Subscribe
Login
Ground Transport

Car-Sharing Startups BlaBlaCar and Turo Use NonTraditional Strategies to Boost Usage

Sean O'Neill photo
Sean O'Neill
BlaBlaCar

Photo Credit: Some Londoners try Blablacar, the carpooling service. The French have taken to the concept en masse, with one out of five adults being registered members. Blablacar

Skift Take

Car-sharing marketplaces are finding that partnerships with automotive leasing companies and insurers may be a more cost-effective way to get the word out about their services than using traditional digital marketing efforts.

BlaBlaCar and Turo, long-distance carpooling platforms based in Paris and San Francisco,  respectively, each face a problem in boosting consumer usage. Distribution deals, such as being listed on aggregators or online travel agencies in exchange for paying a commission, and search engine marketing, which requires buying ads that may not result in transactions, are both expensive ways to generate demand. The two well-funded companies have instead chosen alternative routes to build consumer usage of their marketplaces. When Turo expanded last year into the French Canadian region, it cut a deal with Intact Financial, one of the largest Canadian insurers. Intact owns Belair Direct, the biggest direct-to-consumer insurer in the country. Policyhold

Get unlimited access with Skift Pro.

Subscribe now for complete access to Skift.com's trusted coverage of the travel industry.

Apple Pay, Google Pay, Paypal, VISA, Mastercard, Discover, American Express

Already a subscriber? Login