In fact, you could argue that Airbnb is predominantly a B2B business. But what about my browsing history before that? Webprofits. The clean and minimalistic design is certainly done on purpose. Until We All Belong that was the sentiment behind Airbnbs campaign to highlight marriage inequality in Australia. When searching using a Site Operator on Google for the Booking.com and Wotif.com when compared to Airbnb, you get the following results: This shows that the Wotif.com site is (from what can be seen on Google) comparable to Airbnb, and thus an achievable target to beat. Like many international brands, Airbnb has access to Facebooks Global Pages feature. Theres definitely a lot here we can learn from Airbnb. The layout and the functionality of the site is what makes it so easy to use. Having built and scaled a startup to millions in revenue per year, Dan truly understands the crux to marketing and growth success understanding the motives and characteristics of customers inside and out. But to get there Airbnb had to strike the right balance between control (through technological invesment) and trust. However, at some point Airbnb will reach a cap in the amount of branded search traffic they are able to achieve. It could have been something that ruined the companys reputation and destroyed their business, but they reacted strongly and turned it into a strength. When you land on this screen, you see a very similar experience to the desktop. I see value for both brands and customers when offering customer service through a platform like Twitter, as any response you provide is then in the public domain. Traveling to [Location]? Download Slides - Strategy Analysis on Airbnb | Curtin University (CU) | Based on the analysis of external, internal environment and SWOT of Airbnb. On average, Humans of New York are achieving an engagement rate of 3.35% and this engagement isnt only coming from Likes, its from comments too, which means theres more conversation happening. Given the saturation of online paid media & costs to acquire new customers, Airbnb identified that building an engine to create more word-of-mouth from those who had experienced Airbnb was crucial to finding a solution. Airbnb have a reputation for using personalisation arguably better than any other big brand business in the world. For Airbnb, its been about continuous discovery, testing and optimising of what is known as one of the worlds famous & very effective referral engines. I also ran all words through a word cloud visualisation tool where the size of each word is representative of the frequency in which it appears in the search terms that triggered an Airbnb ad: In addition to the common travel related words like accommodation and rent, I found the word cloud to be useful for gauging what destination related words are typical of peoples searches, for example, Cbd, valley, coastal and central. But this expansion has also put the spotlight on content and localisation, both for guests and also for hosts using the platform. About us. With Available, this view shows who has successfully accepted and signed up to the platform from the users invitation. After I decide to learn more, I come to this landing page specifically personalised to me and, more impressively, my location. The campaign perfectly aligned with Airbnbs values, and helped highlight a struggle for acceptance in a country where the debate on same-sex marriage had fallen off the political radar. Just kidding, everyones heard of Airbnb. By offering more information and support, they will attract, convert and retain more home and experience hosts on their platform. Cultivating community and maintaining trust among stakeholders is one of the solid bases of Airbnb competitive advantage. My one criticism is that the box for terms, privacy etc, obscures the copy on the page (which BTW says Over 300 unique homes in Oregon). 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. Thats a pretty solid looking page structure in my opinion. This is a part of the site I really like and also find quite interesting. Either way, the content is highly relevant to the search term and the location which certainly cant hurt. They are so well researched and highly educational. Some people appreciate the luxury of staying in a hotel, knowing youll receive a professional service, including a properly maintained room. And the top performing organic keywords are. The booking form stands out the most, and with good reason its the quickest way for them to get information about what the user is looking for, in order to personalise their experience. 