Internet marketing and business performance in the real estate industry in Uganda

Abstract

The role of internet marketing in real estate has grown profoundly over the past few years. In an industry that once used print media as its primary form of delivering the marketing message, there is now an urgent need to have transitioned to the internet in order to reach today's homebuyer. The study sought to examine the effect of Internet Marketing on business performance in the real estate industry. The study intended to examine the effect of Social Media Marketing, Search Engine Marketing and Mobile Marketing on Business Performance. The study adopted a descriptive investigation of Association of Real Estate Agents Uganda (AREA-Uganda), and it used mixed approaches. The study population of 128 members of the association was considered for the study, among who included Associate Members, Corporate Members and Individual members. The study utilized three sampling techniques; Stratified sampling, Simple random sampling and Purposive Sampling. Using the Krejcie and Morgan table, a sample size of 97 was derived. The Study utilized two types of data collection methods; Interview guides and Questionnaires. Data from the questionnaires was analyzed using descriptive statistics and a correlation analysis to identify the relationship between the study dimensions in the variables as well as the regression analysis which was used to establish which among the independent variables predicts more of the dependent variable. Based on the findings of this study, it indicated that the use of internet marketing does influence business performance in the real estate industry. The findings indicate that social Media Marketing has a significant and fairly strong relationship on business performance as indicated by (R= .613**, P=. 000) and that social media marketing predicts business performance by 36.9%. Findings further indicated that Search Engine Marketing has a significant moderate relationship on business performance as indicated by (R=.521**, P= .000) and that it predicated business performance by 26.3%. According to the findings, Mobile Marketing has a significant strong relationship on business performance as illustrated by (R= .731**, P= .000) and that Mobile Marketing was a strong predictor of business performance as given by 52.9%. Generally, based on the findings, the study found out that internet marketing predicts business performance by 61.4% and it’s from this result that the study recommends real estate practitioners to utilize Mobile marketing because users are spending more time on mobile devices which are reviewed with a high frequency throughout the day. The study also recommends increased and efficient usage of social media so as to accrue the benefits that come with the adoption of social media marketing which include increased customer loyalty, brand recognition, increased market share and ultimately sales. Search engine marketing, though not highly utilized as a marketing tool in the real estate industry, it ensures increased numbers of visitors, traffic and visibility. Therefore the recommends real estate practitioners optimize their websites by creating appropriate content and also utilize google products efficiently because they can track their business performance with ease through the use of tools like google analytics which ultimately enables them to have access to new markets and clients.