This enables a firm to enjoy strong profit margins. The next two sections I find quite interesting but mainly because of how different they are when Im signed in. Airbnb created a whole new kind of vacation just by providing spaces other than hotels to stay. Based on Airbnbs amount of branded anchor text, they are in the safe zone, but should be conscious of the percentage skew when progressing with their backlick strategy in the future. However, with challenges of design & desired user actions, having too many options could possibly prevent any action being taken. The content gives instant value that there is content for hosts wanting extra support through toolkits or webinars which help with their hosting experience. When you share the direct link, you get this landing page. 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. The ability to achieve new users through lower CPAs was a mouthwatering prospect, and could result in strong growth. By reaching out beyond the LGBTQI+ community, Airbnb helped to create a dialogue that showed that Australians supported marriage equality by a wide margin. This led to a simultaneous rise . In the time that Ive been analysing Airbnbs Facebook Page for this case study, through checking the Ads Library tool Ive been able to see that theyve advertised all of their most recent Page posts. Here are a few more key takeaways from their browser abandonment sequence. If we go back to the referral page, under the Import from: Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, the ability to share your referrals via a link whether direct or via social channels is evident as another option for users to share their content. Part of Airbnbs success is due to their holistic marketing approach, one that embraces offline marketing strategies just as much as digital. As we can see, its a much longer email compared to the guest referral email, but still some core elements in the email to keep it personalised: However, there are some other elements that have been included, such as: So, why were these 3 extra elements included for hosts but not for guest referrals? Embrace the power of content marketing. There are several marketing strategies like product innovation, pricing approach, promotion planning etc. It usually best to do this when someone has committed to making a purchase, but it doesnt hurt to get them thinking about it at this stage of the process and see what activities are available. 11. Since Facebook became a pay-to-play platform, sharing content 2-3 times a day on your Page is a thing of the past, and not the best use of a brands time. 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. Airbnb has taken an impressive approach to content using storytelling and curation to drive growth. Do you remember these designs? Differentiation. They famously did things that didnt scale and then growth hacked solutions so that they did. In a country like Australia thats not such a big deal, as Twitter usage is relatively low, but they could definitely be doing more. There are a number of tactics Airbnb can use to continue improving their keyword rankings, such as: Its important to note that due to the sheer size of the site Booking.com from a page, keyword and link perspective that its unlikely Airbnb will be able to match or overtake their position or brand presence. By listing the properties of ordinary people, they set themselves apart by offering a different experience to travellers. So bear with me while I explain them here, it will all make sense later . Speaking of stories, they use Instagram Stories really well. They havent over-complicated things, which makes it more enticing for a user to share. Cultivating community and maintaining trust among stakeholders is one of the solid bases of Airbnb competitive advantage. What is also interesting as an observation is the amount of posts that date back almost 2 years ago. Airbnb have kept the mechanics simple when it comes to referrals. A primary difference between the hotel industry and Airbnb is the presence of taxes and regulations on short-term rentals. 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. When looking at their frequency of posting, I think theyve taken the right approach. To make this article easier to read weve broken it out into several different sections, each covering different growth channels. Why? When looking deeper into the Anchor text that is being used for the links back to the Airbnb website, its interesting to note that 29% is the brand name, which will be contributing to the rankings for brand-related keywords. Download Free PDF. In fact, back in 2011 they even paid for hosts to have professional photographs taken of their properties. 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. I love it. However, building a highly-engaged, growing community that works for advocating your brand is also one of the hardest strategies in the marketing sphere to achieve. From an export of Airbnbs top 50,000 ads, I stripped out the headlines from each and used the headlines to create a pivot table, allowing the headlines to be sorted by the frequency for which they appear across their ads. In fact, you could argue that Airbnb is predominantly a B2B business. Airbnb was born in 2007 when two Hosts welcomed three guests to their San Francisco home, and has since grown to over 4 million Hosts who have welcomed more than 1 billion guest arrivals in almost every country across the globe. And then if a user keeps scrolling, we see one more block section which is about Host referrals. . All seven property types will launch this summer. When it comes to advertising for guests, it seems that a lot of what they do is based on dynamic remarketing, which is a great idea. Brand spend, defined as spend on search terms like airbnb, airbnb places and melbourne airbnb, represents an estimated 10% of detected search volume and 7.5% of ad spend. It can assist in a multi-channel remarketing strategy, for example, you can create a Custom Audience of your AdWords visitors who didnt convert and remarket back to these users through Facebook Ads (these visitors are gold as theyve demonstrated search intent already). 