Faria Mehboob/L191634/Section B

Airbnb, Etsy, Uber: Acquiring First Thousand Customers |Growing from One
Thousand to One Million Customers

Why Airbnb, Etsy, and Uber were successful?

Airbnb
Founders of Airbnb experimented strategies for attracting renters to their website, and made timely
recognitions of what would work in one city or country and what may fail in the other. In half of the
French cities or towns, the founders paid visit and promoted Airbnb through low-tech, non-scalable
strategies. Teams of two or three people conversed with the few users already in that market to
comprehend the conditions prevailing there. Later, Chesky and Gebbia opted for customer poaching
method by creating a software that hacked Craigslist to extract the contact information of property
owners in the company’s list, and then sent those property owners a pitch to list on Airbnb as well.
Airbnb carefully tracked the cost it would have to bear to send prospective hosts to the Airbnb website
these included cost of throwing parties, setting up booths and other “on the ground” activities and
targeted potential hosts through Facebook ads, using a standard online mass marketing customer
acquisition approach. To face challenges in New York, Chesky, Gebbia and Blecharczyk rented a $5,000
camera and went to every door, to take professional pictures of as many New York listings as possible
and hired professional photographers to go to property owners’ homes to take inviting pictures. In cases
of mishaps Airbnb showed genuine concern and measures to support the loss incurred to ensure their
credibility and to save company image.

Uber
Uber started off making a good impression by using black cars driven by professional drivers and
ensured that customers would have a great experience virtually every time they used the service. It was
also launched during times when demand was expected to be the highest, for instance during the
holiday seasons when people tend to stay out late partying. It also ran promotions during large concerts
or sporting events, targeted big crowds of people where there was a need for cabs at the same time.
After targeting initial customers, the next wave of customers was brought via word-of-mouth. Uber
made far-reaching use of online advertising in several social media platforms to employee more drivers.
It fashioned a model to comprehend and detect factors that caused individuals to be fascinated in
signing up to be a Uber driver.

Etsy
Etsy chose a different track than Uber and Airbnb. Rather than opting for marketing through digital
media, it allowed suppliers do the advertising. Moreover, it provided support to the sellers to market
their crafts and also in return market the platform of Etsy to their loyal customers. Etsy came up with a
“Seller Handbook” and other internal management tools for sellers to enhance process orders and stay
connected with customers via integrated social media. Etsy adopted an ecosystem of more than 150
third-party apps and tools to endow and support the sellers. The company motivated sellers later
became repeat buyers. Etsy also became a platform to buy hard to procure supplies for their individual
goods as a result of the network effect it created. It empowered suppliers by enabling them to list and
sell on Etsy outside of the factory made goods but also turn into finished goods and sell that way too.