231122 sip report

Summer Internship Report on

“Digital Marketing and Brand management of

Playnlive.com through the blog Fit-o-Play, New Delhi”

In partial fulfillment of

FMG PGDM XXIII

Under the guidance of

Prof. Ambrish Gupta

Faculty, Finance Area

FORE School of Management, New Delhi

Prepared by

Rohit P L

FMG 23C, Roll No– 231122

FORE School of Management, New Delhi

FORE School of Management

Certificate

This is to certify that Mr Rohit P L Roll No. 231122 has completed his summer

internship at Playnlive Sports India Pvt Ltd. and has submitted this project report

entitled Digital Marketing and Brand management of Playnlive.com through the

blog Fit-o-Play, New Delhi towards partial fulfillment of the requirements for the

award of the Post Graduate Diploma in Management (FMG--23) 2014-2016.

This Report is the result of his own work and to the best of my knowledge no part of

it has earlier comprised any other report, monograph, dissertation or book. This

project was carried out under my overall supervision.

Date:

Place:

Prof Ambrish Gupta


Contents

Certificate....................................................................................................................2

Table of figures...........................................................................................................6

Executive Summary....................................................................................................7

1. Introduction..........................................................................................................9

1.1 Background....................................................................................................9

1.1.1 About the sports and fitness industry......................................................9

1.1.2 About the company................................................................................12

1.1.3 Competitors...........................................................................................14

1.2 Relevance....................................................................................................15

1. Browser..........................................................................................................23

2. Search Engine Results Pages.......................................................................23

Compelling Ad Copy..........................................................................................26

Recommended Length.......................................................................................26

Avoid Duplicate Meta Description Tags.............................................................26

Not a Google Ranking Factor.............................................................................27

Quotes Cut Off Descriptions..............................................................................27

1.3 Objectives....................................................................................................29

2. Literature Review...............................................................................................30

2.1 Introduction..................................................................................................30


2.2 Internet Marketing........................................................................................31

2.3 Sports Online Marketing...............................................................................32

2.4 Social Media................................................................................................34

2.5 Search Engine Optimization.........................................................................36

2.6 Conclusion...................................................................................................36

3. Methodology......................................................................................................37

3.1 Research Design.........................................................................................37

3.2 Data collection methods...............................................................................37

3.3 Sampling......................................................................................................37

3.4 Analysis........................................................................................................38

3.4.1 Users.....................................................................................................38

3.4.2 Bounce Rate and average session duration..........................................38

3.4.3 New sessions........................................................................................39

3.4.4 Demographics.......................................................................................39

3.4.5 Location.................................................................................................41

3.4.6 Acquisition.............................................................................................43

3.4.7 Device...................................................................................................44

4. Results...............................................................................................................45

5. Conclusion and suggestions..............................................................................46

6. Limitations..........................................................................................................47

7. Further scope.....................................................................................................47


8. Annexure............................................................................................................49

8.1 General Tables............................................................................................49

8.2 References...................................................................................................50


Table of figures

Sl num Figure namePage num

1 SEO and sports 20

2 Browser details 23

3 SERP 23

4 Meta description 26

5 Users 38

6 Bounce rate 38

7 New sessions 39

8 Age group 39

9 Gender 40

10 Interest category 41

11 Location 41

12 City vs users 42

13 Top channels 43

14 Social media acquisition 44

15 Device 44

16 Mobile OS 45


Executive Summary

Sports and fitness is becoming an important part of any normal person’s life, some of

them prefer joining the gym as they find that their hectic corporate life is leaving their

body with out a proper shape, and most often people do not find relevant information

about any sports and fitness facility near them. To fill this gap of information

Playnlive.com was started with a vision to make the information available to

everyone easily and make this country a fit one. Since it is a start up with limited

resources and manpower it is quite straight forward that the company would rely on

digital marketing for brand building and other promotions. Digital marketing involves

various parameters out of which SEO is the most important one. SEOs are the most

inexpensive way to put your site on the first few SERPs. Content plays a vital role in

SEO, as the parent site is basically a discovery platform, a huge amount of unique

content is not a present, to cover up for this all such sites start off with their blogs.

The blog Fit-o-Play was started for this purpose and later became a good platform

for brand building and brand promotion for other corporate partners. This blog was

not only used for content purpose but also to draw traffic from the blog to the parent

website, a platform for promoting the corporate partners that are featured in the

websites like their various events, promotional events etc. The blog was written on a

platform called Word Press. Wordpress provides the blog developer with various

plugins for better user engagement, for SEO and many more. Now with the help of

Google analytics and webmaster tools we were able to find out the actual data

regarding the traffic details and also real time analysis. From the data received from

Google analytics it was found that most of the users were from Delhi and later other

metro cities like Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad followed the suit. With the


help of analytics result we were able to find out that most of the traffic comes from

Facebook when social media is considered. Not only this it was found out that the

bounce rate was around 69% which is pretty high, and it was also noticed that the

percentage of new users was higher which is good for a new blog. All this data

collected helps in formulating marketing strategies with minimum investment. Since it

was found out that Facebook draws a lot of traffic to the blog, it would be wise to

promote posts through Facebook by boosting five posts every week for some money

per day, generally the money spent is Rs 100/day/post. Coming to twitter where the

information is spread in a more viral way. To have a good impact in twitter the

number of followers play a very important role. Apart from these, there are various

user engagement applications online that can grab user’s attention either through

pop up or any other way. The applications like Notify Visitor which provides analysis

as well can be used. The importance of content in brand building is something which

every website has to take seriously as it is very effective, cost effective and can be

evaluated easily with out any errors.