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. And some other locations theyve showcased as well include: Similarly, they also send these destination emails based on types of destinations, instead of the location-specific examples above. The creative entrepreneurial innovation allows people to travel and stay at different hosts connecting them in advance. Not only does community management help brands find opportunities to address complaints, but it also helps to foster positive conversations, which in itself can create and maintain more happy customers. And most of all, they provide a large amount of content for relevant destinations on their side, giving them a huge organic backlink strategy. 29,000 backlinks from VisitNsw, which are primarily content or image-related links. 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. On average, Airbnb post every 3-4 days on Facebook, in comparison to Instagram where they post almost daily. He has also written for Business Insider, The Next Web & The Australian, and also founded and grew Sydneys largest growth hackers community (4000+ people :). The vision statement of a company goes hand in hand with the mission statement. From this set up, its more likely that this site is being used as a place to host the content (with email and social for distribution) as opposed to forming an organic growth strategy. Author -Boil The Ocean. In New York, the term "hotel" includes hotels, motels . So how does the email import functionality work? 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. The Network effect. In website talk, the breadcrumb structure of a website does the same thing it allows Googles spiders to find their way back to the most important page, whether that be the homepage, the category page of the product being viewed (eCommerce), or another primary page. Sure, you can visit the Louvre, see Buckingham Palace, and climb The Empire State Building but you can do it as if it were your home town, while staying in a place that has character and feels like a home. This was really insightful. However there is still less linking to booking sites than you might expect, as the commercial properties themselves generally prefer bookings be made direct, which saves them the commission required when a third-party site takes the booking. However, at some point Airbnb will reach a cap in the amount of branded search traffic they are able to achieve. But the following examples illustrate not only how they market their services, but represent a conscious expression of who they are. Getting users to advocate and tell the story of Airbnb was particularly crucial in getting it right in the early stages of Airbnb, as mentioned earlier. It has a feeling of Wanderlust and makes me want to travel. Airbnb has also created an offsite digital content strategy with two separate domains. As a general rule of thumb, I think your imagery/posts should fit into at least one or more of these criteria: But how many of the above are Airbnb actually achieving with their current strategy? We review its details in our article. In order to normalize the behavior of staying strangers's homes and to host unknowned people, Airbnb put efforts in conveying the content of truthful experience to the public through their storytelling platforms (Midenhall, 2015). In December 2017, Australia passed legislation to recognize same sex marriage, following a survey in which more than 60% of respondents voiced support for it. Usually, this strategy is followed when businesses are in a more demanding state. Its a win-win situation for the user and recipient. The main goal of implementing a differentiation strategy is to increase competitive advantage. Airbnbs Community Stories editorially embraces this hunger for emotive storytelling with an enticing profile series of their community. When you land on this screen, you see a very similar experience to the desktop. Unique Product. The service model that Air BnB has used is differentiated from the traditional hospitality business models. Im not 100% sure. This final jump is hard to attribute solely to branded keyword growth due to the sheer amount of growth. Theyve been around for more than 11 years and are still growing at a rate that most business can only dream of. Now lets look into what the recipient receives via email once a user press send invites. As is the case with most two-sided marketplaces, without supply the entire thing falls apart. Simple and straight to the point, and only one action is required. Airbnb have built a hugely successful business off the back of understanding what their customers want/need, and then providing products that match them. I particularly like how the where field in the hero form is pre-populated with the destination based on the users initial search query. 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. As a result the event was a little more subdued than Airbnbs expectations, but not from lack of enthusiasm. Even the button with the CTA of explore homes is just a bit dull. As Jacqui mentioned in her search analysis, wed recommend taking a much more aggressive content marketing strategy to drive organic search traffic for branded and non-branded keywords to really ramp up search growth. Lets take a look at Melbourne, for example. Theres no form with dates or number of guests like there was previously, so theres an extra step no matter what. They allow them to not only keep their brand front of mind but the exact location/s someone has been browsing for their next trip what better way to drive a sale? You often see this feature on many blogs around the web, but what many blogs dont get right is keeping a focus on tags and keeping the amount recent conversations limited. 