Understanding Your Audience - Airbnb's Story

At the 99U conference in NYC, I had the opportunity to hear Joe Gebbia, founder of Airbnb, a website that connects travelers with unique accommodations. He talked about taking his idea of Airbnb and making it real. It’s actually a great story, read it here.

Airbnb started by filling a need. People wanted a place to stay where they could connect where “the hospitality was genuine and the M&Ms didn’t cost $6.” Things looked good for Airbnb. They got their big break in 2008 at the Democratic National Convention when all of the hotel rooms were booked and there was nowhere for people to stay.

Having received some initial success and some great press, people were using Airbnb, visiting the website and becoming excited about the concept. Joe showed huge spikes in website traffic. Unfortunately, the growth and excitement didn’t last. Joe knew that they needed to do something to move the business to the next level.

That’s when Joe decided to go out into the field and actually talk to people using Airbnb. If he talked to the people using Airbnb, he could figure out what they liked, didn’t like, how the booking process could be improved, what type of content they found valuable and how they wanted to receive the information. This is something that is often overlooked when creating a digital marketing strategy.

Understanding your audience is an essential part of meeting your marketing objectives. Who is your target audience? What are their challenges? What problems can you help them solve? What are their digital habits?

A good way to do this is to create a marketing persona. Creating a marketing persona enables you to view your organization, products and services from the perspective of your target audience - those we want to sell to or influence. Thoughtfully defining your audience enables you to gain behavioral insights and create an organized profile that will guide your marketing strategies. To influence, you need to understand your audience - how they think, what they want and how they make decisions.

Build your audience persona with our Audience Persona Guide Infographic.