We all are familiar with the swipe right or left gesture through Tinder and many more dating apps. Sitting there swiping through random strangers hoping to match with someone for a casual date or so to say just for hookups.
We all know that many are there swiping through profiles just to get hooked up with someone, whether be it on Tinder, bumble, or any other dating app. But everyone is not looking for hookups, some or certainly most of them are seriously looking for a partner or to come into a relationship.
This is the opportunity that Aisle caught and started its journey in 2014. A serious and Intent-Dating app for Indians all over the world made by the Indians for the Indians.
In this blog, we will know a little more about what or who Aisle is, how it was started, and the detailed marketing strategy of Aisle. So let’s begin.
About Aisle
Aisle is an Indian dating app based in Bangalore, Karnataka, made and created by & for Indians around the world. Aisle started its journey in 2014 with Abel Joseph the CEO/Founder of the Aisle Company.
As discussed above aisle was able to identify the opportunity of solving the problem of those people who were looking for serious relationships and not just for hookups or short dates. On top of that aisle targeted only the Indians who were serious about relationships.
Aisle provides a database of more than 3.4 Million Indians and South Indians Worldwide who are serious about a relationship. They are a high-intent dating app with an approach to recognizing Indian’s and South Indians’ susceptibility.
Previously they started s a website with 3 people working with freelancers and as they grew they shifted completely to a mobile app on Android and ios. Aisle is a woman-first company and app, as 40% of women downloaded their app and were the ones to get more involved.
Before getting into the marketing strategy of Aisle let’s know about the basic marketing mix of the company which is rudimental to every business.
Marketing Mix of Aisle
Marketing mix refers to the mix of a company’s products. And how it will be promoting it. What or who is the target audience etc? The marketing mix is a general marketing strategy of Aisle that the company has to follow to push its products or services and grow its brand. It usually consists of the 4 P’s which are as follows:
Product
The product can be a physical matter or service, it means what the company is selling to its customer.
For Aisle, since it’s a dating app it provides services to its customer by giving them a platform to connect and start a relationship. Following are some of the services:
Women First: As mentioned above, the aisle gives importance to the women as they are majorly involved and provide them exclusive features and let them take control.
Aisle Rooms: Aisle Rooms is a feature that has been recently introduced which allows the members to host a virtual meeting with each other before matching. An innovative feature for the lock-down situation.
Sending Invites: Sending Invites is just like sending a message to the individual personally as a conversation starter and continues further from there. It is a premium feature though like many other dating apps.
Settle Down: It’s just like a preference but a little more intense and serious as it asks whether you are interested in settling down or not or what time you are expecting.
Aisle Concierge: Concierge is a premium service offered to members where it provides with unlimited-likes, invites, and profile badges boosting your time for matching.
Love Stories: Love Stories is a feature or service where couples either in a relationship or married share their stories in the aisle love stories section. Aisle has a blog page for the same purpose with other features like relationships tips, etc.
On top of all this service aisle has launched another app under itself by the name Anbe and Meetho, especially for the Tamil Community Worldwide with some of the same features as the parent app aisle.
Their apps are also very simple to use and one can learn how to use the aisle app pretty quickly. They are also now targeting the matrimony industry apart from the dating industry. They are trying to be a solution between the dating and matrimony segment of the Indian market.
Price
Price is one of the important aspects of the marketing strategy of Aisle and is decided on many factors like the cost of maintaining the servers, regular app optimization, salary, wages, etc.
As of now, the aisle has the following price structure:
Place
Place refers to where and how a company sells and markets its products & services. Aisle being a dating app is completely online and also aisle has opted for cloud solutions rather than infrastructure for maintaining their servers, etc.
They provide their services online through their mobile app worldwide to Indians. Plus they are releasing apps for specific target groups too like Anbe and Meetho.
Promotion
This refers to the ways and mediums a company or brand chooses to market its products or services, through innovative ad campaigns, posts, tweets, dating memes, also even taking shots at some competitors as well.
As a part of the marketing strategy of Aisle, it promotes itself and its services through ad campaigns, on its social media handles like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and youtube. They also run ad campaigns like their recent ad campaign of ‘ One by Two’.
