Airbnbgrowth Case Study India

AIRBNB:
The growth
strategy of
a $35 billion
business
by Ta m A l- S aa d
AIRBNB: THE GROWTH STRATEGY OF A $35 BILLION BUSINESS
Have you heard of Airbnb?
Just kidding, everyone’s heard of Airbnb.
Not only did they revolutionise the travel industry, they’re one of the first startup
“unicorns” to emerge in the mid-2000s and are emulated on every level – from their
business model and their map and search results, to their referral engines, and
generally their outlook and approach to everything they do.
They’ve been around for more than 11 years and are still growing at a rate that most
business can only dream of. In fact, last year they turned over more than $1b in a single
quarter and their most recent stock sale values them at USD $35 billion!
THE GROWTH MANIFESTO - POWERED BY WEBPROFITS P2

index
The Product 8
The Website 15
Paid Search 45
Organic Search 74
Social Media 99
Content Marketing 132
Referrals 149
Community Marketing 187
Offline Marketing 204

The growth strategy
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?
How do you ensure that people who have stayed with you before do it again?
How do you convince people to open up their home and allow guests to stay?
And how do you ensure those hosts are happy enough to keep renting out their places?
In a previous role at a start-up it was very common to hear the question “How do Airbnb
do it?” when looking at implementing a website change or a new tactic.
This case study aims to answer all of the questions above by taking a deep dive into the
specifics of each of their digital marketing channels and tactics.
History
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. The idea then evolved into a website where
others could do the same, and travellers could get a cheaper option than a hotel.
The full history has been well documented several times (like here or here) so we won’t
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.
They famously did things that didn’t scale and then growth hacked solutions so that
they did.

Source
My favourite example is how they leveraged Craigslist to drive traffic and listings on
their own site. Each time a listing was made in their area on Craigslist, they would
email the home owner and ask if they would like to list on Airbnb. The home owner
would then spread the word about this new booking platform.
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.
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.

It also shows that they realised early on that the key to success on the platform
would be getting hosts to list their properties. As is the case with most two-sided
marketplaces, without supply the entire thing falls apart.
And you’ll see over the course of this article just how much they focus on bringing
onboard new properties as part of their marketing strategy.
Since then, they’ve 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.
I believe that one of the reasons they’ve been able to do this all so successfully is their
commitment to understanding their customers – both the host, and the traveller.
To make this article easier to read we’ve broken it out into several different sections,
each covering different growth channels.
Product conclusion
Here’s a summary of each:
The Product: We’ll look at how Airbnb position themselves differently to

stand out from other accommodation booking engines, as well as how
they’ve diversified their product range to ensure they keep growing
The Website: We review the use of personalisation to produce more

relevant pages for users, and look at how their product pages are geared
towards making a sale

Paid Search: What are the keywords and ad copy that generates relevant
traffic to their site, and how are the landing pages set up for conversion?
Email Marketing: How do Airbnb use email to communicate with

prospective and existing customers to drive new and repeat usage of
the platform?
SEO: How do Airbnb ensure they appear in relevant search results to

drive organic traffic to the site?
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
Referral Marketing: Airbnb are poster boys of growth through referrals –

how exactly do they do it?
Community: How do Airbnb maintain and grow their online community,

and what part does that play in their business growth?
Offline: What activity do they do outside of digital to drive growth?

The
Product
written by
Tam Al-Saad
Principal Consultant, Strategy + Growth
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.
With a strong digital marketing background and broad business

experience, he’s perfectly suited to the Strategy + Growth team.

AIRBNB: THE GROWTH STRATEGY OF A $35 BILLION BUSINESS - THE PRODUCT
In its simplest form, Airbnb is an accommodation booking engine. It’s a place where
people looking for short term accommodation (usually for holidays) are able to find
somewhere to lay their head down at night. 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. Why would a traveller rather use Airbnb than Hotels.com, Expedia, Trivago, or the
myriad of other websites available?
Cynics will say it comes down to price, and in a lot of instances they’re right. Airbnb’s
tend to be cheaper than hotels, and so the cost-conscious traveller would prefer to pay
less and go without some of the frills and security that you get with a hotel. But there
are plenty of properties on Airbnb that are more expensive than hotels and still get
booked out, so what else is there?

Differentiation
Airbnb isn’t a place where you book hotels (even though you can).
By listing the properties of ordinary people, they set themselves apart by offering a
different experience to travellers.
Nothing sums this up better than their “Don’t go there, live there” campaign.
“Don’t go to Paris, don’t tour Paris, and don’t do Paris. Live there”
What Airbnb offer isn’t a cheap place to sleep when you’re on holiday, it’s the
opportunity to experience your destination as a local would. It’s the chance to meet the
locals, experience the markets, and find the non-touristy places. Sure, you can visit the
Louvre, see Buckingham Palace, and climb The Empire State Building but you can do it
as if it were your home town, while staying in a place that has character and feels like
a home.
THE GROWTH MANIFESTO - POWERED BY WEBPROFITS P 10

This ramble has probably given away the fact that I’m a huge fan of Airbnb and have
used it frequently, but this just goes to show the power of differentiation. Airbnb has
turned me into a huge advocate by just connecting with my preferred way to travel. I’ve
done a fair bit of travelling in my time and I absolutely HATE it when people say they’ve
“done” a certain location. Just by using the right words, Airbnb make me feel as though
they should be my first port of call when I’m visiting somewhere new.
But that doesn’t mean I would use it at all costs. I visited Japan last year, a place where
Airbnb’s are quite hard to come by. 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.
Airbnb created a whole new kind of vacation just by providing spaces other than hotels
to stay. 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.
Airbnb Plus (upsell)
Many people like the idea of staying in someone else’s home, but not everyone does.
Some people appreciate the luxury of staying in a hotel, knowing you’ll receive a
professional service, including a properly maintained room.
And not every Airbnb experience I’ve heard about is an overwhelmingly positive one.
I’ve seen/heard of some properties that haven’t been kept very well, are lacking basic
holiday features, or don’t look very good.
To counter this, they created a premium product called Airbnb Plus. In their own words
“Airbnb Plus is a selection of only the highest quality homes with hosts known for great
reviews and attention to detail.

Every home is verified through in-person quality inspection to ensure quality and
design. Just look for the PLUS badge.”
The homes are well designed, well maintained, and well equipped. Meanwhile, the hosts
are all rated 4.8 or above. All of this is inspected by a real person so you’re ensured of its
accuracy.
By creating this new tier of product, Airbnb have provided a solution to potential
travellers who have reservations about the quality of their properties.
Experiences (cross-sell)
I wouldn’t say Airbnb have exhausted their growth when it comes to ‘accommodation
rental’, but most travellers are aware of who they are and what they offer. Sure, they
can nurture better and convert more customers, but they needed a way to keep growing
their revenue that isn’t reliant on just one product.
“Airbnb Experiences are activities designed and led by inspiring locals. They go beyond
typical tours or classes by immersing guests in each host’s unique world. It’s an
opportunity for anyone to share their hobbies, skills, or expertise without needing an
extra room.”
If Airbnb Plus is an example of a product upsell, their Experiences are a great example
of a cross-sell.
Given that most of their pitch to consumers is to experience a location like a local, it
seems like a very simple and logical step to offer paid activities provided by local hosts.
But it’s one that many businesses wouldn’t have made, and I think it speaks volumes to
the type of business Airbnb see themselves as.

An accommodation platform would never offer experiences as a product, and nor

should they. If your business strength is that you have properties and people want
properties, then that’s what you should focus on. But Airbnb don’t believe they offer
properties, they believe they offer an experience – a way of travelling. That’s way more
than a roof, 4 walls, and a bed.
Not only did they understand what their customers wanted, they created the desire in
the first place! You could argue that they knew their customers better than they know
themselves, and I wouldn’t disagree.
Assurance through insurance
As previously stated, Airbnb understand the importance of maintaining a healthy

supply of properties. 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. They either rent out a spare room or their entire property when they
go away.
For these people in particular, letting strangers into their home can be a scary concept.
So how do Airbnb ensure that hosts are comfortable enough to rent out their property,
and continue to do so?
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. It could have been something that ruined the company’s reputation and
destroyed their business, but they reacted strongly and turned it into a strength.
Within days, Airbnb introduced a Host Guarantee that every property would be insured
up to USD$50,000 for any damage incurred by guests. That value has since increased
significantly to USD$1 million (I guess $4.4 billion in VC funding can really open up
some doors).

With this guarantee, Airbnb have assured hosts that should the absolute worst happen,
they will be covered by the company that enabled the transaction.
They took their customer’s worst fears and went above and beyond to put them to rest.
Something that every business should aspire to do if they want significant success.
Product conclusion
Airbnb have built a hugely successful business off the back of understanding
what their customers want/need, and then providing products that match
them. By positioning themselves as a way to experience travel, rather than
as an accommodation booking engine, they were able to connect with a
segment of the travel market who felt their options were fairly limited.
By offering a guarantee on insurance they took away the biggest fear that
their hosts (and potential hosts) have, ensuring that they feel comfortable
renting out their property. Once they had built a solid base of customers and
reputation, they expanded their offering.
They created an upsell opportunity by providing a higher tier property

that had been manually vetted to ensure the highest possible quality.
They began offering their customers ways to specifically experience life

as a local, as well as sleep like one.
With a product approach like this, it’s no wonder they’re such a

successful business.

The
Website
written by
Tam Al-Saad



AIRBNB: THE GROWTH STRATEGY OF A $35 BILLION BUSINESS - THE WEBSITE
A large part of Airbnb’s success can be attributed to their website. It’s often looked at by
businesses and startups (usually ones that claim to be “The Airbnb of…”), and with
good reason.
I might visit their site once or twice a year when I’m lucky enough to be looking at
booking a holiday, and I can’t help but notice that every time I do, I get a different site
compared to the last time I visited.
Remember the days when the home page was a scrolling image with a big search bar? I
thought it was great back then, it got straight to the point and helped me get to where I
needed to go while still looking aesthetically pleasing, but it’s evolved a lot since then.
Source

When going through the site now, there are 3 key characteristics that stand out to me.
The site is:
Very visual
User friendly
Personalised
You’d 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.
The layout and the functionality of the site is what makes it so easy to use. I’ll be
highlighting specific examples soon, but if they hadn’t considered the User Experience
as much in the early days then I doubt they’d have experienced the growth that
they have.
Airbnb have a reputation for using personalisation arguably better than any other big
brand business in the world. It’s between them, Netflix and Amazon really, isn’t it?
I’ll be looking at specifics here and sharing how they use personalisation to deliver the
best experience.
In this section of the article I’ll be dissecting pages piece by piece to see how their
website helps to drive growth. However, they have a near-infinite number of pages and
I could go on forever, so to reign it in I’ll be looking at a couple of pages that most (if not
all) businesses have.
1. The homepage
2. Property pages (product)

The homepage
Airbnb’s home page is where you can best see the impact that personalisation has had,
and so I’ll be looking at it in two different ways. Once with me logged in and once using
incognito mode.
But I won’t just look at the personalised elements, I’ll also share insights on their
messaging, imagery, layout, and more.
Let’s take a look at the non-personalised version of the home page first.
Non personalised – Above the fold
First thing that strikes me is just how simple it is.

The form
The booking form stands out the most, and with good reason – it’s the quickest way for
them to get information about what the user is looking for, in order to personalise
their experience.
The form is simple and captures the bare minimum – the search results page later can
be used to refine what you’re looking for, but in the first instance let’s just find out where
you’re going, when you’re going, and who you’re going with.
It’s a simple call to action (CTA) header, and it outlines exactly what the website is set
out to do: Book unique homes and experiences. 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.
People go onto Airbnb to look for cheap properties and luxurious properties, in busy
cities and remote countrysides. For small and large, for packed and sparse, for quiet and
loud, cultured and corporate.
Above all, they are looking for a property (or experience) that suits them – unique. And
if you don’t know much about the person doing the searching, I would say this the
perfect word to use.
The button stands out in red with a white background, and the CTA “search” explains
very clearly what’s going to happen when I click on it.
Imagery
The image they’ve selected is pretty good too.
It took me a moment to realise it, but that structure isn’t a watch tower (maybe I’ve been
watching too much Game of Thrones), it’s a home.

Looks pretty unique, wouldn’t you say? And very fitting with the headline they selected.
The location is pretty interesting too; it evokes a feeling of adventure, of doing

something different. It has a feeling of Wanderlust and makes me want to travel.
From a practicality point of view, I also like that it allows the navigation bar at the top
to be read very clearly. I’ve seen many websites where the image looks wonderful but
affects the functionality of the website, and I think it’s criminal. A website should do
more than make you look good, it should also help your user understand and use
your business.
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”). Not a big deal as it’s revealed as
you scroll down, and it’s not the most important bit of information on the page by a long
way, but it is a (very) minor annoyance.
Navigation bar
Back to the main navigation bar.
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. As mentioned earlier in the
article, the supply of properties and experiences is essential for Airbnb’s success, and so
it’s important that hosts are able to navigate where they need to quickly.
Non personalised – Below the fold
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 I’m not going to go all the way through it,
but the next few sections are relatively interesting so I’ll cover them. 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.


Directly beneath the fold you’ll find 3 simple options to help navigate to what you’re
looking for if you would rather narrow it down before starting your search
To be honest, I find these rather plain.
The images are small and hard to make out, and so not that intriguing. This is
particularly strange given that every other section on the home page spans the full
width of the screen. Yes they’re easy to use, but it actually seems a bit lazy. Could
do better.
The next section makes a lot of sense – jump into the upsell. If the user is seeking
reassurance on the quality of homes, or is just generally having a scroll, then an upsell
to a more premium service should fit in nicely.
Unfortunately, I think it misses the mark, again.
The image is great, it looks like a well designed, high quality home, but the header and
description leaves a lot to be desired.

“A selection of homes verified for quality and designed” might well be a good description
of Airbnb Plus, but it’s not exactly enticing. It doesn’t tell me anything about me or why
I’d enjoy it, it’s just a factual statement.
There’s often value in understating things, but this isn’t one of those moments.
Even the button with the CTA of “explore homes” is just a bit dull.
Next we have a recommendation section.
My pet peeve here is that I’m still not signed in and have no browsing history for Airbnb,
so how are these locations recommended for me? Sure, they’re recommended (I assume
they’re the most searched for locations globally, or from my location) but they’re not
personalised so why not just say “Most popular”?
I’m being highly pedantic but with the level of personalisation they go to elsewhere on
the site (which I’ll come to soon), I’m holding them to a higher standard.

Ok, this is much better.
Experiences are still a fairly new product and so introducing it on the home page makes
sense. And they’ve done it way better than they introduced Airbnb Plus.
In particular, note the header and sub header. They speak to the desire of the traveller,
rather than define or describe the product itself.
The statements are emotive and intriguing, making me want to find out more.
Even the description in the sub header is better, mainly because it says who it’s for.
“Created for the curious” ties in quite well with the main header above the fold, people
looking for a “unique” experience.
With the experience being all about having fun with the locals, the image represents it
really well, though maybe the guy in the back could be having more fun 🙂

The homes around the world section showcases some fairly unique looking properties,
perhaps to portray the variety of different homes around the world.
I don’t really understand the point though – why these 8 properties?
They don’t all have 5 star ratings, and the number of ratings they have is quite varied.
They all look pretty cool in their own way, but I haven’t really got any context as to why
these are here.
Clicking the “show all” link at the bottom takes me to a new page that explains that
these are actually the top rated homes around the world. I think they would benefit from
providing that information on the home page itself.
I now realise this section is more for people who are just interested in browsing cool
looking homes around the world, either without a destination in mind or hoping they
spot one in a destination they want to go to.
Though in my experience, nobody has picked a location based solely on the

accommodation. Interesting.

