The Curious Case of Dollar Car Rental and the Debit Card
About 6 months ago, Dollar Car Rental announced what might be the most customer friendly debit card policy in the travel industry. It did so with a great amount of fanfare. Dollar enlisted the help of a key partner, Dave Ramsey, famous for his books and radio show which offer people helpful strategies to stay out of debt. The topic of rental car companies restrictive debit card policies had come up on the Dave Ramsey Show many times before making him a very willing partner.
Today, Dollar continues to advertise on social media as much if not more than most car rental companies and it's all about the debit card. The social media mastheads include the debit card policy and the homepage of dollar.com is completely focused on the new policy and even more specifically, the Dave Ramsey endorsement. Dollar has gone so far as to make Dave Ramsey appear to be more important than the Dollar brand on it's own website.
While it's important to highlight big partnerships, Dollar is missing a huge opportunity. The debit card policy is not mentioned above the fold on its own website. Debit card information is relegated to a banner ad further down the screen. Do potential Dollar Car Rental customers actually know who Dave Ramsey is? That's a good question because if they don't, his endorsement is not very valuable and now Dollar has wasted its primary opportunity to hook a new customer within the first few seconds of their website visit.
Maybe the truth is that anyone who ends up on Dollar.com doesn't actually need convincing. Maybe they understand the brand already and won't pay attention to the messaging anyway. They just want a cheap price.
This leads to a discussion about new customer discovery via search engines, social media, and partner links.
The new debit card policy should be the thing that brings potential customers to Dollar.com as this is a major pain point for many travelers. Let's take a look at the Dave Ramsey side of the partnership. His website should promote Dollar and the new debit card policy and drive his readers over to Dollar.com, right? Unfortunately, this relationship might be a bit more one-sided than Dollar was hoping for. Dollar gets a few name checks on the Dave Ramsey debit card page, but the Dollar logo isn't even included at all. There is only a single hyperlink from the Dave Ramsey website and it is buried in the middle of the content. The link doesn't go the standard Dollar.com website. It actually goes to a page with Dave Ramsey's photo on it that comes across far more like a marketing campaign than an information page. On top of this, the Google search for "car rental debit card" only returns the Dave Ramsey Debit Card page on the third page of results.
Just to recap, Dollar.com has created custom pages for this relationship and essentially turned over its entire homepage to Dave Ramsey, but their logo doesn't even appear on the DaveRamsey.com website. Something seems out of balance there.
Let's go back to that same Google search for "car rental debit card." For any traveler without a credit card, this is likely the search that is going to be performed. With all the promotion and focus on debit cards, this should be where Dollar's benefit shines through. Unfortunately, not. Dollar is actually nowhere to be found in the Google results linked above. As noted, Dave Ramsey's content only comes up on page 3. When was the last time you even looked at page 2 of a Google search?
The really interesting thing about the Google search results is that Thrifty, Dollar's sister brand, appears fifth overall without putting in any particular effort. Dollar, which should be gunning for the #1 spot on Google isn't even there. Thrifty, which has no endorsement and a fairly generic informational page is deemed substantially more valuable to searchers by the infamous algorithm. The main difference may be in the SEO details. Thrifty's page is titled, "Rent a Car with a Debit Card." The Dollar page is titled, "How to Rent a Car Without a Credit Card." Framing the content the correct way is critical.
Just a small comment about Dollar's social media presence. Social media is not a place where "tag lines" work very well. Value propositions rule. "We never forget whose dollar it is" is not going to win any new customers. Instead, having a profile bio that reads, "The easiest place to rent a car with a debit card" would be far more effective to customers AND to the search engines.
While Dollar is definitely trying to set itself apart from the competition by isolating a single value proposition, allowing debit cards, their implementation strategy seems to focus too much on their partnership and not on the customer experience needed for it to be effective. From a purely online discovery perspective (radio show advertising excluded), they are giving way more than they are getting. They also need to figure out how to solve their Google search problem because as it stands, they don't exist when it comes to debit cards. Enterprise, Alamo, and Budget are standing on the podium there.