Airbnb could double down on this strategy to lower the barrier to entry and improve retention with a stronger content-driven approach to educate and raise awareness on becoming a host and building your Airbnb business. 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. 7. Its particularly interesting that Airbnbs spend allocated to accommodation-themed keywords significantly outweighs spend on hotel-related keywords. I believe their inclusion of the Superhost is to give the post added credibility, as Superhosts have an average user rating of 4.8 or more out of 5. First thing that strikes me is just how simple it is. Living on the domain of atairbnb.com, the Airbnb blog covers a plethora of content ranging from tips for hosts and guests, information on partnerships, and updates on business initiatives. Business Model Innovation for Airbnb Fania Rahmanawati Karimah (S1870939) Abstract Airbnb, an online marketplace where the user can rent out their properties in short-term, join tours, and book restaurants, has become the global phenomenon since it has grown dramatically in short amount of time. So what happens when you share via Facebook or Whatsapp? What Airbnb offer isnt a cheap place to sleep when youre on holiday, its the opportunity to experience your destination as a local would. I expect theyre on Twitter simply as a way of ensuring they still have visibility on a channel where someof their customers are (even if its not in big numbers). Here are some more that you may want to consider. Airbnbs timeline is varied in terms of post content and types. An accommodation platform would never offer experiences as a product, and nor should they. Ideally, each of these three elements should be optimized for differentiation. It serves as a broker between suppliers and consumers, receiving a commission of 9% to 15%. 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. It seems as though that previous history doesnt seem to influence the options Im presented with. They dont all have 5 star ratings, and the number of ratings they have is quite varied. As weve spoken before about the layout of the page, lets explore the content and what we can learn from them. 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. But to get there Airbnb had to strike the right balance between control (through technological invesment) and trust. This poster promoting a classic image of Miami was created by graphic designer Alex Asfour, as part of Airbnbs travel poster campaign. When sharing image posts, Facebook does not allow you to create an audience of everyone who engaged with that specific image post, so if you wanted to remarket to these people you would have to choose the option of People Who Engaged With Any Post or Ad and this includes all post engagement; whereas when posting videos, Facebook gives you the option to create audiences such as People who viewed at least ten seconds of your video or People who have watched at least 75% of your video. 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. The strange thing is, Im on the Australian domain so you would assume they at least have it personalised there. This is also a testament to the volume of home ratings and testimonials Airbnb have collected, because for this approach to be successful requires highly rated homes and glowing testimonials, across multiple cities, and multiple countries, while also aiming to tailor the results to users based on the travel duration and location, and potentially factors like affluence as well. Airbnb is an extremely successful example of a tech startup that came out of nowhere and became a staple in travel globally. Airbnb stock has jumped . They use previous bookings and keyword searches to curate their Facebook content. The content gives instant value that there is content for hosts wanting extra support through toolkits or webinars which help with their hosting experience. In 2011 Airbnb had to come up with an urgent answer to this very important question when a host in San Francisco reported that their house was trashed after renting it out for a week. Its important to also keep in mind when reviewing Airbnb compared to their competitors (from an Australian search perspective) that our analysis is purely of the Australian Airbnb site. By creating a hyper-local section of the community pages, Airbnb have reduced the clutter on the main section, while also building a community within the community. If we refer back to the notion of video content being great for storytelling, it may be that Airbnb is happy enough with someone watching a video and if they click through to read the full article relating to that video, thats a bonus, the article perhaps has more value for SEO than social. When compared with Booking.com, its evident who the backlink winner is: Booking.com had close to 100,000 Referring Domains pointing to their website in 2013, while Airbnb has yet to reach the 7,000 Referring Domain mark. Airbnb has also included a number of videos and photos into the content to illustrate experiences or locations, and links lead back to the main site to strengthen ties with Airbnbs services (where its natural or useful for the reader). But its one that many businesses wouldnt have made, and I think it speaks volumes to the type of business Airbnb see themselves as. So, what can we learn from how the Airbnbs referral system mechanics and design work for them right now? The experiences section is very clear these are the top rated experiences around the world. Required fields are marked *. For Airbnb, its been about continuous discovery, testing and optimising of what is known as one of the worlds famous & very effective referral engines. Q&A Threads from both Airbnb Admin team, Top Contributors, or anyone part of the platform. 