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. Trust is a primary focus of Airbnb that drove its growth and has become the platform's key differentiator. Airbnb have kept the mechanics simple when it comes to referrals. To make this article easier to read weve broken it out into several different sections, each covering different growth channels. For some people, the host can be an important aspect of the trip. In fact, back in 2011 they even paid for hosts to have professional photographs taken of their properties. Im not 100% sure of the exact reason why we can only see this for now. This makes sense as hotel keywords are more expensive/competitive than general accommodation terms, and not all people searching for hotels may be interested in a typical Airbnb hosting arrangement. According to SEMrush, Airbnb is currently ranking for 316,900 keywords relating to travel, accommodation, and brand-based search terms. In a country like Australia thats not such a big deal, as Twitter usage is relatively low, but they could definitely be doing more. Idea to save money for your next trip: use Airbnb. Airbnb differentiated its brand by offering an authentic local experience, an affordable price. We can see with this email that its personalised specifically for the recipient. As an experienced marketing consultant, Dan continually strives to perfect his craft in producing high-performing, data-driven and results-focused campaigns for his clients. It keeps users engaged and, in many ways, motivated to invite more friends or follow those up who havent signed up. These posts mostly feature UGC, which gives them a really authentic feel and allows them to easily blend into a users Instagram feed, which I feel is something key for brands to master on this channel. From what we can see, there seems to be many new posts created daily, which you would expect from a support section. When it comes to promoting to attract new hosts, its clear theyve done their research into why hosts sign up to Airbnb, and that research has informed the messaging they use in their ads. Its important to do some of the work for them. When the breadcrumb structured data is not implemented correctly, it looks instead like this. Lastly, theres a cross-sell option into experiences. When you arrive in your new destination, Airbnb send a personalised email containing Airbnb Experiences that may be of interest, disguised as an itinerary. What I like most about it is that the right hand side of the page is reserved for it. 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 properties or organize experiences for guests and travellers who use their services. The images are small and hard to make out, and so not that intriguing. Heavy investment in marketing, advertisement and celebrity . Novak, Jasminko, and Schwabe, Gerhard. In this case, Airbnb vision statement is all about leaving a memorable reputation at a global level. After stumbling into digital marketing through a whim internship application in 2013, Jacqueline discovered a passion for creating engaging and effective growth campaigns. For example, the below is a very basic diagram of what a site structure might look like as an organisational chart for a site like Airbnb: What this translates to on the website looks like this: And when the breadcrumb structured data of the website is optimised correctly, it can pull through the breadcrumb structure to show the hierarchy in a simple and clear way for the user. 1. Why? I feel this kind of content could really benefit the campaigns. 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. On the left, its clear what I need to action if I want to share with my friends. That value has since increased significantly to USD$1 million (I guess $4.4 billion in VC funding can really open up some doors). Using the Phlanx Instagram Engagement calculator, I can see that from their 4.1 million followers, Airbnb get around 26.7k Likes per post, 283 comments, and have an overall average engagement rate of 0.65%. Overall, this report shows that there is still a significant amount of keyword improvements and consequent organic traffic to be gained by Airbnb, which would result in huge traffic increases similar to those seen in previous years by the brand. Check!). Can earn up to $3,401 this month. 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. Storytelling is the bedrock of a quality content marketing strategy, and Airbnb has understood this from the beginning. Its a great way to incentivise. In practice, this means that someone who searches for phi phi islands accommodation triggers an Airbnb ad that speaks to phi phi island accommodation specifically, and directs the user to a landing page that focuses specifically on phi phi island accommodation with upcoming availability. If youre going to need to pay to get your content out there to audiences, using the quality over quantity approach is best. And the top performing organic keywords are. Offline: What activity do they do outside of digital to drive growth? Plus, the more they read/talk about it, the more theyre thinking about it, which should lead to less churn. From an organic search perspective, there are two primary competitors of Airbnb: The Competitive Positioning Map above is a data visualisation based on Airbnb and its competitors organic traffic, as well as the number of keywords that they rank for in Googles top 20 organic search results. It would be interesting to know if they did this intentionally in order to keep the user on Airbnbs site due to the similar experience, instead of allowing the user to go offsite to a location where they would see competitor listings. Whats effective about these sections is how they leverage social proof, both in terms of ratings (supports logical decision making) and testimonials (supports emotional decision making) to reinforce their home recommendations. Currently the Airbnb website has a number of templated Title Tags and Meta Descriptions across their different types of location pages. It is important to note that the company hasnt raised any money from investors since March 2017, when it raised USD448 million. As you can imagine we have a lot of different data points on our users. Airbnb's business model was developed on being a low-cost solution for a low-value customer. All seven property types will launch this summer. The primary contributing factor appears to have been through keyword ranking growth, which as anyone who has followed our other case studies will know can be influenced by a number of other activities, such as onsite optimisation, backlink profile, and content marketing strategies. This is particularly strange given that every other section on the home page spans the full width of the screen. 