airbnb differentiation strategy
So what do the messages look like when you share with friends? Using SEMRush, I exported 50,000 of Airbnbs higher volume search terms and put these into a pivot table, sorting this by how many times each search term appeared. 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. For example, when they share an image separately instead of using the Link Preview option, I see this as counterproductive to the objective at hand, which is to drive people to a website, and Link Previews have been created by Facebook to provide Page owners with the easiest, most conversion-focused way of doing this. 
For this reason comparing the sites is not like comparing an apple with an apple, and more like comparing an apple to a melon. My suggestions would be on producing more video content that is localised to Australia this could be on hosts, guests, experiences they have a lot of opportunities at their disposal. Stability strategy. As far as I can see, nothing is actually personalised yet. Brendan brings both an analytical and creative mindset to his portfolio and is always ready for a challenge. We designed Airbnb to have 100 homes in a city. During the pandemic, the expansion of Luckey by Airbnb was more or less dormant, but Airbnb did not pull the plug on the initiative, unlike Airbnb Transportation for instance. Airbnb were looking for those who wanted to be a traveller, not a tourist, and for this audience there is one fundamental ingredient: authenticity. But that wont be enough, theyll need a comprehensive backlink strategy to appear authoritative and rank for the relevant keywords. It keeps it consistent for the user to know where key pages are. The company ended Q4 2021 with its highest number of active listings yet. They have a huge site so it wouldnt be easy, but there are a number of on-site optimisations they would need to make if they want to compete against the likes of booking.com or Wotif. It needs more hosts. They use previous bookings and keyword searches to curate their Facebook content. They are independent. 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. Its a simple call to action (CTA) header, and it outlines exactly what the website is set out to do: Book unique homes and experiences. Group travel Traveling in a group makes it more likely you will choose Airbnb. Airbnbs differentiation strategy effectively resolves problems within the market and all parties are satisfied. This applies to all other singular words listed above. A breadcrumb structure comes from the childrens story of Hansel and Gretel, where they leave breadcrumbs as a trail to find their way home. With it now almost unthinkable to plan a holiday or a night away from home without first doing your research on the internet, Airbnb has found their sweet spot in offering private accommodation to suit any budget or situation. However, we do see the option of being given other ways to share once we press the Share button next to Copy. For instance, Airbnb is launching in France a program called Patrimoine et Tourisme local to help restore historic houses located in rural areas ( https://www.airbnb.com/d/patrimoine ). Yet, after two years, several things have changed: Some properties have left the short-term rental market and now have long-term tenants. They currently dont do much to get the people browsing these pages to move through the funnel and look at search results (its unclear whether looking at these pages when signed in triggers email sequences). These are the stability strategy, growth strategy, and turnaround/retrenchment strategy. Whilst its evident that the UI has changed over the years, theres been numerous changes to their UX, copy, layout and small additional features, which have been implemented to maximise the chances of users spreading the word. The primary reason is that it comes down to the decision-making process. However with the above strategy they could certainly become more of a competitor for Wotif.com. The company's platform offers entire homes to book for short-term stays. 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. How do you ensure that people who have stayed with you before do it again? Based on the SOSTAC approach, Airbnb firstly conducts a situation analysis, identifying both external opportunities and threats. On the flipside, I appreciate that this is sometimes to push a bigger campaign, which means theyll want to be across as many placements as possible to ensure theyre getting maximum reach for this campaign. My pet peeve here is that Im still not signed in and have no browsing history for Airbnb, so how are these locations recommended for me? This review has been completed using publicly available information on the internet. Do I think they should be creating posts which achieve more of 2 & 4? Referrals are more trusted than any other form of marketing. Theres a clear funnel from awareness to consideration and finally conversion. a) The keywords your competitors are ranking for that you are not. People go onto Airbnb to look for cheap properties and luxurious properties, in busy cities and remote countrysides. However, they have a near-infinite number of pages and I could go on forever, so to reign it in Ill be looking at a couple of pages that most (if not all) businesses have. Its a great way to incentivise. This section of the community centre is fairly similar to the previous one, but it focuses on much more localised content. 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. Airbnb offer $15 off to guest referrals (discount) and $200 for a successful host referral (incentive). The only assumption we have is that its more effective in terms of conversions for Airbnb. Instead, its focused on sharing a custom link. In some places, such as non-urban North America, listings were up by 20% in Q4 2021. 