– Airbnb, personally, big fan myself. I've vacationed in many
homes using their service. But unfortunately, the pandemic absolutely
tanked their business. It dropped by 72%. So in this video, I'm gonna dig into exactly how that happened, and some of the strategies
that they implemented to help them quickly recover from that big, old blow that they took. I'm also gonna dig into how
the lessons learned by Airbnb, and emergency response branding and product marketing can
apply to your own business. This comes as a surprise
to absolutely no one, but when the pandemic hit, the entire travel industry
went into a nose dive, and I'm not talking like, "Oh, we're jumping off the starting block for the 50 meter freestyle
in the Olympics." I'm talking Red Bull Stratos, all right? If you don't know what
that is, look it up.
And they ended up losing
$4.5 trillion, trillion, by the end of the year. This crash cost Airbnb over half a billion dollars in 2020 alone. Facing this large crisis, one of the first things they did was launch an emergency response to help buoy its collapsing business. Upper management worked
with government agencies to provide financial support
to hosts who lost income. The comms team created
content to educate these hosts on how to access those critical funds, and the customer service team expanded its one to one communications so hosts and guests could
get their questions answered as quickly as possible. But Airbnb didn't stop there. Their product team also
launched online experiences to help hosts find new sources of revenue during the lockdown. Even though those emergency
responses were good, not everything Airbnb did was a success. Many hosts who supply
inventory that Airbnb rents out were furious at refund policies that left them holding the bag, and the Kindness Card
campaign that encouraged previous guests to send
donations to their hosts was met with confusion.
So while the company had to deal with their hosts and the public, they also had to decide what to do with its massive marketing budget. In 2019, the company spent more than 1.1 billion, with a B,
dollars on marketing. Much of that was on performance campaigns, like Google ads and affiliate programs. With new bookings gone, spending valuable dollars
to directly capture bookings became pointless. No one knew how long a freeze on performance marketing would last, but everyone assumed it would
come back at some point. You know what I mean? And then, I think we all know
where this story is going, by spring of 2021, vaccines actually made it possible for folks to start traveling again. Within a few months
Airbnb's online traffic reached 95% of its pre-pandemic level. And this is the crazy part, this rebound took place without turning the performance
marketing budget back on. 90% of this online traffic was coming from organic or direct sources, the result of SEO, PR, and good old fashion word of mouth.
In describing the change, Airbnb CEO, Brian Chesky
made headlines when he said, "We are never going back to spending the same amount of money on marketing as a percentage of revenue
as we did in 2019." As you could probably imagine, this was pretty big news in
the world of digital marketing. If you're a marketer, you might be wondering if this means you should consider slashing your own performance marketing budget. Probably not, to be honest with you. The truth is Airbnb invested
in performance marketing for over a decade. It's a major part of what built Airbnb into a brand big enough to not need performance marketing anymore. So for anyone else, definitely
keep up your efforts. The lesson here is that performance marketing alone isn't enough. Every marketer needs to be thinking about how to create and maintain
a strong positive brand. This includes awareness advertising, PR, experiential marketing,
and a whole lot more.
If you wanna learn more
about brand marketing, you can download our free ebook, "How to Build a Consistent Brand" from the link in the description. Before you know it, I'm gonna have turned
you into a Don Draper, a Steve Jobs, a Mickey Mouse. You know what I'm saying? All people that are really
good, and they're brands. Mickey Mouse is a person. Don't try to correct me on that. With business back on track, Airbnb just announced a
massive update to their service designed to reflect the new ways people are working and
traveling after the pandemic. The most significant change
is a new search segment called categories. This lets users search for Airbnb rentals based not on the destination, but rather the experience they can have. These categories include
homes near the beach, or national parks, homes
with chef's kitchens, homes with unique designs,
or creative spaces, and dozens more. In addition to categories, Airbnb has also released split stays which let users book multiple homes as part of the same trip. The decisions to make
these sorts of changes were not taken lightly, as I'm sure you can imagine.
Airbnb has gone all in, updating its homepage on both its website and the Airbnb app to push
these new initiatives. And there can be billions
of dollars at stake if users don't like the
new Airbnb features. So lesson three to learn from Airbnb is if your product is getting
ready for a major update, you need to have a full
marketing plan ready to support that initiative. And I'm sure you're thinking to yourself, "Well, jeez, Jamal that's real, real neat, but I don't know where
to start personally." Luckily for you, HubSpot has
a product go to marketing kit that you can use to prepare to roll out a new product, or
service, or major update.
Check it out for all your needs, so your product or service launch goes as smoothly as possible. You can get it down the description below, and remember whether your
business is upgrading software, evaluating its marketing strategy,
or facing a major crisis, the best thing you can
do to achieve success is to be prepared. So subscribe to this channel, and we'll make sure you're a star student when it comes to digital marketing. Because the one lesson we've all learned over the past two years is
can't really know what's next.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go book every single stay in every single country on Airbnb. I'm gonna experience it all. You're probably not
gonna see me for a while. If you wanna get in touch,
please DM me on Venmo 'cause we all know that that's the final
frontier of communication and social media. Until then, I'll see you next time. (intense music) – Our software's the worst. – Have you heard of HubSpot? See, most CRMs are a
cobbled together mess, but HubSpot is easy to adopt
and actually looks gorgeous. – I think I love our new CRM. – Our software is the best. – [Presenter] HubSpot, grow better..