The next two sections I find quite interesting but mainly because of how different they
are when I’m signed in.
So bear with me while I explain them here, it will all make sense later 🙂
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. (It could just be that beach destinations are the easiest to categorise, or
the most popular generally). But there’s a great selection here in terms of price range.
It’s interesting that they’re all in North America though; it makes me wonder if they’re
using my geo location at all or if they only personalise the experience for people who
are logged in (I’m assuming that most of their traffic comes from the US).
The strange thing is, I’m on the Australian domain so you would assume they at least
have it personalised there. The experiences section is very clear – these are the top
rated experiences around the world. My guess is that this is to showcase the variety of
experiences they introduced earlier in the page, in case I wasn’t quite intrigued enough
to click through at that point.

Personalised – Above the fold
I’ve got to say, I’m not overly impressed by what’s above the fold when I’m logged in.
As far as I can see, nothing is actually personalised yet. Not only that, but it’s a bit
boring. Nothing quite catches the eye and so I’m not 100% sure what the obvious step is
to do next.
The first two boxes – the navigation to specific products and the upsell to Airbnb Plus –
are the two things that impressed me least from the non-personalised home page, and
I’m surprised to see them front and centre here when I am signed in.
If I did want to book a trip (like they assume when I’m not signed in) then starting my
search process isn’t that easy. I either have to select homes, experiences or restaurants,
or click the search bar at the top. There’s no form with dates or number of guests like
there was previously, so there’s an extra step no matter what.

Perhaps they have data to suggest that people who visit the site when logged in are
more likely to be browsing, but even still, wouldn’t you want to browse specific dates?
One element that does change to my advantage is the navigation bar.
Now that I’m signed in I get some options that are well suited to me (saved, trips and
messages) as well as a prompt to become a host – something that’s beneficial to them.
Needless to say, I’m not impressed so far.
Personalised – Below the fold
From then on, the sections appear in the same order that they did when I wasn’t logged
in, but the content within them changes … sometimes.

We can see that that “Recommended for you” tiles have changed, and I’m assuming the
ones displayed are based on my browsing habits. 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.
Or does it?
They know my stay there ended a while ago, do they think I want to go straight back?
I assume that the next few options are similar to Amazon’s “People who viewed this
product also looked at…” feature. I think people who book an Airbnb in LA would also
consider New York, San Diego and the other options.
But what about my browsing history before that? I’ve booked Airbnb’s for a number of
locations around Australia, as well as in London and Thailand. It seems as though that
previous history doesn’t seem to influence the options I’m presented with.
Now we come to the sections that really show personalisation in use.
At first glance they look similar to the sections we saw in incognito mode, but there are
subtle and important differences. I’ll bring them up next to each other so it’s easier
to see

Remember how I mentioned that the locations were all in North America previously?
Well now they are more widespread, with two in particular (Bali and Phuket) as
common places for Australians to travel to. But I don’t think these are categorised
by Geography.
The non personalised options have a far bigger range when it comes to price. My
guess is that Airbnb know I can’t afford $540 a night to stay in The Carribean, and so
the options they suggest are a lot closer to what I’ve booked in the past. 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 I’m more likely to consider, they’ve cut out at least one
step in the process and given me what personalisation really aims for – relevance.
Next, let’s take a look at the experiences.

The difference here is a lot easier to spot. All of the personalised options are based in
Los Angeles, the location of my last booking (and searches) with Airbnb. It looks as
though they’re happy to predict where I’d like to go when suggesting properties, but
when suggesting experiences they look at the last known destination and show me
what I could be doing (or what I missed out on).
Home page conclusions
I think what I’ve seen here is that Airbnb isn’t actually that good at personalising the
experience for their users – at least not on the home page.
Yes, there are some great little touches as we can see in the last section, but on the
whole personalisation isn’t that widespread on their site yet.
Don’t 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 there’s still a long way to go until
we see a fully personalised website experience.
Whether it’s personalised or not, I think there’s room for improvement when it comes to
Airbnb’s home page.

Property page
I’ve chosen to analyse Airbnb property pages as I feel these are the closest thing they
have to products. Their job as a business is to promote the properties (and the hosts)
so that people want to book them. 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.
So, let’s see how they do that.
(For the sake of this review I’ll be looking at a mid-range property in Bondi
Beach, Sydney.)
Above the fold

Airbnb knew early on that good photographs are essential to getting a booking. In fact,
back in 2011 they even paid for hosts to have professional photographs taken of their
properties. They charge for that service now that it’s been proven to work (and they
have enough properties that look good so they don’t need to worry about the ones that
don’t), but you can see why they suggest it when photos are front and centre on the
property pages.
In fact, when they do charge, they actually review and suggest which pictures you go
with for maximum impact. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who
sells a tangible product, but the way you present the product in images makes all
the difference.
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. There’s even an image of the host to
prove it’s a real person behind it all.
As you scroll down, more is revealed about the property.
Below the fold

Webform
Firstly let’s talk about the webform.
It was just visible above the fold, but it didn’t need to be completely visible. Certainly not
at the expense of anything else that was already there.
What I like most about it is that the right hand side of the page is reserved for it. No
matter how far you scroll down the page, the booking form is always visible. So as soon
as the user has enough information they need to make a decision, they are immediately
able to act on it.
The form itself is also very simple. At this stage, as I haven’t put in any dates, Airbnb
only need a couple of details to make sure it’s available, so that’s all they ask for. The
copy directly below the form gives you more insight into what’s going to happen when
you fill it in.

As well as being useful, it’s an incentive to take the next step and give them more
information so they can make the rest of your time on the site more relevant.
The number of views the property has had recently is a ploy at making it seem scarce,
and therefore more desirable. Clever.
Property details
Next we get some useful details about the property.
Hosts write their own descriptions and so, to a degree, Airbnb are at their mercy to help
influence the booking, but they’ve taken a few simple steps to claim back some power
and ensure that useful information is provided to the user.

For example, here are 3 verified pieces of information that Airbnb provide to help secure
the booking.
Using information from the reviews they’ve 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.
The self check-in box also puts at ease people who worry about having to coordinate
being at the property at the same time as the host in order to get access.
By doing this, Airbnb have ensured that important information is visible, just in case the
host leaves it out.
Then there’s a summary about the property, written by the host themselves.
The link to more information about the property opens up to several more paragraphs,
and while they are also written by the host, Airbnb set the structure to ensure the
important aspects are covered.

That structure covers
Information about the space
Guest access
Other things to note
FAQs
A request for more information can be made by contacting the host.
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 case you’re 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. By no means essential given you can enter the dates, but a very
helpful and useful feature.
Reviews
Next we get into a section that Airbnb does famously well – reviews.
Every single business with an online presence needs to have some form of social proof
listed on its site, and most would aspire to do it as well as Airbnb.
The summary section is helpful, though it surprises me that it can’t be used as an option
when filtering search results.

Something you don’t 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.
Supplier information
Next we have some information about the host. This seems as good a place as any for it
on the page. For some people, the host can be an important aspect of the trip. And like
most marketplace sites, the buyer often wants information about the supplier to know if
what’s on the page can be trusted.
The information that Airbnb highlights here is interesting (as most of it is, again,
written by the host).

The key things they provide:
How long have they been using Airbnb?
Are they verified?
How many reviews have they received?
How often and quickly do they respond to messages?
These all help put a user at ease and reduce friction when booking. The rest of it is then
up to the host to make sure they have a profile that people feel they can connect to so
that they want to stay there.
Related information

For the people who haven’t decided where specifically in a city they want to stay, Airbnb
provide some more information about the location of the property.
This can be invaluable content for someone who doesn’t know much about their
destination, especially when Airbnb’s premise is that they want you to live like a local.
It’s almost like trying to decide where you want to live, even if only for a short period
of time.
Most people, you would expect, will have done this research early on, but it certainly
can’t hurt to display at this stage. The fact that Airbnb have this content at all is a
testament to their commitment of giving their users the feeling of living somewhere
rather than visiting it. Not many businesses go above and beyond in this way.
Terms & conditions
The last bits of information that are unique to this page are the policies, and the Ts and
Cs. This is pretty standard for most product pages, but Airbnb do it well.
As with other sections, they provide guidelines for the host and let them fill in the rest.

Similar products
Like this product? Here are some more that you may want to consider.
It’a a classic website feature that not enough businesses make the most of in my
opinion. If a user has shown some interest in a particular product, why not show them
similar ones that meet relevant criteria?
Early cross-sell

Lastly, there’s a cross-sell option into experiences.
It usually best to do this when someone has committed to making a purchase, but it
doesn’t hurt to get them thinking about it at this stage of the process and see what
activities are available.
Product page summary
So to breakdown how the page looks:
Imagery
Essential information & booking
Additional product information
Availability
Reviews
Supplier information (Host)
Related information (Neighbourhood)
Policies / Ts and Cs
Related products
Cross sell products
That’s a pretty solid looking page structure in my opinion.

Website conclusion
As a digital platform, Airbnb rely almost entirely on their website to make

bookings and sales.
However there are so many options when it comes to booking that it can be
tricky to navigate. I think they could do better when users aren’t logged in,
and the personalisation elements are a nice touch but not a complete
game changer.
Having said that, their product page is near perfect, so when a user has a
better idea of what they’re after, they do a pretty good job of funnelling them
towards a sale.

Paid
Search
written by
Brendan Connaughton
Consultant, Acquisition
As an Acquisition Marketing Consultant, he specialises in optimising

paid media campaigns and building landing pages that convert.
Brendan brings both an analytical and creative mindset to his portfolio

and is always ready for a challenge.

AIRBNB: THE GROWTH STRATEGY OF A $35 BILLION BUSINESS - PAID SEARCH
Airbnb are running a big operation on paid search.
According to SimilarWeb, approximately 12% of Airbnb.com.au’s total website traffic is

via paid search. It is also worth noting that paid search is capturing one website visitor
for every two visitors captured from organic search – in my experience, this is fairly
typical of late-stage high growth companies that operate larger websites. To make the
most of my paid search strategy analysis, and to ensure we’re focusing our attention
on their most important messaging, keywords, ads and landing pages, I used a few
different tools in conjunction to extract as much of this information as possible and
then classify it.
Search terms
Using SEMRush, I exported 50,000 of Airbnb’s higher volume search terms and put
these into a pivot table, sorting this by how many times each search term appeared. I
also obtained a few values for each search term like average CPC, estimated traffic and
average position:
You can view the sheet here, as well as the raw keyword data if you’re interested in
doing your own analysis.
It’s quite an extensive sheet, but one of the best paid search competitor analysis tools
I’ve found for larger accounts, as it unpacks exactly what search terms are driving users
to what landing pages.

1. Brand vs Non-brand spend
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.
Because Airbnb’s brand is such that competitors like Home Away are bidding on their
brand name, it’s important Airbnb continue to protect these terms with spend.
2. Competitor spend
Competitor spend, for example terms like home ‘stayz tasmania’ and ‘homeaway
melbourne’, appears to be very small – less than 1% or 2% from my calculations.
3. Destination keywords
Not surprisingly, the bulk of Airbnb’s paid search traffic and spend is coming from
destination-related terms, such as ‘singapore accommodation’.
According to the data from SEMRush, 73% of approximate ad spend goes to search
terms containing ‘accommodation’. This is high, and suggests that the term
‘accommodation’ best reflects how users are searching and what resonates with their
target audience, instead of language like ‘home sharing’ or ‘holiday home’.
Here is a breakdown of spend based on other singular words:
Hotel (includes hotels): 5%
Apartment (includes apartments): 4%
New: 2%

Rent: 2%
Cheap: 1%
Stay: 1%
Holiday: 1%
House: 1%
Book: 0.50
Short: 0.4%
place (includes places): 0.09%
To be clear, 5% of estimated spend includes phrases that include the word ‘hotel’, not
5% of spend is attributable to the ‘hotel’ as an ‘exact match’. This applies to all other
singular words listed above.
It’s particularly interesting that Airbnb’s spend allocated to accommodation-themed

keywords significantly outweighs spend on hotel-related keywords. 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.
So why is Airbnb bidding on accommodation terms at all then?
I suspect it comes down to volume. It’s unlikely there is sufficient volume from closely
related search terms in isolation, and as a result, Airbnb likely need to leverage auxiliary
keywords to reach lofty growth targets.

I also ran all words through a word cloud visualisation tool where the size of each word
is representative of the frequency in which it appears in the search terms that triggered
an Airbnb ad:
In addition to the common travel related words like accommodation and rent, I found
the word cloud to be useful for gauging what destination related words are typical of
people’s searches, for example, ‘Cbd’, ‘valley’, ‘coastal’ and central’.
Ad messaging
From an export of Airbnb’s top 50,000 ads, I stripped out the headlines from each and
used the headlines to create a pivot table, allowing the headlines to be sorted by the
frequency for which they appear across their ads.

Headlines
The most frequently used headlines are below:
And below is a breakdown of one of their ads which showcases how the headlines
appear in the search results:
Guests are definitely the key target of their paid search strategy. According to our
headline analysis, key messaging for guests includes:

Don’t Go There. Live There
Holiday Rentals, Holiday Homes
Book Homes From Local Hosts
Find the Perfect Place to Stay
Free Cancellation Up To 48 Hrs
For branded search terms, such as “Airbnb Sydney CBD”, Airbnb put greater emphasis on
the appeal of staying with a local host:
Whereas for competitive non-branded terms like “Perth accommodation” or “Brisbane

accommodation apartments”, Airbnb are more inclined to showcase their starting price
or one of their points of difference like their cancellation period.

Stayz
HomeAway
Ultimately, the main takeaway I have in terms of how Airbnb’s messaging compares
to competitors like Stayz and HomeAway is that Airbnb appears to be placing more
emphasis on pricing as a point of difference and more focus on their USPs in ad
headlines, like ‘24/7 Customer Service’ and ‘Free Cancellation Up To 48 Hrs’ or more
emotional messaging like ‘Don’t Go There.
Live There’ and ‘Book Homes From Local Hosts’, while their competitors’ messaging is
more descriptive like ‘Wide Variety and Great Prices’ and ‘Thousands of Holiday Homes’.
Calls to action
In terms of call to actions, Airbnb’s most frequently used call-to-action in headlines is

‘Search and Book Now’.

Other frequently used headlines are:
Book Instantly Online
Book Now
Book & Save on Airbnb
Book Here
Airbnb’s call-to-actions place greater emphasis on booking than they do on browsing/

search. This is a smart play from Airbnb – their conversion-oriented messaging helps
to prioritise their paid search spend towards people who are ready to book, as people
looking to browse are less inclined to click on ads that target people further down the
marketing funnel.
Taking a step back, from the 50,000 ads I exported there are over 11,900 headlines, of
which 6,100 are unique and are not used in any of their other ads. If it’s 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.
To do this, Airbnb ensures there is a close alignment between their user’s search
queries as well as their ads and landing pages. 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.
This is a great way to achieve higher ad rank by ensuring great alignment between your
ad copy, landing page experience and most importantly, the user’s search query.
To achieve this, they’ve either used Dynamic Keyword Insertion or have closely tailored
ad groups that have strong alignment between keywords and ads.