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. Instagrams organic reach & algorithm works slightly differently, but well get to that later. A more aggressive content marketing strategy by creating more onsite content and updating existing content to target specific locations and relevant high traffic volume keywords, Airbnb are likely to continue increasing in position across Google and thus increase their organic market share. Novak, Jasminko, and Schwabe, Gerhard. This feature makes it easy and thoroughly enjoyable for the user. Externally, we would presume any traffic is driven through organic search, email traffic, and through social promotion. Can earn up to $3,401 this month. The way its designed and the copy used is to help build instant trust and increase the likelihood of me accepting the invitation. 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. So that in itself is the whole sign up process pretty impressive how streamlined it is, right? As a travel company, cultural celebration is at the heart of Airbnbs business model. 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. 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. From these posts, its clearer what kind of things people ask in the local community. To add to this, they can also follow the user around on a range of different placements News Feed on mobile & desktop, Instagram, Audience Network so Id say having Automatic Placements set for this campaign would be a must to ensure they are everywhere that their audiences are. Its often looked at by businesses and startups (usually ones that claim to be The Airbnb of), and with good reason. When looking at the types of posts they share to the Page, this is a mixture of imagery & video. They also seem to have this automated, as they share many of the exact same photos and captions on Twitter posts as they do on Facebook. Airbnb has taken an impressive approach to content using storytelling and curation to drive growth. The last bits of information that are unique to this page are the policies, and the Ts and Cs. Cynics will say it comes down to price, and in a lot of instances theyre right. Outside of their sponsored Page posts and Dynamic Ads, the rest of Airbnbs ads strategy currently focuses on one thing signing up hosts. As we know, the concept of Airbnb was completely new for audiences who had never used them before, and common questions around about safety & trust were prevalent from audiences considering using the platform. With a strong digital marketing background and broad business experience, hes perfectly suited to the Strategy + Growth team. Differentiation. If Ive already booked accommodation, this section may still be of interest, or if I havent booked accommodation, this is another angle by which I could be re-excited by my interest in visiting Santa Monica. I love it. Precisely speaking, the success of Airbnb leans on the variety of suppliers ranging from small rooms to A-listed buildings ( Airbnb, n.d.). Smart play Airbnb. 11. . How to . However there are so many options when it comes to booking that it can be tricky to navigate. "This is a key problem. If youve ever cracked open or lugged around a lonely planet or rough guide book, then youll feel a huge sense of gratitude for Airbnbs Guidebooks. The instantly-recognisable logo, which they named The Blo, is designed to mean the universal symbol of belonging. They are so well researched and highly educational. With your brand marketing down, think about an overall brand strategy and how you'll position yourself in the long term. This is clever by Airbnb. Each of the pages do have 2 consistent UX features like the homepage, including: Highlighting top contributors serves to show the wider community that numerous community members will help with answering any questions or queries that come their way. Beyond that, I would go as far to say that Airbnb want to enable their customer base to more easily be able to live it, as opposed to just seeing it, reinforcing one of their key brand messages. Well, press Send, duh! . Community: How do Airbnb maintain and grow their online community, and what part does that play in their business growth? For Airbnb, the community centre serves a purpose for hosts, both existing and prospects, to explore what its like being a host on Airbnb. The content on the page is broken up primarily between: Its a clever strategy by the Airbnb team to break up this content. As most businesses know, testimonials are extremely valuable. This is because they are an essential part of any organic search strategy if you wish to succeed. 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. Im not 100% sure of the exact reason why we can only see this for now. From a marketing perspective, I personally think its a good move by Facebook, as it will ensure advertisers do not get complacent with their creative & messaging if they want to stay ahead of the curve, theyll need to keep innovating and testing new ads. Heres an example of Airbnb adding to the conversation in the comments of one of their posts. 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. Recommendations could also be based on the style of home, studio apartment versus family friendly options, or what amenities are associated with my previous bookings, for example, am I always booking places that have wifi or a pool. After I decide to learn more, I come to this landing page specifically personalised to me and, more impressively, my location. While reducing factors like prices & safety, Airbnb created a ubiquitous availability of home-like experiences. 