Aisle also took the opportunity of taking some shots at Tinder directly through a Facebook post to create a buzz around their name and most importantly market plus promote their app.
Competitor’s Analysis of Aisle
The Indian dating industry is the second largest after the US with a revenue of 323 Million Dollars in the year 2020.
The competitors of aisle are:
- Tinder
- Bumble
- OkCupid
- Hinge
- Grindr
- Happn, etc.
Though so many competitors, Tinder and Bumble are the major brands that hold the market. But according to reports aisle has crossed Bumble over the number of downloads in the year 2020, to become India’s second-largest dating app.
Tinder and Bumble have a great digital presence especially Tinder, where Aisle lacks behind a little bit.
To beat the competition the company needs to keep strategizing and planning new techniques to sustain. It is crucial to tackle the growing marketing trends. Hence, the marketing strategy of Aisle needs to be very strong. They also need to work on their SEO and digital marketing strategies too to compete with these big elephants of the industry.
Here, let us have a look at the marketing strategy of Aisle.
Marketing Strategy of Aisle
Following are the key components of the marketing strategy of Aisle:
Segmentation
Segmentation refers to the crowd or base of customers and the industry the company or brand operates in. For Aisle the market segment is the dating industry, along with it they are slowly expanding their segment and getting into the matrimony industry as well. Their focused age group is between 18 – 50.
Target Market
The target market refers to the primary focus of the company. The target market for Aisle that they focus on includes Indians between the age group of 18-50 who are looking for serious and long-term relationships rather than hookups.
Positioning
Positioning refers to the way a company positions or showcases its product or service, whether it is Pricing Positioning, Quality Positioning, Benefits Positioning, Customer Positioning, Convenience Positioning, Differentiation Positioning, etc.
Aisle positions its services as a mix of Differentiation, Customer, and Convenience Positioning. Differentiation because they have created a customer base or service for people who look for long-term and serious relationships rather than hookups.
Convenience and Customer come because they focus on their customer’s needs and provide the convenience of meeting each other through their phones with the click of some buttons.
Aisle’s Ad-Campaign
Aisle has a good social media presence and they have made quite innovative and creative videos to showcase their services and what is unique about them.
They have launched their Ad-Campaign ‘ One by Two ’ to showcase how young Indians date and seek romance in an old-school style. They have made a video for this campaign with two young individuals showcasing the culture of Indian dating and romance.
You can watch the video on youtube.
Though they have ad campaigns and promotional assets, the reach is not quite there still. Unlike its competitors, aisle lacks behind in reach and digital presence in comparison
Digital Presence of Aisle
Digital Presence refers to the digital mediums the company uses to promote itself and connect with its customers. Following are the platforms aisle has their presence in:
Youtube
Aisle has its own youtube channel with almost 1.2k followers where they share short stories, ad campaigns, and promotional videos about its brand and app.
Aisle has its own Facebook page and community with over 48,000 likes and more than 50,000 shares. They post memes, quotes, and also some stories shared by their members in the form of pics. They also post short video form stories with their ad campaigns too.
Aisle has its social media handle on Instagram by the name of aislenetwork with over 49,000 followers where they promote their dating app, and share ad campaigns, memes, stories, tips, etc.
Conclusion
Aisle offers a solution or service to a particular set or type of customers, which differentiates them from its competitors and provides them an advantage to have a market in the niche they have found that is in between dating apps and matrimony sites.
Though they have grown to be India’s second-biggest dating app, they still lack the digital presence that is needed as compared to some of their competitors.
They need to up their digital marketing strategy as well and optimize themselves to reach more potential customers in their niche and also maintain the acquired ones.
Digital Marketing is a growing need for every business, brand, and organization. Companies like Aisle heavily need this because of their young audience plus being a complete online business they need to be highly active and aware of their digital strategies and plans.
Digital marketing skills are in demand and are going to rise more in the upcoming future. So if you want to learn this skill then visit IIDE, to check out our courses for digital marketing. If you want to read more Case studies such as the marketing strategy of Aisle you can always visit our Knowledge Portal.
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