1. Introduction

1.1 Background

1.1.1 About the sports and fitness industry

According to a recent report on the Indian sports sector by KPMG and CII, the

global sports industry is estimated to be worth around USD 620 billion, while in

India, sports is yet to be recognised as a sector and there is no comprehensive

study on the industry’s estimated size in the country. According to experts in this

field, times are changing now, and awareness about sports is spreading. They

even say that there may be a direct link between this sector and the health and

fitness sector, which may nurture the growth of sports startups in India. It has

been found out that the Fitness & Slimming service sector is valued at $2 Bn

which is growing at 25-30% CAGR. This market is just a subset of the estimated

$17 Bn health and wellness market of India. The health and wellness space

seems to be heating up a lot.

Driving forces of this startup:

Awareness that playing a sport can help in fitness

Overall ecosystem push toward health and wellness

More people become members of sports clubs or sports centres

New residential projects give importance to sports infrastructure

Corporate employers encourage sports for team building and fitness


Kinds of Indian startups in this sector:

Globally, the sports ecosystem comprises a range of associated businesses such

as sports manufacturing, retail, e-commerce, tourism, sports medicine, venues &

infrastructure, media & hospitality and merchandising.

The Indian ecosystem is seeing a lot of activity in the following categories:

Overall ecosystem push toward health and wellness

More people become members of sports clubs or sports centres

New residential projects give importance to sports infrastructure

Corporate employers encourage sports for team building and fitness

Today in this modern world more and more Indians are hitting the gym every

year. The industry, which probably belonged to the elite and select few many

decades ago, has now consumed the middle class and entered fringe villages

which are on the periphery of urbanization. Today, fitness industry accounts to

over $24 billion franchise industry which is waiting to be expanded and exploited

to achieve the complete potential.

In the last decade or so, Indian fitness industry has come a long way from being

a non-existent upper middle class dominated industry that only reached a certain

category of people. In the recent years, the middle class with its highly disposable

income and newfound consciousness about health is now working hard to keep

predominant health conditions at bay.

Diabetes, cardiac problems, osteoporosis, arthritis are common among Indians

who are rushing to occupy the world's number one slot in many health conditions

that invariably become a part of their existence by the time they enter the post-40


lifespan. Fitness industry isn't banking on this newly dawned realisation alone. It

is also working on ensuring Indians realize the importance of 'looking good,

eating right and feeling good'.

Earlier, it was only sports persons who endorsed directly or indirectly, the

importance of fitness. Today that isn't the case. Fitness has as many champions

today in various fields. Fitness is considered to be the lone solution for so many

psychological and physiological problems that medical intervention can be

minimized by just hitting the gym alone. The middle class has now latched on to

it. Among the first few gyms in the country, which have now gone on to create a

niche segment for self is Talwalkars, VLCC, Golds etc must have been pretty

stumped at the idea of having to sell punishment as a lifestyle to people. But,

decades later, the fruits have paid off. These brands are not only the leaders in

the segment, but also sole drivers of this economy that is bound to see brighter

days ahead. The market of fitness is still in its nascent stages today, with a lot of

potential to see an unabated growth in the coming years. Obsession with great

bodies has now turned into an equal sport for both men and women. Though

there is not much of a visible disparity, commodification of fitness is as much as

pornografication of a beach body too. Fitness today is a product that is packaged

and sold in gyms with the promise of reaching a perfect body with constant

workout.

This is exactly where the experts come in to warn against setting up unrealistic

expectations. It is okay to desire to have a body that's perfect and aim at it, but

it's altogether another factor to obsess over a photo-shopped picture that shows

an unrealistic body that cannot be achieved. The message is somehow going


missing while the crucial aspects about fitness are being shared by nutritionists

and doctors.

Fitness Industry, according to experts, holds only 8% of the total wellness

industry's share with ample space to grow and coexist. The industry is anticipated

to grow at a good 20% every year, with some prominent international brands

making headway into the country.

1.1.2 About the company

PlaynLive founded by Nakul Kapur along with his friend Rahul Wadhwa, is an

aggregator of information related to sports and fitness facilities. Playnlive Sports

was born out of a vision to make information related to sports across the country

at your fingertips. Their service is basically providing accurate and updated

information about sports clubs, complexes, coaching academies, fitness centers

and studios. With an aim to be the world’s largest platform for sports enthusiasts,

PlaynLive have more than 9000 listings of various sports establishments (clubs,

complexes, academies) and fitness centers across 5 cities in India. Visitors can

log on to Playnlive.com, select their city, select a sport and search for a facility

near their place. The users will be able to find complete relevant information

related to any sports facility.

Playnlive lists all sports facilities for free but charges for featured or promoted

listings and ads. The website has also signed up merchants for online bookings,

cash management and online ticketing for sports events. The website was

launched on 1’st February 2014, however it started its operations for Delhi NCR

in September 2013. They started out with listings for Delhi initially and later on, as

traffic grew, scaled to other metro cities as well.


Products of Playnlive:

Uniqueness of the service: The accuracy of data and aggressive check

controls help people get reliable information from our platform. This is one

of the main reasons to why this company has been growing at 3x levels for

the past few quarter.

Free listing: Playnlive lists all sports facilities for free but charges for

featured or promoted listings and ads. The website has also signed up

merchants for online bookings, cash management and online ticketing for

sports events.

Book a trial: It often happens that you would like to try out a particular

sport or fitness facility before you purchase the membership but all the

facilities might not provide it. So Playnlive started a feature called book a

trial where the user can book for a free trial and check out his desired

facility.

Advertising: Advertisement by sports goods seller, sports facility owners

and sports event organisers is one their primary source of revenue. They

work on a fixed and variable fee model with the sports establishments

where they get the variable part on every referred sale from their platform.

Corporate Listing: They provide sponsored listing for our corporate

partners who are giants in their own respective fields.

Playnlive Pass: They are also building Playnlive Pass where people

would be able to pay for the service they want to avail. It will be like a

virtual sports stadium and gymnasium. The user will have to pay only for

the service they want to avail eg a Zumba class, daily gym pass,

swimming class, court booking etc.


