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Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Ch. 17 Advertising and Public Relations


Fantasy Advertising



How did Airbnb convince people to stay at homes of complete strangers? 



The Seashell House ~ Casa Caracol


By showing nice pictures of places to the right target market. Travelers like the idea of getting the local experience at exotic locations, when they see all these pretty pictures and imagine themselves in these beautiful places advertised in Airbnb.  







Airbnb users seem to like the idea of being part of a community. When we split the equation, we can see that there is demand for new hosts in need of profits. Travelers need those hosts to fill their locations and budget expectations. They both need to trust each other. As a result we have happy hosts and travelers.
Airbnb unlike some of its competition such as Wimdu, decided to focus in the community aspect. It wants to change the way that people do business when traveling





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“Travel like a human”

It is the slogan of the company. Clearly, it is trying to persuade people to be more sensitive and open their friendly and humanity personality when they interact with their hosts and guests.
Some of the hosts are pet friendly...How nice!!







Managing crisis with the word of mouth

How did Airbnb get away with the unfavorable publicity with blogs about ransacked places? 



An insurance policy with a guarantee of a $1 million. Surely this does not convince every person but apparently positive reviews and feedback do. We assume that every one of those 2 million users do not have perfect experiences using Airbnb. Sometimes, the services just do not fill their expectations. Impressively, most of them seem to approve it, or at least that is what their review lines say. 
Statistics based on user’s reviews, say that 40% of the feedback is directed more to the positive experiences with hosts and guests rather than descriptions of the main place. Users that liked the relation with hosts and guests, have fulfilled their expectations good enough to like the service and even better, use it again. 







Other good Strategies  


Photo and video ad campaigns


These explain how the site works. They present the perks and advantages of their service. With every ‘click’ on the video, every potential user is targeted and Airbnb make sure to  advertise him as much as possible.




“Farming” Craigslist 

Craigslist is a company that also uses listings to sell services like renting places. Airbnb uses spam accounts to track possible target markets. However, Airbnb’s real strategy to use the Craigslist is to encourage users to list their places on it, as an alternative to promote their places somewhere else besides Airbnb.








Product design and functionality

The platform of the website makes it really easy for users to get to get setup with their listings. Hosts have access to charge-free professional photographers to make sure their lists look the best to attract those travelers. It also has alternative links like the “wish list”, that offers a collections of people’s dream places. This among other characteristics help to persuade future users.




1 comment:

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