Tesla's Marketing Mix 7 P's

AN OVERVIEW OF TESLA’S: PROMOTION

Tesla’ is an outstanding example of how all the elements of their marketing mix are strategically configured to satisfy its customers’ needs and obtain profitability. Their ability to anticipate and bring innovation is like no other. Although Tesla is a young company in the automotive industry, they have disrupted the market and successfully created a unique position in the booming market for electric vehicles and along the way built a strong brand presence by strategically managing their marketing elements.

One of the core elements of their marketing mix, that has brought the company much success is the clever way they use their promotion. Tesla uses both inbound and outbound marketing to promote its products to existing customers as well as potential new customers. Over the years, Tesla has revolutionized its promotion approach, by shifting from traditional marketing and focusing on viral marketing.

In 2018 Tesla pulled off an “out of this world” advertising campaign when they partner up with SpaceX, a company founded by Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO, for the inaugural flight of the Falcon Heavy rocket. A Tesla Roadster car was used as a payload in the rocket launched into space. They even had mannequin named “Starman”, dressed in a spacesuit, occupying the driver's seat of the Tesla car whilst in space. (ThoughtCatalyst, 2019). This performance was worldwide streamed, videos and images of this event were shared by SpaceX and Elon Musk across their social platforms and it went viral. No one had ever launched a car into space! This was a genius way of reaching out to mass audiences, using new media. This campaign and many other marketing stunts that Teslas has pulled have been key to the success of Teslas’s brand.

Tesla has learnt to optimize their inbound marketing strategies over the years to also meet customer’s needs. Their YouTube channel has over 10 years of evergreen content, from useful how-to guides, to launch campaigns, product overview, news and much more. Their channel has far more subscribers than competitors like BMW or Mercedes. (YouTube, 2020) Tesla also uses other social media channels to keep relationships with their customers. They use their Instagram account mainly to showcase photos shared from their customers globally, using the tag @teslamotors, this is a similar concept that companies like Apple use. (Instagram, 2020)

Over the years Tesla’s has mastered the ability to reach a worldwide audience, even though they ‘spend zero on paid social advertising’. (Savitsky, 2019) They have built a mass following and fanbase that competitors like Audi and Ford have yet to reach and this is mostly because of their CEO, Elon Musk. Elon is considered to be one of the ‘most marketable CEO’s’. (ThoughtCatalyst, 2019) His personal Twitter is in the top 50 most-followed Twitter accounts (FriendorFollow, 2020) He uses his platforms to share Tesla’s achievements as well as losses, but mainly to share his vision focused on building a greener sustainable world by reducing our carbon footprint, with the help of products that Tesla is developing. This concept is widely well received by today’s conscious consumer. This combination with Elon’s authentic, yet controversial personality that transpires through social media, gets people excited about the products and makes them feel connected to the company, ultimately becoming brand advocates. ‘Elon’s devotees are called the Musketeers’, and they are dedicated to generating content & publicity through their own social media channels, blogs, websites and forums, to support Tesla to achieve its mission.  (ThoughtCatalyst, 2019) Elon's dedicated fans are the ultimate free marketing generator. This strategy has been by far the most successful at helping Tesla achieve its popularity, demonstrating the effective use of this P, promotion.

In conclusion, I believe Tesla has successfully demonstrated effective strategic management and its Marketing Mix to obtain market success. The young company has efficiently disrupted the market and revolutionised marketing, being a strong example of how innovative companies can succeed in the ever-changing markets.

REFERENCES

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Savitsky, Ari. (2019) “Tesla Spends Zero on Social Media Advertising”, in Brandtotal [online]. Available at: https://www.brandtotal.com/blog/tesla-spends-zero-on-social-media-advertising  [accessed 20 May 2020]

Techcrunch (2019) “Tesla u-turns on store strategy, will keep half of showrooms open… and hike prices by 3%” in Techcrunch [photograph]. Available at https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/11/tesla-showrooms/ [accessed 1 May 2020]

Tesla. (2020) ‘About Tesla’ Tesla [online]. Available at: https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/about [accessed 11 April 2020]

Tesla. (2020) ‘Support’ [online]. Available at: https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/support?redirect=no [accessed 11 April 2020]

Tesla. (2020) ‘Energy’ [online]. Available at: https://www.tesla.com/en_gb/energy [accessed 11 April 2020]

Twitter (2018) SpaceX launch [online] Available at: https://twitter.com/search?q=roadstar%20space&src=typed_query [accessed 8 May 2020]

ThoughtCatalyst. (2019) The Genius of Tesla's $0 Social Marketing Strategy. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF9r9LrOb70 [accessed 20 May 2020]

YouTube. (2020) Tesla’s official YouTube channel. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/user/TeslaMotors [accessed 20 May 2020]