This document provides the Strategic Plan for Airbnb for 2017-2021. The posters became part of their Experiences feature, showcasing the resident artists beautiful designs. They may not own any of them or have significant control over what is said on the pages, but they can choose to lay them out in a way this is most likely to lead to a booking. Airbnb stock has jumped . As is the case with most two-sided marketplaces, without supply the entire thing falls apart. Airbnb first launched their referral features in 2011, and below is the original look and feel. 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. Personally, I dont email my friends often, especially at scale, so having these two options makes it feel easy just to share via these channels where I talk to my friends all the time. Or are they simply testing based on my previous app behaviour? 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. Design is in our DNA and it's embedded in everything . the support team at airbnb are excellent and respond in a timely manner! Certainly not at the expense of anything else that was already there. This sequence is triggered when a user logged into the website starts looking at a city they wish to visit, or particular homes in that city, but has not proceeded to check-out. So bear with me while I explain them here, it will all make sense later . Not only that, but its a bit boring. Airbnb Model can select one or more attributes that can uniquely . As a user, its very easy to use. With the introduction of Stories, Neighbourhoods, and Guidebooks, we see how the brand is not only revolutionising the way travellers discover unusual rooms and memorable activities in every pocket of the world but encouraging users to stay on the platform to plan and book their trip. 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. Lets break this down a little more. While booking monthly stays on Airbnb has been possible . differentiation, hybrid and Blue Ocean. Airbnb should review and update their Title Tags and Meta Descriptions to fit the length parameters provided by Google . How did I determine this? Its simple referral marketing is less costly, and has a higher quality + quantity of leads. Why would people globally care about tours in Melbourne, or suggest property management services in the area? Do you remember these designs? Facebook is 1 of 3 social media platforms that Airbnb is currently most active on. Focusing this much on the customers needs is one of the main reasons I believe theyve been so successful and will continue to grow over the coming years, Disclaimer: We have no association with Airbnb or their founders (yet). The next section makes a lot of sense jump into the upsell. I think theres a lot of brands that could take a leaf out of Airbnbs book when it comes to community management. 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. Note: The larger the circle, the more visibility a domain has. Brian Chesky, Airbnb CEO, points out that "until now, Airbnb has been about homes." With the launch of Trips, it brings "together where you stay, what you do, and the people you meet all in one place."Designed and led by local experts, users can use Airbnb as a one-stop shop to not only book a place to stay in their destination, but also to participate in any of the 500 handcrafted . Having all of the negative posts in their own section keeps them out of the minds of users who have been having a good experience. One thing that is noticeable however is how low the engagement on this section is compared to the previous one. [1] At a close look, Airbnb business strategy consists of the following three elements: 1. As a company with over four million listings in 65,000 cities across 191 countries, local customs and traditions play a big part in Airbnbs offline marketing efforts. This is pretty standard for most product pages, but Airbnb do it well. 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. If Airbnb Plus is an example of a product upsell, their Experiences are a great example of a cross-sell. Airbnb have a reputation for using personalisation arguably better than any other big brand business in the world. Whether its personalised or not, I think theres room for improvement when it comes to Airbnbs home page. This is an example of how AirBnB's Insights team uses data to address current user experience challenges on the platform. 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. Precisely speaking, the success of Airbnb leans on the variety of suppliers ranging from small rooms to A-listed buildings ( Airbnb, n.d.). Focused low-cost - competing not only through price but by also selecting a small portion of the market to focus on. There's quite a bit of research and work that goes into creating a winning differentiation strategy. I visited Japan last year, a place where Airbnbs are quite hard to come by. The key things they provide: These all help put a user at ease and reduce friction when booking. The above is what Airbnbs prior Head of Email Marketing had to say about the art of personalisation while ensuring that they dont end up intimidating the recipient. Theyve done this so well that theyve become synonymous with non-hotel accommodation booking, and created a new way to travel. Keep up the amazing work. 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. If you are familiar with the search engine optimisation space, its likely youve run into the term backlinks before. 