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. It also shows that they realised early on that the key to success on the platform would be getting hosts to list their properties. ), Tips can be shared easily from host to host, Featured posts which read like blog posts with relevant hosting content, Gamification of system top contributors get points for every comment they give + like they get small leaderboard of contributors, The Airbnb admins dont post often nor reply to other peoples posts regularly an opportunity to get more discussions trending. 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. Airbnb first launched their referral features in 2011, and below is the original look and feel. You want them to equally be motivated to take action by accepting the invitation by joining and have the same experience (thats the only way you get the money ;). Stability strategy. Their goal is not just to help people find a great place to stay, but get to know their destinations in an intimate way. Why would people globally care about tours in Melbourne, or suggest property management services in the area? In a bid to provide more transparency to its users, Facebook now lets you view all of a Pages active ads. Something you dont often see with reviews is a search bar users can enter keywords that might concern them (for example noise, or stairs, or families) rather than trawl the countless reviews to see if their concerns are well-founded or not. 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. The company's platform offers entire homes to book for short-term stays. By doing this, Airbnb are one again fostering a stronger sense of community between the hosts, but they are also saving themselves a lot of internal resources. Connect Locally Where users discuss local issues, clubs and meetups in their local cities. For this reason, I think Airbnb have been smart to not make Twitter an integral part of the Australian Airbnb strategy. Airbnb was designed for when we were much smaller, Chesky said. 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? One thing that is noticeable however is how low the engagement on this section is compared to the previous one. Once with me logged in and once using incognito mode. If I had one criticism here, though, its that they could show more personality in these ads. Airbnbs customer experience is much different than what youd get at a traditional hotel or motel. On the left, its clear what I need to action if I want to share with my friends. In this section Ill be looking at how they use Facebook (both paid and non paid), Instagram, and Twitter to promote themselves, attract new guests and hosts, and keep existing users engaged. 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. In a Live Anywhere on Airbnb world, it makes sense to help families find a place where to crash for 2 months. This special feature that Airbnb have included has the ability to import contacts via Gmail, Yahoo or Outlook with ease (Ive done this before and its great!). When looking at the types of posts they share to the Page, this is a mixture of imagery & video. SEO: How do Airbnb ensure they appear in relevant search results to drive organic traffic to the site? Retarget products to people who have visited your website or app. All seven property types will launch this summer. With 4 million Hosts on Airbnb, we believe that weve just scratched the surface in growing our Host community. And think about it for a second would you share referrals like this via email? In many destinations, regulations and bans on short-term rentals are stricter and no love is lost on Airbnb for allegedly driving up real estate prices. Once you press the link, you get to this screen. To achieve this, theyve either used Dynamic Keyword Insertion or have closely tailored ad groups that have strong alignment between keywords and ads. After finding success in doing this manually, they created a script that would automatically email all new listings on Craigslist and notify them about Airbnb. For local inhabitants and businesses, the disaster is also economic. Airbnb Model can select one or more attributes that can uniquely position it in the eyes of the customers for a specific needs. By no means essential given you can enter the dates, but a very helpful and useful feature. Airbnbs answer to this dilemma is Neighbourhoods which launched seven years ago with 300 neighbourhoods in 7 cities, it now features 23 major cities around the world. This is why improving their generic [location] accommodation organic keyword rankings should be a focus for the Airbnb marketing team, with a recommendation being a more aggressive content marketing strategy. 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. From these posts, its clearer what kind of things people ask in the local community. They knew that people were willing to pay more for hotel rooms, so instead of competing on price, they competed on hospitality. Source and coordinate welcoming, cleaning and maintenance teams in order to provide guests with the best experience. For Airbnb, the community centre serves a purpose for hosts, both existing and prospects, to explore what its like being a host on Airbnb. Now lets take a look at Airbnbs active ads in Australia. When you share the direct link, you get this landing page. Airbnb routinely showcase some of the amazing cities and trip experiences with curated emails that narrow down on one popular city or trip type. 