The Growth Team at Airbnb have 3 main Philosophies when it comes to growth: Its no secret in the growth marketing world that one of Airbnbs key ingredients to product growth success was referrals. Again, as a normal user it really is, but as marketers or anyone working in technology, we can appreciate there is a lot more work that goes behind the scenes. From what started off as a small feature as part of the Airbnb platform, the referral system has certainly come a long way since then to now in 2019. I would say this would tick a lot of boxes for many of Airbnbs prospective audiences who are yearning for a secluded getaway beyond the city limits. I dont think this works for all posts though. Ultimately, over time this has helped Airbnb. Required fields are marked *. Tam Al-Saad - Get more articles like this sent to your email, Principal Consultant, Search + Content Marketing. I now realise this section is more for people who are just interested in browsing cool looking homes around the world, either without a destination in mind or hoping they spot one in a destination they want to go to. The Airbnb homepage is currently receiving 57.82% of all traffic to the website, with it ranking for 3,929 keywords. Based on 3 different assumptions, the potential impact of referrals could have a dramatic compound effect on the bottom line in a very good way indeed. As to how people are arriving at this section of the site, this is likely through organic search, email traffic, and social promotion. Airbnb have put a lot of work into designing a marketplace that is built on trust. In this section of the article Ill be dissecting pages piece by piece to see how their website helps to drive growth. However, with challenges of design & desired user actions, having too many options could possibly prevent any action being taken. This can be invaluable content for someone who doesnt know much about their destination, especially when Airbnbs premise is that they want you to live like a local. Thats a pretty solid looking page structure in my opinion. Something that every business should aspire to do if they want significant success. Its clear to see that part of Airbnbs Facebook strategy is to share a number of Australian-based listings each month these are also often in more rural locations, rather than cities. browse homes. Im being highly pedantic but with the level of personalisation they go to elsewhere on the site (which Ill come to soon), Im holding them to a higher standard. All of this is inspected by a real person so youre ensured of its accuracy. One of the primary advantages of differentiation is that it is inherently costly. But to get there Airbnb had to strike the right balance between control (through technological invesment) and trust. Its quite an extensive sheet, but one of the best paid search competitor analysis tools Ive found for larger accounts, as it unpacks exactly what search terms are driving users to what landing pages. Theres no form with dates or number of guests like there was previously, so theres an extra step no matter what. Coca-Cola, for example, currently enjoys a profit margin of approximately 33 . Airbnb fees and room pricing. Explore Tips & Tricks All about new ways hosts can take their game to the next level. The images are small and hard to make out, and so not that intriguing. Airbnbs tend to be cheaper than hotels, and so the cost-conscious traveller would prefer to pay less and go without some of the frills and security that you get with a hotel. I wouldnt say Airbnb have exhausted their growth when it comes to accommodation rental, but most travellers are aware of who they are and what they offer. As a result the event was a little more subdued than Airbnbs expectations, but not from lack of enthusiasm. Not only did they revolutionise the travel industry, theyre one of the first startup unicorns to emerge in the mid-2000s and are emulated on every level from their business model and their map and search results, to their referral engines, and generally their outlook and approach to everything they do. With this guarantee, Airbnb have assured hosts that should the absolute worst happen, they will be covered by the company that enabled the transaction. But that doesnt mean I would use it at all costs. Airbnb Model can also pursue differentiation strategy based on the industry forces description in casename case study. Alongside their image-based content, Airbnb do share some video posts. While there is a plethora of content-based information present on the Airbnb website, as well as on external subdomains owned by Airbnb, Im going to focus on the key 4 areas I identified as providing the greatest value to their online strategy, and offer insights you can apply to your own campaigns. Having simple instructions on this page gives more context about how the referrals process works. To understand how Airbnb referrals work, we will be diving into the core areas of Design Experience, Psychology & Measurement/Testing of building a refer-a-friend system that grows awareness and drives more bookings and sales. Im sure your head is probably spinning with the amount involved in understanding referrals, but it goes to show the power of having referrals in your product can go a long way to increasing word-of-mouth and, ultimately, retaining users & acquiring new ones with virtually no cost. Airbnb Plus is a selection of only the highest quality homes with hosts known for great reviews and attention to detail. For example, the search term canberra accommodation has an average 40,500 searches per month, with the rankings as: Airbnb seems to be cognisant of their low organic positioning for generic [location] accommodation terms, and so acts to ensure they are in position 1 of ad placements for high volume targets. We know customer-advocacy is a big part of their success with referrals, but how does Airbnb nurture a community that can get users to not only invite friends to the platform via sharing referral links, but also help existing users and in