We’ll come back to this shortly, but this is a great example of message-matching
at scale.
Landing pages
Like what we saw with Airbnb’s search ads, from an export of 50,000 Airbnb ads, there
were 8,000 unique URLs.
Due to the sheer number of landing pages at play, it’s clear that Airbnb are either
directing people to their expansive website or dynamically-generated landing pages.
Airbnb are doing a combination.
For some locations, such as Phi Phi Islands, Airbnb are directing people to minimal
navigation, shorter-form landing pages:
As well as destination website pages:

From the landing page URL report, any URLs that contain /a/ are indicative of their
shorter-form location landing pages, while /s/ is indicative of location website pages –
and Airbnb are actively using a combination of both for high-interest locations.
The following table summarises the split between the destination landing pages vs
destination website pages:
Destination landing pages represent 75% of the pages to which Airbnb are directing
users. Ideally, we’d look at this in terms of a breakdown of spend, but unfortunately
there is no way to accurately gauge Airbnb’s spend, so we’re best using frequency as an
indicator of spend.
For the most part, Airbnb use a hero image that ‘message-matches’ the location the user
is interested in visiting:

However, this is not the case for all location landing pages.
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 they’ve got data to suggest a location-specific

background image corresponds to a higher conversion rate.
I particularly like how the ‘where’ field in the hero form is pre-populated with the
destination based on the user’s initial search query.
It’s worth noting that trip information provided in the hero form is stored, such as travel
duration or location, if the user bounces but returns to the homepage, their trip details
are stored in their browser cookie:

I would expect that the majority of users do not purchase in the same session, so
prompting returning users to continue to browse available homes in their cities of
interest is a nice touch. Beyond the hero section, the rest of the page is slim, but tailored
to the user based on their destination of interest:

Airbnb feature highly-rated homes that have upcoming availability and homes
that have recently been booked. What’s 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.
This is also a testament to the volume of home ratings and testimonials Airbnb have
collected, because for this approach to be successful requires highly rated homes and
glowing testimonials, across multiple cities, and multiple countries, while also aiming
to tailor the results to users based on the travel duration and location, and potentially
factors like affluence as well.
Airbnb also make a point of their key USPs, which include: 24/7 customer service, global
housing requirements compliance, and all star hosts.
The final call to action is also positioned with low intent language:
Ultimately, I like how Airbnb have approach their landing page strategy and I’m sure the
breath of dynamically generated pages as well as their recommendation engine was
resource intensive.
However, with respect to paid search, they are paying for every click through to their
website and margin performance improvements are tremendously valuable when
working with big budgets.

Paid search summary
Airbnb have an extensive paid search account with the majority of the spend
going towards terms that feature “accommodation” as a keyword. This makes
sense given how closely it aligns to their service offering, but they don’t rest
on their laurels.
Their ad copy speaks to their unique points of difference and so stands out
from their competitors, which one would assume would lead to significantly
better performance.
When it comes to landing pages, they mostly feature local imagery to help
provide a more relevant result, and it would seem they are testing short
form pages against longer ones to see which converts better. Either way,
the content is highly relevant to the search term and the location which
certainly can’t hurt.

Email
Marketing
written by
Brendan Connaughton
Consultant, Acquisition
As an Acquisition Marketing Consultant, he specialises in optimising

paid media campaigns and building landing pages that convert.
Brendan brings both an analytical and creative mindset to his portfolio

and is always ready for a challenge.

AIRBNB: THE GROWTH STRATEGY OF A $35 BILLION BUSINESS - EMAIL MARKETING
One of the crucial components of Airbnb’s email

marketing strategy is their browser abandonment
sequence. 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.
Airbnb are able to match up the user session with

your email address based on your browser cookie,
and they then trigger an email sequence that aims
to get you back into your search and ultimately
book your next stay.
Browser abandonment
sequence
Here’s an example of an email I

received after looking at some places
in Santa Monica:
Let’s breakdown this email section by section,

there is a lot of things Airbnb are doing well:

The heading and email subject

line is tailored to a city I browsed
and the dates I searched for.
The search box is a deeplink

that takes me directly to the
associated search results for
Santa Monica 9-12th April.
Airbnb recognise some travel credit associated with my account and insert this into the
email to remind me.

Airbnb showcase four 4.5 star homes in Santa Monica that have availability for the
dates I selected. 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. Recommendations could also be based on the style of home, studio apartment
versus family friendly options, or what amenities are associated with my previous
bookings, for example, am I always booking places that have wifi or a pool.
Also worth noting the low intent call-to-action. ‘browse homes’. From this email Airbnb
are trying to get me back to their website. Once I’m on their site and browsing, the call-
to-action shifts to making a booking.

The experiences section speaks to Airbnb moving horizontally to become a one-stop

shop for travellers. If I’ve already booked accommodation, this section may still be of
interest, or if I haven’t booked accommodation, this is another angle by which I could be
re-excited by my interest in visiting Santa Monica.
Again, Airbnb’s call-to-action for the experiences section of the email is low-
commitment, simply ‘Browse Experiences’.
Zooming out, Airbnb have shared that, not surprisingly, their email content is tailored
based on information they have about the user. However, this is not to say that their
email strategy is leveraging all the data they have available, as it’s important they
don’t overshare:
“We make use of data in every email that we send. Be it data from our
wish lists, search trends, seasonality, there is a component of every
email that is rooted within data. As you can imagine we have a lot of
different data points on our users. With email, in general, you always
have to walk that line about what data would be beneficial to use and
what comes along as too “big brother”.

Jordie van Rijn, Head of Email Marketing Airbnb.
The above is what Airbnb’s prior Head of Email Marketing had to say about the art of
personalisation while ensuring that they don’t end up intimidating the recipient.
Without a doubt, this is one of the big issues data-centric companies are battling on
their quest to maximising return on marketing investment while maintaining the trust
of their most valued customers – particularly in light of growing concerns regarding
what data is being collected by organisations and how this information is being used.
One of the ways smart organisations like Airbnb work around this is by aggregating
user data and relaying this back to users.
For example, in a separate browser abandonment series of emails that was triggered
by me looking at Los Angeles accommodation, Airbnb reference in the subject line
and hero section of the email that people travelling to Los Angeles typically book their
accommodation at least 2 months prior:
Airbnb astutely sent me this email 2 months and 13 days prior to the travel dates I
specified as part of my search.
Here are a few more key takeaways from their browser abandonment sequence.

1. Email alerts to notify you of

discounts offered by hosts:
2. 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:

Host acquisition
This is particularly resourceful as past guests

are already familiar with the Airbnb brand,
their processes and the benefits. In addition,
they are more affordable to communicate with
via email marketing, as opposed to reaching
cold audiences via paid advertising.
Building on this approach, I would also be

looking to remarket to anyone that opened the
email via Facebook, Display, or Gmail ads with
additional information or incentives for them
to register as a host.
Let’s look at a few more interesting email

marketing use-cases.
Booking confirmation
Once a user completes a booking, Airbnb use

the confirmation email to increase the value of
this customer or transaction in two ways:

1. Incentivising referrals
Referrals are typically one of

the most reliable sources of new
customers. Airbnb offer $15 off to
guest referrals (discount)
and $200 for a successful host
referral (incentive).
2. Cross-sells
As we’ve alluded to earlier in the

article, Airbnb are expanding
horizontally into experiences.
Of course it’s easier to sell to existing

customers than new ones, and
there’s no better time than when they
are finalising their booking or have
recently just completed
their booking.

Itinerary email
When you arrive in your new destination,
Airbnb send a personalised email containing
Airbnb Experiences that may be of interest,
‘disguised’ as an itinerary.
These experiences are presumably curated

based on their recommendation engine,
and this email can be dispatched to all
users for which there are adequate Airbnb
Experiences in their destination to populate
the email.
You can see another variation of this

email here.

Destination emails
Airbnb routinely showcase some of the amazing
cities and trip experiences with curated
emails that narrow down on one popular city
or trip type.
Here’s a Buenos Aires example:

And some other locations they’ve showcased as

well include:
New York City

Melbourne
Similarly, they also send these destination

emails based on types of destinations,
instead of the location-specific
examples above.
Here are two more examples:
Winter Sport Experiences
Weekend Beach Getaway

Email marketing conclusion
Outside of the obvious objectives, like increasing reservations and prompting

a customer to book their next travel adventure, I suspect that one of Airbnb’s
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 they’re in a new city.
Beyond that, I would go as far to say that Airbnb want to enable their
customer base to more easily be able to ‘live it’, as opposed to just ‘seeing it’,
reinforcing one of their key brand messages.

Organic
Search
written by
Jacqueline Coombe
Principal Consultant, Search + Content Marketing
After stumbling into digital marketing through a whim internship

application in 2013, Jacqueline discovered a passion for creating
engaging and effective growth campaigns. As Principal Consultant in
the Search + Content Marketing team and a Growth Lead at Web Profits,
there’s nothing Jacqueline loves more than creating data-driven results
and using investigative tools to develop a client’s strategy.

AIRBNB: THE GROWTH STRATEGY OF A $35 BILLION BUSINESS - ORGANIC SEARCH
There are few industries bigger than travel, and it’s hard to find other industries that
provide such a huge opportunity in relation to organic search.
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.
While Airbnb is estimated to be capturing close to 12% of their total website traffic
through paid search channels, as detailed by Brendan, SEMrush estimates the total
traffic they receive to be in the region of 1.5 million visits per month.
But how have they done this?
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.
Keywords
When it comes to keywords, Airbnb is limited only by the locations in which they have a
presence. And considering they have over 6 million listings worldwide, it’s pretty safe to
say that the limit is the sky for their keyword potential.
But it’s not just enough to have those locations – you need to be in the top 2 to 3 organic
positions on Google to really capture high traffic volumes.
Focusing on their Australian site, Airbnb primarily ranks for the following two types
of keywords:

Branded – ranking for phrases that contain ‘Airbnb’, in particular when paired
with a location.
Non-branded, location-based accommodation terms – ranking for phrases that

include a location they have a listing in and the term ‘accommodation’ or the type
of accommodation, eg. ‘house’.

According to SEMrush, Airbnb is currently ranking for 316,900 keywords relating to

travel, accommodation, and brand-based search terms. And the top performing organic
keywords are
The Airbnb homepage is currently receiving 57.82% of all traffic to the website, with it
ranking for 3,929 keywords. The next best-performing page is Melbourne, Australia with
1.9% of the total traffic, and 479 ranked keywords.

Page 1 keyword
learnings
The majority of keywords ranking

on page 1 for the Airbnb website
are branded, with smaller volume
locations ranking for generic
‘[location] accommodation’ terms.
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.
Generic search term

Branded search term
This shows that in terms of success,

branded keywords currently play a
huge role in their organic success,
and should continue to be a primary
driver of organic traffic in the future.
It also fits well with Brendan’s

findings on branded keyword
targeting vs generic location
targeting, as Airbnb is not showing
higher in the organic results for
generic terms and that’s where
they’re putting the majority of their
advertising budget on Google (73%).
However, at some point Airbnb

will reach a cap in the amount of
branded search traffic they are able
to achieve.
This is why improving their generic

‘[location] accommodation’ organic
keyword rankings should be a
focus for the Airbnb marketing time,
with a recommendation being a
more aggressive content
marketing strategy.

Organic visibility
The organic visibility of the Airbnb website can be attributed to both the growth in
the number of keywords ranking to positions on page 1 of Google and the increased
backlink profile of the site which assists with driving third party referral traffic to
the website.
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.
From 2014 Airbnb experienced a consistent growth trajectory until December 2015,
when over a two month period (Dec 2015 – Feb 2016) traffic grew by another 96% from
257,640 to 505,165 visits.
This again set the standard for 2 years of fairly consistent growth, until a further ‘growth
spurt’ of 106% from 884,267 visitors in Jan 2018 to 1,829,206 visitors in Feb 2018. This
traction is reflected in the Google Trends graph for the past 5 years for the term ‘airbnb’.

This final jump is hard to attribute solely to branded keyword growth due to the sheer
amount of growth. Something I found of interest and that may have had an impact on
Airbnb’s 2017/2018 growth was that there were several small Google algorithm updates
made in December 2017 – an unusual time for updates due to the impact these changes
can have on eCommerce. This period of updates was named the ‘Maccabee Update’ by
Search Engine Roundtable’s Barry Schwartz, and according to industry experts was
focused around User Experience and impactful keyword permutations.
“By far, the biggest bulk of sites that I saw got hit all had tons and tons of landing pages
target massive arrays of keyword permutations. 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. If they
were a service business, they would target [city name] + [service A] and then [city name]
+ [service B] and so on.”
Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Roundtable
This may explain why Airbnb saw a huge bump – not necessarily because they aren’t
actioning the above strategies (because they are) but rather that in comparison to
their competitors like Booking.com and Wotif.com the amount of pages they have are
significantly less. This could cause a favourable result.
Another potential reason for the spike in organic traffic could be the other marketing
efforts Airbnb were actioning toward the end of the 2017 – for example, it’s common for
organic search for a brand to increase following targeted online and offline campaigns,
such as TV commercials, radio ads, and increased digital marketing budget. Without
a look at Airbnb’s marketing calendar and a review into their campaigns, it’s hard to
determine exactly what other efforts Airbnb may have actioned at the time to result in
such an increase.
Of not, since February 2018 the growth trajectory has not been consistent, and there
have been fairly significant dips in the monthly estimated traffic. In fact, estimated
traffic year on year from February 2018 to February 2019 is down.

Competitor visibility
For such a competitive space, Airbnb is considered one of the more competitive players.
From an organic search perspective, there are two primary competitors of Airbnb:
Booking.com
Wotif.com
The Competitive Positioning Map above is a data visualisation based on Airbnb and
its competitors’ organic traffic, as well as the number of keywords that they rank for in
Google’s top 20 organic search results.
The larger the circle, the more visibility a domain has.

Keyword gap analysis
To break down the visibility differences between Booking.com, Wotif.com and Airbnb,
we ran a keyword gap analysis through SEMrush.
As Chloe explained in our review of Xero’s marketing strategy, it’s important to run an
SEO keyword gap analysis to know:
1. The keywords your competitors are ranking for that you are not
2. The keywords that your competitors are ranking for on page 1 that you’re on page 2+.
This traction is reflected in the Google Trends graph for the past 5 years for the
term ‘airbnb’.

Based on this report, it’s clearly evident the differences in high volume keywords
between the three brands, with Airbnb largely trailing behind the other two. For
example, the search term ‘canberra accommodation’ has an average 40,500 searches per
month, with the rankings as:
Booking.com – position 1
Wotif.com – position 5
Airbnb – position 82
Airbnb seems to be cognisant of their low organic positioning for generic [location]
accommodation terms, and so acts to ensure they are in position 1 of ad placements for
high volume targets.
For the example of ‘byron bay accommodation’, Brendan found that Airbnb are bidding
to be in either position 1 or position 2 of ads for related search terms, both branded and
generic, and are receiving an estimated 2,326 visits per month to their ad.

Overall, this report shows that there is still a significant amount of keyword
improvements and consequent organic traffic to be gained by Airbnb, which would
result in huge traffic increases similar to those seen in previous years by the brand.
Keyword ranking opportunities
There are a number of tactics Airbnb can use to continue improving their keyword
rankings, such as:
1. 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.
2. A new onsite optimisation strategy – I’ll go into this in more detail in the next
section, but currently the onsite optimisation for Title Tags and Meta Descriptions
on the website follows a fairly standard template that could be improved upon by
testing new and engaging meta data across key pages.
It’s important to note that due to the sheer size of the site Booking.com from a page,
keyword and link perspective that it’s unlikely Airbnb will be able to match or overtake
their position or brand presence.
However with the above strategy they could certainly become more of a competitor for
Wotif.com.
How did I determine this?
When searching using a Site Operator on Google for the Booking.com and Wotif.com
when compared to Airbnb, you get the following results:

Booking.com
Wotif.com
Airbnb
This shows that the Wotif.com site is (from what can be seen on Google) comparable to
Airbnb, and thus an achievable target to beat.