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). Since then, theyve evolved multiple times; continuously improving their website and user interface, adding new features, creating new products, expanding to new markets, and trying a range of different tactics to drive the growth of their business. However, I think it addresses & resonates with what other hosts may or potentially do experience in their respective locations which gives value to the reader. So as soon as the user has enough information they need to make a decision, they are immediately able to act on it. From this email Airbnb are trying to get me back to their website. 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. It means I dont have to copy & paste emails (although you have that option) and the bulk of the work is done. Ive done a fair bit of travelling in my time and I absolutely HATE it when people say theyve done a certain location. Image source: Getty Images. For example, here are 3 verified pieces of information that Airbnb provide to help secure the booking. I assume that the next few options are similar to Amazons People who viewed this product also looked at feature. 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. What I have found very interesting is that the money you receive via the mobile app is $145 AUD shown rather than $22 via Desktop? The company analyzes the specific product and compares it with similar products offered by competitors. A company needs to analyze: Their strengths; Their weaknesses Every single business with an online presence needs to have some form of social proof listed on its site, and most would aspire to do it as well as Airbnb. For such a competitive space, Airbnb is considered one of the more competitive players. At the time of writing, the Airbnb Fan base is sitting at 15.6 million. Its no secret that most travellers appreciate a good story. 1 / 52. When it comes to landing pages, they mostly feature local imagery to help provide a more relevant result, and it would seem they are testing short form pages against longer ones to see which converts better. So, what better way to advertise the product than those who have experienced the platform? Of course, you can edit the template message yourself, but this does make it easy for the user to share. Lets take a look at the invitation mechanism on mobile at a high level. Initial reading is to get a rough idea of what information is provided for the analyses. Focused low-cost - competing not only through price but by also selecting a small portion of the market to focus on. What has Airbnb done well? Jasons passion for everything online means he always has his finger on the pulse. 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. How did I determine this? Some people appreciate the luxury of staying in a hotel, knowing youll receive a professional service, including a properly maintained room. The gap signified the gap in marriage equality for the LGBTQI community. Something I found of interest and that may have had an impact on Airbnbs 2017/2018 growth was that there were several small Google algorithm updates made in December 2017 an unusual time for updates due to the impact these changes can have on eCommerce. In this case, Airbnb vision statement is all about leaving a memorable reputation at a global level. More social proof again (impressive numbers, right?). Once Ive accepted the invite and completed the sign up process, I get taken straight to the homepage with a personalised message with What can we help you find, Dan? and in the right hand corner a notification for $76 AUD in my account. Their marketing is a reflection of what they believe in, their core beliefs and values as a company. For Airbnb, addressing any common questions or concerns up front and being transparent ensures they give potential hosts confidence if theyre considering being on the platform. If its not already clear, Airbnb are using an extensive library of headlines, and this is because most of their ads are tailored specifically to travel destinations. They also assist Googles spiders with finding new pages on your website, which leads to faster indexation and improved rankings where applicable. By far, the biggest bulk of sites that I saw got hit all had tons and tons of landing pages target massive arrays of keyword permutations. Airbnb has its sights set on exponential growth in the coming years. 1. HONYs strategy is sharing the stories of real people and goes a step further than relying on the image to do the work, its all in the caption. Even when they dont go exactly as planned. Being the experienced brand with strong foothold, the company uses differentiation as a tool to reduce the pressure by other brands. Airbnb offer $15 off to guest referrals (discount) and $200 for a successful host referral (incentive). Maximum rate each night: Under this . The part about the airbnb community is excellent! As this action could mean swiping left to the next Story, why not try and encourage a click-through to your website or app earlier, if thats one of your objectives with the Story? Really love this level of analysis . Its a great UX and user-generated content strategy. A successful referral process is a simple one, so summing it up in 3 small sections makes it easy for the user to understand, which entices them to go through it. Not a big deal as its revealed as you scroll down, and its not the most important bit of information on the page by a long way, but it is a (very) minor annoyance. Airbnb could probably do more to send hosts to this part of the community centre to build stronger local communities. This shouldnt come as a surprise to anyone who sells a tangible product, but