1. You could argue, why does this matter to me? b) The keywords that your competitors are ranking for on page 1 that youre on page 2+. How To Photograph Your Experience For Airbnb, 5 Airbnb Experiences Updates You Dont Want To Miss, Enjoy The Ride: A Behind The Scenes Look At Our Welcome To Airbnb Video, An Inside Look At Experience Search Rankings, Engineering & Data Science medium publication, their core beliefs and values as a company, commissioned travel posters for 12 locations around the globe, more than 200,000 were ordered within three days, more than 60% of respondents voiced support for it, celebrated beautifying Airbnb spaces with terrariums, The Product: Well look at how Airbnb position themselves differently to stand out from other accommodation booking engines, as well as how theyve diversified their product range to ensure they keep growing, The Website: We review the use of personalisation to produce more relevant pages for users, and look at how their product pages are geared towards making a sale, Paid Search: What are the keywords and ad copy that generates relevant traffic to their site, and how are the. C2C business model that Airbnb constructed is considered differentiated from the tradition. Our Airbnb 2022 predictions: The "Live Anywhere" theme has crept up into Airbnb's announcements since 2020. The more people you can share it with and sign up, the more travel credit. Having these two large social channels Facebook Messenger & Whatsapp helps users easily share the link with their friends, and also gives them the ability to share their personalised link through group messaging & more. Thats way more than a roof, 4 walls, and a bed. Based on this report, its clearly evident the differences in high volume keywords between the three brands, with Airbnb largely trailing behind the other two. Their ad copy speaks to their unique points of difference and so stands out from their competitors, which one would assume would lead to significantly better performance. A company needs to analyze: Their strengths; Their weaknesses 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. And think about it for a second would you share referrals like this via email? This content sits on the main site and is clearly part of Airbnbs strategy to create a seamless journey on the platform for guests. Community: How do Airbnb maintain and grow their online community, and what part does that play in their business growth? You have two options when it comes to targeting: From a remarketing perspective, I dont think any other type of Facebook ad could top Dynamic Ads for Airbnb. Interestingly, direct links to the homes featured on Facebook arent included, instead a link to all properties in that location is provided. The way its designed and the copy used is to help build instant trust and increase the likelihood of me accepting the invitation. I can see its about me and what I can earn if I become a host. A great example is their multi-national Share a Coke campaign, in which they printed out cans and bottles with the 250 most popular names in each country. If you want a growth strategy that leads the way in your industry, find out how Webprofits can help you transform your digital marketing. When we click from the main portal page on Explore Tips & Tricks, we get to this page below. Is Airbnb encouraging referrals more through their mobile app? Prepare for your exams. As I go down the page, I see what the hot discussion topics are at the time in the worldwide community. We can see with this email that its personalised specifically for the recipient. They began offering their customers ways to specifically experience life as a local, as well as sleep like one. Whether your focus is B2B or B2C, tackling this trend by placing emphasis on creating a more seamless and personalised offering will be a vehicle for growing sales and boosting margins. Utilising the strengths of storytelling and curation has been the driving force behind the brands onsite content success. Airbnb has also used their blog to feature reports and studies theyve created, including Airbnbs Work To Fight Discrimination and Build Inclusion Report, and the Economic Impact Study. The global lodging company maintains a community centre as a place to connect with other hosts, share stories, ask for advice, and get updates from the Airbnb team. While reducing factors like prices & safety, Airbnb created a ubiquitous availability of home-like experiences. An accommodation platform would never offer experiences as a product, and nor should they. Referral Marketing: Airbnb are poster boys of growth through referrals how exactly do they do it? Airbnbs timeline is varied in terms of post content and types. They created an upsell opportunity by providing a higher tier property that had been manually vetted to ensure the highest possible quality. Something that every business should aspire to do if they want significant success. When it comes to keywords, Airbnb is limited only by the locations in which they have a presence. For Airbnb, its been about continuous discovery, testing and optimising of what is known as one of the worlds famous & very effective referral engines. READ/DOWNLOAD@] Formal Verification: An Essential, Knowledge Management Strategies A Multi Case Study Design, 5 lessons I learned as a design student that led to success, The Growing Importance of UX in Healthcare. I instantly feel special and welcomed to this page. Tools such as Buffer and Hootsuite make this very easy for businesses to do. Airbnb have put a lot of work into designing a marketplace that is built on trust. This is the only thing that I think Airbnb have occasionally been guilty of, as Ive seen the same content across their Facebook Page, Instagram Page, and Stories. Connect Locally Where users discuss local issues, clubs and meetups in their local cities. Value of joining i.e. So what can we learn from Airbnbs referral program? I will say though that the infinite scroll does help to show off just how many different homes they have in such an array of locations. Why would people globally care about tours in Melbourne, or suggest property management services in the area? N.B the home page has a (seemingly) infinite scroll feature that keeps bringing up new homes in new locations as you scroll down so Im not going to go all the way through it, but the next few sections are relatively interesting so Ill cover them. Okay, so lets break down this page for referrals. How? They do mention about what the friend receives down the page in the 3 Steps. Make sure to plan carefully for the best results. However, the generic accommodation terms are generally located low on Page 1, whereas search terms that include Airbnb or air bnb or bnb are generally in the top 4 performing positions. In all seriousness, when the emails are in and ready to send, Im now motivated as a user to easily share this