Onsite optimisation
Title tags and meta descriptions
Currently the Airbnb website has a number of templated Title Tags and Meta
Descriptions across their different types of location pages.
For example, one of their common Title Tags is:
1. [Location] 2019 (with Photos): Top 20 Places to Stay in [Location] – Holiday Rentals,
Holiday Homes – Airbnb [Location], [State], [Country]For example, Coffs Harbour
2019 (with Photos): Top 20 Places to Stay in Coffs Harbour – Holiday Rentals, Holiday
Homes – Airbnb Coffs Harbour, New South Wales, Australia
There are a number of similar pages on the site also ranking with similar Title Tags.
However, as this Title Tag is longer than the 60 characters allowed for by Google on
Desktop search, what is actually seen by the user can be seen below:

This results in a less than optimal user experience, which could be impacting their
click-through and their rankings.
The Meta Descriptions across the website are largely templated, however Google is in
some locations pulling a ‘dynamic’ Meta Description through to the page of what they
think is the most relevant information to be displayed. This feature cannot be controlled
by a website owner, and is solely dependent on Google’s algorithm to display.
Breadcrumb structure
There is an inconsistent ‘breadcrumb’ structure implemented on the Airbnb website,

which could also be impacting the websites organic performance.
A breadcrumb structure comes from the children’s story of Hansel and Gretel,
where they leave breadcrumbs as a trail to find their way home. In website talk, the
breadcrumb structure of a website does the same thing – it allows Google’s 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.
Basically it is the hierarchical structure of a website.
For example, the below is a very basic diagram of what a site structure might look like
as an organisational chart for a site like Airbnb:

What this translates to on the website looks like this:
And when the breadcrumb structured data of the website is optimised correctly, it can
pull through the breadcrumb structure to show the hierarchy in a simple and clear way
for the user.
When the breadcrumb structured data is not implemented correctly, it looks instead
like this
Consistency is key here as if it is not consistent, it’s harder for Google’s ‘spider’ bots
to crawl the website, leading to longer indexation times and reduced impact when
changes are made on the site. 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.
Onsite optimisation recommendations:
Airbnb should review and update their Title Tags and Meta Descriptions to fit the
length parameters provided by Google –
Title Tag – max. 60 characters
Meta Description – max 160 characters

They could trial using a number of different Meta Descriptions as opposed to

a single template to see if this has a positive impact. Remember, while Meta
Descriptions do not impact rankings, they do impact click-through rate which
does impact rankings, so it’s definitely something to keep in mind when assessing
your own Meta Descriptions.
I also recommend that Airbnb implement the correct structured data markup
across the website for best results.
Link acquisition – backlinks, referring domains &

domain ratings
If you are new to the ‘search engine optimisation’ space, it’s likely you’ve run into the
term backlinks before. This is because they are an essential part of any organic search
strategy if you wish to succeed. But why are they so important? Here are 3 key reasons:
1. They assist Google’s algorithm with determining your site’s authority, credibility and
relevance. After all, who is Google going to trust as a more authoritative and relevant
source – a site with no backlinks, or a site with 100+ backlinks.
2. They also assist Google’s ‘spiders’ with finding new pages on your website, which
leads to faster indexation and improved rankings where applicable. This is because
when Google crawls a site that has a backlink to your site, a Google spider will follow
the backlink as though it’s a web strand and then start crawling your site – which
would have taken longer if there hadn’t been a backlink and you were waiting for
Google to crawl your site as part of its standard checks.
3. They can boost referral traffic. Now, it’s not something often spoken to by content
marketers (as basically there are no guarantees on the amount of traffic you could
potentially receive through a backlink to your site) but this reason is not to be
discounted as the more referral traffic you receive through a backlink, the more
value Google places on the link, and the better your results for that page.

The Airbnb site
According to ahrefs, the Airbnb AU website is currently showing approx. 539,000

backlinks from approx. 6,430 Referring Domains – of note, while more links are likely
to have been built to the site since its inception, there will always be lost links as time
passes due to pages being removed from this party websites, listings being removed the
Airbnb site and no redirect being put in place, and whole websites being shut down.
This is why the historical number of backlinks is shown as 2,650,000.
When compared with Booking.com, it’s evident who the backlink winner is:

Booking.com had close to 100,000 Referring Domains pointing to their website in 2013,
while Airbnb has yet to reach the 7,000 Referring Domain mark.
This substantial difference in backlink profile will be largely contributing to the

difference in non-branded keyword rankings, organic traffic, and also brand awareness.
And a primary reason for this huge discrepancy is due to the type of accommodation
each platform offers.
Airbnb offers private accommodation to users, which means that the listings they
feature are generally investment properties owned by an individual who would not
be able to link to their listing or the Airbnb website outside of social media.
Booking.com offers commercial accommodation to users, such as hotels, resorts

etc, which means the link opportunities are much greater.

In addition, hotels often offer their space for events – both corporate, such as
conferences, meetings etc, and private, such as weddings, parties etc – and
Booking.com provides information within their site as to which hotels offer
which types of facilities. This further increases the scope of potential links they
could be achieving.For example, Booking.com has 7 backlinks from the Referring
Domain ‘Eventbrite’
So there are pro’s and con’s either way.
Anchor text and link opportunities
When looking deeper into the Anchor text that is being used for the links back to
the Airbnb website, it’s interesting to note that 29% is the brand name, which will be
contributing to the rankings for brand-related keywords. SERPSTAT recommends the
following amount of anchor text percentages not be exceeded for best link results
without incurring a Google penalty for spammy link tactics.
Branded anchor text: 50%
Naked links: 20%
Generic anchors: 5%
LSI, partial match anchors: 1-5%
Exact match anchor text: 1-2%

Based on Airbnb’s amount of branded anchor text, they are in the safe zone, but should
be conscious of the percentage skew when progressing with their backlick strategy in
the future.
The next most common anchor text phrase is ‘<a>no text</a>, which could be one of two
scenarios:
1) it is simply an html tag denoting an address link within the text, or
2) it is a link placed on an image.
Both could be applicable in the below scenario.
As you would expect for a site like Airbnb, the majority of their backlinks have been
achieved through travel-related content, such as articles on a certain destination, links
from travel-related companies, and links in media and forums.
Of note, this has been changing with the introduction of the new ‘Experiences’ and
‘Restaurants’ sections of the Airbnb website.
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.

While this will not help them rank for the ‘[location] accommodation] keywords that
have been the focus to date, it has assisted with growing the size of the Airbnb AU
website and backlink profile. This in turn will have an overall positive effect on the
website if the Experience pages continue to be optimised over time, particularly with
the inclusion of internal linking to the relevant accommodation pages on the website.

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
Accommodation Car rentals
Flights Airport taxi transfers
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. And most of all, they provide a large amount of content for relevant
destinations on their side, giving them a huge organic backlink strategy.
Wotif.com
Accommodation Holiday rentals
Flights Car hire
Holiday packages
Wotif.com offers a larger selection of options than Booking.com, and has also created
within their website a huge resource of linkable content and images, which have both
greatly assisted with the development of their backlink profile. For example, Wotif.com
currently has approx. 29,000 backlinks from ‘VisitNsw’, which are primarily content or
image-related links.


Developing content that will receive backlinks without your internal marketing team
having to do any work should be the goal of every website – but organic presence and
your brand can have a huge impact on this, as people will not find your amazing content
unless you are either performing well for relevant search terms organically, or someone
is already on your website due to your brand presence and finds the content because
you promote it on relevant, high traffic service pages.
Backlink opportunities
The best way for Airbnb to improve their backlink profile ties into the recommendation
given for keyword ranking improvements: develop a more aggressive content
marketing strategy. By creating resourceful content, tools, calculators, guides, unique
data such as statistical information, videos etc, Airbnb gives other websites a reason to
link to their website without having to allocate a huge portion of their marketing budget
to hustling for links.
SEO Summary
Airbnb rely heavily on their brand presence to drive organic traffic and could
do significantly better when ranking for accommodation-based keywords.
They have a huge site so it wouldn’t 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. But that won’t be enough, they’ll need
a comprehensive backlink strategy to appear authoritative and rank for
the relevant keywords. Luckily they have an extensive content catalogue
which they can use to drive these backlinks but need to be more aggressive
in promoting it, and perhaps create additional resources that are more
‘backlink-friendly” to really succeed in organic search.

Social
Media
written by
Jason Garrard
Principal Consultant, Social Media
Jason’s passion for everything online means he always has his finger on
the pulse.
With a creative flair and an eye for detail, he is data driven, analytical and
thrives on turning insights into initiatives.
Jason began his career at Web Profits as an intern and six years later he
is now one of our leading social media specialists, managing a number of
our long-standing Australian Fluid clients.
AIRBNB: THE GROWTH STRATEGY OF A $35 BILLION BUSINESS - SOCIAL MEDIA
Social media plays an integral role in any business’ marketing strategy these days and,
of course, Airbnb are no different. In this section I’ll 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.
It’s 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.
Let’s get into it.
Facebook overview
Facebook is 1 of 3 social media platforms that Airbnb is currently most active on.
Airbnb’s Facebook content serves 3 main purposes:
1. Taps into the aspirational elements of travel through engaging imagery to

encourage bookings
2. Encourages property owners to become an Airbnb host
3. Highlights their hosts as a key part of the Airbnb experience.
Let’s take a more in-depth look at their content, its performance, and how they engage
with their Facebook community.
Facebook page:
Not all businesses are lucky enough to have a recognisable logo that they can use as
their Page profile picture but, as a globally-renowned brand, Airbnb have that privilege.
The instantly-recognisable logo, which they named “The Bélo”, is designed to mean “the
universal symbol of belonging”.

Their cover image appears to be the interior of an Airbnb property and promotes
their overall
aesthetic well – cultured, colourful, and stylish. Notably, they haven’t made use of a
Facebook Cover video, which is a missed opportunity to introduce new users to their
brand in a creative and engaging way – similar to the homepage of a website.
At the top of the Page, they’re utilising the CTA option which Facebook offers to
all Pages, choosing to go with ‘Sign Up’. Upon clicking this you’re directed to their
homepage, and I can see that they’ve generated this link with UTM tracking.

Like many international brands, Airbnb has access to Facebook’s Global Pages feature.
This allows brands to post localised content under one universal Facebook Page name,
share fans, and receive a vanity URL/username – e.g. https://www.facebook.com/
AirbnbAustralia/.
I can see Airbnb has also switched on the Page option “Prompt people to send
messages” – this automatically opens a Messenger chat window when a user visits the
Page on desktop. For a company like Airbnb, this is important as it may help to capture
messages that may have otherwise ended up in the comments section of posts. This
option currently isn’t available on mobile.
At the time of writing, the Airbnb Fan base is sitting at 15.6 million.
Frequency of posting
On average, Airbnb post every 3-4 days on Facebook, in comparison to Instagram where
they post almost daily.
When looking at their frequency of posting, I think they’ve taken the right approach.
Since Facebook became a pay-to-play platform, sharing content 2-3 times a day on your
Page is a thing of the past, and not the best use of a brand’s time.
If you’re going to need to pay to get your content out there to audiences, using the
“quality over quantity” approach is best. Instagram’s organic reach & algorithm works
slightly differently, but we’ll get to that later.
When looking at the types of posts they share to the Page, this is a mixture of imagery &
video. Let’s break this down a little more.

Image posts
Utilising UGC for page content
The majority of their image posts feature an Airbnb listing, utilising user-generated
content (UGC) which gives the brand a very authentic and relatable feel.
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.
If they were to use polished/professional

imagery, I don’t think it would have the
same natural feel, so I’m confident this
strategy works well for them on both
Facebook & Instagram.
The post copy that accompanies the image often introduces the host/s on a personal
level – “Make yourself at home at Patrick and Elizabeth’s historic homestead”. This type
of messaging perfectly ties back to their brand ethos of belonging and community – we
don’t need to know who Patrick & Elizabeth are, we just need to know we’re invited to
stay at their home.

Interestingly, direct links to the homes featured on Facebook aren’t included, instead a
link to all properties in that location is provided. Their response to one user requesting
more info on a property was “We do not promote individual listings on our platform.
This might help though:” – this is slightly contradictory, as they do sometimes share the
@ username of the Instagram account for the property (if the owner has one).
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.
By doing this, Airbnb are aligning their brand with a sense of travel, hoping that when
people start thinking about their next travel destination, they will think of Airbnb.
Keeping content localised
It’s clear to see that part of Airbnb’s Facebook strategy is to share a number of
Australian-based listings each month – these are also often in more rural locations,
rather than cities. This makes sense when you refer to data that was shared by the
company towards the end of 2018, where they predicted which Australian locations
would be the top 10 trending destinations for 2019 (based on internal data for bookings
made in 2017 vs. 2018).
These included:
Wagga Wagga (289%) Corowa (175%)
Blackheath (281%) Bridport (173%)
Toowoomba (229%) Jindabyne (166%)
Tamborine Mountain (205%) Strahan (163%)
Mount Gambier (202%) Mudgee (158%)

What this tells us is that a data-driven approach forms part of their content strategy.
They use previous bookings and keyword searches to curate their Facebook content.
This is an excellent strategy as it essentially allows them to give their audiences a little
extra nudge down the sales funnel. How? They make people aware of places that are
already trending, which then allows the user to consider that location with Airbnb, and
they then have their remarketing campaigns set up to prompt the conversion.
Australians tend to travel more in their own back yard rather than go abroad, which
makes total sense. It’s less commitment, often more cost-effective for the customer, and
they’re fortunate with such a huge and diverse country like Australia that there are so
many amazing listings they can continue to share.
The ‘staycation’ is also becoming more popular and I don’t doubt that businesses like
Airbnb have played a part in that.

Video posts
Alongside their image-based content, Airbnb do share some video posts. Currently,
video is used for their more polished, brand-focused posts and does not feature user-
generated content.
In comparison to static imagery, video is often more engaging and great for storytelling,
which Airbnb have used to announce they’d hit half a billion check-ins in May 2019, as
they celebrated this through video, rather than imagery.
Although they are sharing some video content, I’ve noticed that this is usually content
which isn’t localisedand, when switching regions on the Facebook Page, you can see
that they’re sharing much of the same video content across different countries. I think
this is a clear missed opportunity for them to better engage with their audiences in a
more personalised way.

In a study conducted by KPMG, they found that alongside integrity from brands,
personalisation is of key importance to Australian consumers when it comes to
customer experience (CX). Airbnb are doing a great job on this in many ways (they
ranked 47 out of 50 in the same study), but I firmly believe that a brand’s social channels
should also be used to enhance their customer’s experience.
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. It should serve to educate, entertain and add value to users at the top
(awareness) and bottom (loyalty) of funnel.
Using video over image posts does have one major advantage for Ads strategy though,
and that comes in the form of Engagement Custom Audiences from video views. 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”.
These audiences can be great for honing in on your audience targeting later down the
track. 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.
These audiences can also then be used for Lookalike audiences.
Link posts
Outside of image & video-based content, Airbnb often share posts that link back to their
website, blog or press room – these are on 3 separate domains & subdomains.

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.
A post from their blog
When sharing links to their Facebook Page, it’s hard to tell whether or not they are
tracking anything other than clicks on these. They’ve used a custom link shortener for
a number of years now (http://abnb.co) which usually provides you with the option to
track who is clicking on the link, but that’s it.
Best practice would be to also have these links built with UTM parameters – this allows
you to then go and view the performance of the links in Google Analytics, however it’s
evident that they are not using UTM parameters.
It could be said that best practice on Facebook for sharing links is using the Link
Preview option, rather than sharing links in the post copy with a separate image. In
2014, Facebook previously reported that links in the link preview format receive twice
as many link clicks on average compared to links that are in photo captions.

Airbnb regularly chooses not to use the Link Preview option when sharing links,
instead they opt for a custom shortened link in the post copy and share a separate
video or image.
For certain links that they share, I think this strategy works quite well. If we refer back
to the notion of video content being great for storytelling, it may be that Airbnb is happy
enough with someone watching a video and if they click through to read the full article
relating to that video, that’s a bonus, the article perhaps has more value for SEO than
social. They can still capture the viewers of this video, without needing to worry about
capturing them through website remarketing.
I don’t think this works for all posts though. 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.