the way you present the product in images makes all the difference. The difference here is a lot easier to spot. One question still remains for me: why do they choose the multiple/local domain names? Airbnb Plus is a selection of only the highest quality homes with hosts known for great reviews and attention to detail. Im now shown a ranked list of recommendations with comments from Airbnb hosts and a Google Map with pins corresponding to each place. What I like most about it is that the right hand side of the page is reserved for it. Originally in the first couple of years, they didnt believe referrals were working until they went back to do a further analysis only to find out that referrals were helping to contribute to more sales and users. Airbnb Model can also pursue differentiation strategy based on the industry forces description in casename case study. About us. It is important to note that the company hasnt raised any money from investors since March 2017, when it raised USD448 million. Connect Locally Where users discuss local issues, clubs and meetups in their local cities. Innovation is at the core of how we operate at Webprofits, always looking for a smarter + better way of helping our clients drive record-breaking growth through digital marketing. And how do you ensure those hosts are happy enough to keep renting out their places? Needless to say, Im not impressed so far. However, theres not much to be gleaned from it for most businesses to be able to action, so well leave the home page review there for now. Why would Airbnb have this content pillar specifically? Theres no form with dates or number of guests like there was previously, so theres an extra step no matter what. Be it data from our wish lists, search trends, seasonality, there is a component of every email that is rooted within data. There are few industries bigger than travel, and its hard to find other industries that provide such a huge opportunity in relation to organic search. Airbnb are able to match up the user session with your email address based on your browser cookie, and they then trigger an email sequence that aims to get you back into your search and ultimately book your next stay. . As Chloe explained in our review of Xeros marketing strategy, its important to run an SEO keyword gap analysis to know: This traction is reflected in the keyword gap analysis report when comparing the terms Booking.com and Wotif.com are ranking on page 1 of Google for, which Airbnb are not. And like most marketplace sites, the buyer often wants information about the supplier to know if whats on the page can be trusted. As for why it is not consist, it may be that the markup was not enforced across all pages, or that pages were missed when adding the markup across the site if done through a manual spreadsheet. This type of messaging perfectly ties back to their brand ethos of belonging and community we dont need to know who Patrick & Elizabeth are, we just need to know were invited to stay at their home. But unless your story resonates with your ideal customer audience, then while people will read your content and engage with the piece, they wont necessarily engage with your brand. Its almost like trying to decide where you want to live, even if only for a short period of time. Global presence makes it an easy choice. Airbnb's marketing strategy leverages every opportunity to communicate its value while remaining warm and inviting. 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. How do you ensure that people who have stayed with you before do it again? Not many businesses go above and beyond in this way. Airbnb business level strategies. In this section of the community site, this is where discussions around support related to anything and everything takes place. They charge for that service now that its been proven to work (and they have enough properties that look good so they dont need to worry about the ones that dont), but you can see why they suggest it when photos are front and centre on the property pages. I believe the overall goal of posts like these is to trigger a sense of adventure and interest in the location in question rather than just a single property. Social proof to ensure those interested that other people are happy with their experience as a host. . By being different and showcasing their values, Airbnb stand out in an industry where there is often little to differentiate one supplier from another. Airbnb have a ton of content on their site, mostly to support the decision of where shall I travel to? This is fantastic and helps make Airbnb feel like a one-stop-shop for travel but they could do more with the content they have. When we start a business or a new brand, it is essential to aim for a long-term payoff for all our efforts and investments A sustainable ROI. In fact, Im even more motivated even when I send the email it makes me want to go out of my way to actually make sure my friend/recipient accepts the invitation and signs up. Launched in 2017, the award-winning campaign encouraged people to wear a black matte metal ring with a centimeter gap in the middle, and the words Until We All Belong inscribed on the underside. That's what Airbnb has bet on since 2008, when a three-member team of designers and an engineer set out to solve the essential problem of where to stay. Ive seen many websites where the image looks wonderful but affects the functionality of the website, and I think its criminal. The search box is a deeplink that takes me directly to the associated search results for Santa Monica 9-12th April. 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.
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