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. How do you convince people to open up their home and allow guests to stay? Experiences are still a fairly new product and so introducing it on the home page makes sense. Keep reading for more detail about each of these along with business-level strategies examples for each! Ill bring them up next to each other so its easier to see. Building on this approach, I would also be looking to remarket to anyone that opened the email via Facebook, Display, or Gmail ads with additional information or incentives for them to register as a host. Guidelines and tips. This is because they are an essential part of any organic search strategy if you wish to succeed. Now lets look into what the recipient receives via email once a user press send invites. Log in or create an account, if you haven't already done so. We instantly see the value of sharing and when a host successfully joins, Earn $22 for every new host you refer. Its part of their larger strategy to become an everyday check in, providing users with content and experiences that are woven into their day-to-day lives. Would be exceptional if Airbnb are basing these recommendations based on average cost per night of previous bookings or the booking value of similar users. The critical experience Airbnb offers for a traveler is to experience new places as the locals do. A well-rounded and entrepreneurial individual with more than 12 years experience in working with and launching startups, Tam is skilled at managing multiple products simultaneously. Airbnb, the lodging colossus, has been prudent from the financial point of view. When it comes down to an Airbnb vs. hotel, most people opt for an Airbnb because it's cheaper. Oooof, this was loooong and pure gold Very nice effort! You could argue, why does this matter to me? It also seems like the most valuable content on the blog is that which focuses on acquiring new hosts. Long-term stays, i.e. High level of technology integration into various business processes. In a bid to provide more transparency to its users, Facebook now lets you view all of a Pages active ads. Its between them, Netflix and Amazon really, isnt it? The company uniquely leverages technology to economically empower millions of people around the world to unlock and monetize their spaces, passions and talents to become hospitality entrepreneurs.[3]. "Designing for reintermediation . , Interesting read! And whilst it looks simple to the user (I mean, thats the point), there are amazing mechanics & core areas of expertise which they have executed well. It helps a customer to have a personalized experience. It sure was a long time ago. 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. Mimic Airbnb's strategy by: Marketing your Airbnb as an experience, not just a building As a potential new host, seeing content from other hosts involved in the conversation certainly helps in the decision making process to join. The content gives instant value that there is content for hosts wanting extra support through toolkits or webinars which help with their hosting experience. Its worth noting that trip information provided in the hero form is stored, such as travel duration or location, if the user bounces but returns to the homepage, their trip details are stored in their browser cookie: I would expect that the majority of users do not purchase in the same session, so prompting returning users to continue to browse available homes in their cities of interest is a nice touch. 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. What is Airbnb generic strategy? Given that most of their pitch to consumers is to experience a location like a local, it seems like a very simple and logical step to offer paid activities provided by local hosts. Coca-Cola, for example, currently enjoys a profit margin of approximately 33 . Next we get some useful details about the property. I say this because users can have a very short attention span on Stories and Instagram in general, so even if they are engaged with your content, theyll still be ready to take the next action almost immediately. People appreciate stories about people, so this is very enticing content. Airbnb should review and update their Title Tags and Meta Descriptions to fit the length parameters provided by Google . Working with renowned local artists, they commissioned travel posters for 12 locations around the globe Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, Detroit, Havana, London, Paris, Florence, Nairobi, Cape Town, Tokyo, and Seoul. Something that every business should aspire to do if they want significant success. The next section makes a lot of sense jump into the upsell. Airbnb recognise some travel credit associated with my account and insert this into the email to remind me. And using the concept of ' Sharing Econom y', they created a newfound supply of income for the hosts. Its very short copy, and it gets straight to the point. They can boost referral traffic. And a primary reason for this huge discrepancy is due to the type of accommodation each platform offers. I can see its about me and what I can earn if I become a host. 