Introduction
Strategic marketing management is a strategy by which the association separates itself from the opposition and focuses on its qualities in order to offer its customers the best support and value. The goal of fundamental marketing is to capitalize on the positive division of the association over its opposition from the point of view of buyers.
Aims & Objectives
This assignment will critically review Airbnb’s marketing strategy and evaluate its marketing efficiency. Moreover, the assignment to determine certain marketing risks pertaining to Airbnb’s marketing strategy, as well as propose an effective counterstrategy to overcome the challenges. In addition, the assignment will cover metrics that can be used to evaluate its new marketing tactic.
Scope
Marketing is an important tool for any business, small or large. Marketing efforts allow businesses to increase their sales and earn a profit. In today’s era, relying on strategic marketing is essential to mitigate the risks that are present in the market and to improve the scope of business by making it sustainable.
Task 1
Marketing tools are devices that organizations use to create and promote their products and controls. In this unique situation, the word "equipment" refers to techniques, techniques, and materials. Of course, most organizations use several distinctive promotional tools to address their agreements, such as advertising, regular mail, and statistical surveys (Cooper, 2000). Founded in 2008, Airbnb is currently the world's largest rental company, offering visitors a choice of more than 7 million properties in more than 220 countries. While passengers get more short-term rental options at cheaper prices than hotels, they also benefit monetarily from adapting their available space and maintaining the revenues of the tourism industry on their own networks. Airbnb's advertising approach focuses on building and maintaining a solid customer territory with a focus on the long-term reliability of both customer segments: visitors and hosts.
Airbnb’s Marketing Approach
With an excellent annual spending budget of approximately $ 1 billion, Airbnb is actively promoting advanced promotion focused on sharing relevant content with intended interest across various channels. His diffuse advertising, which includes more in-depth work in helping and gaining new customers, complements his sophisticated and state-of-the-art advertising technology. Airbnb's approach to promotion focuses on building and maintaining a solid territory among its customers, with a focus on long-term reliability on the part of the client: visitors and hosts. To target new customers, the brand uses a stimulant to generate a query and reach out to important influential organizations to improve their computer traffic. Airbnb primarily marketing tools and channels are:
Content Marketing
Airbnb uses content advertising to help build a local area of the client around its image. The primary goal of this strategy is to strengthen the connection between the brand and its clients, to continue the commitment before, during and after exchanges, and subsequently to influence long-distance reliability.
Influencer Marketing
Effective influencing advertising Airbnb has long supported its sensational development. The problematic brand uses a coordinated effort with prominent personalities to comprehensively promote its administrations to new targeted crowds.
Referral Programs
Airbnb has a far-reaching reference program that gives individuals in the local area awards for welcoming new clients to the podium. This promotional strategy helps the brand expand its group of clients through existing clients, which reduces the significant cost of acquiring clients.
Task 2
The Importance of a Marketing Risk Management Plan
Risk management is a basic interaction that every organization must align with its business goals. Implementing a plan in your marketing system can help you anticipate challenges, prepare for them, and avoid them internally and externally (Rutkauskan & Ginevicus, 2011).
- Identifying Risks
- Analyzing Risks.
- Monitoring Risks
Airbnb Marketing Review
Airbnb uses a broad range of marketing tools to create a strong market preposition that generates effective leads and improves traffic. Airbnb uses its website as a lead conversion tool and uses a range of tactics to derive traffic to its website by influencer marketing tactics, content marketing, and digital tools. While content marketing is one of the most effective marketing tools in the digital era, Airbnb’s content marketing strategy has certain risks (Rutkauskan & Ginevicus, 2011).
Content Marketing Risk
Content marketing at Airbnb comprises of using effective keywords in its website content to improve its search results, as well as create content in the form of blogs, videos, info graphics, etc. However, one drawback to this strategy is that company generated content tends to be manipulated and users understand that it would not be entirely present. This means that the effectiveness of content marketing for Airbnb would ultimately lose its efficiency in driving traffic to the website. Due to awareness and transparency on the internet, users demand accurate and authentic information before making a purchase. Therefore, user-generated content is more likely to increase consumer interest and participation. User-generated content (UGC) refers to everything your customers do and helps you show off: websites, online media posts, photos, web posts, and even comments on your website reflect client-generated content. Advertisers regularly involve industry influencers and even customers to create online visitor magazines or conduct their media campaigns (Rutkauskan & Ginevicus, 2011).
