Mercedes Egea Lara · Follow
19 min read · Sep 28, 2023
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I know what you’re thinking. Airbnb. A classic.
I recently wrote a post on Twitter about how it bothers me that companies like Airbnb, Uber, or Zappos are always used as examples for entrepreneurship courses since they were founded more than 10 years ago, and the problems they had to face were very different from those we experience today.
However, Airbnb remains one of the first references many of us have had when deciding to embark on entrepreneurship, so I couldn’t overlook their case, being also one of those companies that have excellently executed their Go To Market strategy. So, without further delay, let’s get started!
The origin
Founded in 2008, Airbnb was created with the objective of connecting people with stays in private spaces around the world online, and since then, it has revolutionized the way we travel. Airbnb is now one of the largest vacation rental sites in the world.
As tourism grew more and more, people felt the need to search for hotels and family homes from the comfort of their living room. Airbnb emerged to meet this need by creating an online platform for booking hotels and private homes.
Contrary to what many users may think, the value proposition that Airbnb’s founders had in mind for their company was not to offer their service as a cheaper alternative to hotels. Instead, from the beginning, it has revolved around the unique experience of learning to live like locals, even when we are far from home. Although Airbnb accommodations are cheaper than hotels in many cases, the brand also offers accommodations that are more expensive than the latter.
Airbnb’s offering is simple: stay in a house or apartment of “hosts,” either by renting a single room or renting the entire property, instead of staying in a conventional hotel.
Airbnb’s goal for guests is to enrich travels by providing accommodations with character. Any property owner can post their home on the Airbnb platform, thus creating a massive database of various home rentals. Instead of living in prefab hotel rooms, we can enjoy a space with personality and character. Stepping out of the front door of such accommodation opens us to a whole community, immersing us in a new environment.
This perspective is highly relevant to understanding their entire marketing strategy.
Airbnb’s Marketing Strategy
The company adopts various digital marketing techniques to drive its mission to become and remain a leader in the hospitality industry. While its marketing and advertising expenditure is predominantly allocated to the online segment, a series of effective yet economical methods outside this environment (offline) contribute to brand generation and, in turn, demand. The company has always adopted some particularly striking marketing strategies for efficient resource management and a mode of promotion that has helped it gain momentum among the masses.
Airbnb’s non-traditional business approach means it rarely seeks support from marketing agencies, or indeed, any external experts, preferring to utilize internal expertise and leverage valuable content, experiences, and user feedback to power its marketing execution.
Airbnb’s story has inspired many other companies, even its competitors. Let’s look in detail at the marketing strategies that have allowed it to grow beyond expectations in such a competitive environment without the help of agencies or external support.
Brand Establishment
One of the biggest strategies that Airbnb has employed has been establishing its brand from a very early stage.
Airbnb’s hook since its foundation has been to offer travelers the opportunity to experience life as a local. Airbnb’s campaigns always emphasize that rentals are homes, not just accommodations. This is reflected in their marketing materials where they create a coherent experience between users’ perceptions and their travel experience.
“Live Like a Local” was also one of Airbnb’s first large-scale marketing campaigns and has served to position the brand in the minds of those seeking unforgettable travel experiences. Unlike other global brands, Airbnb is always looking to promote itself locally rather than globally.
We can take Airbnb as an example in identifying a main value proposition of our company and then building our operations and promotional materials to reflect those values. By doing so, we create more consistent marketing that will continually attract our target audience. With this, Airbnb has not only established a monopoly of itself in the market by creating a blue ocean strategy, but it has always generated loyalty among those customers who recognize that the brand has remained true to its purpose.
Creation of Quality Content
Content is a way in which the brand can tell its story in the most appealing manner. Airbnb’s content marketing strategy is solid, offering consumable content that draws audiences to its service and thereby increases its user base.
On Airbnb’s website, there is a wealth of quality content that keeps users hooked once they visit the site. Airbnb uses content marketing to help develop a user community around its brand. The main goal of this tactic is to strengthen the relationship between the brand and its customers, enhancing commitment before, during, and after transactions and thereby influencing long-term loyalty.
This content finds its foundation in travel guides. The guides are resources that hosts can attach to the listings, detailing restaurants, parks, and other local attractions that may interest guests. Airbnb also creates lists of attractions that any user can explore.
The company also has its own blog, specifically targeted at hosts. It is frequently updated with tips for improving the home, questions and answers with Airbnb experts, and relevant platform updates designed to engage users.
