How Airbnb Hacked Craigslist for Viral Growth

Airbnb was one of the very first true “unicorns”, achieving a valuation of over $1 billion. It’s no surprise that startups mimic and unbox their business model to try and replicate their success. Here are some lessons we can learn from Airbnb’s Craigslist strategy. Be unconventional, don’t over complicate the customer acquisition process, and keep it simple. Do boring things that work, and growth doesn’t have to be sexy.

Scott D Clary

Host of The Success Story podcast | Founder/CEO OnMi Patch

Not only did they completely revolutionize and redefine travel as we know it, Airbnb was also one of the very first real “unicorns”, achieving a valuation of more than a billion dollars.

They certainly haven’t slowed down over the years, topping over $1 billion in quarterly revenue, with a valuation of over 35b. They are simply impressive.

It’s no surprise that startups mimic and unbox their business model to try and replicate their success.

Let’s break down some of the major components that helped them achieve their huge success.

Humble beginnings

Airbnb started in 2008 when founders Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia realized there was a business idea to rent out our air mattresses to travelers in their living rooms when hotel space for a major conference in San Francisco was full.

The idea then evolved into a website.

Other people have used the website to do the same thing.

Boom. Airbnb.

Do things that don’t fit

Instead of investing in paid ads or social media, they started manually reaching out to people who would be the perfect customer for their website/platform.

Every time someone has posted on Craigslist that they are offering their home for a bed and breakfast or for short-term housing.

They emailed them – asking if they wanted to list their platform.

It was manual, and it was tedious, but it worked.

It was inexpensive and it worked.

To quote Paul Graham, “Doing things that don’t evolve”.

The results?

After initial success, they coded an automated tool that automatically reached new Craigslist posts.

They have refined the copy, made onboarding and registration easier and more user-friendly.

It led to viral growth and was the start of an incredible story of a company redefining its category.

Scale and grow

Airbnb is a masterclass in startup strategy, marketing strategy, and sales strategy.

They failed many times before achieving any success, and the early lessons they used to achieve their initial momentum, as well as the many scaling and growth strategies they used to achieve the unicorn status, we’re equally impressive (and far too many to properly cover in a newsletter).

While researching this case study, I came across a 230+ page case study that discusses growth strategies and ideas post Craigslist, Airbnb, so if you want to know more about some awesome things and innovations that Airbnb has evolved, check out these links.

Lessons learned

There are a few lessons we can learn from Airbnb’s Craigslist strategy.

Growth doesn’t have to be sexy.

Airbnb realized that growing startups could use very traditional, boring, and simple methods to achieve initial growth. The Craigslist strategy was basically an outbound sales strategy for a SaaS project. I know enough developers who just want to set up an inbound machine and never type an email or chat with a customer, and just drive traffic and maximize conversions. Do boring things that work. You don’t need paid ads, fancy funnels, graphic design. You need to write a few sentences and focus on getting customers wherever they are.

Meet customers where they are.

Airbnb has not focused on targeting, retargeting and spreading a wide network. They just met their customers where they were. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a Silicon Valley thinking it wanted to spend its time on a platform as “unsexy” as Craigslist. But they realized their customers were there – so they just spent time meeting the customers on whatever platform/medium they preferred.

Be unconventional.

Keep it simple, don’t over complicate the customer acquisition process. Just because your strategy doesn’t align with the strategy used by a CMO discussing the latest high-tech demand generation programs on a popular marketing podcast doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Being unconventional is a good thing.

Do things that don’t scale.

To create a process that will allow you to scale your business, it won’t be scalable from day one. It will not be automated; it will not be mass available. It will be slow and painful. A common trap that founders or marketers fall into is that they assume that if they build it, customers will come. This is the most dangerous mental trap to fall into. Almost every successful business or strategy works because someone made it work. I figured out how to optimize it manually. It took an awful lot of time to figure it out, and only then, once they proved it was successful, did they find ways to scale it and automate it. Manually recruit users and land customers, then scale this process, once you know it works.

Also posted at https://newsletter.roioverload.com/p/hacking-craigslist-for-viral-growth.

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