Program code: BA-BUS-314-2021.

2
Student name: Aruzhan Kali

HW PROJECT DIGITAL MARKETING

Airbnb - company digital marketing strategy
Short company description:
Airbnb Inc is an American company
helping people over the world rent
and search accommodations for
their holidays or business trips. The concept of a company is to make
bridges between house hosts and renters. Airbnb offers accommodation in 65,000 cities
in 191 countries around the world.
Airbnb is actually one of the companies which are killing the market with their
digital marketing strategy and campaigns. Their digital marketing strategy is basically
relies on the User-Generated Content (hereinafter – UGC). This genuine step to let the
consumers create their own content and opinion is the reason why they are getting very
successful. UGC works almost the same as an Word of Mouth marketing (hereinafter –
WOM) because of the sincerity and truthfulness of this content. On the company`s
Instagram/Facebook/Twitter pages they have created highlights with table of cities
visited by their consumers. In order to gain more engagement into their digital strategy
they always post some how tutorials, useful city guides. Their policy is to combine
humor with travelling forum content – which makes the company not only the «typical
renting platform» as any other «Sahibinden etc», but a brand with personality.
One of Airbnb`s popular digital marketing campaigns are from the year of 2015.
They become social media stars when releasing this campaign. At the end of the
campaign period, they got more than 13 million interactions with increased number of
followers for 340%.
The first key ingredient of their successful digital marketing strategy is generating
interest with content, create a demand for your product by engaging the certain topic.
The second area the company is investing in is video marketing. The company
now has up to 500 videos on YouTube totally gaining about 100 million views . Also the
2015 campaigns on sensitive themes elicited strong reactions from more internet users
is the video named «Airbnb- is mankind?» (https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=7Dx3JyrUtBw)
The third aspect of AirBnb`s digital marketing success if fast-responding real life
Twitter account. The company literally uses its twitter for lightning-fast reactions to any
requests. This method was especially liked by the genea-z generation who do not like to
wait, and are accustomed to quickly receiving and receiving information. Also, this move
helped the company to significantly reduce the number of complaints, because most of
the negative reviews and appeals are resolved in public (a. show their indifference to
the client's problem, b. solve the problem in front of everyone, thus maintaining your
reputation) which helps them connect with their audience. The example of this service is
depicted in figure 1 below.

(figure 1. AirBnb’s twitter support service example)

Fourthly, the company actively cooperates with influencers since they are trying
to be very active and engaged on Instagram. The company's marketers perfectly feel
the current trends and need their customers. So, they cooperate with influencers of
different levels, knowing that many subscribers of these people, in pursuit of "the same
life", will use the service that their idol advised them.
These were the strategies that Airbnb companies use for successful digital
marketing. By looking at their campaigns and ad integrations, you can tell that the
company is sticking to its marketing strategies quite well. Since AirBnb's core business
is in the digital space, it is very important for the company to maintain and increase
customer engagement.
It was important for the creators and marketers of the brand to establish their
place in the online space, which they successfully achieved by accurately analyzing the
market and picking up current trends. As a result, the exact value of the company today
is about 10 billion dollars.
Having the opportunity to be in the role of a digital marketer of a company, I
would probably not change course and try to maintain the current strategies at the
proper level, adding interesting campaigns, strategies and advertising integrations.
Perhaps, to complete the transaction and purchase after the marketing attraction of
customers, I would add a 10-20% discount for the first booking of the client in order to
convince the user of his uniqueness. The discount would be provided individually and
only one-time. Also, collaborating with companies in the same sector could be a great
marketing move. For example, joint projects from TripAdvisor and Airbnb, and other
companies from the hotel/restaurant/airline businesses. This would be beneficial for
both companies by creating a unique offering, thereby attracting customers from both
companies.