of Google+ business account helps in checking all
the information that is available from “Housing.com”.