At Web Profits when we’ve split-tested using an image with a link in the copy versus a
Link Preview, on average, the Link Preview prevails.
Community management
Airbnb does a good job at community management on Facebook, and I expect that they
have a dedicated team managing this.
Any posts shared to the Page by Facebook users are usually answered within a matter
of hours, and they also do a great job of replying to feedback in the comments section
on their posts.
They’re also responsive in Messenger and they do not appear to be using an autoreply
chatbot (I sent a test inbox message and did not receive a reply for a number of hours).

Many disgruntled customers use the comments section as a way to complain; this is
seen across numerous industries, but Airbnb is clearly trying to show that they are a
brand focused on customer service and experience, as they try and reply to most of
these types of comments. They also follow best practice by attempting to resolve the
complaint out of the public eye and moving it to a personal message “Can you please
send us a PM with your email address…”
I think there’s a lot of brands that could take a leaf out of Airbnb’s book when it comes
to community management. Not only does community management help brands find
opportunities to address complaints, but it also helps to foster positive conversations,
which in itself can create and maintain more happy customers.
Here’s an example of Airbnb adding to the conversation in the comments of one of

their posts.
Source

Facebook ads
In a bid to provide more transparency to its users, Facebook now lets you view all of a
Page’s active ads. You can try this out for yourself by visiting the Ads Library tool.
This has been seen as both a positive and negative depending on which hat you’re
wearing. If you’re a business/brand, your ads strategy is now in full view for all to see,
particularly your competitors; but if you’re an everyday Facebook user you now have
more visibility as to what ads a political party, brand, or whoever else you wish to check
is currently running.
From a marketing perspective, I personally think it’s a good move by Facebook, as it

will ensure advertisers do not get complacent with their creative & messaging – if they
want to stay ahead of the curve, they’ll need to keep innovating and testing new ads.
Now let’s take a look at Airbnb’s active ads in Australia…
Sponsoring page posts
In the time that I’ve been analysing Airbnb’s Facebook Page for this case study, through
checking the Ads Library tool I’ve been able to see that they’ve advertised all of their
most recent Page posts.
This is positive and shows that they are invested in making sure their content gets an
initial ‘boost’ when it goes live.
There are some great tools out there for advertisers that can automate this process for
you, including Boosterberg and AdEspresso. These work off rules which you set within
the software, leaving you time to focus on the more important things.

Dynamic ads
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 CPA’s using the Dynamic
Ads objective.
For anyone that has not come across Dynamic Ads, here’s a quick recap on how
they work…
Essentially, Dynamic Ads are automation at its finest. They utilise a product feed/
product catalogue and I’m confident that any new listings that get added to the Airbnb
site also get added to this feed. You have two options when it comes to targeting:
1. Retarget products to people who have visited your website or app.
2. Show relevant products to prospective customers, even if they haven’t visited your
website or app.
From a remarketing perspective, I don’t think any other type of Facebook ad could top
Dynamic Ads for Airbnb. 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?
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 I’d say having
’Automatic Placements’ set for this campaign would be a must to ensure they are
everywhere that their audiences are. I noticed they use three main hooks in their
Dynamic Ads copy:
Find an Airbnb in [Location] with free cancellation.

Book a real home in [Location] for less than a hotel room 😮

Traveling to [Location]? Idea to save money for your next trip: use Airbnb.
Although I think these are good, short messages that speak to the pain points that come
with booking/saving for a vacation, I think they’re missing out on an opportunity to call
out different users in a more fun and creative way, for example:
“Hey – what happened to your [Thailand] plans?! There’s still so many amazing
locations to check out in [Bangkok]. Let’s pick up where we left off…”
“So, about [Paris], when are we booking? We’re ready when you are…”
With this in mind, it’s always important to stay true to your brand’s tone of voice, but the
more that you can make a connection with your audiences in an authentic, human way
on social, the more likely they will be to proactively seek out your business for
their needs.
Host acquisition

Outside of their sponsored Page posts and Dynamic Ads, the rest of Airbnb’s ads
strategy currently focuses on one thing – signing up hosts.
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:
Generate awareness of becoming a host / prospecting
Helping with the consideration phase of the host journey through remarketing
These two stages of the Host journey feature in what Airbnb refers to as the List Your
Space (LYS) flow:
Airbnb’s concept of multi-touch attribution for a hypothetical user journey
When we delve more into why Facebook is perfect for top & middle of funnel objectives,
it relates to 3 things:

There’s a fairly high number of Australians on Facebook, with around 15 million

monthly active users for them to serve ads to – that’s 60% of the total population
It doesn’t rely on search intent, which means it’s more scalable
It can assist in a multi-channel remarketing strategy, for example, you can create
a Custom Audience of your AdWords visitors who didn’t convert and remarket
back to these users through Facebook Ads (these visitors are gold as they’ve
demonstrated search intent already).
Looking at the messaging they’re using in Host ads, I like the angles that Airbnb have
chosen to run with. They’ve clearly used previous customer research to tap into the key
motivations for why a hosts sign up for Airbnb:
Host to fund your travels

Host to pay for

home renovations
Host with peace

of mind

Share your home to

earn money
All of the ads above also utilise the 4:5 video ratio, which is a fairly new best practice
ratio that Facebook introduced. This format allows you to take up as much real estate as
possible on a person’s Feed.
I do think that these ads are missing something here though, and it’s to do with
the creative. Many of the ads they use feature video, which is positive, but they don’t
feature real Australians talking about their experiences with being an Airbnb host. I feel
this kind of content could really benefit the campaigns. This needs to be done in the
right way though, as it still needs to come across as authentic.
An idea for generating this type of content could be an Instagram UGC competition
where hosts share videos of WHY they host; the entries would be collected using a
campaign hashtag, and hosts would be incentivised to do this with the opportunity to
win an awesome prize. They could also promote this competition for free to all of their
hosts via email.

Facebook summary
Airbnb’s timeline is varied in terms of post content and types. They utilise imagery well
(especially with user generated content), and share articles regularly, but could be doing
more on video given how much Facebook prioritises it in their algorithm.
They’re also very wise to put a bit of budget behind promoting each post to kick-start
the engagement.
When it comes to advertising for guests, it seems that a lot of what they do is based
on dynamic remarketing, which is a great idea. They’re spending their budget on
users who have shown high intent, and show them highly relevant ads to increase the
chance of conversion. If I had one criticism here, though, it’s that they could show more
personality in these ads.
When it comes to promoting to attract new hosts, it’s clear they’ve done their research
into why hosts sign up to Airbnb, and that research has informed the messaging they
use in their ads.
Instagram
Overview
Airbnb are using Instagram mainly to promote their listings, Superhosts & Experiences.
Unlike Facebook, where Airbnb have a localised Australian Page, they’ve chosen to have
just one global Instagram account. This does mean they can’t share too much content
which is specific to one location, and it also means they have to work a little harder at
sharing content which is universally appealing. Fortunately for them, for brands to see
success on Instagram it’s mostly all about sharing compelling/authentic imagery, which
Airbnb does have.

Airbnb are very active on Instagram – they share content to their Feed as well as to
their Instagram Stories. 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.
Now let’s look at some examples of how Airbnb is using Instagram to promote their
different offerings.
Superhosts
This is an example of one of Airbnb’s ‘Superhost’-themed posts. The image instantly

grabs your attention. The architecture of the building is unusual, the glimpse of the
cozy/warm inside is very inviting and, to top it off, you can be at one with nature at
this retreat.

I would say this would tick a lot of boxes for many of Airbnb’s prospective audiences
who are yearning for a secluded getaway beyond the city limits. The image is also UGC,
with the photographer credited.
When we turn our attention to the caption, we’re met with some descriptive copy which
helps to further set the scene, but there’s also a mention of the ‘Superhost’, Manuela,
whose amazing property this is. 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. Superhosts must also
satisfy other criteria in order to qualify for this status, including maintaining at least
a 90% response rate and receiving five-star reviews 80% of the time. All of this means
peace of mind for any prospective guest.
Listings

Listings make up a big chunk of Airbnb’s Instagram content, and are clearly meant to
evoke a sense of wanderlust in all those who stumble upon them. These posts mostly
feature UGC, which gives them a really authentic feel and allows them to easily blend
into a users Instagram feed, which I feel is something key for brands to master on
this channel.
If you’re trying too hard on Instagram, whether that’s in a salesy manner or with
imagery that is too airbrushed, the Instagram community will see through this and
won’t be as engaged.
One thing I did notice in my research is that many of the listings they share in posts
do not feature people (see Feed example above) – there’s lots of empty chairs, empty
beds, and generally untouched settings. Even if this is not done on purpose, I think
this is clever, as it allows the user to imagine themselves there. The focus is on the
outstanding property and the equally beautiful backdrop.
What could be improved?
As a general rule of thumb, I think your imagery/posts should fit into at least one or
more of these criteria:
1. It’s a beautiful image and has a lot of visual impact
2. It evokes an emotion – happiness, humor, nostalgia, etc
3. It gives you FOMO (fear of missing out)
4. It tells a captivating story (image and/or caption)
But how many of the above are Airbnb actually achieving with their current strategy? I
would say definitely 1 & 3, a little bit of 2, and not so much of 4.

Do I think they should be creating posts which achieve more of 2 & 4? The short answer
is yes, but here’s why.
Using the Phlanx Instagram Engagement calculator, I can see that from their 4.1
million followers, Airbnb get around 26.7k Likes per post, 283 comments, and have an
overall average engagement rate of 0.65%. Now, this is an ok result, but that’s less than
1% of their overall Followers engaging here, and I think that alone could definitely be
improved upon.
Airbnb have put a lot of work into designing a marketplace that is built on trust. This
trust isn’t so much between the user and Airbnb, its trust amongst hosts and guests. As
much as reviews are helpful in the booking process, once we hit ‘book’ on the platform,
we’re then putting our trust in a complete stranger being a good host and the host is
putting their trust in us being an equally good guest.

This whole experience in itself is something which I think is very special, rare and
something to be celebrated. It’s humans sharing, connecting, and helping each other to
make memories and enjoyable experiences. If we refer back to this sense of community
and how deep-rooted it is in Airbnb’s values, I think they are missing an opportunity to
share more stories that focus on this aspect of their brand – this happens
between people.
If we compare their current 0.60% engagement rate to the Humans of New York account,
we can see a real difference here.
On average, Humans of New York are achieving an engagement rate of 3.35% and this
engagement isn’t only coming from Likes, it’s from comments too, which means there’s
more conversation happening. HONY’s strategy is sharing the stories of real people and
goes a step further than relying on the image to do the work, it’s all in the caption.

I’d like to point out I’m 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 can’t see how
much more value they’re providing to
their audiences than a travel Pinterest
board would.
This type of strategy will always have

an expiry date.
With that being said, I do like their

UGC strategy and think they’ve done a
good job of leveraging this for content,
rather than using professionally shot
and polished imagery, which would
not suit the platform.
If you were wondering how they get

permission for re-sharing a users
image, here’s an example:

Instagram Stories
Airbnb were an early adopter of Instagram Stories, and have featured in numerous
articles across the internet as a brand that is crushing it with this feature, of which I
totally agree.
What’s worked to their advantage is the creativity they have shown in getting users to
engage with their stories and to keep clicking through.
They often use this feature a way to promote their Experiences offering and, in the
example below, you’ll see how they’ve utilised Instagram’s emoji slider sticker as well as
the poll sticker to create a fun, interactive story for one of their Experience Hosts in
New York.

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.
I think one great way of doing this is by sharing content that is unique and not the same
content that you’ve previously shared on your Facebook Page or Instagram feed. This
is the only thing that I think Airbnb have occasionally been guilty of, as I’ve seen the
same content across their Facebook Page, Instagram Page, and Stories. On the flipside, I
appreciate that this is sometimes to push a bigger campaign, which means they’ll want
to be across as many placements as possible to ensure they’re getting maximum reach
for this campaign.
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 they’re going to include one,
perhaps even from the 2nd or 3rd tile depending on how long the full Story is. 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, they’ll still be ready to take the next
action almost immediately. As this action could mean swiping left to the next Story,
why not try and encourage a click-through to your website or app earlier, if that’s one of
your objectives with the Story?
Instagram summary
Airbnb’s instagram page is highly visual (as it should be) and showcases the vast array
of beautiful properties they have on their platform to inspire wanderlust in potential
travellers, but engagement is relatively low. They could benefit from using their
Instagram to tell more stories, as these are a great way to connect with people.
Speaking of stories, they use Instagram Stories really well. Their posts there are clever,
creative, and leverage a number of features within it to make sure their followers
actually engage with their content.

Twitter
In 2018, a Sensis social media report found that 19% of Australian social media users
accessed Twitter – this was compared to the 91% who had used Facebook. 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. For this reason, I think Airbnb
have been smart to not make Twitter an integral part of the Australian Airbnb strategy.
I can’t imagine you’d find much, if any, content on the Australian Twitter account which
hasn’t been shared to Facebook or Instagram already, but that’s ok, as with only 10.8k
Followers on Twitter and 19% of Aussies using it, I don’t think Airbnb need to worry
about creating unique content for this channel.
I expect they’re on Twitter simply as a way of ensuring they still have visibility on
a channel where someof their customers are (even if it’s not in big numbers). 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. Tools such as Buffer and Hootsuite
make this very easy for businesses to do.

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. Both Optus and
Telstra use it for support and to answer any questions their customers may have –
Telstra’s bio states, “We’re here 24×7 to provide customer support and answer any Telstra
questions you might have”.
Airbnb have also gone down this route, creating an @AirbnbHelp account which is
their go-to account for all customer service related issues. I see value for both brands
and customers when offering customer service through a platform like Twitter, as any
response you provide is then in the public domain.
This can definitely have a positive effect on your company’s public perception/
reputation, especially if you do a good job.

Twitter summary
Their local twitter pages aren’t very impressive and it seems they’re more
like an afterthought rather than a planned out strategy.
In a country like Australia that’s not such a big deal, as Twitter usage is
relatively low, but they could definitely be doing more.

Content
Marketing
written by
Chloe Potvin
Consultant, Search + Content Marketing
As a Consultant, she’s dedicated to understanding audiences and helping

brands lead a conversation that gives people a reason to follow them.
Always thinking ahead, Chloe is interested in transformational changes

to businesses and how relevant content and targeted messaging can
catalyse high-level goals.

AIRBNB: THE GROWTH STRATEGY OF A $35 BILLION BUSINESS - CONTENT MARKETING
Storytelling is the bedrock of a quality content marketing strategy, and Airbnb has
understood this from the beginning. But unless your story resonates with your ideal
customer audience, then while people will read your content and engage with the piece,
they won’t necessarily engage with your brand.
Airbnb were looking for those who wanted to be a traveller, not a tourist, and for this
audience there is one fundamental ingredient: authenticity.
There’s a thirst for it; local lifestyles, customs and culture, transformative moments.
Forget the tourist menu pedalling another overpriced pizza margherita, wouldn’t you
rather taste nonna’s homemade pecorino stuffed ravioli while her son Francesco tells
you comedic tales about growing up in Sardinia?
And, perhaps, this is what has really driven the growth of Airbnb and played the
greatest role in building their content strategy to date.
As documented in this study, Airbnb is no longer a one trick pony. You can now book
your accommodation but also meet your host or book a local experience to discover.
Pick up a paintbrush and channel your inner Bob Ross, dance at a sunset silent disco in
San Francisco, and discover Porto’s vibrant history as you’re led through the tiled streets
by a local.
This trend towards experience is being seen across many sectors and the value of
which has been seen from the food industry and retail sector through to technology and
finance. Whether your focus is B2B or B2C, tackling this trend by placing emphasis on
creating a more seamless and personalised offering will be a vehicle for growing sales
and boosting margins.
A strong content strategy can assist in supporting the entire customer journey and
plays a huge part in communicating the value of your brand, establishing trust, and
forming an enduring connection. For Airbnb, it underlines everything they do and has
transformed their site from a marketplace to a travel platform which engages users
and hosts.

