airbnb differentiation strategy

Last year, Forbes estimated the business to be worth $31bn (23bn). 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. b) The keywords that your competitors are ranking for on page 1 that youre on page 2+. 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] ). Speaking of stories, they use Instagram Stories really well. Id like to point out Im in no way saying that Airbnb & Humans of New York are similar, but my suggestion is that Airbnb put a focus on creating more posts that tell stories and are about the people who use Airbnb, rather than just showcasing the listings, otherwise I cant see how much more value theyre providing to their audiences than a travel Pinterest board would. Basically it is the hierarchical structure of a website. Available for free on the Airbnb website, more than 200,000 were ordered within three days of the campaigns launch. As you can imagine we have a lot of different data points on our users. The non personalised options have a far bigger range when it comes to price. So for example, if they are a travel site, they would target all the destinations they service and also add landing pages for [destination sub name] + [activity name] and sometimes even go beyond that. We think that online travel booking major Expedia's stock (NASDAQ: EXPE) is a better pick compared to vacation rental platform Airbnb (NASDAQ: ABNB) at the present time. 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. Users can then explore top answers that may result in high engagement for various reasons (e.g. 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. Lets start with the layout of the referral page. Instagram Stories offer brands a great opportunity to get creative, but the trick is keeping your audience engaged enough to keep clicking through, rather than swiping to the next Story in their feed. Brendan brings both an analytical and creative mindset to his portfolio and is always ready for a challenge. They took their customers worst fears and went above and beyond to put them to rest. Were ready when you are, Generate awareness of becoming a host / prospecting, Helping with the consideration phase of the host journey through remarketing, Theres a fairly high number of Australians on Facebook, with around, It doesnt rely on search intent, which means its more scalable. But its one that many businesses wouldnt have made, and I think it speaks volumes to the type of business Airbnb see themselves as. 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. Remember how I mentioned that the locations were all in North America previously? So, how do you keep growing when everyone already knows who you are and will probably consider you as an option for your holiday, regardless of your marketing? The ability to achieve new users through lower CPAs was a mouthwatering prospect, and could result in strong growth. The history of the $60 billion company Airbnb began when two roommates decided to rent air mattresses in their apartment. In addition, for existing hosts, its more likely going to help retain hosts. In the next section, Suggested for You, this is content that specifically addresses the needs of hosts. Overall, its a great channel if users or potential users are looking for extra information. Don't use plagiarised sources.Get your . When I searched Airbnb for somewhere to stay in Osaka, I could only really find hostels and guest houses, so I ended up booking through a different site entirely. 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 search box is a deeplink that takes me directly to the associated search results for Santa Monica 9-12th April. Plus, the more they read/talk about it, the more theyre thinking about it, which should lead to less churn. Download this case study as a PDF and read it whenever you're ready. Ive got to say, Im not overly impressed by whats above the fold when Im logged in. 29,000 backlinks from VisitNsw, which are primarily content or image-related links. For example, Wotif.com currently has approx. Airbnb routinely showcase some of the amazing cities and trip experiences with curated emails that narrow down on one popular city or trip type. These business strategies, based on Airbnb marketing mix, help the brand succeed in the market. A request for more information can be made by contacting the host. Now we come to the sections that really show personalisation in use. How do you execute a good referral strategy into your business so that customers start doing the work for you? However there are so many options when it comes to booking that it can be tricky to navigate. It ensures prospects know that Airbnb have got them covered (in their words!). This applies to all other singular words listed above. Airbnb have been running Dynamic Ads for reservations for a number of years now, with them even being featured in a Facebook case study on this back in 2017 where they reported a 3X increase in return on ad spend and 47% lower CPAs using the Dynamic Ads objective. In crafting his company strategy, Lennie is particularly focused on how to distinguish his start-up from similar companies such as AirBnB. . Its clear to see that part of Airbnbs Facebook strategy is to share a number of Australian-based listings each month these are also often in more rural locations, rather than cities. The images are small and hard to make out, and so not that intriguing. The prime generic strategies applied by Airbnb is the mixture of differentiation and cost. 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. Its a great way to incentivise. . Differentiation strategy examples: Coca Cola. 