Fit-o-play: This blog was basically started to provide related and updated

information about sports, health and fitness. Here the users can access

the information related to their interest and provide their views through

comments and ratings section.

1.1.3 Competitors

The online sports and fitness discovery space is scattered sector as there not many

players in the market. The exact market share values cannot be found out as a

detailed study of this sector has not yet been done. Though Playnlive enjoys a first

mover advantage, there are few firms which are competing in this space. Some of

these firms are as follows:

Qurlo: a Delhi based startup, has entered into this space with aim to provide

you with all information about various physical wellness centres falling into

broad categories of ayurveda, yoga, beauty clinics, body care, spas, bridal

make up, dermatology, face care, fitness centres, skin care, gym, hair care,

yoga, weight loss and so on. With the power of social media, digital

consumption of content and information is growing at accelerated rates. Every

brand, every service and any idea that seeks to connect with the end user

must have a digital address. Qurlo reviews any outlet in the city with a brief

description about the centre, services offered and contact details along with

pictures and advertisements about any discounts and offers available.

Fitho: After struggling from weight management issues at some point of life,

Prachi Gupta (Founder) and Dhruv(Co-founder) realized that for anyone

looking to lose weight, finding a good solution that was convenient, affordable,

and one that works around their lifestyle wasn’t easy. And there is no doubt

that rising disposable incomes, sedentary lifestyle, is coupled with growing


awareness of health & fitness & internet/mobile penetration. Having a look at

all this, and coupling it with their background in the digital industry, the two

saw an opportunity for digital weight management services which made them

launch Fitho. Fitho is a technology based weight management service, that

provides its member a personalized program with nutrition & exercise and

helps them manage their weight, or lifestyle disorders like diabetes, heart

health, etc.

Fitraq: Fitraq is anther start up in this space which caters to the fitness sector

by providing a discovery platform for gyms. Currently it is available in Delhi-

NCR. The company claims to have over 1,200 fitness centres on its platform

as of now. However, users need to register on the site to contact the centres.

1.2 Relevance

Digital Marketing is a term that encompasses modern marketing techniques used

online, for example, Social Media, Blogging, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Pay

per Click Management (PPC), Branding, Content Marketing, Video Marketing and

App creation. As for the Sports Industry, well, this really is as broad as it gets. From

a performance point of view, this could be the marketing of a sports event, an

athlete, a club/team, as well as sporting professional such as psychologists,

physiotherapists, nutritionist, etc. Then there are the businesses and retailers

offering sporting goods and services who also rely on Digital Marketing as a key

driver for their business.

Whether it’s your favourite football team, sports event, retailer or competitor, being

seen online, as well as engaging with supporters and customers is now a vital aspect


for effective sports marketing. In this case, it is worth highlighting individual examples

to explain how Digital Marketing is helping to change the sporting world.

The biggest change to the sports industry has been the advent of social media. With

platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, there are millions of users for sports brands

to promote themselves to. This is by no means a recent thing either, as sports

people and their respective clubs and teams utilise such platforms to harness

branding as well as engagement to make their fans’ online experience all the more

rewarding.

For the average sports fan, affording expensive tickets to see an event is often

extremely challenging, both in financial and often geographical terms. What social

media does is bridge the ever increasing gap between the expense of live fandom

and the free exposure of social media. In effect, this has created a new form of

fandom, one which takes advantage of the new digital age.

In addition, Econsultancy recently ran a story regarding Manchester City’s social

media strategy, which focuses on engagement. Whilst this is a bit of a no-brainer,

after all, social media is a fantastic way of building your online branding through

quality user experiences; it is possible to also drive additional traffic to your website

from social media, if that’s your goal.

For many, this came across as a desperate attempt for the fans to decide who the

club should sign, rather than a competent and well-run hierarchy. Whilst Liverpool

FC protest that this was taken out of context as they were just running a poll to see

who their fans think should be the next manager, it came across as if they needed

suggestions. In any case, it was a rookie mistake.


So, when it comes to writing updates or sharing information, remember, whilst it

needs to be interactive and engaging, you also don’t want to harm your brand image,

otherwise this could be a very costly mistake.

Google considers these important parameters to provide better search results and

good page rank, they are as follows:

SEO title:

Meta description

Backlinks

Content

Focus keyword

Meta keywords

Since content is one of the most important parameters blogging becomes a vital

aspect for any dot com company or any website per say.

Blogging:

Teams and clubs across a variety of different sports have used blogging as a great

way to showcase more of a human and real side to the trials and tribulations of

supporting a particular team or club. Even national and local newspapers now have

dedicated blog sections, where supporters can write down their thoughts of their

Saturday or Sunday afternoon endeavours (or midweek evenings too for that

matter). Sports fans now have huge numbers of followers and are part of a much

larger online sports community. In addition to forums and chatrooms, many


dedicated and die-hard fans set up and populate their own blogs with relevant and

engaging material.

Some clubs hardly engage with their bloggers – not only is this doing little to garner

their support, they’re missing a trick too. Other clubs, for example Arsenal Football

Club, have a strong following when it comes to the online community. Thousands of

different blog owners all like to share their views on what’s happening with the club

both on and off the pitch, and Arsenal FC worked with blog owners to get a particular

story out to their community of followers.

In short, the club had received negative press regarding the quality of medical care

for its players. After launching a new state of the art medical centre, they utilised a

blogger outreach programme to help generate positive publicity amongst their online

community – and it worked too.

This example provided the required boost to start a blogging platform called Fit-o-

Play for Playnlive.com which helped in filling the gap of good amount of content

required for Google to index the website as the parent website is discovery platform

where a good amount of rich data cannot be found hence this blog became very

important. This blog was not only used for content purpose but also to draw traffic

from the blog to the parent website, a platform for promoting the corporate partners

that are featured in the websites like their various events, promotional events etc.