As Tam wrote, Airbnb has really springboarded off the message, “‘Don’t go there. Live
there.” For Airbnb, travel is about a personal, unique and local adventure no matter
where you are in the world – and we start to see this within the personalisation aspects
of the platform.
But this expansion has also put the spotlight on content and localisation, both for
guests and also for hosts using the platform. Airbnb has taken an impressive approach
to content using storytelling and curation to drive growth. While there is a plethora
of content-based information present on the Airbnb website, as well as on external
subdomains owned by Airbnb, I’m going to focus on the key 4 areas I identified as
providing the greatest value to their online strategy, and offer insights you can apply to
your own campaigns.
Onsite (Airbnb.com.au)
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. Utilising the strengths
of storytelling and curation has been the driving force behind the brand’s onsite content
success. 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.
Stories
It’s no secret that most travellers appreciate a good story. Isn’t 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?
Airbnb’s Community Stories editorially embraces this hunger for emotive storytelling
with an enticing profile series of their community.

These 300-400 word stories are poignant snapshots of how an Airbnb user’s life has
been impacted by using Airbnb while travelling and immerses potential travellers in the
spirit of adventure, curiosity and connection. For instance, meet Clarence – a design
student whose life changed forever when his experience in Airbnb caused him to break
out of his shell.
As most businesses know, testimonials are extremely valuable. Targeting the

consideration phase of the customer journey, the stories leave readers daydreaming
about how their life could be changed from their next Airbnb.

And yet, this subsection of the site is currently an underutilised opportunity by Airbnb.
Lacking a strong organic search strategy and missing fundamental CRO elements:
Airbnb is not activity driving organic traffic to the stories nor converting any readers
which may land here. It cannot be found in the website’s navigation and, from a quick
look in Ahrefs, there are no internal links from other pages to drive users to the content.
So there’s no way for people to find it from the website.
In addition, even if the content was promoted to an audience in order to drive traffic
from a social or email platform (which I presume is the primary source of traffic
currently), the lack of CRO elements on the pages means there’s no further action
encouraged to be taken, such as moving users from consideration to a sale. Airbnb has
removed the search bar in the header and there aren’t any buttons or links to guide
users to take another step.
It is only the US version of Airbnb Stories which is ranking in position #1 on page #1

on Australian desktop for the search term “Airbnb Testimonials” (avg monthly search
volume 70). But from SEMrush we can see that organic growth has been stagnant for
the last year.
Neighbourhoods

Airbnb understands that most travellers care about location. When you’re 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. Airbnb’s 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 content sits on the
main site and is clearly part of Airbnb’s strategy to create a seamless journey on the
platform for guests.
Curated like a blog feed of suburbs within a chosen city, Neighbourhoods is a more
visual version of an old fashioned street directory. If you select Melbourne, for example,
there are 19 neighbourhoods to select from, with filters like “Greens Spaces” and “By
the Beach”.

As you click through you’ll 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. This content truly differentiates Airbnb from the big hotel booking sites,
highlighting interesting places in different cities.
Airbnb partnered with local photographers to really capture the essence of the area
from a native perspective, inspire viewers, and create a connection to the locale. Visual
content is the holy grail of “authenticity” and shows the extent that brands should be
willing to go when selling to their audience.
At the top of the page, there’s a button in Airbnb’s signature colour (which, internally,
they apparently call ‘Rausch’) directing you to places to stay in that neighbourhood.
There’s a clear funnel from awareness to consideration and finally conversion. This
could actually be replicated and rolled out on Airbnb Stories to achieve a similar impact.

Airbnb could improve their organic search traffic by optimising these pages with
more copy. 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.
We did note from our research that the keywords the Neighbourhoods section are
appearing in top positions for are all relatively low volume searches, and not high
volume opportunities that would assist Airbnb with greater growth.
Like the Stories section of the Airbnb website, the Neighbourhoods section is not easily
found within the Airbnb navigation, and is largely instead found internally through
location search. Externally, we would presume any traffic is driven through organic
search, email traffic, and through social promotion.

Guidebooks
If you’ve ever cracked open or lugged around a lonely planet or rough guide book, then
you’ll feel a huge sense of gratitude for Airbnb’s Guidebooks. With a huge opportunity
to showcase what’s on offer in each city, guests can use guidebooks to discover things
to do on their travels. And, get this, the recommendations come straight from Airbnb’s
hosts (Authentic? Check!).
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.
The guidebook homepage appears as this:

First, you’ll need to select your destination. I’ve looked at “Sydney”. Next, I’ve clicked on
“Food Scene” and then “Cafe and Coffee Shops”.
I’m now shown a ranked list of recommendations with comments from Airbnb hosts
and a Google Map with pins corresponding to each place.
The site structure of these pages is strong due to the way each category acts as a
directory page to the other listings, giving greater value to the site and also helping the
pages rank for high volume search terms.
As to how people are arriving at this section of the site, this is likely through organic
search, email traffic, and social promotion. For example, one of Airbnb’s guidebooks is
ranking in position #1 organically for the term ‘Melbourne shopping centres’.

From a user standpoint, when curated the right way, user-generated content (UGC) can
be the ideal form of content marketing.
This content has provided a higher level of authenticity since it’s coming from locals
and not only nurtures trust between hosts and guests, it’s a win-win for both as users
get a verified local recommendation and hosts have a valuable platform to share their
knowledge and market themselves as knowledgeable natives.
In addition, I found it interesting to see the similarities in style between this section of
the Airbnb website and popular travel site TripAdvisor.
It would be interesting to know if they did this intentionally in order to keep the user on
Airbnb’s site due to the similar experience, instead of allowing the user to go offsite to
a location where they would see competitor listings. Of course, without insights from
Airbnb I can only assume this is the case!

Offsite
Airbnb has also created an offsite digital content strategy with two separate domains.
Both are discoverable in the footer of their main site: Blog and Airbnb Citizen.
The Airbnb blog
Living on the domain of atairbnb.com, the Airbnb blog covers a plethora of content
ranging from tips for hosts and guests, information on partnerships, and updates on
business initiatives.
Airbnb has also used their blog to feature reports and studies they’ve created, including
Airbnb’s Work To Fight Discrimination and Build Inclusion Report, and the Economic
Impact Study.

The articles on the blog are roughly curated into several types of content including:
Destination Guides – like “The King Valley: The Australian Valley That Flows With
Prosecco” and “Beaches, Beats, And Bunny Chow: Diving Into Durban”
Spotlights – like “Meet Your Host: Bushwalking in Bundeena With Dianne” and
“Experience In The Spotlight: Freestyle Football In Paris With World Champion
Séan Garnier”
Tips & FAQs – like “What Should I Do If My Guests Arrive Late?” and “How To
Photograph Your Experience For Airbnb”
News and Updates – like “Building A 21st Century Company” and “5 Airbnb
Experiences Updates You Don’t Want To Miss”
Behind the Scenes – like “Enjoy The Ride: A Behind The Scenes Look At Our
“Welcome To Airbnb” Video” and “An Inside Look At Experience Search Rankings”
The content is relatively

sensible in length (avg. 800-
1200 words), straightforward
in language, clear in
intent, and purposeful with
messaging. 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
Airbnb’s services (where it’s
natural or useful for
the reader).

The blog doesn’t follow a set template for articles and there are several broad categories
such as “Wanderlust” and “Hospitality”. 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. People appreciate stories about people, so this
is very enticing content. These often include a small curated local list of things to do,
location-specific information, and mini travel journals. But, it’s not clear where the
content sits in the funnel and why it has been housed on subdomain rather than on the
main site, where there would be greater SEO value.
From this set up, it’s 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. From Afhrefs ‘top pages’ function, we can see that a small amount of
monthly traffic is coming from branded organic keyword rankings with content built
out to answer branded queries.


We assume that Airbnb is creating content with a purpose and focus on distribution
to drive that content to their audiences. But as a marketer, you never want to discount
the impact of SEO and keywords. As Jacqui mentioned in her search analysis, we’d
recommend taking a much more aggressive content marketing strategy to drive
organic search traffic for branded and non-branded keywords to really ramp up
search growth.
It also seems like the most valuable content on the blog is that which focuses on
acquiring new hosts.
Airbnb could double down on this strategy to lower the barrier to entry and improve
retention with a stronger content-driven approach to educate and raise awareness on
becoming a host and building your Airbnb business.
By creating evergreen content including short articles, in-depth guides and explainer
videos, which speak to all stages of the funnel, the blog would have a clear value and
focus. In fact, you could argue that Airbnb is predominantly a B2B business. It’s their
hosts which are their key customers; if their hosts succeed then they succeed.
By offering more information and support, they will attract, convert and retain more
home and experience hosts on their platform.

Content marketing summary
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.
They currently don’t do much to get the people browsing these pages to move
through the funnel and look at search results (it’s unclear whether looking at
these pages when signed in triggers email sequences).
As Jacqui mentioned in her SEO section, they could also do more with their
content to generate backlinks to their site and improve their organic
search rankings.

Referrals
written by
Dan Siepen
Consultant, Social Media
As an experienced marketing consultant, Dan continually strives to

perfect his craft in producing high-performing, data-driven and results-
focused campaigns for his clients.
Having built and scaled a startup to millions in revenue per year,

Dan truly understands the crux to marketing and growth success –
understanding the motives and characteristics of customers inside and
out. Embracing his core values of integrity, innovation and passion for the
industry, Dan knows the online marketing game and is in love with his
job and industry.
He has also written for Business Insider, The Next Web & The Australian,
and also founded and grew Sydney’s largest growth hackers community
(4000+
THE GROWTH MANIFESTO - POWERED BY people :).
WEBPROFITS P 149
AIRBNB: THE GROWTH STRATEGY OF A $35 BILLION BUSINESS - REFERRALS
Referral marketing is one of the best forms of marketing you can have for
your business.
However, there are many businesses who never seem to nail it.
Even to this very day, Airbnb’s referral program is constantly used as a primary
example of how to execute a successful program that drives massive growth and
product ‘stickiness’.
The Growth Team at Airbnb have 3 main ‘Philosophies’ when it comes to growth:
No tricks;
We never compromise on User Experience; and,
Our users tell the story better than we do.
It’s no secret in the growth marketing world that one of Airbnb’s key ingredients to
product growth success was referrals.
Referrals have played an integral role in the overall growth strategy of the company and
falls directly under the Growth Team Philosophy “Our users tell the story better than
we do”. Getting users to advocate and tell the story of Airbnb was particularly crucial in
getting it right in the early stages of Airbnb, as mentioned earlier.
So, why are referrals so important?
Referrals are more trusted than any other form of marketing. Period.
Here are just a few stats & reasons why:

Stats
People Are 4x More Likely to Buy When Recommended By a Friend – Nielsen.
92% of consumers trust recommendations from friends, only 33% trust online
ads (Nielsen).
Word-of-Mouth recommendations convert 3-5x higher compared to

other channels.
Reasons
Increase the Lead Quality and Quantity Lower the Churn Rate
Lower the Acquisition Costs Increase Customer

Lifetime Value
Increase Conversion Rate
Source

It’s simple – referral marketing is less costly, and has a higher quality + quantity
of leads.
Referral generation
Given the saturation of online paid media & costs to acquire new customers, Airbnb
identified that building an engine to create more word-of-mouth from those who had
experienced Airbnb was crucial to finding a solution.
As we know, the concept of Airbnb was completely new for audiences who had never
used them before, and common questions around about safety & trust were prevalent
from audiences considering using the platform. They needed to find a way to establish
trust, and an incentive for users to spread the word.
So, what better way to advertise the product than those who have experienced
the platform?
It was all about trusting people, not logos.
How do you build, design & measure a good

referral program?
So what can we learn from Airbnb’s referral program?
How do you execute a good referral strategy into your business so that customers start
doing the work for you?
It’s not as easy as you think. It’s more than simply adding a button after the checkout
process with “Invite a friend” or “Share with a friend”.

For Airbnb, it’s been about continuous discovery, testing and optimising of what is
known as one of the world’s famous & very effective referral engines.
It’s amazing what they’ve been able to achieve over the years since they first introduced
referrals into their platform in 2011.
Their referral strategy is so easy that even my grandma has used it before with referrals
from her friends. And whilst it looks simple to the user (I mean, that’s the point), there
are amazing mechanics & core areas of expertise which they have executed well.
To understand how Airbnb referrals work, we will be diving into the core areas of Design
Experience, Psychology & Measurement/Testing of building a refer-a-friend system
that grows awareness and drives more bookings and sales.
Design experience and mechanics
Airbnb first launched their referral features in 2011, and below is the original look
and feel.
Image source

Image source
Do you remember these designs? It sure was a long time ago.
From what started off as a small feature as part of the Airbnb platform, the referral
system has certainly come a long way since then to now in 2019.


Whilst it’s evident that the UI has changed over the years, there’s 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.
We can easily deep-dive and go back across all the years to see how they’ve improved it
over time, but then again this article (which is already long), would become
much bigger.
So, what can we learn from how the Airbnb’s referral system mechanics and design
work for them right now?
How does it help them acquire new users & retain existing travellers?
Design experience and mechanics
Airbnb have kept the mechanics simple when it comes to referrals.
They manage to cut the process down into 3 simple steps:
Import contact emails from Gmail, Yahoo or Outlook
Share link with friends
Send a customised & personalised invite.
Seems like a very simple process, right? Again, as a normal user it really is, but as
marketers or anyone working in technology, we can appreciate there is a lot more work
that goes behind the scenes.
Let’s start with the layout of the referral page.

The clean and minimalistic design is certainly done on purpose. It’s clear what Airbnb
want the user’s attention to focus on.
On the left, it’s clear what I need to action if I want to share with my friends. On the
right, I can see the credit I currently have, and what I need to do in order to get more.
And then down the bottom, I see very easy instructions with simple steps of how the
process works.

Okay, so let’s break down this page for referrals. (We will check out the mobile app later).
Copy to persuade sharing
When it comes to the sharing mechanism under “Share your love of travel”, the first
thing you see straight away is the description under the title.
It’s very short copy, and it gets straight to the point. It’s basic copywriting psychology
– you need to instantly show value right up front, which Airbnb have done here. Who
doesn’t want more money for their holiday or accommodation, right?
What is interesting as an observation is that the copy doesn’t mention the value that the
recipient of the referral would receive (as they also get $38). Why is this the case? The
assumption is that Airbnb wants to focus on the goal of the user at this particular step.
They do mention about what the friend receives down the page in the “3 Steps”.
Why would the user want to send this in the first place?

It comes down to what feels like a “Gift Experience”. You don’t want just share
something your friends to do a “favour” for you. You want them to equally be motivated
to take action by accepting the invitation by joining and have the same experience
(that’s the only way you get the money ;).
What’s even more impressive with even more incentive to share?
The user who shares the invite gets $38 but the friend RECEIVES $76. How cool is that? I
now know what to get mum for her 52nd birthday 😉
The fact that your friend or recipient receives credit when signing up (in this case $76),
it doesn’t feel as if the user is taking advantage of the situation or the recipient feeling
‘used’. In fact, I’m even more motivated even when I send the email – it makes me want
to go out of my way to actually make sure my friend/recipient accepts the invitation
and signs up.
It’s a win-win situation for the user and recipient.
And you know who really wins with this process? Airbnb of course. Users are now really
motivated to send invites because they know the recipient gets amazing value.
Email import
So how does the email import functionality work?

Step 1) Sharing is caring
As I look down, I see the option of “Import from”: Gmail, Yahoo or Outlook. This special
feature that Airbnb have included has the ability to import contacts via Gmail, Yahoo or
Outlook with ease (I’ve done this before and it’s great!).
This feature makes it easy and thoroughly enjoyable for the user. It means I don’t have
to copy & paste emails (although you have that option) and the bulk of the work is done.
So what happens next? Well, press Send, duh!
In all seriousness, when the emails are in and ready to send, I’m now motivated as a
user to easily share this with my friends or anyone whom I want to receive an invitation
to join.
Step 2) The recipient gets …
Now let’s look into what the recipient receives via email once a user press ‘send invites’.

