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. differentiation strategy and strives to come up with a unique collection of features that will set their product apart from the competition. First thing that strikes me is just how simple it is. We designed Airbnb to have 100 homes in a city. Share a link to your friends to a custom landing page or via email. 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? Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Rene Mauborgne, Positioning: The Battle Of Mind by Al Ries and Jack Trout, What is Strategy-HBR Article by Michael E. Porter, Good To Great by James C. Collins, Principles by Ray Dalio, . As a long-term host Ive spent years working with different hosts and always had an amazing time. (A) Cost leadership - When the competitive advantage of . The whole experience was streamlined. 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. Idea to save money for your next trip: use Airbnb. It has a feeling of Wanderlust and makes me want to travel. 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. 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. Their job as a business is to promote the properties (and the hosts) so that people want to book them. Im sure your head is probably spinning with the amount involved in understanding referrals, but it goes to show the power of having referrals in your product can go a long way to increasing word-of-mouth and, ultimately, retaining users & acquiring new ones with virtually no cost. If we refer back to this sense of community and how deep-rooted it is in Airbnbs values, I think they are missing an opportunity to share more stories that focus on this aspect of their brand this happens between people. They began offering their customers ways to specifically experience life as a local, as well as sleep like one. A company needs to analyze: Their strengths; Their weaknesses Biggest hosts mimic the behaviour of hospitality firms in terms of distribution. In addition, I found it interesting to see the similarities in style between this section of the Airbnb website and popular travel site TripAdvisor. Retarget products to people who have visited your website or app. Lets pick up where we left off, So, about [Paris], when are we booking? The instantly-recognisable logo, which they named The Blo, is designed to mean the universal symbol of belonging. Email Marketing: How do Airbnb use email to communicate with prospective and existing customers to drive new and repeat usage of the platform? For example, Wotif.com currently has approx. 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. Methods of analysis include Strategic Position & Action Evaluation (SPACE) Matrix, and Grand Strategy Selection Matrix as well as . As mentioned earlier in the article, the supply of properties and experiences is essential for Airbnbs success, and so its important that hosts are able to navigate where they need to quickly. But this expansion has also put the spotlight on content and localisation, both for guests and also for hosts using the platform. This document provides the Strategic Plan for Airbnb for 2017-2021. Besides the basic cost savings, the most inviting factor of Airbnb, there are many reasons why Airbnb is better than a hotel: Airbnbs often come with a kitchen so besides saving money . 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. They famously did things that didnt scale and then growth hacked solutions so that they did. Focused low-cost - competing not only through price but by also selecting a small portion of the market to focus on. 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. This is an excellent strategy as it essentially allows them to give their audiences a little extra nudge down the sales funnel. As the pages are predominantly image-based, they are missing out on opportunities to rank on page #1 and drive traffic for more location-based keywords. At the top of the page, theres a button in Airbnbs signature colour (which, internally, they apparently call Rausch) directing you to places to stay in that neighbourhood. Once you press the link, you get to this screen. 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. And most of all, they provide a large amount of content for relevant destinations on their side, giving them a huge organic backlink strategy. These work off rules which you set within the software, leaving you time to focus on the more important things. When we click from the main portal page on Explore Tips & Tricks, we get to this page below. It is a cornerstone of Airbnb business strategy. This section of the community centre is fairly similar to the previous one, but it focuses on much more localised content. Their main objective with Instagram content is to generate engagement & awareness and, where possible, they will try and prompt users to click through to their website, either through the link in their bio or by using the swipe up to learn more option in Stories. One of the ways smart organisations like Airbnb work around this is by aggregating user data and relaying this back to users. The next best-performing page is Melbourne, Australia with 1.9% of the total traffic, and 479 ranked keywords. These business strategies, based on Airbnb marketing mix, help the brand succeed in the market. 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. Its a clear design, and the use of their primary colour stands out against the white background. As you can see in the screenshot above of organic visibility above, the brand first began to gain keyword traction in January 2014, when traffic grew by 133% month on month. The site is: Youd expect a business that specialises in travel to have an image laden website, but they do a particularly good job of having a lot of images without it feeling overwhelming. You can see another variation of this email here. One question still remains for me: why do they choose the multiple/local domain names? In comparison to static imagery, video is often more engaging and great for storytelling, which Airbnb have used to announce theyd hit half a billion check-ins in May 2019, as they celebrated this through video, rather than imagery. People appreciate stories about people, so this is very enticing content. Many people like the idea of staying in someone elses home, but not everyone does. One thing that is noticeable however is how low the engagement on this section is compared to the previous one. This type of strategy will always have an expiry date. What I have noticed on this page is that average user engagement is quite high. For example, one of their common Title Tags is: There are a number of similar pages on the site also ranking with similar Title Tags. Airbnb has removed the search bar in the header and there arent any buttons or links to guide users to take another step. business model which creates value for both parties and fill the demand and supply gap in the market. Airbnb business level strategies. Ive seen/heard of some properties that havent been kept very well, are lacking basic holiday features, or dont look very good. As far as I can see, nothing is actually personalised yet. Speaking of stories, they use Instagram Stories really well. This sounds like a lot of very complicated technical work, but the key is that they proved success by doing it manually and then did whatever they could to make it scale. Airbnb, the lodging colossus, has been prudent from the financial point of view. 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. Social proof to ensure those interested that other people are happy with their experience as a host. Really love this level of analysis . The assumption is that Airbnb wants to focus on the goal of the user at this particular step. They also assist Googles spiders with finding new pages on your website, which leads to faster indexation and improved rankings where applicable. 