The blog was written on a platform called Word Press. Word Press is a very

prominently used blogging platform across the globe. There are various plugins

available in this particular platform to design the look of the blog, user engagement

plugins like rating widget, comments widget etc, SEO plugin which helps the blog


developer to decide for the focus keyword, SEO url, Meta description for that

particular blog and meta key words.

Though lately, according to Google’s new semantic algorithm Meta keywords are not

given much of a weightage. The reason being that people in order to improve the

page rank show their respective page on the first pages of Google search used meta

keywords that were most searched on the internet irrespective of these keywords

featuring in the article or not. This reduced the quality of the search results of

Google. The new algorithm of Google which is Semantic algorithm is an improved

version of the previous algorithm to show better search results. The semantic

algorithm uses structured data to for each page/blog, where there is a cap of 160

characters for this structured data. Here the developer has to type in the structured

data and update the page so whenever a user searches for anything on Google then

the structured data is also searched along with the url, Meta description, focus

keyword, and meta keywords. Even though Meta keywords are not very important

according to this new algorithm but still developers feel that each page must have at

least 4-5 Meta keywords. In word press the cap on Meta keywords is 16.

SEO and Sports

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) has taken on huge prominence in the sports

industry. Social media and blogging can be used to engage with the fans on a much

more personal level, it’s SEO that is been used to improve and enhance exposure

and generate additional traffic to the websites by showing the pages of the websites

on the first few search results. Generally two types of SEOs are involved, namely on-

page SEO and off-page SEO. My project was more towards the on-page SEO as it

was directly involved with the content and the keywords and other aspects of SEO.


Many people like retailers, sports professional sports persons, nutritionists etc who

have an online presence through websites or blogs focus on SEOs. They either

outsource there SEO part or do it in house. Generally off-page SEO is outsourced as

it involves lot of skill and experience to show better search results by being visible on

the first few search engine results’ page (SERPs).

Figure 1.1

As you can see from the above image, when searching for a term as competitive as,

‘sports shoes’, you can see the advantages of achieving that number 1 spot. Within

the annotation I have just highlighted the Meta, and how well it has been optimised.

However, any SEO specialist will tell you that a lot more goes into SEO campaigns

like this. Even such optimised Meta description and keywords is no longer an actual

ranking factor, but another way to enhance Click through Rate (CTR), which in the


example above would work effectively, given that the user was searching for

‘Running Shoes’.

Brand Management within Search Engines

Another way in which I used SEO in my project for digital marketing purposes was

for Brand Management. Traditionally, brand management or reputation management

within the search engines refers to the way in which the listings can be manipulated,

so that only positive listings appear with the results. That means when someone

searches for a brand, they will only see quality on-brand links, with anything negative

or potentially harmful listings pushed down the results page.

PPC and Sports

Pay per Click (PPC) listings within search engines are for those businesses that are

looking to increase revenue through the sale of tickets, merchandise, clothing or

services for sport and sporting events via the search engines.

With this in mind, this type of Digital Marketing activity isn’t exactly exclusive to the

sports industry. However, what I have noticed is the way that certain paid listings can

be quickly updated to piggyback off any recent sporting achievement, associated

with what is being sold with the paid advertisement.

Content Marketing and Video Marketing

With reference to the creation and distribution of unique content whether it’s written,

pictorial or in video form which can be optimized giving it a greater chance to be

seen online. Such marketing techniques have their own benefits. From a technical

point of view, it builds brand awareness, creates additional links as well as traffic to


one’s website. From a sporting perspective, such content keeps fans, followers and

potential customers interested and engaged all the time.

Apps

Today in this modern day of smart phones mobile applications have become a must

for any dot com company. Consider Zomato which started of with an online

discovery platform for restaurants now has its own applications and most of the

users use the applications when compared to the traffic drawn on the website. The

same is the case with Playnlive.com where the mobile applications are in the

development stage and will be soon available on all the three most prominent

platforms i.e. ios, Android and Windows.

Now coming to other important parts of SEO

SEO title: Title tags—technically called title elements—define the title of a

document. Title tags are often used on search engine results pages (SERPs) to

display preview snippets for a given page, and are important both for SEO and social

sharing.

The title element of a web page is meant to be an accurate and concise description

of a page's content. This element is critical to both user experience and search

engine optimization. It creates value in three specific areas: relevancy, browsing, and

in the search engine results pages.

Optimal Length for Search Engines

Google typically displays the first 50-60 characters of a title tag, or as many

characters as will fit into a 512-pixel display. If you keep your titles under 55

characters, you can expect at least 95% of your titles to display properly. Keep in


mind that search engines may choose to display a different title than what you

provide in your HTML. Titles in search results may be rewritten to match your brand,

the user query, or other considerations.

A title tag is the main text that describes an online document. Title elements have

long been considered one of the most important on-page SEO elements (the most

important being overall content), and appear in three key places: browsers, search

engine results pages, and external websites.

1. Browser

Title tags often show up in both the top of a browser's chrome and in tabs.

Figure 1.2

2. Search Engine Results Pages

When you use keywords in the title tag, search engines will highlight them in the

search results if a user has performed a query including those keywords. This gives

the user greater visibility, and generally means you'll get a higher click-through rate.

Figure 1.3


Optimizing the titles

Because title tags are such an important part of search engine optimization,

implementing best practices for title tags makes for a terrific low-effort, high-impact

SEO task. Here are critical recommendations for optimizing title tags for search

engine and usability goals:

Be Mindful of Length:

As stated above, search engines will truncate titles in search results that exceed a

certain length. For Google, this length is usually between 50-60 characters, or 512

pixels wide. If the title is too long, engines will show an ellipsis, "..." to indicate that a

title tag has been cut off. That said, length is not a hard and fast rule. Longer titles

often work better for social sharing, and many SEOs believe search engines may

use the keywords in your title tag for ranking purposes, even if those keywords get

cut off in search results. In the end, it's usually better to write a great title that

converts and get clicks than it is to obsess over length.

