Airtasker case study
Performance Highlights.
76%
Gross merchandise value (GMV) – an all time high
60%
more tasks posted
387%
new user sign ups
Case study at a glance.
- As a digital marketplace, Airtasker has a complex two-sided business model. They connect people who need to get stuff done or 'Posters' (demand) with people looking to earn money or 'Taskers' (supply).
- To satisfy stakeholder expectations, Airtasker first wanted to demonstrate growth and scalability in the UK in the final two months of the 2020/21 financial year, while proving its potential for global expansion in Australia, and the US.
- Using our Digital Growth Framework we delivered a proven business case, key insights, and a scalable growth template, taking a pragmatic approach to optimise for ROI and planning a clear path for scale.
- In just 10 weeks Airtasker’s Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) – the key revenue metric – reached an all-time high of 76% in the UK. Task posting increased by over 60% and platform sign-ups tripled. The volume of activity in the UK made it possible for us to gain valuable insights into audience behaviour and the interplay between supply and demand, which in turn opened doors to successfully scale in the Australian market and launch into the US.
For the full story, read on…
THE FULL STORYWhile many mainstream businesses have found it hard to grow during COVID, Airtasker listed on the ASX in May 2021 and also decided to renew its focus on international expansion.
Airtasker connects people who need to get stuff done with people looking to earn money. The digital platform has to simultaneously acquire task ‘Posters’ (demand) and make sure there are enough ‘Taskers’ to satisfy their needs (supply).
The Airtasker team came to us with the desire to experiment with methods to deliberately drive growth on its platform, and leverage these learnings to scale into future markets.
THE CHALLENGEAirtasker’s business model is complex, and its growth goals ambitious.
To be self-sustaining and profitable as a two-sided marketplace, Airtasker needs to acquire and retain a balanced volume of both Posters and Taskers, which is a challenge in itself. In addition, after listing on the ASX, Airtasker had aggressive goals for global expansion and a desire to prove the brand and business in other markets. To achieve growth they needed to overcome a few critical challenges.
01 .
A small marketing team, limited resources and previous poor performance was not the ideal starting point.
The young Australian-based company and its marketing team were still focused on the primary local market. In addition there was a lack of paid media experience and previous paid advertising efforts had failed to deliver the desired increase in GMV.
Stretching resources to cover the UK would create challenges for the Australian team, and recruiting was difficult in the covid environment.
02 .
Airtasker desperately needed answers to three questions before it could confidently roll into new markets.
- Demand or Supply? To create a thriving marketplace experience for users, Airtasker needed to create and connect both demand with supply while also establishing which user types would drive the greatest marketplace impact.
- Mainstream or Niche? Moreover, the Airtasker model is infinite in terms of the breadth of services and tasks that could be fulfilled. Should Airtasker try to break into areas where existing competitors already dominated, or focus on niche services?
- Revenue or Uptake? A leading indicator of the marketplace's success is the uptake or volume of active users (Posters and Taskers) who were attracted to the platform via tasks. However, it’s not that simple — the frequency and price value of different tasks affect a service category’s impact on revenue. Airtasker needed to understand when it was better to have a low volume of high value tasks or a high volume of low value tasks.
Not only did this need to be done well, it needed to be done fast.
We had the final 2 months of the 2020/21 Financial Year to convince stakeholders to continue investing in the UK, and to support expansion into other future markets. This required a proven business case, key insights, and a scalable growth template.
THE APPROACHA multidisciplinary project team was created to work with Airtasker and provide instant scale and experience.
The formulation of a highly skilled project team immediately filled the knowledge and skills gap across Paid Social, Paid Search, Strategy and Project Management.
In the UK we applied our Digital Growth Framework to Airtasker’s complex business model, and developed, experimented with, and optimised digital marketing activities to drive ROI.
We focused heavily on Paid Media acquisition to identify and validate profit centres.
For the UK market we developed a three point marketing strategy, that was focused on creating demand by recruiting Posters:
- Manual Search Was used to optimise the performance and profitability from key service categories, scaling within acquisition targets.
- Automated Search Tools Were then deployed to discover new services of focus.
- Social Was used to support and improve marketplace engagement through nurturing and testing of audience specific nuances in messaging and creative.
Through regular weekly sprints we were able to:
- Effectively hypothesise, test, learn, optimise and document the growth journey in the UK;
- Test assumptions about the various factors impacting revenue;
- Quickly learn what was driving growth on each channel;
- Understand the variables which impacted revenue in a marketplace environment.
THE impactSetting a UK growth record and establishing a foundation for Australian and US growth in just 10 weeks.
Airtasker gave us their biggest growth challenge and the Webprofits team helped the business to successfully navigate its expansion into new markets during the unpredictable and unprecedented COVID pandemic, setting a UK growth record and establishing a foundation for Australian and US growth in just 10 weeks.
The UK campaign results surpassed all previous paid media activities.
In just 10 weeks Airtasker’s Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) – the key revenue metric – reached an all time high of 76% in the UK. Task posting increased by over 60% and platform sign-ups tripled.
The volume of activity in the UK made it possible for Airtasker to gain valuable insights into audience behaviour and the interplay between supply and demand, which in turn opened doors to scale into the Australian and US markets.
In Australia, by implementing the same growth framework saw new user sign-ups increase by 387%.
We started working on the Australian market just as the country went into lockdown. Under tough circumstances we fine-tuned campaigns to discover new ‘virgin’ task categories that allowed Airtasker to maintain marketplace activity.
As restrictions eased we implemented and fine tuned a ‘Rejuvenation’ campaign on paid media that successfully retargeted inactive users to get as many Taskers back onto the platform.
The Rejuvenation Campaign saw new user sign-ups increase by 387% and conversions increased by 293% at a cost per acquisition (CPA) 77% lower than the target.
We knew launching into the highly competitive US market with the same approach would be too expensive. So…
… factoring in market differences, we ran top of funnel brand messaging campaigns to test and learn, to validate USPs and help Airtasker decide where to play and who their brand would resonate with most successfully. We then overlaid these learnings with what we had just validated in the UK.
Launching simultaneously in three key cities (Kansas, Miami and Atlanta), through our structured experimental framework, we rapidly and cost-effectively identified the most successful USPs against specific age groups and locations. This set the foundations for Airtasker to be successful in this new market.