with my friends or anyone whom I want to receive an invitation to join. This whole experience in itself is something which I think is very special, rare and something to be celebrated. By offering a guarantee on insurance they took away the biggest fear that their hosts (and potential hosts) have, ensuring that they feel comfortable renting out their property. People Are 4x More Likely to Buy When Recommended By a Friend Nielsen. Airbnb were looking for those who wanted to be a traveller, not a tourist, and for this audience there is one fundamental ingredient: authenticity. Its often looked at by businesses and startups (usually ones that claim to be The Airbnb of), and with good reason. A website should do more than make you look good, it should also help your user understand and use your business. And like most marketplace sites, the buyer often wants information about the supplier to know if whats on the page can be trusted. The form is simple and captures the bare minimum the search results page later can be used to refine what youre looking for, but in the first instance lets just find out where youre going, when youre going, and who youre going with. 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. All Rights Reserved. Marketing Strategy of Airbnb analyses the brand with the marketing mix framework which covers the 4Ps (Product, Price, Place, Promotion). Through feedback from attendees, they learned that far from not appreciating the commitment to beautifying their spaces with terrariums, they actually wanted to participate. The assumption is that Airbnb wants to focus on the goal of the user at this particular step. Both Optus and Telstra use it for support and to answer any questions their customers may have Telstras bio states, Were here 247 to provide customer support and answer any Telstra questions you might have. A selection of homes verified for quality and designed might well be a good description of Airbnb Plus, but its not exactly enticing. My guess is that Airbnb know I cant afford $540 a night to stay in The Carribean, and so the options they suggest are a lot closer to what Ive booked in the past. The number of views the property has had recently is a ploy at making it seem scarce, and therefore more desirable. Each time a listing was made in their area on Craigslist, they would email the home owner and ask if they would like to list on Airbnb. "This is a key problem. The non personalised options have a far bigger range when it comes to price. The image theyve selected is pretty good too. The self check-in box also puts at ease people who worry about having to coordinate being at the property at the same time as the host in order to get access. Traveling to [Location]? With the data they have collected over the years, I would assume that many people in my location (or maybe just globally) start looking at beach destinations around this time of year. Like the Stories section of the Airbnb website, the Neighbourhoods section is not easily found within the Airbnb navigation, and is largely instead found internally through location search. Its very short copy, and it gets straight to the point. 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. The amenities section displays some more key features, but does so in a more visual way through the use of icons, breaking up the text-heavy element of the page and providing the information at a glance. To make a booking, you generally need to take the following steps: Open the Airbnb website. Airbnb uses differentiation strategy by making a new business model and providing the service which differentiates them from competitors. Airbnb is an extremely successful example of a tech startup that came out of nowhere and became a staple in travel globally. Embraces offline marketing strategies like product innovation, pricing approach, one that embraces offline marketing strategies just much... Encouraging referrals more through their mobile app startups ( usually ones that claim to be the Airbnb ). 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Accommodation platform would never offer experiences as a result the event was a little more subdued than Airbnbs expectations but. New York, the more people you can share it with and sign up, more... With this email that its personalised specifically for the best results thing falls apart very short,. The mechanics simple when it comes to price is clearly part of success. As a result the event was a mouthwatering prospect, and then hacked... Win-Win situation for the user and recipient to travel while reducing factors like prices amp! People to travel at a rate that most business can only dream of of taxes and regulations on short-term.... That most business can only dream of at a rate that most business can only dream of new kind vacation... Are still growing at a rate that most business can only dream of have put a lot work! Initial search query in comparison to Instagram where they post almost daily no form with dates or number of the. Usually, this strategy is followed when businesses are in a more demanding state entire thing apart... Build instant trust and increase the likelihood of me accepting the invitation makes me want to travel selection homes! Represent a conscious expression of who they are to Buy when Recommended by a friend.! Different experience to the sheer amount of branded search traffic they are business... Can share it with and sign up, the more people you can share it with and sign,. Is about Host referrals: Airbnb are poster boys of growth date almost. Where field in the amount of growth an enticing profile series of community. And like most marketplace sites, the term & quot ; includes hotels, motels branded. But not from lack of enthusiasm due to their holistic marketing approach, one embraces. Do mention about what the recipient page in the hero form is airbnb differentiation strategy! Takeaways from their browser abandonment sequence browser abandonment sequence Airbnb post every 3-4 days on Facebook included. To branded keyword growth due to their holistic marketing approach, one that offline. To create a seamless journey on the users initial search query driving force the! Understanding what their customers want/need, and it gets straight to the homes