AirBnB

AirBnB formerly known as AirBed and Breakfast is an ingenious digital start-up in an industry which generally isn’t on the top of the mind among general public. It is an intermediary between hosts who want to rent their accommodations and travellers who want to hire them for the period of their trip.

Airbnb is leveraging a social media challenge to encourage members of the global community to partake in creative acts of hospitality in the hopes of augmenting brand awareness and enticing new customers.

TECHNIQUES USED TO GAIN SOCIAL REACH

• "We Accept"

The community marketplace launched great campaigns matching its content strategy as well as its business concept in general. In February 2016, Airbnb created an emotionally loaded ad for the Super Bowl 2017 using #weaccept to spread tolerance towards other cultures and religions.

Regarding Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, the ad saying “you deserve to belong” send a political message besides outlining the business concept. The simple hashtag is used on Instagram a lot and has just been employed again in the context of the San Francisco Pride Parade on June 25, 2017 year.

• Landing pages raise awareness and call to action

The Australian office launched a similar campaign this June, also sending a political statement to protest Australia’s lack of marriage equality. In this context, Airbnb created a meaningful and simple visualized landing page as displayed below.

There are three simple reasons why we think that the landing page is awesome: It has a harmonic design matching the overall brand image, it provides informative visualized content and it includes calls to action! With the campaign “Until we all belong”, which includes a matte black ring, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky hopes to shift the subject of marriage equality on the political agenda again, according to Adweek.

We think that Airbnb deserves a THUMBS UP for this content strategy for connecting political and social topics with the brand’s philosophy!

• "Live There" campaign

In 2016, Airbnb further developed its brand proposition, rooted in travel, communities, people and experiences.

The Live There campaign summed this up brilliantly, contrasting the Airbnb experience with more traditional, more inauthentic travel.

As Jonathan Mildenhall told Marketing Week, Airbnb is “moving towards [an] end-to-end experience proposition where the core of the Airbnb brand value proposition transcends accommodation.”

• App Design

The app was redesigned for the Live There campaign launch. Airbnb improved its matching algorithms to present users with the most appropriate information and listings.

But it’s the simplicity of the design that strikes us most.

The main page of the app is a long scrolling experience including a sticky search bar, a whole bunch of recommendations and extensive content such as guidebooks.

There’s no faffing about in a menu, discovery is baked into the homepage of the app.

The four other tabs on the footer menu give access to more practical areas of the app – search functionality, messages from hosts, your booked trips and your profile.

It’s one of the easiest apps to navigate that we have experienced, with the white space and chunky headers making it a joy to use.

• The Belo Logo

There was a small amount consternation on social media when Airbnb’s current branding launched in 2014, as the Belo logo looks not unlike the previously existing logo for Automation Anywhere.

But the rebranding process was a huge success (read more here) and, as Airbnb CMO Jonathan Mildenhall told FastCo, was “when [Airbnb] went from a property listings company, which is what we were – a very successful property listings company – to a culturally-driven brand.”

The Belong Anywhere campaign and the Belo logo launched Airbnb as a super brand.

• Neighbourhood guides

There are lots of neighbourhood guides curated by Airbnb for 23 of its most popular cities. Each is extensive.

There is much to love about these guides, with Airbnb’s indomitable tone of voice ringing throughout.

Here’s a list of what makes the neighbourhood guides great:

Neighbourhood guides are heavy on photography…

…essential for marketing of place.

Using local photographers means authenticity and unusual aspects that don’t look like regular travel agent fare.

Each long page is a mesmerising joy to scroll, and at the bottom there’s even details of each photographer and their websites.

Digested information

See the summary of Tokyo below. Listing what locals love and hate paints a picture of the city in the way that mere listings of attractions cannot.

The guides also include well-labelled maps and plenty of transport advice.

Integration with hosts

As one would expect with Airbnb, this content marketing of sorts is a whole lot more.

These guides are integrated into the Airbnb platform and therefore offer genuine value to users.

What that means is links through to places to stay, quotes from hosts, community tags (crowdsourced lists of attractions), and the ability to save neighbourhoods to look at them again later.

• AirBbB Stories

These host stories are simple but effective – honest portraits of some of Airbnb’s best hosts.

A few years old now, these stories are nevertheless an important part of Airbnb’s marketing.