turn new users via a dedicated community forum? Yes, hosts are charged 3%, but as Airbnb states on their website, this fee is to cover the cost o. Above all, they are looking for a property (or experience) that suits them unique. This is a part of the site I really like and also find quite interesting. The pricing strategy used by professionals. Moreover, Airbnb is exploring machine learning algorithms and AI to build a deeper understanding of images, improve reviews using natural language processing (NLP) and support more advanced search using NLP. At a close look, Airbnb business strategy consists of the following three elements: 1. Theres even an image of the host to prove its a real person behind it all. What is evident and which we havent seen many referral systems use is other social channels such as messenger & whatsapp. For some people, the host can be an important aspect of the trip. This is an awesome reception. Through the section Connect Locally, you come to this particular page. Check!). And youll see over the course of this article just how much they focus on bringing onboard new properties as part of their marketing strategy. But theres a great selection here in terms of price range. It was all about trusting people, not logos. Lets break this down a little more. This is an excellent strategy as it essentially allows them to give their audiences a little extra nudge down the sales funnel. This makes sense when you refer to data that was shared by the company towards the end of 2018, where they predicted which Australian locations would be the top 10 trending destinations for 2019 (based on internal data for bookings made in 2017 vs. 2018). From Afhrefs top pages function, we can see that a small amount of monthly traffic is coming from branded organic keyword rankings with content built out to answer branded queries. This in turn will have an overall positive effect on the website if the Experience pages continue to be optimised over time, particularly with the inclusion of internal linking to the relevant accommodation pages on the website. Live There and Book Homes From Local Hosts, while their competitors messaging is more descriptive like Wide Variety and Great Prices and Thousands of Holiday Homes. If you are familiar with the search engine optimisation space, its likely youve run into the term backlinks before. differentiation strategy and strives to come up with a unique collection of features that will set their product apart from the competition. The final call to action is also positioned with low intent language: Ultimately, I like how Airbnb have approach their landing page strategy and Im sure the breath of dynamically generated pages as well as their recommendation engine was resource intensive. Then you suddenly see a McDonald's and it becomes your choice of food because it is a safe bet an. Plus, the more they read/talk about it, the more theyre thinking about it, which should lead to less churn. Forget the tourist menu pedalling another overpriced pizza margherita, wouldnt you rather taste nonnas homemade pecorino stuffed ravioli while her son Francesco tells you comedic tales about growing up in Sardinia? Now we come to the sections that really show personalisation in use. Airbnb is new to the Corporate Responsibility scene but is quickly distinguishing itself as an emerging player the CSR community. As most businesses know, testimonials are extremely valuable. For example, if Airbnb shares a video which relates to Japan and this gets 50k views, creating an audience of viewers who watched 75% or 95% of this video would be great for their next Japanese-themed post, as they know these people are interested in video content to do with Japan. It is a cornerstone of Airbnb business strategy. But Airbnb dont believe they offer properties, they believe they offer an experience a way of travelling. Instagrams organic reach & algorithm works slightly differently, but well get to that later. Differentiation. The use of the word unique is what I find particularly interesting they could have gone with a number of different adjectives that could be used to describe a home. Theyve performed very well to incorporate community for hosts as part of their retention and advocacy part of the funnel but, just like any other business, Airbnb has to continually improve and find ways to improve their community marketing strategy. Airbnb seem to have concluded that there are more opportunities outside of just private accommodation listings, and have now branched into partnering with tour providers, hospitality companies, and more to provide a more comprehensive travel-related site for the user. Airbnb was born. By listing the properties of ordinary people, they set themselves apart by offering a different experience to travellers. This might help though: this is slightly contradictory, as they do sometimes share the @ username of the Instagram account for the property (if the owner has one). To measure its effectiveness moving forward, Airbnb looked at various metrics (Time in Video 12:46) and forecasted data to interpret what can be achieved through compounding growth over time. 5C Marketing Analysis of Airbnb 4P Marketing Analysis of Airbnb Porter Five Forces Analysis and Solution of . As a travel company, cultural celebration is at the heart of Airbnbs business model. Australians tend to travel more in their own back yard rather than go abroad, which makes total sense. So theres no way for people to find it from the website. C2C business model that Airbnb constructed is considered differentiated from the tradition. As far as I can see, nothing is actually personalised yet. As we can see on the community portal page, the community centre is broken down into 3 core pillars: The primary focus for this content pillar is helping those who are hosts or potential hosts to connect with other hosts, share stories, ask for advice, and get updates from the Airbnb team. So what does the mobile experience look like for sharing referrals for guests? Connect Locally