Place Important Keywords Close to the Front of the Title Tag

The closer to the start of the title tag a keyword is, the more helpful it will be for

ranking—and the more likely a user will be to click them in search results.

Leverage Branding

Many SEO firms recommend using the brand name at the end of a title tag instead,

and there are times when this can be a better approach. The differentiating factor is

the strength and awareness of the brand in the target market. If a brand is well-

known enough to make a difference in click-through rates in search results, the


brand name should be first. If the brand is less known or relevant than the keyword,

the keyword should be first.

Consider Readability and Emotional Impact

Creating a compelling title tag will pull in more visits from the search results. It's vital

to think about the entire user experience when you're creating your title tags, in

addition to optimization and keyword usage. The title tag is a new visitor's first

interaction with your brand when they find it in a search result; it should convey the

most positive message possible.

Meta description

Meta descriptions are HTML attributes that provide concise explanations of the

contents of web pages. Meta descriptions are commonly used on search engine

result pages (SERPs) to display preview snippets for a given page.

Meta description tags, while not important to search engine rankings, are extremely

important in gaining user click-through from SERPs. These short paragraphs are a

webmaster’s opportunity to advertise content to searchers and to let them know

exactly whether the given page contains the information they're looking for.

The Meta description should employ the keywords intelligently, but also create a

compelling description that a searcher will want to click. Direct relevance to the page

and uniqueness between each page’s meta description is key. The description

should optimally be between 150-160 characters.

SEO best practices that were followed in my project are,


Compelling Ad Copy

The meta description tag serves the function of advertising copy. It draws readers to

a website from the SERP and thus, is an extremely important part of search

marketing. Crafting a readable, compelling description using important keywords can

improve the click-through rate for a given webpage. To maximize click-through rates

on search engine result pages, it's important to note that Google and other search

engines bold keywords in the description when they match search queries.

Figure 1.4

Recommended Length

Meta descriptions can be any length, but search engines generally truncate snippets

longer than 160 characters. It is best to keep meta descriptions between 150 and

160 characters.

Avoid Duplicate Meta Description Tags

As with title tags, it is important that meta descriptions on each page be unique. One

way to combat duplicate meta descriptions is to create a dynamic and programmatic

way to make unique meta descriptions for automated pages.


Not a Google Ranking Factor

Google announced in September of 2009 that neither meta descriptions nor meta

keywords factor into Google's ranking algorithms for web search. Google uses meta

descriptions to return results when searchers use advanced search operators to

match meta tag content, as well as to pull preview snippets on search result pages,

but it's important to note that meta descriptions do not to influence Google's ranking

algorithms for normal web search.

Quotes Cut Off Descriptions

Any time quotes are used in a meta description, Google cuts off the description. To

prevent meta descriptions from being cut off, it's best to remove all non-

alphanumeric characters from meta descriptions. If quotation marks are important in

your meta description, you can change them to single quotes rather than double

quotes to prevent truncation.

Although conventional logic would hold that it's universally wiser to write a good meta

description, rather than let the engines scrape a given web page, this isn't always the

case. Use the general rule that if the page is targeting between one and three

heavily searched terms or phrases, go with a meta description that hits those users

performing that search. If the page is targeting long-tail traffic (three or more

keywords)—for example, with hundreds of articles or blog entries, or even a huge

product catalog—it can sometimes be wiser to let the engines extract the relevant

text, themselves. The reason is simple: When engines pull, they always display the

keywords and surrounding phrases that the user has searched for. If a webmaster

forces a meta description, they can detract from the relevance the engines make

naturally. In some cases, they'll overrule the meta description anyway, but a


webmaster can not always rely on the engines to use the more relevant text in the

SERP.

When choosing whether or not to add a meta description, also consider that social

sharing sites like Facebook commonly use a page's description tag when the page is

shared on their sites. Without the meta description tag, social sharing sites may just

use the first text they can find. Depending on the first text on your page, this might

not create a good user experience for users encountering your content via social

sharing.

Backlinks: Backlinks enable you to keep track of other pages on the web that link to

your posts. For instance, suppose Alice writes a blog entry that Bob finds interesting.

Bob then goes to his own blog and writes a post of his own about it, linking back to

Alice's original post. Now Alice's post will automatically show that Bob has linked to

it, and it will provide a short snippet of his text and a link to his post. What it all works

out to is a way of expanding the comment feature such that related discussions on

other sites can be included along with the regular comments on a post.

Focus Keyword: A focus keyword is the main keyword that you are hoping people

will look for and find your post. If your blog is in a competitive niche then chances are

that you will be competing with many other established and reputable publications for

popular keywords. In such situation, you can get more organic traffic by using long

tail keywords. Always remember that your audience is humans not search engines.

People don’t just type one keyword in search engines, they use phrases. Your focus

keyword can be a phrase.

A good SEO friendly post title is human readable, contains your focus keyword and

is within the 70 characters limit. However, it also needs to be catchy. When your


page appears in the search results, a user will decide whether or not they want to

click on it based on the SEO title and the description in the search snippet. The

description part may change as search engines display the most relevant part of

your article as the description. But the title will remain the same. Make sure your

SEO title describes exactly what people will get if they clicked on the link.

1.3 Objectives

The objectives of this project are as follows:

Understand the sports and fitness discovery sector.

Understanding the business model of Playnlive.com

Understanding the important aspects of digital marketing and practicing

them on a real time basis.

Understanding the importance of SEO for any website and parameters of

on-page SEO and implementing on the blog.

To increase the number of users on the blog by generating unique content

and promoting the content in order to draw traffic.

Importance of social media marketing and drawing the traffic to the

website and the blog through social media promotions specifically through

Facebook and Twitter.

Indexing of the website in order to provide better search results.