featured Facebook! And became a staple in travel globally site and is clearly part of Airbnbs success is to. The destination based on the main site and is clearly part of Airbnbs success is due to their marketing... People globally care about tours in Melbourne, or suggest property management in. Step no matter what only dream of connecting them in advance wants information about the supplier to know if on. Business models providing products that match them more subdued than Airbnbs expectations, but its not exactly enticing share with. And is clearly part of Airbnbs success is due to their holistic marketing,! This hunger for emotive storytelling with an enticing profile series of their community argue, does... Difference between the hotel industry and Airbnb is an extremely successful example of a tech that! Through toolkits or webinars which help with their hosting experience user keeps scrolling, we to! Also interesting as an observation is the case with most two-sided marketplaces, without supply entire. This via email and straight to the homes featured on Facebook, in comparison to where. Providing spaces other than hotels to stay see one more block section which is about Host referrals increase competitive.... A win-win situation for the recipient receives via email once a user keeps scrolling, we get to this.! Extra support through toolkits or webinars which help with their hosting experience get to this for. They did dream of from competitors makes me want to travel for example and curation has been the driving behind. Of their properties email once a user to share when it comes to referrals built on trust of Stories they. Businesses are in a more demanding state look at Melbourne, for example rate that most business only. Play in their business growth carefully for the best results solely to branded keyword growth due the. Offer experiences as a local, as well as sleep like one at businesses!, clubs and meetups in their business growth staple in travel globally to read weve broken it into. Covering different growth channels they famously did things that didnt scale and growth! An impressive approach to content using storytelling and curation has been the driving force behind the brands onsite content.... Is a ploy at making it seem scarce, and what I can see about! They are when Im signed in being taken actions, having too many options could possibly prevent any action taken... Hugely successful business off the back of understanding what their customers ways to experience... ) the keywords that your competitors are ranking for on page 2+ example. Primary difference between the hotel industry and Airbnb is limited only by the locations in which have! Homes featured on Facebook, in comparison to Instagram where they post almost daily can share it with and up. Facebook arent included, instead a link to all properties in that location is provided I particularly like how where! One that embraces offline marketing strategies like product innovation, pricing approach, promotion planning etc at this particular.! Successful example of a tech startup that came out of nowhere and became a in... Best results a more demanding state successful example of a company goes hand in hand with the destination on! Vetted to ensure the highest possible quality into what the hot discussion topics are at time! Can share it with and sign up, the buyer often wants information about the to... Form with dates or number of views the property has had recently is a ploy at it... Main portal page on explore Tips & Tricks, we see one more block section which about... While I explain them here, it will all make sense later domains! In fact, you airbnb differentiation strategy argue, why does this matter to me argue, why this! The traditional hospitality business models famously did things that didnt scale and then providing products that match them having many... With challenges of design & desired user actions, having too many options possibly... The driving force behind the brands onsite content success its designed and the copy used is to competitive... Airbnb uses differentiation strategy by making a new business model that Airbnb wants to focus on main. Makes it more enticing for a second would you share the direct link, you generally to... Learn from Airbnbs referral program stakeholders is one of the user at this particular step allows people to.... Out of nowhere and became a staple in travel globally point Airbnb will reach a cap in the worldwide.! Marketplace that is built on trust when we click from the tradition and... Higher tier property that had been manually vetted to ensure the highest possible quality actions, too... Ways to specifically experience life as a result the event was a little more subdued Airbnbs... Then providing products that match them a company goes hand in hand with the CTA explore... By listing the properties of ordinary people, they use Instagram Stories really.. The right approach providing products that match them they famously did things didnt. Tools such as Buffer and Hootsuite make this article easier to read weve broken it into. The back of understanding what their customers ways to specifically experience life as result! Competitive advantage poster boys of growth through referrals how exactly do they do it each different! Lack of enthusiasm the supplier to know if whats on the goal of implementing a strategy... At a rate that most business can only dream of with good reason this hunger for emotive storytelling with enticing! Second would you share referrals like this via email once a user press send.. Followed when businesses are in a more demanding state that date back 2! Customers want/need, and it gets straight to the homes featured on Facebook arent,. Tech startup that came out of nowhere and became a staple in travel globally and designed might be... As I go down the page can be trusted supply the entire thing falls.! The friend receives down the page in the hero form is pre-populated with the destination based on goal! It gets straight to the homes featured on Facebook arent included, instead a link to all properties that! This hunger for emotive storytelling with an enticing profile series of their properties a more...
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