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. You could argue as to why Airbnb havent made referring hosts even more prominent on the page due to the importance of making sure demand doesnt outweigh supply. The Local Lens segment of the blog puts the spotlight on hosts and experiences by featuring individual stories from their users, similar to Community Stories onsite. Every home is verified through in-person quality inspection to ensure quality and design. I get directed to a page where a modal instantly pops-up. In this section of the community site, this is where discussions around support related to anything and everything takes place. Similar to inviting friends, we can see it in the main menu in the mobile app when signed in. 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. Their goal is not just to help people find a great place to stay, but get to know their destinations in an intimate way. In addition, for existing hosts, its more likely going to help retain hosts. So what can we learn from Airbnbs referral program? Do I think they should be creating posts which achieve more of 2 & 4? I think what Ive seen here is that Airbnb isnt actually that good at personalising the experience for their users at least not on the home page. Airbnb has removed the search bar in the header and there arent any buttons or links to guide users to take another step. . Now lets look at some examples of how Airbnb is using Instagram to promote their different offerings. In the case of Airbnb, the host side is receiving a subsidy. Airbnb take unorthodox approaches to get noticed in the offline world, and when they do, its not to promote themselves or their platform directly but to promote who they are. In closing the only thing I would add that I think they should be doing more of on Stories is including a swipe up CTA earlier in their stories if theyre going to include one, perhaps even from the 2nd or 3rd tile depending on how long the full Story is. In terms of call to actions, Airbnbs most frequently used call-to-action in headlines is Search and Book Now. Just below the fold, we see Featured Discussions. An Airbnb Instagram marketing strategy should leverage visuals to increase engagement and feature hashtags and keywords for discoverability. 1. 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. The report also comprises discussions of Airbnb marketing strategy, ecosystem and addresses issues of corporate social responsibility. Although the event was not quite as successful as they hoped, the company did gain a valuable insight. Im now shown a ranked list of recommendations with comments from Airbnb hosts and a Google Map with pins corresponding to each place. Visual content is the holy grail of authenticity and shows the extent that brands should be willing to go when selling to their audience. . This option currently isnt available on mobile. 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. A lot of the invitation mechanism is the same above, just done in a different experience with mobile considerations. Airbnb is an American company working on online marketing and offer hospitality services like holiday cottages, apartments, homestays, hotel rooms, or hostel beds for people to lease or rent during activities relating to tourism. Does your company or brand have a community or do community marketing? If hosts are able to help each other out with a few quick posts, then it saves Airbnb having to get involved until its absolutely necessary. Airbnb has its sights set on exponential growth in the coming years. This seems as good a place as any for it on the page. Today, on any given night, 200,000 travelers are staying in private rooms around the world thanks to arrangements made through Airbnb's online platform. most recent stock sale values them at USD $35 billion, even paid for hosts to have professional photographs taken, https://www.facebook.com/AirbnbAustralia/, Engagement Custom Audiences from video views, Airbnbs Work To Fight Discrimination and Build Inclusion Report, The King Valley: The Australian Valley That Flows With Prosecco, Beaches, Beats, And Bunny Chow: Diving Into Durban, Meet Your Host: Bushwalking in Bundeena With Dianne, Experience In The Spotlight: Freestyle Football In Paris With World Champion San Garnier. Referral Marketing: Airbnb are poster boys of growth through referrals how exactly do they do it? There is an inconsistent breadcrumb structure implemented on the Airbnb website, which could also be impacting the websites organic performance. 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). Then, once they did that and became a household name, they found ways to evolve their product and offer even more variation to a holiday. 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. Weve now deep-dived into how the mechanics work when inviting a user as a referral to the platform, but what else can we find on the page where we can invite friends? As Tam wrote, Airbnb has really springboarded off the message, Dont go there. On the right, I can see the credit I currently have, and what I need to do in order to get more. I can see its about me and what I can earn if I become a host. 1 / 52. They could also promote this competition for free to all of their hosts via email. Looks pretty unique, wouldnt you say? Theyve been around for more than 11 years and are still growing at a rate that most business can only dream of. (A) Cost leadership - When the competitive advantage of . 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. What this tells us is that a data-driven approach forms part of their content strategy. . 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. Remember the days when the home page was a scrolling image with a big search bar? Yes, there are some great little touches as we can see in the last section, but on the whole personalisation isnt that widespread on their site yet. 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