Airbnb is worth 25billion and raised another 100 millions yesterday November 20Th.
There booking have increased by x2 since last year. There business for those who do not know is about staying at a person’s house by renting a room or the whole apartment if they are not here. There publicity is mainly done online and there strategy is the following:
They use dropbox combine with there referral program which tripled there daily bookings. In terms of payments they use PayPal which is remarkability safe. Also instead of going the common routes ( coupon, codes…). What they did was when users referred to a friend by email gaining 25$ once there first trip was completed or 75$ when hosting there first guest.
It is all about the referral program in which you have the steps here:
- Target segment: To the most active costumers of your product. As they will be the ones to refer to a broader range of people.
- Rewards: to make users invested in your company in this example money for travelling users. And don’t forget to think about your costs of turning a costumer a client you don’t want to lose to much money.
- Make the offer two-sided: the referrer and the referred should both win to reinforce the current costumer loyalty and to attract the new one.
- Clear visual for action: tell your costumer what to do in terms of posting a picture or sharing a post so it is clear for him
- Implement through trusted software: use a second party which is already running perfectly and which is security approved instead of building from scratch. It will make the implementation easier for everybody.
- Test and Refine: You should always try to innovate and make it better.
here is the link of the actual news:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/sujanpatel/2015/02/25/learn-the-growth-strategy-thats-helped-airbnb-and-dropbox-build-billion-dollar-businesses/3/