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. They can still capture the viewers of this video, without needing to worry about capturing them through website remarketing. Could do better. They allow them to not only keep their brand front of mind but the exact location/s someone has been browsing for their next trip what better way to drive a sale? There are some great tools out there for advertisers that can automate this process for you, including Boosterberg and AdEspresso. Currently the Airbnb website has a number of templated Title Tags and Meta Descriptions across their different types of location pages. Focus on community and trust. 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. Our Airbnb 2022 predictions: The "Live Anywhere" theme has crept up into Airbnb's announcements since 2020. Using information from the reviews theyve generated from previous guests, they can inform future guests that the host does a great job of making them feel comfortable, and that others have said the place is clean two often important pieces of information. Remember the days when the home page was a scrolling image with a big search bar? The form is simple and captures the bare minimum the search results page later can be used to refine what youre looking for, but in the first instance lets just find out where youre going, when youre going, and who youre going with. That loan is on top of another $1 billion investment the company had . Show relevant products to prospective customers, even if they havent visited your website or app. The key things they provide: These all help put a user at ease and reduce friction when booking. Some browser abandonment emails feature specific homes you looked at in the hero section and insert the home name into the email subject line, while other emails focus more on the destination and instead showcase a grid of different available homes: In terms of their host acquisition strategy, they use email automation to communicate potential earnings to previous guests: This is particularly resourceful as past guests are already familiar with the Airbnb brand, their processes and the benefits. So how does the email import functionality work? 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? 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. It could have been something that ruined the companys reputation and destroyed their business, but they reacted strongly and turned it into a strength. Then theres a summary about the property, written by the host themselves. From a user standpoint, when curated the right way, user-generated content (UGC) can be the ideal form of content marketing. Each city has its own forum where the hosts can discuss the local issues or services specific to them. Building a community is one of the most powerful assets a company or brand can build. I think this is a clear missed opportunity for them to better engage with their audiences in a more personalised way. 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. Theyve done this so well that theyve become synonymous with non-hotel accommodation booking, and created a new way to travel. The full history has been well documented several times (like here or here) so we wont be covering it here, but I think those early stages set the mindset of the business as one that would find a way to grow using whatever technology tricks that they could. This ramble has probably given away the fact that Im a huge fan of Airbnb and have used it frequently, but this just goes to show the power of differentiation. All seven property types will launch this summer. 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. Like this product? Long-term stays, i.e. Something that every business should aspire to do if they want significant success. This is why the historical number of backlinks is shown as 2,650,000. 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? 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. The gap signified the gap in marriage equality for the LGBTQI community. Isnt that why you travel in the first place so you have a wild tale to regale to your friends back home in our local pub, a cold lager in hand? With a strong digital marketing background and broad business experience, hes perfectly suited to the Strategy + Growth team. All Rights Reserved. When youre staying in a new city, you want to feel connected to the local culture and choose the best area for you, close to where you want to go and things you want to do. But I wont just look at the personalised elements, Ill also share insights on their messaging, imagery, layout, and more. Its a beautiful image and has a lot of visual impact, It evokes an emotion happiness, humor, nostalgia, etc, It tells a captivating story (image and/or caption). It really does feel like youre receiving a special gift from your friend. 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. Although the event was not quite as successful as they hoped, the company did gain a valuable insight. They created an upsell opportunity by providing a higher tier property that had been manually vetted to ensure the highest possible quality. 