Avis Budget Group

Avis Budget Group (ABG) has seen strong success pairing its enterprise-level, car rental booking solutions with some of the largest travel suppliers in the world. In an effort to continue to expand revenues, ABG developed a near stand-alone, self-service booking solution targeting smaller hospitality suppliers including bed-and- breakfast owners, independent hotels, and relevant associations open to integrating the car rental solution into their existing site or app. The smaller partners would receive a share of the commission on any rental car booked and tracked back to the partner.

Avis Budget Group engaged the MMGY Global social team to develop and execute a business-to-business lead generation program designed to drive high-level awareness of the program as well as nurture key decision-makers through a path to conversion for the self-service platform. One of the key tensions was that hyper-focused target audience wears a lot of hats – overseeing nearly all aspects of property management. They are inundated with messaging from vendors telling them how they can grow or supplement their business.

MMGY Global social teams developed a social-first campaign centered around a primary channel strategy of using paid social through LinkedIn to drive the initial sell-in engagement and then Facebook to pull through prospects as sales teams worked through final conversion. The program targeted global audiences primarily across the U.S. and Europe. The campaign creative was developed uniquely by audience types focusing on independent hoteliers and bed-and-breakfast owners. Key decision-makers were engaged through short-form videos as well as lower-funnel social tactics to encourage prospects to sign up to learn more about the program.

The three-month campaign far exceeded expectations in key metrics including total quality lead volume. This was the first time Avis Budget Group had moved this program out of beta and into a paid social marketing campaign. In addition, all results were generate despite the lack of established lead-conversion benchmarks.