Application of different online marketing tools like Hootsuite, Tweetdeck

and Notify visitors to monitor the promotion campaigns.

Concept of Google analytics and strategizing the promotion campaigns

based on the results from Google analytics.


2. Literature Review

The papers considered for the literature review are as follows

The Role of Internet Marketing: Sports Business and Social Media by

Jamaal Brown

Understanding social media use and its marketing implications by David

Malerick

2.1 Introduction

The goal of sports business is to create the communication and online marketing

strategy for the consumers who seek products, services, brands, or the games.

Online sports business has seen explosive growth and become a viable means

of accomplishing marketing strategies (Youngjin, Ko, & Claussen, 2011). Social

media in sports has changed the style of communication and internet marketing.

The fans’ connection to sports is changing and social media is creating a whole

new channel for the fans to interact and be a part of the action that they may not

get at the stadium or the ballpark (Reed, 2010). Sports business organizations

provide the consumers with Internet and social media usage in order to boost

reputation and relationships with the sports organizations.

The level of understanding the consumers’ need and want through the utilization

of online and social media marketing is relevant to sports business. The

population of online sports consumers has increased and most sports

organization have utilized their websites as a marketing tool for their achieving

business objective (Youngjin, Ko, & Claussen, 2011). With the increase of online

and social media usage, the sports organizations aim to increase new and more


customers into the sports world. The bottom line is that the sports organizations

use online and social media to develop the relationship with the consumers.

The study about the role of internet marketing with the usage of social media in

sports organizations is limited. The purpose of this study is to examine and

understand how the role of internet marketing has changed the role of sports

business and social media. The study focuses on sports business (or

organizations) using online marketing, relationship marketing and social media in

the process of developing the relationship with the consumers.

2.2 Internet Marketing

Understanding internet marketing is important to succeed in business. The

customers purchase products through social media. Researchers claimed that

“today’s consumers are more empowered than ever before; social networking,

blogging, and the availability of digital devices such as tablets and

smartphonesallow consumers to connect with another, discuss brands and

products, and interact with brands quickly and easily” (Powers, Advincula,

Austin, Graiko, & Snyder, 2012, p. 480). Moreover, leading online brands have

raised expectation that brands are accessible and willing to engage with

consumers (Powers, Advincula, Austin, Graiko, & Snyder)

The brands influence consumers’ decisions because it is convenient to assist the

consumers to identify the brands they are interested in. Lipsman, Mud, Rich, and

Bruich (2012) stated that “brands increasingly are interested in establishing a

social presence and engaging with their fans, helping shape their customers’

experiences, and even leveraging their voices for greater marketing impact”

(Lipsman, Mud, Rich, & Bruich, 2012). The brands bring social media to keep up


with the consumers; therefore social media have the opportunity to create

connections with their consumers in order to build affinity and loyalty. (Powers,

Advincula, Austin, Graiko, & Snyder, 2012). When it comes to dealing with the

relationship with the customers, the organization needs to understand how to

use social media for marketing strategy for the customers.

It is significant to understand the organizations’ objectives and what it takes to be

Successful in internet marketing. The organizations are using social media for

marketing purposes in order to satisfy the customers’ wants and needs. In order

to be successful in marketing, the organization needs to create social media to

develop the objectives and relationship with the customers. Schlinke and Crain

(2013) offer the goals of the organization for social media initiatives should be

one or more of the following: (1) to establish a reputation as a thought leader in a

subject area, (2) to be the source of current relevant news around a topic, (3) to

make the members of the organization more accessible and create stickier

relationship with existing clients, and/or (4) to extend the current brand as one

serving a specific demographic. In addition, Schlinke and Crain (2013) include

content, branding, tools and implementation, blogs, and websites as a part of a

social media strategy.

2.3 Sports Online Marketing

Online marketing has impacted the sports business. According to Brown (2003),

the sports organization’s objective was to provide information about the

organization to the visitors or to generate awareness of the organizations

(Brown, 2003). The sports organizations want to help customers to understand

about the sports organizations objectivities (Brown, 2003). In order for the


customers to understand the sports organizations objectives, Brown (2003)

emphasized that “the online consumers need to continue developing the medium

as an effective marketing tool (Brown, 2003). Sports online marketing creates

money through customers who use Internet. Without the use of Internet, the

sports marketing will be ineffective. Before the existence of social media, sports

organizations consider Internet as an important marketing tool. The customers

have the ability to purchase the sports products online or through the Internet.

Brown (2003) claimed that it is important for marketers to develop new methods

of how to reach the targeted audience in order to enhance the sports

organizations’ reputation. The sports organizations can make the money when

the customers purchase the sports products they need. Due to Internet, the

customers purchasing products through online has enhanced new economic

opportunities for business (Madsen, 1996). The customers receive information

about sports online. With the increased utilize of online, the sports organizations

offer various websites to share, communicate, and interact directly with the

sports customers. If the customers are looking for news, online provides the

information for them. The sports organizations allow the sports customers to visit

a sports website and search for sports information because they are interested in

or committed to a certain sports team, player or issue in sports (Youngjin, Ko, &

Claussen, 2011). Moreover, the online marketing allows sports organization to

communicate information, updates, and events (Filo, Funk, & Hornby, 2009). If

customers want to purchase the tickets to watch the game, they are able to

make the ticket purchase through online. The sports organizations utilize the

Internet “as a main resource in connecting and communicating with the fans

throughout the world” (Filo, Funk, & Hornby, 2009). The key for sports marketing


is fan loyalty. Bee and Havitz (2010) emphasized that “loyalty to a sports team is

more extreme than loyal to any typical product because it tends to be more

intense and long term (Bee and Havitz, 2010). Sports organizations seem to

understand about the customers. The customers are the sports fans. In order to

satisfy the customers, sports organizations have the ability to serve them by

bringing products (athletes) to perform on the stage in front of customers (fans).