Overcoming Marketing Challenges
When it comes to travel convenience, Airbnb doesn't just compete with accommodation chains like Marriott and Hyatt, traffic aggregators like Booking.com and Kayak, or trip planners. They also face local business rivals such as Lonely Planet and Trip Advisor, where people could go for search and reviews before actually booking lodgings. If Airbnb customers share suggestions from past experience, it will help create an exclusive community among Airbnb customers. By adopting this process, Airbnb will be able to establish further connections between its people, increase its acceptance among people who knew about the platform but never used it, and are ready to expand its selection by expanding its search results.
Task 3
User Generated Content Marketing Plan for Airbnb
Airbnb can use Market research executives to request stories or send emails to real people in the Airbnb group once they complete their stay period and ask them to share their. If someone is iterated in sharing their experiences, Airbnb would send them a template of a from with specified fields that the user can fill. Some of the fields that would be included in the form are:
- Approximate length of the story
- The tone and language style required while filling the form
- Formatting instructions
- A sample of a filled form that is acceptable by Airbnb
- Instructions on what to do after posting are complete.
The first priority will be contact from Airbnb, who can confirm the story and immediately indicate what is happening. The story will then be sent to the marketing department, who may consider whether the story is in line with the brand guidelines. Provided this is confirmed, Airbnb will inform the customer that his story will be used over Airbnb’s platforms, and the user will be informed once such actions take place to promote them to market the story in their circle. One a story is accepted, the editing team will curate or polish the content to make it ready for publishing. In the event that the story does not follow the guidelines set or does not follow the content guidelines, the main task at this stage will be to inform the client that his story will not be shared in the Airbnb phases, but it is strongly recommended to share them on their own website or elsewhere. on the website.
Customer Response
A customer response that takes all of your changed structures together will help you understand the responses that trigger your marketing efforts. Airbnb needs to evaluate the way customers and other users respond by UGC. Do they feel it is helpful and making decisions or do they feel the content is manipulated by Airbnb? Understanding customer response is the key to evaluating User generated content marketing.
Cost-Per-Acquisition
A business cannot improve its marketing efforts if they do not follow one metric that matters most: Marketing Cost Acquisition (CPA) (Vana & Cerna, 2012). Airbnb can calculate the CPA for users converted via UGC segment.
Return-on-Investment
Return on investment (ROI) is a major issue in terms of marketing costs. The ultimate goal is to test whether your marketing business is profitable (Vana & Cerna, 2012). Airbnb would need to determine the revenues or business generated from the UGC segment.
Communicating with Stakeholders
Communicating with stakeholder is an important segment of the stakeholder management, but it is not the only one. A business needs to engage the right stakeholders, in the right stages of the business with accurate details, is essential for partners to feel respected, involved, heard and esteemed (Polonsky, 1996). Airbnb can communicate and engage with its stakeholders by offers user that share stories discount coupons or credits that can be availed on their next service use.
Conclusions & Recommendations
In conclusion, it is evident that strategic business marketing is a highly integrated and detailed function of a business that can make or break the organization. A strategic marketing plan is imperative for a business to succeed in the modern society that is bound to face various threats such as changing trends, increased competition, and various other risks. In the case of Airbnb, optimizing its content marketing strategy and relying on user generated content will be highly beneficial for the business.
References
Cooper, L. G. (2000). Strategic marketing planning for radically new products. Journal of marketing, 64(1), 1-16.
McDONALD, M. A. L. C. O. L. M. (2016). Strategic marketing planning: theory and practice. The marketing book, 87.
Aghazadeh, H. (2015). Strategic marketing management: Achieving superior business performance through intelligent marketing strategy. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 207, 125-134.
Flint, D. J. (2004). Strategic marketing in global supply chains: Four challenges. Industrial marketing management, 33(1), 45-50.
Rutkauskas, A. V., & Ginevičus, A. (2011). Integrated management of marketing risk and efficiency. Journal of business economics and management, 12(1), 1-23.
Polonsky, M. J. (1996). Stakeholder management and the stakeholder matrix: potential strategic marketing tools. Journal of Market-Focused Management, 1(3), 209-229.
Vaňa, K., & Černá, Ľ. (2012). The marketing audit as a method of the evaluation of the marketing plan. Research Papers Faculty of Materials Science and Technology Slovak University of Technology, 20(Special-Number), 131-136.