The blog is also linked to “Airbnb Citizen,” the brand’s promotional channel for both hosts and guests. This channel shares positive user stories with the brand.
As a service-based company, they focus not on selling services primarily but on showing and selling the unique experiences that customers have had using Airbnb in the form of content.
Building a Community
Airbnb has a balance that is difficult to achieve for any marketplace: they need to reach both customers who are looking to use their service to book accommodation and hosts who are looking to list their accommodations on the platform. Attracting these two types of customers has its challenges, especially since Airbnb has a website for both types of customers, which has its pros and cons. However, the company has found ways to target these markets specifically and strategically.
For hosts, Airbnb uses community/civic outreach to share how community members can use them to gain a second source of income. They also use content marketing tactics to share ways in which hosts can make the most of their partnership with Airbnb.
Airbnb has also had to work closely with communities to ensure that their services are welcomed and positively contribute to the locals. To do this, Airbnb has launched multiple initiatives aimed at providing economic opportunities. In addition to partnering with community groups to create localized positive change. These outreach efforts have served to strengthen Airbnb’s reputation in communities, increasing the likelihood of locals becoming hosts.
The concept of community also encompasses both parties, guests and hosts. Airbnb is ultimately an online community where profits are shared between those who pay and those who earn. This means that travelers can pay much less than at any other hotel and still find all the comforts in an Airbnb, while hosts can earn by renting out spaces in their home for shorter periods of time.
Airbnb’s marketing approach focuses on building and maintaining a strong community among its users, aiming for the long-term loyalty of both customer segments.
Having a Clear Understanding of Their Customer Profile: the Host Figure
Although Airbnb is a popular service for travelers and serves two markets (guests and hosts), the company knows it cannot operate without hosts, so the acquisition, retention, and support of these are vital for its ongoing success.
While guests are looking for unique places to stay, hosts are looking to monetize their property to a broad audience while leveraging Airbnb’s marketing infrastructure.
Airbnb has found a brilliant strategy in terms of acquisition: retargeting for guests who have enjoyed their experience. Customers who have previously enjoyed their stay receive an email encouraging them to list their property. These emails communicate the benefits and values of being a host. Airbnb’s message also mentions that their insurance coverage can handle guests’ damages, reducing the risk of listing a property.
Of course, not all customers will be interested in listing their homes. To find promising potential customers, Airbnb has to segment high-value guests, retarget them, and introduce them to a new marketing funnel. This effort is time-consuming, but it has immense value considering each host will bring new paying guests.
Hosts are the lifeblood of Airbnb. Without this market, they couldn’t rent local properties. The company offers hosts outstanding incentives, making hosting on Airbnb an easy opportunity to add a steady stream of income.
As we have mentioned before, Airbnb shares useful content for hosts to help them make the most of their Airbnb listings, and makes a point to thank them in their marketing campaigns, like in their “Made possible by Hosts” campaign.
Use of User-Generated Content (UGC)
Airbnb is one of the best examples of a successful company leveraging user-generated content.
Encouraging and promoting user-generated content (UGC), especially when a company is starting, is an excellent way to share quality content without spending valuable resources on content creation.
While the company develops its own brand materials, the main revenue generator is the listings created by the hosts. However, the fact that their service model is based on crowdsourcing and user content doesn’t mean it can stay on the sidelines.
In the early days of Airbnb, its founders knew they were making money but were showing no signs of growth. Upon further investigation, they realized that most of the listing photos uploaded by users were not very flattering. In response, the founders went door-to-door in New York City to take professional photographs of these apartments. As a result, revenues doubled and continued to grow year after year.
This teaches us that when our business reaches a certain size, taking a hands-on approach is not a bad idea even if this is not precisely scalable. As Paul Graham says, “Do things that don’t scale”. Even today, Airbnb’s premium service, “Airbnb Plus,” conducts home inspections to ensure these properties meet their brand standards.
Use of Influencer Marketing
Airbnb’s influencer marketing strategy is one of the most well-thought-out marketing moves. Airbnb employs this strategy to influence the audience to increase its user base. Often, influencers mention Airbnb whenever they use their service on social media. Airbnb backs their stays in exchange for their mentions on social media.
The brand’s first influencer marketing practice was in 2015 when the famous American singer and songwriter Mariah Carey posted a picture of herself in a luxurious mansion in Malibu promoted through Airbnb.