When the customers have their athlete favorites, they tend to purchase products

such as team jerseys. According to Meir and Scott (2010), they described the

loyalty of fans as a “tribal tendency.” Meir and Scott (2007) mentioned that a

tribe is “a group of people who are united by a shared passion, similar to a family

community.” The sports marketers understand that the sports fans are in turn

marketing to them as a whole to increase loyalty (Meir & Scott, 2007).

2.4 Social Media

The organizations utilize two-way communication such as social media platforms

to share, interact, and communicate directly with the customers. Kaplan and

Haenlin (2010) add that “all social media divide into six different categories:

collaborative projects (e.g., Wikipedia), blogs, content communities (e.g.,

YouTube), social networking (e.g., Facebook, Twitter), virtual social worlds (e.g.,

Second Life), and virtual game worlds (e.g., World of Warcraft)” (Kaplan and

Heanlin, 2010).

Kietsmann, Hermkens, McCarthy, and Slivestre (2011) claim that “social media

are comprised of mobile and web technologies that provide interactive platforms

for the public to share, create, discuss, and modify content” (Kietsmann,

Hermkens, McCarthy, and Slivestre, 2011). The researchers create the


framework of a social media honeycomb. The researchers define social media

honeycomb framework as social media platforms through the level of emphasis

on seven functional building blocks: identity, conversation, sharing, presence,

relationships, reputation, and groups (Keitsmann et. al, 2011). With the

combination of social media into current business tasks, Li and Bernoff claimed

that “firms can now more efficiently listen, talk, energize, support, and embrace

their audience and their ideas” (Li and Bernoff, 2011). The traditional method of

advertising has been decreasing. According to Mangold and Faulds (2009),

effective marketing and communications are “navigating away from traditional

methods of advertising, resorting to social media as a trustworthy source”

(Mangold and Faulds, 2009). The company or organization begins to understand

that their communication and marketing ability through old traditional media is

declining. There is an amplified increase in consumer conversations and a

decrease in a company’s direct control over its brand’s conversation (Mangold &

Faulds, 2009). The scholars believe that it is significant for companies or

organizations to remain active in monitoring and participating in the social media

dialogues (Mangold & Faulds, 2009).

The organizations need to create the methods of how to use social media to

communicate with the customers. With the effort of communicating with the

customers, Mangold and Faulds (2009) categorize nine methods that business

uses social media successfully: (1) provide networking platforms, (2) use blogs

and other social media tools to engage customers, (3) use both traditional and

Internet-based promotional tools to engage customers, (4) provide information,

(5) be outrageous, (6) provide exclusivity, (7) design products with talking points

and consumers’ desired self-images in mind, (8) support causes that are


important to consumers, and (9) utilize the power of stories. These are the

communication methods that customers want and need from the organizations.

2.5 Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization is often about making small modifications to parts of

your website. When viewed individually, these changes might seem like

incremental improvements, but when combined with other optimizations, they

could have a noticeable impact on your site's user experience and

performance in organic search results.

2.6 Conclusion

Internet marketing becomes very important tools for sports consumers. The

findings assisted us to understand the importance and role of utilizing Internet

marketing, relationship marketing, and social media to interact and communicate

with the sports consumers. Today, sports organizations have the ability to

access social media for marketing purposes such as promoting products,

services, and brands to sports consumers. In addition, sports organizations

utilize social media for marketing strategy. Social media provides sports

organization the opportunity to enhance relationship marketing with sports

consumers. Therefore sports consumers would be delighted and satisfied with

sports organization that provided consumers’ need and want.


3. Methodology

3.1 Research Design

The research undertaken by me was basically a descriptive research. I was given

the task to analyse the behaviour of the users visiting our website and based on

the conclusions, different marketing strategies were to be implemented.

3.2 Data collection methods

Primary data: Primary data was available from the Google analytics tool both for

the website as well as the blog. The data available contained both historic data of

the blog and also the real time data.

Secondary data: Before implementing any promotion campaign or starting to

publish articles for the blog a detailed secondary research on behaviour of the

general users was done with help of Google analytics, a detailed research on

most searched keywords was done in order to provide the content on the blog

with better focus keywords and Meta keywords.

3.3 Sampling

The total number of users visiting the blog in the time period between April 6,

2015 and June 5, 2015 were considered as a sample and this data was readily

available from Google analytics.


3.4 Analysis

3.4.1 Users

Figure 3.5

The total number of users during the tenure of the project was around 30500

users. Generally in a one week’s period a spike in number of users was observed

on Mondays, Fridays and Saturdays. The highest spike was observed on

Wednesday but that was due to a paid promotion campaign on social media and

the other spike in the number of users was generally observed on the above

mentioned days.

3.4.2 Bounce Rate and average session duration

Figure 3.2

From the above figure we can see that the bounce rate is 69.52%. Here bounce rate

means the number of users who leave the page immediately after entering the page.

The average session duration is around 1:58 min which is decent considering it’s a

fairly new blogging site. But coming to the bounce rate, it is too high for a blog which

was a matter of concern.


3.4.3 New sessions

Figure 3.3

Since the blog was a fairly new blog percentage of new visitors is expected to be

high. And we were able to draw around 73.4% new visitors in the given period of

time. The percentage of new sessions was also around 73.16% which is again

expected from a new blogging site.

3.4.4 Demographics

Age

Figure 3.4

It was observed that around 61% of the traffic came from the age group 18-34.


This particular data was helpful in deciding the target audience for the promotion

of blogs on Facebook for paid promotion.

Gender

Figure 3.5

Here we can see that the percentage of male users was dominating not by much

though. The reason behind this was that most of the male users are both interested

in fitness and sports hence the number of male users is dominating here. The gap

between male and female users is less because of the presence significant number

of female users looking for content related to fitness.