Though not everyone will come across this content or need it to be convinced to book, without community-led content, Airbnb would be failing to publicise its USP.

3 METHODS OF AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT

1. Youtube Videos

Airbnb continues to invest in video marketing, as a key part of telling their brand and product story, with nearly 500 videos on YouTube accumulating more than 100 million views.

Other notable YouTube videos from Airbnb include:

• Views, with 3 million views
• Breaking Down Walls, with 5.9 million views
• We Accept, with 4.9 million views

Each one is carefully shot, edited and the paired with the perfect music to warm even the coldest hearts.

2. Instagram

Airbnb is queen of user-generated content (UGC). 

UGC occurs when you ask your customers to post their interaction with your product or service, usually findable across social media channels using a hashtag.

Because Instagram is a millennial show-off haven, and Airbnb’s brand is associated with “millennial cool”, this is a match made in heaven.

If UGC is done correctly, with a lot of other strategic marketing efforts, then this will eventually happen organically. In the case of Airbnb, there are currently 1.8 million photos using #airbnb on Instagram — and counting.

Check out this gorgeous shot from a regular Instagram user/traveler, picked up and repurposed for Airbnb’s marketing:

UGC can be a huge asset for a business to showcase happy users/customers.

3. Fast-responding Customer Service via Twitter

 While Twitter is indeed one of the slowest growing social media channels, and has struggled to generate a profit, it is one of the best social channels for customer service.

It’s designed for quick exchanges and open conversations. Here are a few examples of Airbnb responding quickly and efficiently to customers using their Airbnb Help Twitter:

Plus, here are a few examples of the brand engaging with customers who share their Airbnb experiences on Twitter, from the main account:

3 LINKING AND PARTICIPATION STRATEGIES

1. Digital Marketing via Google Ratings

Ratings are a big part of the online vacation rentals business plan, especially in a peer-to-peer marketplace. 

Of course Airbnb uses the ratings system for their rental listings just like the others, but they also make sure that the ratings from Trustpilot.com show up in their AdWords listings. 

2. Content Strategy Matters

In an article published by TechCrunch, Anand Iyer talks about Airbnb's management of listings as a form of carefully curated content. The most appealing spaces on Airbnb’s website are ranked higher in the website’s search results, while listings with lower ratings or lower quality content, in general, are harder to find due to a good algorithm and employees who curate and feature the best content.

In addition, returning to the idea of visual stimulation, Airbnb offered the mutually beneficial service of professional photos of the spaces listed on the site and guidelines for user-generated images. This way, the visuals provide better content and the spaces become more attractive to users searching for a place to stay. It’s a win-win situation for Airbnb because their digital marketing strategy optimizes their own search engine listings allowing for the cream to rise to the top, which in turn keeps their own content interesting for Google’s search engine.

Another factor that affects the SEO of a website is also the size of the website. Airbnb.de currently has about 3 million pages indexed in Google, while the other top 5 domains don’t even make it past 2 million, except for fewo-direkt.de. Even though Airbnb.de has significantly more pages, the content on the pages is created by users, which presents a tradeoff: the company doesn’t need to spend time and money creating content, but they also don’t have control over the content of the listings. This means that although Airbnb.de might like to be organically visible on the top head keywords in Germany, the pages might not get optimized on such keywords because of the content that dominates the website.

3. Google Display Advertising for Expansion

Sometimes we forget that aside from high positioning in Google SERPs, people also need to be visually stimulated for a good click-through rate. Airbnb chose to invest in Google display advertising with banner ad campaigns including images from actual housing being offered on their site. This allowed Airbnb to attract international traffic and increase their listings dramatically.



Of course this type of advertising does not affect search visibility. It is not AdWords. But it does affect the brand recognition of the user. This is a nice tactic to reach the target market while attempting to transform visibility into sales.

CONCLUSION

Airbnb actively engages with their audience by providing outstanding customer care and leveraging authentic user generated content. 

Airbnb has successfully integrated their core value of sharing into their social media presence. They have created an authentic experience for their digital communities, boasting an international fanbase of 5 million on Facebook and Instagram.

Airbnb puts their community at the center of their social media campaigns. By using distinct platforms to communicate different messages, they effectively master the art of creating content that audiences share and love.