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? This feature makes it easy and thoroughly enjoyable for the user. One question still remains for me: why do they choose the multiple/local domain names? Airbnb isnt a place where you book hotels (even though you can). What Airbnb have done well is how easy they make it to Invite Friends or Invite Hosts via Desktop & Mobile application. This content truly differentiates Airbnb from the big hotel booking sites, highlighting interesting places in different cities. The prime generic strategies applied by Airbnb is the mixture of differentiation and cost. Of note, this has been changing with the introduction of the new Experiences and Restaurants sections of the Airbnb website. If they were, its probably not the best look for Airbnb. Airbnb has removed the search bar in the header and there arent any buttons or links to guide users to take another step. Design thinking and design research inform strategic decision-making on many levels. Jason began his career at Webprofits as an intern and six years later he is now one of our leading social media specialists, managing a number of our long-standing Australian Fluid clients. Brendan brings both an analytical and creative mindset to his portfolio and is always ready for a challenge. A large part of Airbnbs success can be attributed to their website. Through feedback from attendees, they learned that far from not appreciating the commitment to beautifying their spaces with terrariums, they actually wanted to participate. Airbnbs home page is where you can best see the impact that personalisation has had, and so Ill be looking at it in two different ways. To give you some context, I booked an Airbnb a few months ago for a trip to L.A, so it makes sense that it appears as the first tile. Ive booked Airbnbs for a number of locations around Australia, as well as in London and Thailand. In the case of differentiation, a key advantage is that effective differentiation creates an ability to obtain premium prices from customers ("Executing a Differentiation Strategy" [Image missing in original] ). I mean, an extra $3,772 AUD per month is not bad at all (wouldnt mind the extra money now that I think about it). Make sure to plan carefully for the best results. For the people who havent decided where specifically in a city they want to stay, Airbnb provide some more information about the location of the property. Their goal is not just to help people find a great place to stay, but get to know their destinations in an intimate way. The model was disruptive when it hit the market and created an ongoing ripple in the travel and hospitality industry. Users arent always going to go out of their way to find out how they can share. Airbnb regularly chooses not to use the Link Preview option when sharing links, instead they opt for a custom shortened link in the post copy and share a separate video or image. Lets pick up where we left off, So, about [Paris], when are we booking? 92% of consumers trust recommendations from friends, only 33% trust online ads (Nielsen). Lets break this down a little more. Using it as a reference to our paper. And think about it for a second would you share referrals like this via email? There are several high-frequency pages like Canberra and Adelaide that, at the time of writing, do not feature a location-specific hero image and instead, feature a nondescript apartment image: This is an area of improvement if theyve got data to suggest a location-specific background image corresponds to a higher conversion rate. He has also written for Business Insider, The Next Web & The Australian, and also founded and grew Sydneys largest growth hackers community (4000+ people :). Next we get into a section that Airbnb does famously well reviews. It was the underlying message behind Airbnb's marketing campaign Don't Go There . Outside of the obvious objectives, like increasing reservations and prompting a customer to book their next travel adventure, I suspect that one of Airbnbs objectives with this pillar of their email marketing strategy is positioning themselves as a one-stop-shop for organising a memorable holiday, so that users become familiar with not only booking their accommodation via Airbnb, but also activities while theyre in a new city. Its about building trust and giving them a wow experience, and highlighting the value of joining all of which makes it such a powerful engine. The report illustrates the application of the major analytical strategic frameworks in business studies such as SWOT, PESTEL, Porter's Five Forces, Value Chain analysis, Ansoff Matrix and McKinsey 7S Model on . Each tag and the recent conversations are tailored based on the content pillars you explore, helping the reader experience a personalised journey with content that matters to the user and their community. 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