A beautifully tailored email.
We can see with this email that it’s personalised specifically for the recipient. It really
does feel like you’re receiving a special gift from your friend. I love it.
It’s not a complex email.
It’s beautifully minimalistic and I know who it’s from.
The way it’s designed and the copy used is to help build instant trust and increase the
likelihood of me accepting the invitation.
How?
They do this by including;
Familiarity – I know the person sending it in the photo
Trustworthy – I trust the sender
Incentive – I instantly see the value that I will receive if I take an action by
accepting the invitation.
Simple and straight to the point, and only one action is required.
So presuming I’m impressed as a recipient (not just for the purpose of this article), what
happens if I click “Accept Invitation”?
Step 3) Where to next?
I get directed to a page where a modal instantly pops-up.

The modal design sticks with the above principles to ensure continued appeal to
the recipient:
The value of signing up
I know who it’s from
Multiple options to sign up.
This seamless experience makes me want to continue with the sign up process.
It’s effortless.
Step 4) So you’ve signed up. What now?
Once I’ve accepted the invite and completed the sign up process, I get taken straight
to the homepage with a personalised message with “What can we help you find, Dan?”
and in the right hand corner a notification for $76 AUD in my account. Winner, winner,
chicken dinner! I love free money!

The whole experience was streamlined. For new users, Airbnb ensures that each
individual feels important to be part of the platform.
So that in itself is the whole sign up process – pretty impressive how streamlined it
is, right?
The social sharing process
While we focused on how it was done via email invitation, it’s a very similar process
when sharing the link directly with friends.
If we go back to the referral page, under the “Import from: Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook”, the
ability to share your referrals via a link whether direct or via social channels is evident
as another option for users to share their content.
The way you invite friends to the platform is on purpose very similar to how other
platforms work. Share a link to your friends to a custom landing page or via email.

When you share the direct link, you get this landing page.
What is evident – and which we haven’t seen many referral systems use – is other
social channels such as messenger & whatsapp. So what happens when you share via
Facebook or Whatsapp?

You can see why Airbnb purposely placed Facebook & Whatsapp icons next to the
short link.
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. The more people you can
share it with and sign up, the more travel credit.
And think about it for a second … would you share referrals like this via email?
Personally, I don’t 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.

So what do the messages look like when you share with friends?
Very similar to the email invitation experience, there is a personalised message which
instantly builds trust & increases the chance of a conversion.
Of course, you can edit the template message yourself, but this does make it easy for the
user to share.
Rest of the referral page
We’ve 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?
Staying interested – your travel credit

This is a cool ‘tracking’ feature included by Airbnb to let users know who has received
invites & who hasn’t.
It keeps users engaged and, in many ways, motivated to invite more friends or follow
those up who haven’t signed up.
How? Well, let’s see.
This is what happens when we click

“Show invite details”.

In these two views, you see “Pending” based on the invites sent out and “Available” with
the Credit and coupons available to use.
The pending view is definitely a smart feature to include. Users are ‘engaged’ and
enticed to keep following up friends who haven’t joined the platform. It’s a great way
to incentivise.
With Available, this view shows who has successfully accepted and signed up to the
platform from the users invitation.
This will help spur users once they get a couple of referrals to keep getting more users
signed up if they want more credit.
Copy: how invites work
When we scroll down the page, we see the instructions for the process.

Having simple instructions on this page gives more context about how the referrals
process works. 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.
What is clever is the positioning of this section on the page. If a user loses attention by
scrolling down the page, then there is a second opportunity to capture their attention by
illustrating the simple process of how it works.
The final pull – more ways to earn
And then if a user keeps scrolling, we see one more block section which is about
Host referrals.

Airbnb have strategically placed this on the page for users as, while gaining more users
onto the platform is great, it’s even more of a priority to get more hosts onto
the platform.
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.
More ways to refer = more credit.
You could argue as to why Airbnb haven’t made referring hosts even more prominent
on the page due to the importance of making sure demand doesn’t outweigh supply.
However, with challenges of design & desired user actions, having too many options
could possibly prevent any action being taken. It’s an interesting challenge worth
watching closely if you’re a user of Airbnb.
Guest referrals: Mobile
So what does the mobile experience look like for sharing referrals for guests?
It’s a very similar UI to the desktop platform which is done by design. It keeps it
consistent for the user to know where key pages are.
A lot of the invitation mechanism is the same above, just done in a different experience
with mobile considerations.
However, there is one key difference that is prioritised in the mobile app which is
different to the desktop experience. SMS sharing.
Let’s take a look at the invitation mechanism on mobile at a high level.

In the mobile app, we can see “Invite

Friends” which stands out.

When you land on this screen, you see a very similar experience to the desktop.
And once you press “Share your Link”, you come to this screen.
The mobile experience doesn’t include email due to the obvious reason that the UX just
won’t be the same as desktop. Instead, they provide the mobile-friendly option of SMS
(and, of course, Facebook and Whatsapp) to make it a seamless experience.

Host referrals: Desktop
Okay, so we’ve gone into detail of what the invitation mechanics, design & UX looks like
for guests, but what about hosts?
Let’s firstly take a look at the layout of the ‘Refer Hosts’ Page.
At the top section, it’s a different layout compared to the guest referral page. We
instantly see the value of sharing and when a host successfully joins, “Earn $22 for
every new host you refer”.
Then underneath, we don’t see the email option to send a personalised invite right
away. Instead, it’s focused on sharing a custom link.
I’m not 100% sure of the exact reason why we can only see this for now. The only
assumption we have is that it’s more effective in terms of conversions for Airbnb.
However, we do see the option of being given other ways to share once we press the
“Share” button next to “Copy”.

Step 1) Sharing is caring
It’s now that we see the other options of sharing referral via different channels – such
as messenger and email.
So, based on the same principles as inviting guests, what does the recipient receive this
time if they’re invited to become a host?
Step 2) The recipient gets …
Again, a tailored email.


As we can see, it’s a much longer email compared to the guest referral email, but still
some core elements in the email to keep it personalised:
Photo of who it’s sent from
Value of joining – i.e. “Can earn up to $3,401” this month
Clear CTA’s.
However, there are some other elements that have been included, such as:
Images of people 3 key pieces of information about

hosting – in other words, 3 USP’s.
A video testimonial

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?
The primary reason is that it comes down to the decision-making process. To sign up
as a host compared to being a guest, there’s a lot more involved in terms of trying to
convert them.
Step 3) The landing page experience
After I decide to learn more, I come to this landing page specifically personalised to me
and, more impressively, my location.
This is an awesome reception. I instantly feel special and welcomed to this page. I can
see it’s about me and what I can earn if I become a host. I mean, an extra $3,772 AUD per
month is not bad at all (wouldn’t mind the extra money now that I think about it).
To save on time, there are other elements of this page which certainly helps with the
decision-making process to take the next step.

Social proof to ensure those interested that other people are happy with their
experience as a host.
This section is particularly important to have on the site. It ensures prospects know that
Airbnb have got them covered (in their words!).
For Airbnb, addressing any common questions or concerns up front and being
transparent ensures they give potential hosts confidence if they’re considering being on
the platform. In addition, they offer more information about becoming a host.

More social proof again (impressive numbers, right?).
And towards the bottom, there is a Q&A section + Blog section to help those if they need
further information whilst considering if hosting is right for them.
In summary, the invitation for new hosts is carefully crafted and personalised to give
the best possible experience for a new host. It’s about building trust and giving them a
‘wow’ experience, and highlighting the value of joining – all of which makes it such a
powerful engine.

Host referrals: Mobile
So what does the mobile experience look like

for Hosts?
Similar to inviting friends, we can see it

in the main menu in the mobile app when
signed in.
Once you press the link, you get to

this screen.

The referral amount changes
What I have found very interesting is that the money you receive via the mobile app is
$145 AUD shown rather than $22 via Desktop?
Why? I’m not 100% sure. Is Airbnb encouraging referrals more through their mobile app?
Or are they simply testing based on my previous app behaviour?
This is an interesting observation as I haven’t as of yet successfully referred a host,

so this is possibly a strategy to help me take an action. If it is, I like the strategy. It’s
certainly now motivated me to help refer a host.

The act of referring
After a user clicks on “Refer Contacts” then it instantly takes them to this screen where
they can share with their contacts with ease. (Note: you will see people’s contact details,
we just had to blur them out).
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.

Key takeaways for guests and hosts
The user journeys for guests and hosts are different, but share some core elements
which you as a business owner or marketer can learn from to generate more referrals:
Strong & Evident CTA Buttons
Airbnb makes it very evident what they want the user to take an action
by having the CTA button in red across ALL their key pages & channels,
including email & in-app.
Personalised Messaging & Copywriting
Each persona is spoken to in a way that focuses on the values & motivations
for what will entice them to use the platform.
Clear & succinct messaging focused on value certainly helps those wanting
to share.
Email & Social Share
Both personas have a very simplified UX for sharing via email or a

custom link.
As a user, it’s very easy to use. They haven’t over-complicated things, which
makes it more enticing for a user to share.
Multiple touchpoints
What Airbnb have done well is how easy they make it to ‘Invite Friends’ or
‘Invite Hosts’ via Desktop & Mobile application. Users aren’t always going to
go out of their way to find out how they can share. It’s important to do some
of the work for them.

Measurement/testing of referrals
Obviously, we don’t have access to the backend analytics of how Airbnb measure the
effectiveness of referrals, but it’s important to address that whilst it’s great to design and
build a referral system, how do you measure the success of it and optimise over time?
There are a couple of fantastic resources online + a video you can explore in detail.
Beyond what Airbnb have done from designing a world-class UX experience with their
referral system, it’s their approach to continuous measurement and testing which acts
as a testament to the continuous success of the program.
So, how do you measure an effective refer-a-friend system?
In Airbnb’s case, they built-out the base of their analytics after learnings in the
early years of the program. Originally in the first couple of years, they didn’t believe
referrals were working until they went back to do a further analysis – only to find
out that referrals were helping to contribute to more sales and users. To measure its
effectiveness moving forward, Airbnb looked at various metrics (Time in Video – 12:46)
and forecasted data to interpret what can be achieved through compounding growth
over time.
Monthly Active Users Sending Invites Conversion Rate to New Guest
Invitees per Inviter Conversion Rate to New Host
Conversion Rate to New User Revenue Impact Potential
Based on 3 different assumptions, the potential impact of referrals could have a

dramatic compound effect on the bottom line – in a very good way indeed. The ability
to achieve new users through lower CPA’s was a mouthwatering prospect, and could
result in strong growth.

Ultimately, over time this has helped Airbnb.
(Source – Video: 11:58)
To this day, Airbnb continues to use the model above as a baseline to predict,
determine, and prioritise features to keep improving conversion rates across the
products they roll out.

In an article in the Engineering & Data Science medium publication, Jason Bosinoff at
Airbnb explained how they “Kept Score” for tracking the analytics of referrals.
Airbnb do have the luxury of having large-scale teams of data analysts & developers,
but with new analytics platforms such as Mixpanel, measuring product growth and
building attribution models have become easier even for smaller SaaS based companies
or app makers.
Referral overview
There’s definitely a lot here we can learn from Airbnb.
I’m 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 there’s one big takeaway to think more about, it has to be their simplified
UX experience with keeping personalisation in mind. It’s certainly something
to strive for.

Community
Marketing
written by
Dan Siepen
Consultant, Social Media
As an experienced marketing consultant, Dan continually strives to

perfect his craft in producing high-performing, data-driven and results-
focused campaigns for his clients. Having built and scaled a startup to
millions in revenue per year, Dan truly understands the crux to marketing
and growth success – understanding the motives and characteristics
of customers inside and out. Embracing his core values of integrity,
innovation and passion for the industry, Dan knows the online marketing
game and is in love with his job and industry.
He has also written for Business Insider, The Next Web & The Australian,
and also founded and grew Sydney’s largest growth hackers community
(4000+
THE GROWTH MANIFESTO - POWERED BY people :).
WEBPROFITS P 187
AIRBNB: THE GROWTH STRATEGY OF A $35 BILLION BUSINESS - COMMUNITY MARKETING
“Build something of value for your customers that isn’t easy to replicate” – Jason Fried,
Founder of 37 Signals
Does your company or brand have a community or do community marketing?
If you haven’t built a community before nor done community marketing, you’re
not alone. Many global brands are still trying to work out ways to build & integrate
successful community marketing initiatives as part of their overall marketing strategy.
Building a community is one of the most powerful assets a company or brand can build.
In fact, we wrote an article on it not too long ago.
It’s all about empowering existing customers, networks and advocates by connecting,
engaging and establishing discussion through a particular medium – anything from
‘meetup’ groups, subreddits, Facebook Groups, events, blogs … you name it.
However, building a highly-engaged, growing community that works for advocating

your brand is also one of the hardest strategies in the marketing sphere to achieve.
When it comes to Airbnb, they are a fantastic, world-class example, and a brand that has
built (and continues to grow) a successful community.
We know customer-advocacy is a big part of their success with referrals, but how does
Airbnb nurture a community that can get users to not only invite friends to the platform
via sharing referral links, but also help existing users and in turn new users via a
dedicated community forum?
Building a robust & highly-engaged community
So, what have Airbnb done to construct and generate one of the best communities in
the world?

Acquiring hosts through the hosting community is paramount when it comes to scaling
the platform globally and, equally as important, retaining them. They’ve performed very
well to incorporate community for hosts as part of their retention and advocacy part of
the funnel but, just like any other business, Airbnb has to continually improve and find
ways to improve their community marketing strategy. These are just some of the core
areas that underpin the success of a thriving global online community:
Community discussion Content marketing

– forums/discussion portals
Gamification
Incredible UX
With all pillars combined to turn into a well-oiled machine that is continuously
optimised, this is where the magic begins.
The community centre – The retention & acquisition

focal point of community activity
For existing and prospects, Airbnb host a beautifully-designed and well-planned UX

host community portal called the “Community Centre”.

The numbers* are seriously impressive:
729,796 members
7,502 users online (that’s quite a bit!)
970,141 total posts (wow!)
*Numbers are accurate at the time of writing
We’ve seen numerous companies use community centers – or ‘portals’ – quite

effectively in their community marketing, as explained in our last growth study on
Xero, where they are helping accountants and their partners.
For Airbnb, the community center serves a purpose for hosts, both existing and
prospects, to explore what it’s like being a host on Airbnb.
How has Airbnb structured their community centre

for success?
What has Airbnb done well? Their structure of pages through their community
content pillars.
Everything from the home page to specific pages, there are core numerous core UX
elements to illustrate an engaging community of hosts and desired actions.
Homepage key features
When it comes to the homepage, we are instantly presented with plenty of content we
can view.
But where do you start?

Just below the fold, we see “Featured Discussions”. As a user on the site, I instantly see
what the top articles and discussions are for the month and which the community
cares about.
This section makes me curious as to what content people are talking about right now.
As I go down the page, I see what the hot discussion topics are at the time in the
worldwide community.
As we can see, there are community discussions categorised into “Top, Recent &
Unanswered”. Users can then explore top answers that may result in high engagement
for various reasons (e.g. a common problem or situation about hosting).

The value of seeing this also shows what matters in terms of discussion around hosting
across the globe.
You could argue, why does this matter to me?
As there are threads started by people from other parts of the world. However, I think it
addresses & resonates with what other hosts may or potentially do experience in their
respective locations which gives value to the reader.
In the next section, “Suggested for You”, this is content that specifically addresses the
needs of hosts.
The content gives instant value that there is content for hosts wanting extra
support through toolkits or webinars which help with their hosting experience. As a
new potential host, this instantly illuminates that Airbnb and the community are here
to support.
Specific content pillar pages & strategic design for engagement
For each core section of the community section stated above, each has different page
layouts focused on the goals of the user, keeping core desired actions in mind.