In these collaborations, celebrities or influencers usually post pictures of their luxurious stay on Airbnb on Instagram. Therefore, it drives increases in website traffic and lead generation.
Experience Marketing as an Additional Service
To understand how Airbnb utilizes the “experience marketing strategy,” we first need to remember who Airbnb’s customers are. Airbnb targets genuine seekers of travel experiences. People who imagine traveling to a foreign place but living like a local. Airbnb not only provides the option to book accommodation for trips but also the opportunity to experience a destination like a local.
The definition of an authentic experience depends on each individual. Understanding that guest loyalty is closely tied to their satisfying real-world experiences, the company launched the “Airbnb Experiences” section in 2016. The service offers customers unique activities, including tours and workshops, organized by local experts. This approach demonstrates the brand’s ability to respond to the preferences of its target market observed through market research.
Another instance of Airbnb’s mastery in creating experience marketing was when the brand launched its “Online Experiences” in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Organized through Zoom, the virtual activities included cooking and dance classes, city tours through photography, guided meditation, and much more. With the slogan “Fun without leaving home”, these experiences offered guests digital escapes during the time of lockdown and social distancing and provided hosts with a source of income at a time when the travel and tourism industry suffered significant financial losses.
“Airbnb Experience” offers travelers the opportunity to truly immerse themselves in the host’s world. This is a great example of cross-selling an offer that is closely tied to the brand’s philosophy of allowing travelers to experience a destination like locals.
A Referral Program to Boost Word-of-Mouth
A key factor in Airbnb’s massive and rapid growth has been the implementation of an altruistic referral program that encourages users to share the app and the company’s services with people in their network.
In the hospitality industry, referrals play a crucial role. A user conducts intensive research before choosing a service. But when the experience is referred by someone real, it becomes credible. A person is more likely to choose a service when it is referred by a friend.
Airbnb has been running referral programs since 2011 to build its user base. Airbnb’s referral program is one of the company’s most effective methods for acquiring new customers and encouraging word-of-mouth. It’s a program that provides community members with rewards for inviting new users to the platform. It’s essentially about inviting friends to the platform and thus obtaining discounts for a future booking.
Executed through the company’s main website and mobile app, this marketing tactic helps the brand expand its consumer base through existing users, reducing the CAC (customer acquisition cost).
Airbnb’s marketing strategy seizes every opportunity to communicate its value while remaining warm and welcoming. Airbnb’s success is attributed to its referral marketing, as it believes its users tell the story better than they do.
Use of Good Segmentation
Marketing segmentation is a very important factor in Airbnb’s promotional strategy.
The brand invests in market research to monitor its continuously evolving user demographics and takes note of their rapidly changing needs. Significant data are collected through Airbnb’s web and mobile app, capturing customer behavior, preferences, age, gender, location, and more.
Historically, the company has used the analysis of this data to identify market niches, conceive new offering categories, and adjust its marketing campaigns very successfully. The studies are also used to monitor changes in the hospitality industry at large and arm the company with competitive analysis.
Audience research is crucial for the success of our business. Airbnb has used audience segmentation to engage both users and hosts in different and complementary ways. Focusing different tactics on different segments of our audience is key to ensuring the success of our campaigns, starting with creating target personas for each of them and addressing their needs in our marketing efforts.
Product Focus
Another reason Airbnb has become so popular since its inception is the way it operates. Compared to other platforms, Airbnb is a more transparent, easy-to-operate, and uncomplicated platform. It’s a marketplace that connects people in an easy way. Additionally, the platform offers the option to post reviews, rate rental spaces, and add hotel descriptions, which helps customers weigh their options based on the feedback of other consumers. Airbnb is essentially an accommodation booking engine.
Airbnb has always been known for creating an attractive and user-friendly interface. App design is a fundamental consideration for many companies and is as important as any other aspect of brand marketing. Recognizing these facts, Airbnb has made design a priority and has gone to great lengths to build its app around practical design guidelines.
An example of this is how its app reflects the brand’s messages. These aim to make guests feel welcome, and for this reason, they have unified the user interface on Android and iOS platforms, adopting a welcoming tone with the brand’s messages and even selecting their typeface to achieve a warm and welcoming style.
A particular consideration worth mentioning is Airbnb’s use of typographic elements. Airbnb created icons from written words. This approach made it easier to translate concepts into other languages without having to redesign the interface much for each region.
