BHARAT MATRIMONY MARKETING STRATEGY (part 2)

In the previous blog, we discussed the challenges that were faced by Murugavel Janakiraman when he started BharatMatrimony. We explained the idea and how it was launched, what hardships came in the way. We discussed the way on how he got his first customers and what techniques he used. They took one step at a time and how did they develop their business.

In this blog, we will discuss that what steps he took after the initial steps. We will start with the SEO part.

SEO

From an SEO point of view, it is invaluable to have one parent area – matrimony.com with committed pages for every community that comes under the parent site. For e.g.: www.bharatmatrimony.com/tamilmatrimony gave greater expert to the site and furthermore demonstrated ideal in the internet searcher rankings.

Ascended Content Marketing

“Desi Match” magazine was launched for South Asian residents living in the US. It was the first and only matrimony magazine.

“Matrimony Express” – India’s first relationship blog.

Happymarriages.com website gave advice and tips on how people can stay happy in a married life, whereas, BharatMatrimony had made its presence viral in the matrimony sector. With diverse religions and languages, and economic segments, BharatMatrimony was helping people to stay happy after getting married.

What was the need for creating HappyMarriages.com?

The mission of Matrimony.com states that

“The future of a country depends on its citizens. Good citizens emerge out of good parenting; good parenting can happen only in a good marriage and we are the gateway to happy marriages.”

To lead a happy and enrich married life Happymarriage.com is the initiative of BharatMatrimony.com.

What was the challenge?

It was seen by the Matrimony.com team that people were having problems in the relationship after marriage. Some of them were having problems on the first day of the marriage which were lasting for almost 4 years. There were misunderstandings like relationship problems with the In-laws, personal fights, time management, not giving each other the required space and problems with the choice of work. It was because of many reasons that even the guidance from elders and the time was leaving the couples confused. It was obvious that there was no way that these problems were mentioned anywhere.

Thought behind the strategy

Happymarriage.com is a simplified matrimony site which comes with a monthly newsletter with related content and this helps the newlywed couples. The content was quality wise on a higher side which was very helpful for the readers.

“Happy families are the building blocks of the nation. As a leader in the online matchmaking space, we have the responsibility to guide married couples to lead a happy life post marriage. HappyMarriages.com is an initiative to enrich marital relationships and make them meaningful. It’s BharatMatrimony’s guide to a happy marriage.”

– Murugavel Janakiraman

Founder & CEO, Matrimony.com

The execution

It took almost three months for the marketing team to complete the research on the various challenges faced by the newlywed couples. After extensive research, and with the data given by the couples and also from the inputs from the social circle, the team was able to frame the content and publish it.

The outcome

The goal was to offer valuable content around the early conjugal difficulties and help manage youthful couples to an important relationship and a cheerful marriage. This was accomplished with the site and a month to month pamphlet which has more than 24,000 endorsers and more than 1 lakh wedded individuals get the bulletin each month.

Communication and referrals

Spoken communications and referrals were the main reason for the traffic received. The parents created the profile on the reviews of other parents. BharatMatrimony had the first mover advantage and this was the reason for a strong brand recall.

BharatMatrimony.tv

This online channel features TVCs made by BharatMatrimony.tv crosswise over classes that incorporate International TVCs, Assisted Matrimony, Elite Matrimony, and Tambulya in numerous dialects that take into account assorted clients on the web.

Website traffic

The order in which the traffic was directed towards the website was

• Direct->Referrals->Organic Search->Display Ads->Mail->Social

A strong brand recall is achieved by maximum direct traffic and this was actually seen. People would open their browser and directly came to BharatMatrimony website rather than coming from a referral or ads.

• The traffic was not coming on the website through emails or organic search or social recall, rather than the traffic came from branding and engagement channels.

WHAT WERE THE OFFLINE MARKETING CHANNELS

1. Mega Swayamvaram

Over 10,000 participants from 9 major communities came to the world’s largest Matrimony Meet, which was conducted in Chennai in the year 2007.

Why was such an event organized?

This event was conducted so that the match-making would become quick and a platform was given to the people with similar thoughts who were seeking a better half.

Were they able to pull it off? Yes? Then, How?

• The characteristics of the brides partaking in the Swayamvaram were given in a position astute ordered booklet containing the subtle elements of the lucky men and the other way around.
• This booklet included points of interest like rank, stature, weight, and horoscope and so on and sent to the members well ahead of time.
• Rundown of probable was shortlisted for a gathering to be started.
• Contact subtle elements of all members from particular ranks would be given at the setting for them to make contacts autonomously after the occasion.

Result:

The outcome was huge. People were strolling around with similar thoughts in their minds and they were actually networking and were interacting with each other for the betterment of their future. This gave a big kick to BharatMatrimony brand wise.

2. Families opting for speed dating

• Creating strong offline communities was an integral part for BharatMatrimony to build the trust.
• The first ever Matrimony Meet was organized in 2002 with a thought of meeting the bride and groom face to face where they can discuss all the perspectives.
• This gave an opportunity for one-on-one discussion.

3. Special Meet Up

Muruga knows that it is important to know someone whom we want to marry and everyone deserves to choose the best life partner. Keeping this in mind, BharatMatrimony hosted it’s first-ever Matrimony Meet for the physically challenged.

4. Retailing

The thought was to grow under the lead mark BharatMatrimony.com, giving guardians and the more seasoned age that isn’t excessively educated a disconnected channel, making it impossible to convey face to face.

BharatMatrimony’s methodology for online development has dependably been to help it with disconnected retail outlets that clients can visit, converse with delegates. This refines a brand.