Where users discuss local issues, clubs and meetups in their local cities. Moreover, the company aims to keep guests and hosts safe via a wide range of measures such as risk scoring, background checks, 24/7 global assistance, secure payments and account protection. And think about it for a second would you share referrals like this via email? For example, Wotif.com currently has approx. This action takes them beyond the scope of a simple accommodation booking tour, however does not quite match the integrations available through main competitors Booking.com or Wotif.com, who offer the following different features: Booking.com also has arrangements with a number of other services to assist the user with making this a one-stop shop, such as partnering with restaurant reservation services. The rest of it is then up to the host to make sure they have a profile that people feel they can connect to so that they want to stay there. leadership. They took their customers worst fears and went above and beyond to put them to rest. Ideally, wed look at this in terms of a breakdown of spend, but unfortunately there is no way to accurately gauge Airbnbs spend, so were best using frequency as an indicator of spend. Its amazing what theyve been able to achieve over the years since they first introduced referrals into their platform in 2011. All of this means peace of mind for any prospective guest. One of the ways to achieve that is to strive for getting maximum value from each customer(higher Customer Lifetime Value(CLTV)) It means the brand should look for developing loyal customers. Were ready when you are, Generate awareness of becoming a host / prospecting, Helping with the consideration phase of the host journey through remarketing, Theres a fairly high number of Australians on Facebook, with around, It doesnt rely on search intent, which means its more scalable. With a strong digital marketing background and broad business experience, hes perfectly suited to head up Web Profits marketing initiatives as Head of Growth. At Webprofits when weve split-tested using an image with a link in the copy versus a Link Preview, on average, the Link Preview prevails. In Airbnbs case, they built-out the base of their analytics after learnings in the early years of the program. Airbnb's business model was developed on being a low-cost solution for a low-value customer. Ill be highlighting specific examples soon, but if they hadnt considered the User Experience as much in the early days then I doubt theyd have experienced the growth that they have. The bane of most customer supports existence is the simple to answer questions, and if people dont take a lot of interest in reading FAQs then having other users answer those questions is a double win. To save on time, there are other elements of this page which certainly helps with the decision-making process to take the next step. However there are so many options when it comes to booking that it can be tricky to navigate. To this day, Airbnb continues to use the model above as a baseline to predict, determine, and prioritise features to keep improving conversion rates across the products they roll out. Instagram Stories offer brands a great opportunity to get creative, but the trick is keeping your audience engaged enough to keep clicking through, rather than swiping to the next Story in their feed. Referrals are more trusted than any other form of marketing. Now, its not something often spoken to by content marketers (as basically there are no guarantees on the amount of traffic you could potentially receive through a backlink to your site) but this reason is not to be discounted as the more referral traffic you receive through a backlink, the more value Google places on the link, and the better your results for that page. Best of all, this section of the site is linked to from the footer of the Airbnb website, from the Host section of the site, and the Things To Do areas, allowing for much easier navigation than the other onsite content areas. When you share the direct link, you get this landing page. Airbnb have strategically placed this on the page for users as, while gaining more users onto the platform is great, its even more of a priority to get more hosts onto the platform. The post copy that accompanies the image often introduces the host/s on a personal level Make yourself at home at Patrick and Elizabeths historic homestead. But I wont just look at the personalised elements, Ill also share insights on their messaging, imagery, layout, and more. When you arrive in your new destination, Airbnb send a personalised email containing Airbnb Experiences that may be of interest, disguised as an itinerary. Once a user completes a booking, Airbnb use the confirmation email to increase the value of this customer or transaction in two ways: Referrals are typically one of the most reliable sources of new customers. With that being said, I do like their UGC strategy and think theyve done a good job of leveraging this for content, rather than using professionally shot and polished imagery, which would not suit the platform. In the next section, Suggested for You, this is content that specifically addresses the needs of hosts. Ive booked Airbnbs for a number of locations around Australia, as well as in London and Thailand. With email, in general, you always have to walk that line about what data would be beneficial to use and what comes along as too big brother. In this case, Airbnb vision statement is all about leaving a memorable reputation at a global level. Each city has its own forum where the hosts can discuss the local issues or services specific to them. That value has since increased significantly to USD$1 million (I guess $4.4 billion in VC funding can really open up some doors). An idea for generating this type of content could be an Instagram UGC competition where hosts share videos of WHY they host; the entries would be collected using a campaign hashtag, and hosts would be incentivised to do this with the opportunity to win