Each of the pages do have 2 consistent UX features like the homepage, including:
Top Contributors
Recent conversations & tags
Start a Conversation
Top contributors
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.
Top Contributors are consistent inside the 3 core content pillar pages, which we will go
into detail further below.

Related tags & recent conversations
You often see this feature on many blogs around the web, but what many blogs don’t get
right is keeping a focus on ‘tags’ and keeping the amount ‘recent’ conversations limited.
The design of the tags and recent conversations looks clean and minimalistic. Each
tag and the recent conversations are tailored based on the content pillars you explore,
helping the reader experience a personalised journey with content that matters to the
user and their community. It genuinely makes me consider wanting to explore more
through these actions, even if I don’t start a conversation.
Start a conversation
An important UX feature that is part of these pages is that anyone can ‘Start a
Conversation’.

Airbnb has purposely positioned this on the right-hand side of the page to make it clear
that users can explore, find or ask any question desired which may be holding them
back from continuing to use the platform or wanting to become a host.
It’s a clear design, and the use of their primary colour stands out against the white
background.
Pros and cons
Pros
Tips can be shared easily from host to host
Lots of helpful guides
Anyone can ‘start a conversation’
Localised discussions (by city)
Minimalistic, easy to use – great UX

“Featured posts” which read like blog posts with relevant hosting content
Discussions points initiated by admin
Gamification of system – ‘top contributors’ get points for every comment they give
+ like they get – small leaderboard of contributors
Posts are able to be engaged with
Cons
The Airbnb admins don’t post often nor reply to other people’s posts regularly – an
opportunity to get more discussions trending
Someone without an account/not even a host can make a post. This could be a
barrier to entry for prospects wanting to sign up to the platform.
Content strategy – the content pillars
We’ve now taken a good look at the breakdown of the mechanics of how their
community platform works with their UX, but what about the content?
As we can see on the community portal page, the community centre is broken down
into 3 core pillars:
Explore Tips & Tricks – All about new ways hosts can take their game to the next
level.
Connect Locally – Where users discuss local issues, clubs and meetups in their
local cities
Get Support – Advice from other hosts

Content pillar #1 – Explore tips & tricks
The primary focus for this content pillar is helping those who are hosts or potential
hosts to connect with other hosts, share stories, ask for advice, and get updates from the
Airbnb team.
Why would Airbnb have this content pillar specifically?
It’s showing that Airbnb hosts have a thriving community of hosts who want to connect
and share their positive experiences. Having this content ensures retention by keeping
hosts engaged with other users of the platform. The stories, tips, and tricks all help
to reinforce the positive feelings that hosts get as part of being part of the Airbnb
community. Plus, the more they read/talk about it, the more they’re thinking about it,
which should lead to less churn.
The content
When we click from the main portal page on “Explore Tips & Tricks”, we get to this
page below.

As we’ve spoken before about the layout of the page, let’s explore the content and what
we can learn from them. The content on the page is broken up primarily between:
Blog posts from the Airbnb Team
Q&A Threads from both Airbnb Admin team, Top Contributors, or anyone part of
the platform.
It’s a clever strategy by the Airbnb team to break up this content. While it’s important
to speak from an authoritative angle through blog content, mixing it up with Q&A
styled posts shows that community members are heavily involved in the conversation,
illuminating Airbnb’s core growth strategies around encouraging consumer advocacy.
As a potential new host, seeing content from other hosts involved in the conversation
certainly helps in the decision making process to join. In addition, for existing hosts, it’s
more likely going to help retain hosts.
Content pillar #2 – connect locally
This is a part of the site I really like and also find quite interesting. Through the section
“Connect Locally”, you come to this particular page.

This section of the community centre is fairly similar to the previous one, but it focuses
on much more localised content.
Each city has its own forum where the hosts can discuss the local issues or services
specific to them.
Let’s take a look at Melbourne, for example.

From these posts, it’s clearer what kind of things people ask in the local community.
You can imagine that it would be strange to see these posts in the “Explore tips & tricks”
section. Why would people globally care about tours in Melbourne, or suggest property
management services in the area?
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.
I think this section really goes to show their commitment to providing the user with
relevant information as much as possible.
One thing that is noticeable however is how low the engagement on this section is
compared to the previous one. Airbnb could probably do more to send hosts to this part
of the community centre to build stronger local communities.
Content pillar #3 – get support
In this section of the community site, this is where discussions around support related
to anything and everything takes place.

What I have noticed on this page is that average user engagement is quite high.
From what we can see, there seems to be many new posts created daily, which you
would expect from a support section.
What is also interesting as an observation is the amount of posts that date back almost
2 years ago.
This shows me that Airbnb have done very well to control the amount of posts that
don’t ask the same question.
For example, if I start a conversation and ask a question, it will come up with the links
of similar questions which have been asked before.

Now, it makes sense why some threads seem large with the amount of comments. This
is clever by Airbnb. Who wants the same question asked over and over again? If they
were, it’s probably not the best look for Airbnb. This way, anyone who wants to ask can
go straight to this thread and, even without contributing to the thread, they may have
their questions answered.
It’s a great UX and user-generated content strategy. Smart play Airbnb.
Do Airbnb get heavily involved in the discussion?
No, it seems as if they don’t get involved at all. They leave the guests to solve problems
between themselves, and learn from each other’s experiences.
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.
If hosts are able to help each other out with a few quick posts, then it saves Airbnb
having to get involved until it’s absolutely necessary. The bane of most customer
support’s existence is the simple to answer questions, and if people don’t take a lot
of interest in reading FAQs then having other users answer those questions is a
double win.
Overall, it’s a great channel if users or potential users are looking for extra information.
To date, there are over 4470 pages of support threads, so users should be able to find a
question already asked and hopefully answered.
Another clever part of having this separate is that once again it keeps from distracting
the engagement in the “Explore tips & tricks section”. 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.

Key takeaways for community
The community that Airbnb has built is impressive, and the UX flow to tackle
various discussions around the platform can be easily found.
By creating different and distinct sections, they are able to keep the
conversations relevant to the user, which should improve the experience for
everyone involved.
Airbnb have stuck to their guns by getting existing users and loyal
consumers to become the advocators by becoming ‘contributors’. It’s hard
to achieve this if you’re a small business, but if you’re a larger organisation,
there’s plenty to learn from Airbnb.

Offline
Marketing
written by
Tam Al-Saad



AIRBNB: THE GROWTH STRATEGY OF A $35 BILLION BUSINESS - OFFLINE MARKETING
Marketing is not just about acquiring new customers or creating a recognizable brand.
When aligned with a company’s ideals, marketing can make a powerful statement, and
in the best instances, be a force for change in the world.
Part of Airbnb’s success is due to their holistic marketing approach, one that embraces
offline marketing strategies just as much as digital. But their strategies don’t just relate
to customer acquisition. Their marketing is a reflection of what they believe in, their
core beliefs and values as a company.
Their campaigns have not always been popular and they are not strangers to admitting
when they were wrong. But the following examples illustrate not only how they market
their services, but represent a conscious expression of who they are.
Travel posters
As a travel company, cultural celebration is at the heart of Airbnb’s business model.

They are known for creating great online user experiences, but they also excel in
experiential and live-event marketing. Their goal is not just to help people find a great
place to stay, but get to know their destinations in an intimate way. It’s part of their
larger strategy to become an “everyday” check in, providing users with content and
experiences that are woven into their day-to-day lives.

Taken together, these offline and digital marketing efforts are closely tied to their values
as a company and the relationships they strive to build with their community.
Besides sophisticated digital campaigns, Airbnb has contributed to traditional, even

“old fashioned,” marketing channels in unique and highly aesthetic ways. Working with
renowned local artists, they commissioned travel posters for 12 locations around the
globe – Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, Detroit, Havana, London, Paris, Florence,
Nairobi, Cape Town, Tokyo, and Seoul.
The posters became part of their

Experiences feature, showcasing the
resident artists’ beautiful designs.
But the designs did more than give artists

an opportunity to display their talents
– they brought some of the magic back
to traveling, allowing users to immerse
themselves in local communities.

This poster promoting a classic image of Miami was created by graphic designer Alex
Asfour, as part of Airbnb’s travel poster campaign.
The goal of this campaign was not necessarily to promote Airbnb, but to reflect the
heart and soul of the destinations they serve, as well as inspire people to explore
the individual cities further. In the process, Airbnb not only helped give artists an
opportunity to create beautiful works of art, but give travelers a vibrant and accurate
sense of their destinations.
“Until we all belong”
“Until We All Belong” – that was the sentiment behind Airbnb’s campaign to highlight
marriage inequality in Australia. Launched in 2017, the award-winning campaign
encouraged people to wear a black matte metal ring with a centimeter gap in the
middle, and the words “Until We All Belong” inscribed on the underside.
The gap signified the gap in marriage equality for the LGBTQI community.

Called The Acceptance Ring, people were encouraged to wear it to show their support –
and acceptance – of same sex marriage. Available for free on the Airbnb website, more
than 200,000 were ordered within three days of the campaign’s launch.
Openness and belonging are at the heart of Airbnb – it’s at the core of what we do every
day. We are committed to helping people belong no matter where they are in the world
and strongly believe that everyone should have the right to marry the person they love.
Brian Chesky, Airbnb Co-founder and CEO
The campaign perfectly aligned with Airbnb’s values, and helped highlight a struggle
for acceptance in a country where the debate on same-sex marriage had fallen off the
political radar. By reaching out beyond the LGBTQI+ community, Airbnb helped to create
a dialogue that showed that Australians supported marriage equality by a wide margin.
In December 2017, Australia passed legislation to recognize same sex marriage,

following a survey in which more than 60% of respondents voiced support for it.
The campaign’s goals were not just to raise awareness, but to highlight the human
side of the company by showing support for an issue they were passionate about. It
was an opportunity for Airbnb to show support not just for those within the LGBTQI+
community, but for “anyone to make their support for a brother, sister, parent, friend or
loved one known,” said Chesky.
Terrarium making
As a company with over four million listings in 65,000 cities across 191 countries, local
customs and traditions play a big part in Airbnb’s offline marketing efforts. Even when
they don’t go exactly as planned.
The company produced an event in Seoul, Korea, that celebrated beautifying Airbnb
spaces with terrariums.

There were several terrarium-making stations open for participants to come up and try.
However, the event was something of a dud – participants mostly stayed away from the
stations, preferring not to engage.
Although the event was not quite as successful as they hoped, the company did gain
a valuable insight. Through feedback from attendees, they learned that far from not
appreciating the commitment to beautifying their spaces with terrariums, they actually
wanted to participate.
They just considered it rude to start making a terrarium without an invitation. Local
customs dictated a more direct invite, with participants preferring a more personal
overture from an official Airbnb representative before joining the activities. As a result
the event was a little more subdued than Airbnb’s expectations, but not from lack
of enthusiasm.
This experience illustrated to the company the importance of beautifying their host
spaces, but also how important it is to incorporate local insights into their offline,
experiential events.
Offline summary
Airbnb take unorthodox approaches to get noticed in the offline world, and when they
do, it’s not to promote themselves or their platform directly but to promote who they are.
The examples we’ve highlighted here show how Airbnb convey their values in order
to resonate with an audience who also have strong values that inform their
purchasing decisions.
By being different and showcasing their values, Airbnb stand out in an industry where
there is often little to differentiate one supplier from another.

Final words
As someone who has admired Airbnb for many years, it’s been interesting to take an in-
depth look into what they’re doing and evaluate it.
What’s clear to me is how much value they put on understanding their users, both
guests and hosts, and building a strategy that speaks to them directly. They’ve done this
so well that they’ve become synonymous with non-hotel accommodation booking, and
created a new way to travel.
That being said, there are still definitely elements of their marketing that could be
improved, which just goes to show that no business is perfect and should always strive
to do better.
To quick recap some of the main takeaways from this article;
They’ve built products that speak to the key needs of their users in order to ensure
growth from existing customers rather than rely on new customer acquisition.
They don’t use as much personalisation on their website as well as you might
assume (but still better than most).
Their paid search focuses around the term accommodation – the word most
likely to be used by their audience – and their ads stand out compared to their
competitors.
Their emails are mostly automated, personalised, and well-timed, ensuring that
they are highly relevant.
They rely on brand terms for organic search and are way behind when competing
against Booking.com or Wotif due to lack of onsite and offsite optimisation.

Their content is designed to keep people on the site and provide supporting
information for trips, rather than close the conversion or drive backlinks.
They use organic social media for nurturing audiences, and use dynamic
remarketing to generate enquiries for guests.
Their Facebook ads for hosts speak to the main benefits they’ve identified of
hosting with Airbnb, rather than the features.
The referral system they have set up is easy to understand, and messages are
heavily personalised from the sender.
They’ve built a community centre to keep hosts engaged, and have structured it so
that the content in each section is highly relevant.
Their offline marketing talks to their core values as a business to help them
connect with potential and existing customers.
Some people might think it’s easy to know what your customers want when you’re in
a fun space like travel, but this is a highly competitive industry with a vast array of
different customer personalities. Airbnb created a new type of traveller through their
product in 2006, and since then have developed that persona further and grown the
market.
Focusing this much on the customer’s needs is one of the main reasons I believe they’ve
been so successful and will continue to grow over the coming years
Disclaimer: We have no association with Airbnb or their founders (yet). This review has
been completed using publicly available information on the internet. If you would like to
get in touch with me, click here.

Lead
Author
Tam Al-Saad
Principal Consultant | Strategy + Growth at Web Profits

experience in working with and launching startups, Tam is skilled
at managing multiple products simultaneously. With a strong digital
marketing background and broad business experience, he’s perfectly
suited to the Strategy + Growth team.

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AIRBNB:

Have you heard of Airbnb?

Just kidding, everyone’s heard of Airbnb.

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Content Marketing 132

Community Marketing 187

Offline Marketing 204

The growth strategy

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Here’s a summary of each:

The Product: We’ll look at how Airbnb position themselves differently to

The Website: We review the use of personalisation to produce more

THE GROWTH MANIFESTO - POWERED BY WEBPROFITS P6

Email Marketing: How do Airbnb use email to communicate with

SEO: How do Airbnb ensure they appear in relevant search results to

Content Marketing: We look at how Airbnb use articles and videos to

Social Media: We breakdown how Airbnb use Facebook, Instagram, and

Referral Marketing: Airbnb are poster boys of growth through referrals –

Community: How do Airbnb maintain and grow their online community,

Offline: What activity do they do outside of digital to drive growth?

THE GROWTH MANIFESTO - POWERED BY WEBPROFITS P7

A well-rounded and entrepreneurial individual with more than 10 years

With a strong digital marketing background and broad business

THE GROWTH MANIFESTO - POWERED BY WEBPROFITS P8

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Airbnb Plus (upsell)

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An accommodation platform would never offer experiences as a product, and nor

Assurance through insurance

As previously stated, Airbnb understand the importance of maintaining a healthy

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They created an upsell opportunity by providing a higher tier property

They began offering their customers ways to specifically experience life

With a product approach like this, it’s no wonder they’re such a

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A well-rounded and entrepreneurial individual with more than 10 years

With a strong digital marketing background and broad business

THE GROWTH MANIFESTO - POWERED BY WEBPROFITS P 15

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The site is:

You’d expect a business that specialises in travel to have an image laden

2. Property pages (product)

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Non personalised – Above the fold

First thing that strikes me is just how simple it is.

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The image they’ve selected is pretty good too.

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The location is pretty interesting too; it evokes a feeling of adventure, of doing

Back to the main navigation bar.

Non personalised – Below the fold

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To be honest, I find these rather plain.

Unfortunately, I think it misses the mark, again.

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Next we have a recommendation section.

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Ok, this is much better.

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Content Marketing 132

Community Marketing 187

Offline Marketing 204

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