• Approximately 100 retail outlets of BharatMatrimony were opened in the metro cities and the surrounding cities of Delhi in the year 2007-2008. Some of the outlets were company-owned and some of them were under the franchise of BharatMatrimony. The main reason was branding, although some of them were not able to do well, but, they were becoming a known brand. Some of the Tamilians picked up TamilMatrimony instead of BharatMatrimony, so it was like one of them was getting known. The plan didn’t work as the brand strategy was not coming in line with the local brand strategy. Expanding quickly without customization and losing money to the retail outlets led to the shutdown. The Recession also played a part in the shutdown.
• Muruga did not give up on the shutdown but he decided to re-launch it in a different manner. This time he started the outlets locally and later on planned to expand it nationally. 20 company-owned retail outlets were launched by the name of tamilmatrimony.com in Tamil Nadu. This is the way Muruga customized the branding.

The Benefits

• People took an interest while speaking to the representative in their local language.
• People took printouts of the selected and shortlisted grooms and brides.
• It likewise encouraged perceivability locally and accumulation of payments.

The Results

Within a half year, it was clear that the outlets were a colossal achievement and over a time of year and a half, BharatMatrimony propelled more than 100 organization claimed outlets skillet India with a comparable restricted procedure. As of now, it has 140 retail outlets.

5. Partnering with the government

The only purpose of the partnership with the government was to reach the people living in the surrounding area of the cities. Through this, they could reach too many more brides and groom irrespective of the place.

• Worked together with the Department of Post, Government of India, to offer BharatMatrimony Membership Cards through post workplaces the nation over.
• Banded together with the Andhra Pradesh government to give marital administrations through e-Seva, an administration started by the legislature to guarantee innovation achieves everyone – urban and rustic, rich and poor, proficient and unskilled.
• Tied up with the Government of Kerala to give Matrimony benefits through the Akshaya activity. This is an inventive task went for connecting the computerized partition between the urban and the country to make monstrous financial development.

6. Offline Brand Campaigns

April 14th, Matrimony Day

• People celebrated the happiness of the wedding bliss on Matrimony Day, 14th April. BharatMatrimony gave away discounts and offers from many leading brands keeping the spirit of Matrimony Day alive. Even The Hindu published a 4-page supplement titled “Perfect Match” on Matrimony Day and with everyone celebrating it; the day is officially celebrated as Matrimony Day.
• BharatMatrimony is the reason behind the celebration of marriage.

Guinness Book of World records

To praise their fifteenth commemoration, BharatMatrimony made the world’s biggest photograph collection on Matrimony Day. What was remarkable about this collection was that BharatMatrimony highlighted each couple (who met on their entryway) with their unique wedding photographs.

Outcome: Their message, ‘Marriage is fundamental to anchor a cheerful and sound society’ was generally welcomed.

Let’s take a look at the summary of Marketing

HOW IS BHARATMATRIMONY DOING THINGS DIFFERENTLY?

1. Forceful expansion

With cash in and a solid a dependable balance inside the marriage space, BharatMatrimony had two choices through which they could extend –

A solitary brand system where they could take off more administrations around marriage and a multi-mark technique wherein they could make different commercial centers utilizing a similar innovation and move on a level plane. They settled on both. This is the manner by which they did it–

SINGLE-BRAND STRATEGY

To build the BharatMatrimony brand and speed up the growth, the company introduced services related to Matrimony for a $56 Billion market in India.

1. Photography (launched in 2015)

Offering professional services in photo shoots and videography

2. MatrimonyBazaar (launched in 2016)

Wedding services for those who wanted to save time and money while getting married

3. MatrimonyMandap (launched in 2017)

Helped by checking the availability of the wedding venue and were allowed to book at best prices.

To keep the correspondence and commitment unblemished even post the wedding, BharatMatrimony built up the attached gateways which shared updates and data for and by couples post marriage.

• Success Stories

It’s a page where the newly wedded couples used to share their experience of a successful marriage. It has a section called Tinies and in this section, couples used to share pictures and stories with their relatives and families.

• com

On this platform, people used to share all the ideas and experiences post-marriage and this would help the users with the things which they could use.

MULTI-BRAND STRATEGY – DIVERSE MARKETPLACES

Muruga saw the accompanying focal points of utilizing a multi-mark procedure –

• It was anything but difficult to duplicate these commercial centers utilizing the same back-end innovation
• Scalability wasn’t an issue
• Also, marital clients aren’t deep rooted clients. The lifetime estimation of a client is typically 3 a year. They just remained on the stage until they got hitched. Once the pursuit is finished, there is no purpose behind them to return to the site. This made it basic to differentiate.

Keeping the structure of innovation set up, Muruga took an official choice and chose to dispatch the accompanying commercial centers successively from 2006 to 2008 i.e. 8 benefits in a traverse of two years. The enhancement helped pick up the piece of the overall industry and these stages were beginning to see development –

• com: The No.1 Property Portal.
• com: Help individuals with individual, property and vehicle credits.
• com: The Online Automobile Supermarket.
• Mobile 5050: Latest news on telephones, contraptions
• com: The Online Classifieds.
• Clickjobs: An occupations entrance
• Indiapages: The Online Yellow Pages
• BharatBloodBank – a non-benefit, non-business interface

To be continued…..

In the next blog, we will tell you that how the pricing was decided and what experiments did Muruga conducted along with the data-driven strategy and product updates.

References

https://www.bharatmatrimony.com/aboutus.php

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BharatMatrimony

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/entrepreneurship/i-am-married-to-and-through-bharat-matrimony-murugavel-janakiraman/articleshow/60525006.cms

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murugavel_Janakiraman