Airbnb’s marketing strategy to make the booking process straightforward is simple: use elements that help guests find exactly what they need. One only needs to browse their website to see this. With the use of calls to action for different needs of different profiles or the use of carefully selected and perfectly placed photos to attract visitors’ attention.
Airbnb has achieved its goal and has become a global leader in its field and even competes with the traditional hotel industry thanks to its focus on digital product. The lesson for companies is clear: an easy-to-use website is a fundamental part of the marketing strategy of any company that relies on a digital environment.
Leveraging Audiovisual Media
Another striking strategy the platform has employed to create a market base for itself worldwide is the use of audiovisual media.
The moment a person searches for a hotel or a private home on Airbnb’s website or app, they are flooded with results that not only contain the host’s main contact details but also include visual images and videos to assess the environment.
The use of images and videos is an amazing way to showcase what a person’s stay will be like and what they can expect from it. Additionally, customers who have stayed in a particular Airbnb can also post photos and videos on the portal to help other customers gauge the overall quality and environment of the place as part of Airbnb’s reviews. This is a very effective way to market and retain loyal customers who may want to return time and again.
Lastly, Airbnb utilizes the YouTube platform quite well to promote its services, creating video campaigns and posting them on their channel.
Masters of Digital Marketing
Creating something in an online environment makes no sense without the use of digital marketing. Pioneering the use of digital marketing has helped Airbnb increase its accessibility and profitability around the world.
Next, we will look in detail at which elements the company has relied on to achieve this.
Mobile Marketing
For many companies, the goal of mobile marketing is to persuade users to install their app. For Airbnb, this makes sense: to drive bookings through the app, from the installation of the app to the completion of a transaction.
Given that every additional step runs the risk of losing a customer, Airbnb has ensured that the transition is as smooth as possible. Many companies use deep links to maintain the user journey at this crucial stage. This involves adding a unique identifier to mobile ads that directs users to a specific screen after installation. The use of deep links helps users find what they need without having to learn to navigate the app, making it much easier to convert them into customers.
SEO
In SEO, the most important thing is to consider the user’s search intent with the use of keywords. It is also important to know which page of our site is better optimized for specific keywords and searches. Airbnb does a great job with this. It simply considers all types of search terms a prospective customer will look for and only focuses on ensuring their landing page appears and converts them.
Besides searches, it’s important to keep the meta title and meta description updated. Therefore, Airbnb makes sure to include and adapt the types of accommodations to each segment: “vacation rentals, cabins, beach houses, homes, unique experiences…” This is great as it covers the different options of vacation homes that Airbnb offers without overdoing it. These are probably the most popular types of vacation rentals on the web, so Airbnb has included them in the meta title of the homepage.
Airbnb ranks for a lot of brand terms, and this is not a bad thing. ”Let’s book an Airbnb” has become almost as normal in everyday conversation as “let’s book a vacation” or “let’s book a hotel.”
Social Media Strategy
Social media marketing plays a crucial role in Airbnb’s success. The brand engages its audience and draws more people to its platform with its posts for travel enthusiasts.
The best part of Airbnb’s social media strategy is that they publish user-generated content. By posting UGC, they have to put less effort into creating posts. It makes their social media pages authentic, and the audience can identify with them.
The brand posts almost daily. Additionally, Airbnb manages its community well, responding to comments on their posts within hours. This is one of the reasons it attracts a solid user base because they know how to be social. Companies with products that are easy to photograph often get good results on social media. Airbnb has the advantage that many unique homes are posted on the website and are a real draw for accommodation seekers.
However, Airbnb faces the challenge of ensuring that the experiences shared on the company’s social media reflect the experiences that customers have.
Having said that, we will take a look at their most prominent social media platforms:
Instagram is a fantastic platform for Airbnb. Thanks to Instagram’s visual nature, Airbnb has the opportunity to showcase photos of the incredible and unique homes that are listed on the website.
Airbnb’s Instagram grid is filled with aspirational photos of vacation homes that are more likely to be shared than the average picture of a hotel or even some of the more generic listings on Airbnb’s site.
Most of these posts are user-generated content: the posts regularly credit the original photographer’s account in the description.
Sharing customer photos on our company’s social media and, of course, giving them credit in the caption, is a great way to build a connection with our audience. If they love our product, they will be excited to see that we consider their photos good enough to share on the company’s social media.
This can create a trend where customers want to share pictures of our product or service so that they have the chance to be featured. Our company gets photos taken by happy customers, which act as content and social proof, and customers are recognized and shared by a company they love.