Interest

From the following figure we can see that the interests of the users varied over a

large number of varieties. Some of the significant percentages can be seen in the

following figure.


Figure 3.6

Here we can see that about 5.5% of the people interested in sports were visiting

the blog. This number started off with around 2% during the beginning stages of

the project but later on the number increased to 5.5% which means the targeting

for the promotion on social media especially from Facebook was showing positive

results though not a significant increase.

3.4.5 Location

India US not set Russia UK Germany China France Japan Indonesia

42.41

26.77

7.13

0.85 2.09 1.93 1.41 1.34 1.01 0.92

New users (%)New users (%)

Figure 3.7


The highest number of users was from India which was the target location. Here

the term not set means that particular data is not from one specific region but

from a collection of regions. The percentage of Indian users was around 42.41

which are twice that of from US. Now looking at the distribution of users across

different parts of India.

New Delhi Bangalore Chennai Hyderabad Pune Mumbai

27.77

5.86 5.18

1.46 0.893.36

New users (%)New users (%)

Figure 3.8

It was observed that most of the traffic was drawn from Delhi with Bangalore and

Chennai drawing almost same percentage of traffic. Hence there was a need to

increase traffic from other regions as well and strong promotion was required for

this purpose in these regions.


3.4.6 Acquisition

Figure 3.9

Acquisition means how the users get to any website. Here the blog has been

considered. For any website/blog users coming directly to the site are valued

more as that shows that the site has a good presence in the minds of the users.

Over here the direct acquisition is 47.7 % which can be considered as decent as

the blog is fairly new.

The second highest is through social media, the break up of social can be seen

in the next figure. Here organic means that users have visited the site based on

search results in Google. Here the on-page SEO plays an important role as it is

responsible for the visibility of the site on Google’s search results.

Referral is basically through the backlinks created on the other websites.


Facebook Twitter Quora Google+

85

7.8 3.5 3.3

Users (%)Users (%)

Figure 3.10

Here we can see that the highest traffic through social media is from Facebook.

Hence Facebook was the primary option for promotion and to attract users to the

blog.

3.4.7 Device

Desktop Mobile Tablet

67.72

30.38

1.7

Share (%)Share (%)

Figure 3.11

This particular statistic helps in designing the blog. Here we can see that majority

of the users prefer desktop over mobile and tablet, it should also be noticed that

mobile has a 30.38% share which is a significant number. This shows that the

blog has to be designed in such a way that it easily viewed on a mobile screen


and desktop as well. The figure below shows the share of the mobile operating

systems.

Android IOS Windows

64.64

29.21

2.82

Share (%)Share (%)

Figure 3.12

4. Results

The following results were achieved at the end of the project.

A direct traffic of about 47% was achieved.

A significant number of 30000 users were achieved in the course of two

months.

A better understanding of the behaviour of the users visiting the site has

been attained which helps in targeting the users online through different

social media platforms.


5. Conclusion and suggestions

Digital marketing is an umbrella term for the targeted, measurable, and

interactive marketing of products or services using digital technologies to reach

consumers. The key objective was to promote the brand Playnlive through the

blog and develop a huge user base. As already mentioned content is one of the

most important factors for increasing the visibility of the site on Google search

results. It is a very effective way of segmenting and targeting the users as

Google analytics gives us the historic data and the marketing plans can be made

accordingly.

It’s clear then that whichever Digital Marketing tool we use will depend on your

overall marketing goals. For high profile brands and athletes, engaging with fans

and being on-brand is of paramount importance, whilst for smaller teams, clubs,

retailers and sports businesses, social media as well as search engine marketing

seems to be a no brainer if you want to enhance brand awareness and exposure

within the search engines.

Since Playnlive.com is a start up most of the promotion activity was to create

brand awareness among the online users.

Suggestions:

The following changes and additions to the site can bring in more users:

Increasing the number of links within the site as Google ranks the sites

higher with many unique links.


Submitting the articles in Stumbleupon as it is trending worldwide for

users who read random stuff.

Promoting the blog through emails. Send mass emails and try to attract

the users to the site.

Submitting the posts to reddit will also bring in a lot of traffic.

Creating a top 10 post. Selecting the best articles and write a blog about

it.

Creating viral posts will help generate traffic.

6. Limitations

The following are the limitations:

This particular sector is highly unorganized hence it becomes difficult to

market the product online.

Since Playnlive.com is a start up, there’s always a limitation on budget

and other resources.

Any blog requires around 3-4 months generating a huge user base but

due to the time frame of only 2 months a significantly large number of

users could not be attracted.

7. Further scope

Looking at the increasing number of health conscious people in India, the

company has good scope as more and more people would like to get into

various fitness activity and as the site provides easy access to the information

and a booking option it wpuld work out in an amazing way. People also like to

read a lot about health and nutrition, keep themselves updated about different


sporting events around the world and this can be fulfilled by the blog and the

traffic from blog can be driven towards the parent website.


8. Annexure

8.1 General Tables

Country vs New users

Sl num CountryNew users (%)

1 India 42.412 US 26.773 not set 7.134 Russia 0.855 UK 2.096 Germany 1.937 China 1.418 France 1.349 Japan 1.01

10Indonesia 0.92

City vs New user

Sl num CityNew users (%)

1 New Delhi 27.772 Bangalore 5.863 Chennai 5.184 Hyderabad 1.465 Pune 0.896 Mumbai 3.36

Social media vs New user

Sl numSocial Media Users (%)Facebook 85Twitter 7.8Quora 3.5Google+ 3.3


Device vs New user

Sl num Device Share (%)Desktop 67.72Mobile 30.38Tablet 1.7

Mobile OS vs New user

Sl num OS Share (%)Android 64.64IOS 29.21Windows 2.82

8.2 References

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231122 sip report

Documents

brand management of

new sessions393

management fmg

new delhi certificate

project report

blog fito

sports online marketing322

brand building