We have all heard about Tesla’s tech savvy cars and its latest technology products killing it in the market. With its cutting edge electronic cars to its space exploration adventures, Tesla is on to become to next biggest company ready to rule to AI and technology world. Headed by Elon Musk, the CEO and pretty much the brain of the organisation, he with his innovative and out of the park strategies have brought all of the world’s attention to him. Is that just aggressive PR or has there been real work gone behind such a big and loyal fan base of the founder and his venture Tesla?
Every company, especially in today’s world is surrounded with cut throat competition. To stay put in the marketplace, there has to be more than just making good products. And hence companies usually resort to their main tool; marketing. Marketing has become a crucial tool today because of its ability to make or break a company. No matter how amazing the actual product or the service is, without appropriate marketing strategies, visibility and talk around their products tends to fade and companies end up losing out on huge customer bases to their competitors. Today’s world is a world of internet and passive consumers. To get every second of the attention of a consumer, flashy and over the top marketing techniques are use to constantly nudge the customer to buy the product. Of course, certain brands have overtime developed a brand value and some sort of goodwill with the efficiency of their services but never the less, marketing stands very important for a firm to grow itself and gain a sustainable market share. Tesla has very innovatively built its brand and have marketed themselves in a sustainable way creating a huge impact in future technologies and innovation. The 3 point strategy of Tesla to market itself has been extremely successful and it has carved its own space in the ever crowded market of automobiles.
1. Product prodigy
The first element of marketing is the uniqueness in itself. Tesla is the only company that prominently works to build electric and fuel substitutable automobiles, almost the first in the industry. This in itself helps in gaining the first set of customers, who truly believe in the ability of the company and will stick around for a really long time. Also by focussing on tapping into the status driven mindset of society, they aggressively focus on creating a brand that is long lasting and ultimately unbeatable in the field.
Without spending a lot on aggressive and mob marketing, Tesla focuses on catering to these very people by promoting their product as one of its kind. Such a smart approach saves them the initial cost on creating a hype for the product because its self-fulfilling; uniqueness becomes their selling point. This has been only possible with its unequivocal focus on research and technology. Every product of theirs is built from scratch; even the batteries are not outsourced. This in itself serves the purpose of creating the required hype and discourse around its impressive car designs and pinnacle engineering efforts.
2. Personal Brand
It is true that the face of a brand disproportionately attracts consumers and creates the chatter. A brand is as good as the person who developed it. And who better than Elon Musk can represent this fact? Musk has aced the game of personal branding and creating goodwill for his venture Tesla. The more the confidence you have in the person, the more you trust his creation. In his own words, “Your personal brand, when built, will be bringing dividends in the future, even if you stop developing it. Your reputation as a good specialist will not vanish.”
Every successful entrepreneur is a vivid storyteller and his/her key strength is selling stories to consumers. Elon Musk is a brilliant storyteller. As the founder and CEO of Tesla, Musk personally makes twitter announcements about the developments at his company, broadcasts its principles, talks about how his company is striving to create impactful change in the lives of people and makes an honest attempt to connect with every true believer of the company and the brand. This affects not only buyers, but also investors, strengthening their faith in the company and increasing its value. His vision about the future, his plans about Teslas relevance in that future resonates with a lot of people and hence is a marketing brownie point earned by Tesla, rightfully so.
3. Marketing a story- Tapping on the emotional quotient of people
By choosing a social problem as indelible as Climate Change, Tesla has successfully tapped into the emotional quotient of people who wish to contribute their bit to resolve the crisis. The very rich and affluent, not just believe that using an electric car from as high tech a brand as Tesla improves their status in society but also help them in doing their part to prevent global warming. The business model of Tesla initially caters to these exact affluent people who have the financial resources to invest in the ever expensive Model S Plaid will give the company the means to invest in technology to make affordable electric cars for the middle class. This idea of asking people to support the less affluent through buying their cars creates room for a sense of philanthropy making people feel good about themselves as well. Moreover, not patenting their technology is a bold but ingenious move that sells the idea to people that it is not just a company falsely advertising to resolve the future energy problems but is actually driven towards that goal and is encouraging others to join this path as well. This not just reflects the sense of clarity and long term vision that Tesla has for itself and the world, but more importantly attracts people and other investors towards the company who become confident and optimistic about its ventures. Without the efforts of constant marketing and facing insecurities with the presence of rivals, the company has managed to build its loyal customer base which is only increasing at an exponential rate.