There isn’t much to add about Airbnb’s Twitter except that it is a reserved space for the company to retweet tweets from the founders, as well as collaborations with other brands and tweets from hosts.
It’s important to highlight the “Airbnb Help” account on the platform that responds to user inquiries about their stay.
Airbnb’s Pinterest account is excellent. There are travel checklists, “things to do” checklists, travel tips, and road trip ideas combined with illustrations and photographs. It seems Airbnb started Pinterest with the same content used on other platforms, primarily photographs of the houses listed on the website, and then expanded its use by creating more interactive content.
This is the type of post that the audience loves to save and share with their friends and followers.
Email Marketing
Airbnb employs email marketing strategies to target customers who log in to the website, browse the city they wish to visit but then do not proceed to checkout. The brand addresses them with an email sequence in an effort to change their minds, inviting them to return to their search and make their next booking.
They craft a custom email header, using the user’s search term to grab their attention. Then, the email includes recommendations along with the ratings of the listed hotels or apartments in the city that the user has searched for. This is how they create a personalized email aimed at prompting the user to complete their booking.
Search and Social Media Ads
We don’t want to delve too much into this section as the purpose of studying these marketing strategies is to focus more on those that are organic or have long-term value; however, we should mention how they carry out their paid media strategy in the most efficient way possible.
Regarding SEM, Airbnb is astute in targeting ads to reach potential customers at times when they are seeking vacation ideas or are ready to book.
Competitors often place ads for search terms where other companies in the same niche are well-ranked, to snag the “top spot.” For instance, in the search term “vacation rentals”. Airbnb has an ad there, but it doesn’t occupy the first position, thus it doesn’t seem to be considering boosting its advertising spend to snatch that prime advertising spot from competitors.
As for social media ads, the company conducts A/B tests. It’s always a good idea to run multiple versions of the same ad with slight alterations to see which one is more appealing to the target demographic.
When someone clicks on the ad, they are directed straight to the appropriate landing page, meaning they are in the right place to get answers to their queries. If these ads had taken the user to the general accommodation page or even the main homepage of Airbnb, conversion rates would drop as the visitor would have to find what they are looking for instead of being taken straight there.
With this, Airbnb ensures to always have the customer’s journey in mind and make it as easy as possible for them to convert.
Guerrilla Marketing
Airbnb engages in other offline strategies such as guerrilla marketing. The brand uses this low-cost technique ad hoc, either when entering new geographical markets or as a complementary tool to gain additional attention in existing markets.
Some examples of these guerrilla campaigns include Airbnb’s floating house, which navigated along the River Thames in London for five days in 2015. It was a celebratory stunt in response to the Deregulation Act, confirming that Londoners could rent out their homes for 90 days. This display drew significant responses from passing locals, resulting in phenomenal coverage across the UK.
Another example is, in its early days, Airbnb created a bot that copied the listing of a new property on Airbnb to the most popular directory in the United States at that time, Craigslist. Why was this strategy brilliant? Because without investing a single Euro, they leveraged the audience that already existed on Craigslist, where it was common to see people looking for apartments, to redirect that traffic to their own website, thus increasing their number of visits and their awareness.
Public Relations Stunts
The “PR Stunts” or publicity stunts capture a lot of audience attention. It helps a brand to get an instant boost in terms of customers and brand exposure. Airbnb’s marketing strategy includes such stunts.
This involves the use of some search terms like: “Home Alone house” or “Barbie’s house”. These seemingly random search terms are actually part of one of Airbnb’s largest digital marketing campaigns: “Night At.”
The “Night At” competitions give guests the opportunity to stay in anything but a normal house, be it a night at a sports stadium or even a vacation at one of the Seven Wonders of the World.
They have even used “Night At” as a way to leverage news trends to get some traffic to their own webpage. For example, they leveraged a situation where a person started tweeting their experience after getting trapped overnight in a store. Airbnb seized this as an opportunity to collaborate with the store, turning what could have been a public relations disaster into something positive, even going so far as to organize a competition for several people to spend the night in said establishment.
What Future Awaits Airbnb?
Airbnb is a great master class on how a company continues to explore and leverage new opportunities to remain relevant and meet the unique needs of travelers.
It has demonstrated how it adapts to the times, how it leverages trends, and all while making good use of ingenuity rather than the marketing budget.
What learnings can you take from this example to apply to your business?