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. Their local twitter pages arent very impressive and it seems theyre more like an afterthought rather than a planned out strategy. Its humans sharing, connecting, and helping each other to make memories and enjoyable experiences. For these people in particular, letting strangers into their home can be a scary concept. This is a key problem. Thus, airbnb has managed to craft a growth strategy based on a very simple concept of crowsourcing and word of mouth, a strategy which has helped airbnb hit a USD 13 billion valuation (Patel, 2015). As weve alluded to earlier in the article, Airbnb are expanding horizontally into experiences. Just below the fold, we see Featured Discussions. The button stands out in red with a white background, and the CTA search explains very clearly whats going to happen when I click on it. 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. These work off rules which you set within the software, leaving you time to focus on the more important things. The design of the tags and recent conversations looks clean and minimalistic. Airbnb should review and update their Title Tags and Meta Descriptions to fit the length parameters provided by Google . Airbnb was designed for when we were much smaller, Chesky said. 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). The copy directly below the form gives you more insight into whats going to happen when you fill it in. In the mobile app, we can see Invite Friends which stands out. The image is great, it looks like a well designed, high quality home, but the header and description leaves a lot to be desired. Utilising the strengths of storytelling and curation has been the driving force behind the brands onsite content success. Ultimately, over time this has helped Airbnb. Also worth noting the low intent call-to-action. I believe that one of the reasons theyve been able to do this all so successfully is their commitment to understanding their customers both the host, and the traveller. So, based on the same principles as inviting guests, what does the recipient receive this time if theyre invited to become a host? In these two views, you see Pending based on the invites sent out and Available with the Credit and coupons available to use. Airbnb created a whole new kind of vacation just by providing spaces other than hotels to stay. 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. The number of views the property has had recently is a ploy at making it seem scarce, and therefore more desirable. Content Marketing: We look at how Airbnb use articles and videos to keep their guests and hosts engaged with the platform, Social Media: We breakdown how Airbnb use Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to build and convert an audience of guests and hosts. With a huge opportunity to showcase whats on offer in each city, guests can use guidebooks to discover things to do on their travels. I see social media advertising, particularly Facebook Ads, playing a major role in this strategy and being one of the best channels for Airbnb to: These two stages of the Host journey feature in what Airbnb refers to as the List Your Space (LYS) flow: Airbnbs concept of multi-touch attribution for a hypothetical user journey. Similarly to their video content, the posts which link back to their websites are often shared across their Global Facebook Pages, rather than being specific to that location. The focus is on the outstanding property and the equally beautiful backdrop. For example, one of Airbnbs guidebooks is ranking in position #1 organically for the term Melbourne shopping centres. Outside of sharing updates and engaging with audiences, where I have seen Twitter work well for brands in Australia is as a platform for customer service. Then theres a summary about the property, written by the host themselves. Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking Software Partner Programs: How to Qualify and Should Property Managers Care? For Airbnb, its been about continuous discovery, testing and optimising of what is known as one of the worlds famous & very effective referral engines. 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. Part of Airbnbs success is due to their holistic marketing approach, one that embraces offline marketing strategies just as much as digital. The whole experience was streamlined. In particular, note the header and sub header. Meanwhile, the hosts are all rated 4.8 or above. And as far as does this offer an opportunity for incremental new offerings and services, the answer is absolutely yes. He argues that the use of a specific threshold would bias the perception of distribution as a whole and could be misleading. You could compare a lot of their image posts to a Wanderlust Pinterest board; aspirational imagery featuring real people with locations that offer stunning backdrops, architecture and interiors. 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. 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. 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. Apart from the images, the screen displays most of the top level information you would want to know about the property at a glance: The headline, the location, the price, and the number of bedrooms, bathrooms, and guests. browse homes. I visited Japan last year, a place where Airbnbs are quite hard to come by. 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? Airbnb started out in 2008 when founders Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia realised they could make a quick buck by renting out an air mattress in their living room to people visiting San Francisco for a big conference. Sure, theyre recommended (I assume theyre the most searched for locations globally, or from my location) but theyre not personalised so why not just say Most popular? Not many businesses go above and beyond in this way. The host themselves to have 100 homes in a city Australian Airbnb.... 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