an awesome prize. A primary difference between the hotel industry and Airbnb is the presence of taxes and regulations on short-term rentals. Community: How do Airbnb maintain and grow their online community, and what part does that play in their business growth? When it comes to the homepage, we are instantly presented with plenty of content we can view. So what does the mobile experience look like for Hosts? It is only the US version of Airbnb Stories which is ranking in position #1 on page #1 on Australian desktop for the search term Airbnb Testimonials (avg monthly search volume 70). The instantly-recognisable logo, which they named The Blo, is designed to mean the universal symbol of belonging. These audiences can also then be used for Lookalike audiences. I noticed they use three main hooks in their Dynamic Ads copy: Find an Airbnb in [Location] with free cancellation. It helps a customer to have a personalized experience. 2.1B CULTURAL EXPERIENCE. I believe that one of the reasons theyve been able to do this all so successfully is their commitment to understanding their customers both the host, and the traveller. Local customs dictated a more direct invite, with participants preferring a more personal overture from an official Airbnb representative before joining the activities. Heres a summary of each: A well-rounded and entrepreneurial individual with more than 10 years experience in working with and launching startups, Tam is skilled at managing multiple products simultaneously. For Lectures [email protected] https://www.linkedin.com/in/shahmm. Due to the sheer number of landing pages at play, its clear that Airbnb are either directing people to their expansive website or dynamically-generated landing pages. That loan is on top of another $1 billion investment the company had . As these stats show, Twitter adoption in Australia has been slow and has not seen the same kind of growth that Facebook & Instagram has in recent years. When it comes to the sharing mechanism under Share your love of travel, the first thing you see straight away is the description under the title. Storytelling is the bedrock of a quality content marketing strategy, and Airbnb has understood this from the beginning. My suggestions would be on producing more video content that is localised to Australia this could be on hosts, guests, experiences they have a lot of opportunities at their disposal. If youre trying too hard on Instagram, whether thats in a salesy manner or with imagery that is too airbrushed, the Instagram community will see through this and wont be as engaged. Airbnb Inc. Report contains a full analysis of Airbnb business strategy. And like most marketplace sites, the buyer often wants information about the supplier to know if whats on the page can be trusted. It was the underlying message behind Airbnb's marketing campaign Don't Go There . Its interesting to note that very little of what they do is actually aimed at generating users there and then, they use social media more to nurture and stay front of mind. Here are some world-famous examples of brand strategy done right! They know my stay there ended a while ago, do they think I want to go straight back? We assume that Airbnb is creating content with a purpose and focus on distribution to drive that content to their audiences. What I like most about it is that the right hand side of the page is reserved for it. Like you go out to an unknown place, where food options are limited. I might visit their site once or twice a year when Im lucky enough to be looking at booking a holiday, and I cant help but notice that every time I do, I get a different site compared to the last time I visited. A Differentiation Strategy Requires Capital. Airbnb are using Instagram mainly to promote their listings, Superhosts & Experiences. These 300-400 word stories are poignant snapshots of how an Airbnb users life has been impacted by using Airbnb while travelling and immerses potential travellers in the spirit of adventure, curiosity and connection. There are some great tools out there for advertisers that can automate this process for you, including Boosterberg and AdEspresso. A platform business model can be defined as a "business model that focuses on helping to facilitate interactions across a large number of participants" [2] In case of Airbnb, participants are host who offer their . Our Airbnb 2022 predictions: The "Live Anywhere" theme has crept up into Airbnb's announcements since 2020. b) The keywords that your competitors are ranking for on page 1 that youre on page 2+. The campaigns goals were not just to raise awareness, but to highlight the human side of the company by showing support for an issue they were passionate about. Airbnb, the lodging colossus, has been prudent from the financial point of view. Airbnb Experiences are activities designed and led by inspiring locals. The main goal of implementing a differentiation strategy is to increase competitive advantage. https://www.facebook.com/AirbnbAustralia/. And, get this, the recommendations come straight from Airbnbs hosts (Authentic? Airbnb. The stories, tips, and tricks all help to reinforce the positive feelings that hosts get as part of being part of the Airbnb community. A request for more information can be made by contacting the host. the support team at airbnb are excellent and respond in a timely manner! Not many businesses go above and beyond in this way. Externally, we would presume any traffic is driven through organic search, email traffic, and through social promotion. 29,000 backlinks from VisitNsw, which are primarily content or image-related links. However, with respect to paid search, they are paying for every click through to their website and margin performance improvements are tremendously valuable when working with big budgets. Webprofits. Q&A Threads from both Airbnb Admin team, Top Contributors, or anyone part of the platform. And you know who really wins with this process? Airbnb's new . 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