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. 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. So why was it perceived as being so different to the booking engines that were already around at the time, and are still huge today. Web. Airbnb isnt a place where you book hotels (even though you can). Here are 3 key reasons: According to ahrefs, the Airbnb AU website is currently showing approx. Ive done a fair bit of travelling in my time and I absolutely HATE it when people say theyve done a certain location. Having said that, their product page is near perfect, so when a user has a better idea of what theyre after, they do a pretty good job of funnelling them towards a sale. And while many businesses have been created that rent out properties on Airbnb, there are still a significant number of properties where the host still lives there. 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. Even the button with the CTA of explore homes is just a bit dull. differentiation, hybrid and Blue Ocean. 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. Its a win-win situation for the user and recipient. Airbnb has established a clear onsite content strategy which aims to engage and inspire their guests to stay on the platform and book a bed or experience. Airbnb Model can select one or more attributes that can uniquely . 51% of the hosts practice multichannel distribution. The main goal of implementing a differentiation strategy is to increase competitive advantage. Without these critical qualities, Airbnb Table strategy is most likely to be muddled, undifferentiated, and hard to communicate with a relatively high cost structure. 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. Mimic Airbnb's strategy by: Marketing your Airbnb as an experience, not just a building Having this on the page again highlights to users that not only can you get credit by inviting your friends to use the platform to stay for accommodation, but also invite friends to host people to stay at their places. I dont really understand the point though why these 8 properties? For new users, Airbnb ensures that each individual feels important to be part of the platform. That loan is on top of another $1 billion investment the company had . Business Strategy Chapter.1. I think theres a lot of brands that could take a leaf out of Airbnbs book when it comes to community management. 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. Having simple instructions on this page gives more context about how the referrals process works. To counter this, they created a premium product called Airbnb Plus. 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. 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. As to how people are arriving at this section of the site, this is likely through organic search, email traffic, and social promotion. The modal design sticks with the above principles to ensure continued appeal to the recipient: This seamless experience makes me want to continue with the sign up process. This move will enable professional hospitality companieslike small, independent boutique hotelsto have a place on the platform. Not only did they understand what their customers wanted, they created the desire in the first place! I now know what to get mum for her 52nd birthday . 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. So, what have Airbnb done to construct and generate one of the best communities in the world? We instantly see the value of sharing and when a host successfully joins, Earn $22 for every new host you refer. Airbnb focuses on providing a human experience with personalized touches. Its an interesting challenge worth watching closely if youre a user of Airbnb. 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. Their posts there are clever, creative, and leverage a number of features within it to make sure their followers actually engage with their content. Ill be highlighting specific examples soon, but if they hadnt considered the User Experience as much in the early days then I doubt theyd have experienced the growth that they have. And the final important screen is you have the option to share the link directly via other channels such as Facebook & Whatsapp, similar to the experience on mobile to share with guests. Cynics will say it comes down to price, and in a lot of instances theyre right. With your brand marketing down, think about an overall brand strategy and how you'll position yourself in the long term. To achieve this, theyve either used Dynamic Keyword Insertion or have closely tailored ad groups that have strong alignment between keywords and ads. Airbnb have also gone down this route, creating an @AirbnbHelp account which is their go-to account for all customer service related issues. , Interesting read! User experience, word of mouth and self-regulation are at the center of its strategy. If Airbnb Plus is an example of a product upsell, their Experiences are a great example of a cross-sell. 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). Airbnb segmentation, targeting and positioning . If they were a service business, they would target [city name] + [service A] and then [city name] + [service B] and so on.. 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. Lets take a look at the invitation mechanism on mobile at a high level. I suspect it comes down to volume. If you select Melbourne, for example, there are 19 neighbourhoods to select from, with filters like Greens Spaces and By the Beach. 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. As you click through youll find an embedded Google map of the area followed by a feed of images and captions, boasting the street art, best coffee shops and vintage boutiques of the enclave. directed towards developing technology or strategies to differentiate Airbnb from its competitors. It took me a moment to realise it, but that structure isnt a watch tower (maybe Ive been watching too much Game of Thrones), its a home. 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. 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. Either way, the content is highly relevant to the search term and the location which certainly cant hurt. Beyond what Airbnb have done from designing a world-class UX experience with their referral system, its their approach to continuous measurement and testing which acts as a testament to the continuous success of the program. Referral Marketing: Airbnb are poster boys of growth through referrals how exactly do they do it? https://www.facebook.com/AirbnbAustralia/. Besides sophisticated digital campaigns, Airbnb has contributed to traditional, even old fashioned, marketing channels in unique and highly aesthetic ways. 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. After I decide to learn more, I come to this landing page specifically personalised to me and, more impressively, my location. Storytelling is the bedrock of a quality content marketing strategy, and Airbnb has understood this from the beginning. The model was disruptive when it hit the market and created an ongoing ripple in the travel and hospitality industry. It seems as though that previous history doesnt seem to influence the options Im presented with. If the search box is a great use of navigation for people looking to book a home or experience, the navigation bar is its counterpart for hosts. In addition, for existing hosts, its more likely going to help retain hosts. Why would people globally care about tours in Melbourne, or suggest property management services in the area? At this stage, as I havent put in any dates, Airbnb only need a couple of details to make sure its available, so thats all they ask for. 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