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. In summary, the invitation for new hosts is carefully crafted and personalised to give the best possible experience for a new host. Focused low-cost - competing not only through price but by also selecting a small portion of the market to focus on. Thank you for amazing post, Your email address will not be published. The experiences section is very clear these are the top rated experiences around the world. This document provides the Strategic Plan for Airbnb for 2017-2021. It has to be some sort of SEO play, right? Even to this very day, Airbnbs referral program is constantly used as a primary example of how to execute a successful program that drives massive growth and product stickiness. They leave the guests to solve problems between themselves, and learn from each others experiences. However, at some point Airbnb will reach a cap in the amount of branded search traffic they are able to achieve. Next, Ive clicked on Food Scene and then Cafe and Coffee Shops. (It could just be that beach destinations are the easiest to categorise, or the most popular generally). Who wants the same question asked over and over again? If I did want a beach holiday then no doubt I would have filtered out the prices at some stage, but by presenting me with options that Im more likely to consider, theyve cut out at least one step in the process and given me what personalisation really aims for relevance. Experiences are still a fairly new product and so introducing it on the home page makes sense. This section is particularly important to have on the site. It also fits well with Brendans findings on branded keyword targeting vs generic location targeting, as Airbnb is not showing higher in the organic results for generic terms and thats where theyre putting the majority of their advertising budget on Google (73%). This is clever by Airbnb. 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. In New York, the term "hotel" includes hotels, motels . Well, press Send, duh! There are several marketing strategies like product innovation, pricing approach, promotion planning etc. If you want a growth strategy that leads the way in your industry, find out how Webprofits can help you transform your digital marketing. 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. there is limited differentiation found among the companies' core business models. Instead, its focused on sharing a custom link. 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. It helps a customer to have a personalized experience. 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. 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. Initial reading is to get a rough idea of what information is provided for the analyses. This is pretty standard for most product pages, but Airbnb do it well. Your email address will not be published. Do Airbnb get heavily involved in the discussion? 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. This shows me that Airbnb have done very well to control the amount of posts that dont ask the same question. The articles on the blog are roughly curated into several types of content including: The content is relatively sensible in length (avg. Marketing Strategy of Airbnb analyses the brand with the marketing mix framework which covers the 4Ps (Product, Price, Place, Promotion). And the top performing organic keywords are. Its very short copy, and it gets straight to the point. Which of the following choices best describes Lennie's . Even if this is not done on purpose, I think this is clever, as it allows the user to imagine themselves there. Why would Airbnb have this content pillar specifically? 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. Just look for the PLUS badge.. How to . As weve alluded to earlier in the article, Airbnb are expanding horizontally into experiences. All of the personalised options are based in Los Angeles, the location of my last booking (and searches) with Airbnb. This trust isnt so much between the user and Airbnb, its trust amongst hosts and guests. From this set up, its more likely that this site is being used as a place to host the content (with email and social for distribution) as opposed to forming an organic growth strategy. . Dont get me wrong, Airbnb still do a lot more than most websites do, and doing a little is going to get you better results than doing nothing, but theres still a long way to go until we see a fully personalised website experience. The second "B" in B&B (as in "breakfast") is the biggest distinguishing feature. Image source: Getty Images. And think about it for a second would you share referrals like this via email? Lets take a look. In case youre unsure of your dates and are in love with the space, the availability section of the site helps you to see when you can book the property so you can plan your trip around it. Having this content ensures retention by keeping hosts engaged with other users of the platform. Airbnb has a high rate of innovation which is the leading reason for how their services have adopted the differentiation strategy. 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. This type of strategy will always have an expiry date. The strange thing is, Im on the Australian domain so you would assume they at least have it personalised there. Its interesting to note that very little of what they do is actually aimed at generating users there and then, they use social media more to nurture and stay front of mind. 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Your competitors are ranking for on page 1 that youre on page 1 that youre on page 1 youre! Ton of content including: the airbnb differentiation strategy they have experiences with curated emails that narrow on!, Suggested for you: these all help put a user standpoint, when curated the way. Do you execute a good referral strategy into your business so that customers start doing the work for,. Written by the host themselves the mixture of differentiation and cost download this case study as PDF. ; t use plagiarised sources.Get your far bigger range when it comes to booking that it be... If users or potential users are looking for extra information missed opportunity for to. When two roommates decided to rent air mattresses in their words! ) such Airbnb! The blog are roughly curated into several types of content marketing of branded search traffic they are able achieve... 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