Airbnb thrives internationally, surpasses 5m nights booked: infographic
Last year, Airbnb, a marketplace that lets individuals rent out their flats and houses to others in a peer-to-peer fashion, raised a staggering $112m in funding. It also found itself in a PR crisis after the apartment of one of its host's apartments was practically torn apart by a guest.
But that apparently hasn't slowed the company's growth.
How’s your decision energy?
Making decisions requires mental energy. When your energy is low, 'decision fatigue' sets in and some fairly predictable biases result.
Too many teams set themselves up to operate in an almost permanently fatigued state. How can you avoid this?
20 lead generation tips: part two
I was recently invited to speak on a panel about lead generation which covered everything from the state of the current market, the issues faced by lead buyers and sellers and a sneak peak into what the future holds for the fledgling UK industry.
As part of the panel we were tasked to come up with a series of lead generation tips for the audience and myself, Andy Purbrick from Dennis Publishing and Sean Sewell from Performance Horizon Group put our heads together to come up with a top 20.
Last week we covered the first 10 lead generation tips, and this week we bring you tips 11 to 20.
Start Me Up! A profile of onefinestay
Onefinestay offers its customers the opportunity to stay in an 'unhotel', someone else's house or apartment when they're out of town. It currently offers a number of properties in central locations in London.
I've been asking the company about how the concept works, the challenges involved, and plans for future expansion...
Companies respond to just 5% of questions on Facebook
You probably heard many cases of how social media can negatively influence companies, and how users 'bragging' on social media can become a catastrophe.
It's not only companies, social media is also about influencing countries and their governments. It is absolutely clear, that during the past years, social media got people and corporations closer to each other then anything, it allowed us to communicate faster, communicate more effectively with each other.
Rightmove crowdsources website improvements on Facebook
With its new Facebook campaign, property website Rightmove is aiming to get people involved in suggesting new features for its website.
The Ideas Factory campaign asks Facebook users to register and submit ideas for possible improvements, as well as voting for the best ideas submitted by others. And, of course, there are iPads to be won...
Eight marketing lessons estate agents need to learn (and FAST!)
I’ve recently been searching for a new place to live (Contrary to popular belief, Econsultancy staff are occasionally allowed to leave their desks), which means I’ve been spending even more time than usual online, browsing the ‘to let’ ads on property websites.
And getting closer to a brain haemorrhage on an hourly basis.
Estate agents and larger aggregate property sites are ideally placed to exploit the massive uptake in web usage we’ve seen in the last decade, yet their sites are usually among the very worst examples of design and usability you’ll ever encounter, while the offline experience is also disjointed and frustrating.
While it’s clear that the agent can’t always be to blame, larger companies in particular need to get their act together fast as some providers are surging ahead, leaving their less useful competitors in the dust.
As an excuse to go house-hunting during working hours and have a bit of a rant in general, I wanted to run through some of the common mistakes I’ve seen recently.
Value based pricing: the holy grail of online lead generation
Value based pricing is the new buzz term in online lead generation, but what does it take to sort your Rolls Royces from your Robin Reliants?
Six top tips for integrating social media into B2B selling
Social media is now a proven and important element of most digital marketing campaigns and the majority of marketing practitioners will be comfortable with how it integrates into their existing communication programmes.
However, there is still a dearth of information on how social media integrates with and supports selling and engagement activities.
Introduction to DDG and digital sales & marketing for SME/SMBs
This is an introductory article for small to medium businesses who are either behind the digital sales and marketing curve, or who are dabbling with digital tactics for either branding or lead generation purposes.
The focus of this article is 'Digital Demand Generation' (DDG), a discipline that combines a custom combination of digital tactics for lead generation (traffic), and an implementation of a marketing automation tool to manage lead progression through the funnel towards a closed sale.
This discipline is now emerging as Revenue Performance Management (RPM) and was originally termed Marketing Automation. Regardless of title, progressive organisations can make significant strides forward with DDG by increasing their number of leads, number of sales qualified conversions and reduction of the sales cycle in terms of time and expense.
Using digital marketing tactics, marketing automation tools and the latest best practices can result in a tremendous revenue growth opportunity for SMEs, but be sure to consider the suitability of DDG for your business.
