Musk Explained: The Musk approach to marketing
By: Vrashank Saini
Tags: Marketing, Marketing Strategies, Insellers, Digital Marketing, Elon Musk

When I mention Elon Musk, what comes to your mind? Tesla or SpaceX or PayPal, perhaps, or some other apparently insane idea he has suggested. What’s odd is that up until the moment he didn’t suggest them, these proposals sound insane. Why does it seem like if he’s able to throw his weight behind these proposals, it’s easy for the entire world to follow suit, including investors? Although Elon’s brilliance has been addressed more than enough, his extreme concentration and devotion to his job and a madman as a constant pursuit of his goals that he is willing to gamble all he has, his marketing genius is generally left out.

Elon is a master at picking up and using the usual B-school marketing structures in his own style. Each of his organizations has tried to take on a ground-breaking & untested strategy. It’s important to consider what the consumer needs, what your product is, and how do you link the two with such innovative ideas?

Targeting & Placement, Segmentation:

It wasn’t Tesla who first introduced electric cars. They’ve been on the market for quite a while now. But the picture we had of fully electric cars before Tesla was a box-shaped, low-power, limited-usability vehicle with an unimpressive overall design. And then there were the hybrids that relied more on their usual features to give the “green option” to consumers as an add-on. With Tesla, all this shifted.

The highest quality of architecture, efficiency and comfort is reflected by Tesla’s vehicles. Tesla, using technology, created cars that could not only compete with the best performers on the market, but also outperform them. The positioning was not to own an environmentally friendly vehicle, but to engage in quality & performance expectations that technology would achieve in the next generation while at the same time minimizing your carbon footprint. This moved the head of the electric mobility industry and put Tesla on par with top car manufacturers such as Volkswagen, Toyota, Mercedes, etc.

This was also vital to the accomplishment of another end. As a young business with limited resources and production capacity, Tesla segmented the market and concentrated first on manufacturing high-end models aimed at high-paying consumers. This not only helped it to raise capital and develop its reputation, but also enabled it to take advantage of its capacity limitations. This was followed by the introduction of many “people’s car” models to join the broad-based mid-range segment by building on the image of the brand and raising capital through their original positioning.

To find the best product and the right marketing plan for it, it is also important to consider what consumers are going to purchase, their desires, their wants. In order to not only initiate but also help the clients in the purchase process, it is equally necessary to convey the value proposition. An efficient branding strategy can also help you educate consumers to support the development of an ongoing product pipeline. Elon, again in his own unique style, has mastered this.

Elon Musk: CEO of The Celebrity

He changed history when Steve Jobs came out in front of a crowd of cheering fans on January 9, 2007. It was not only the introduction of the very first iPhone, but it also propelled the world into a new marketing age. Usually, corporations have relied on costly commercials put at the most eye-catching slots to introduce and market their goods. Jobs have altered that. You take an unconventional & enthusiastic CEO, a best-in-class product and create a ravishing base of fans and you have the formula for success. Marketers have attempted to implement this over time, but ironically the most popular is in an industry that relies heavily on enormous ad placements on TV, posters, etc. and other conventional marketing techniques for its consumer outreach initiatives to date.

Elon not only picked up the Jobs marketing style beautifully, but applied his own elements to it. Perhaps as strangely awaited as Work are his product launches. He is one of Twitter’s most followed CEOs (~40M followers) and has been vigorously engaged in keeping his followers up to date. Musk has always attempted to keep a direct channel with his fans, from freely debating new ideas to keeping his followers updated on anything they do at Tesla / SpaceX. He is a specialist in product marketing using social media, sourcing new ideas and using them for direct consumer input. The culture of authenticity and honesty that Musk tried to maintain at Tesla has contributed to the creation of a strong reputation for the company’s quality and confidence.

Nothing short of celebrity status loves Musk. He is extremely open to the media, regularly appearing on TV, unlike many of his contemporaries. As Apple has shown well over the years, all his public appearances and his media engagements have portrayed him as a concentrated, hard-working and enthusiastic entrepreneur who has helped create a ravishing fan base for his products that is crucial to selling a top-quality product at a premium price.

Re-define the mechanism for sales

It has always been a very complicated and frustrating procedure to buy a new vehicle. You go with a chosen model or budget in mind to the dealership and approach a salesman with it. But once he begins with the multitude of alternatives you need as well as add-on functions, you’re beginning to feel a little lost. You can already sense it going out of your budget, but you are now hooked on testing it out once and selecting a model for a test drive. You come back and begin to negotiate the price. After a lot of trouble, you either understand that it’s beyond your budget to put you right where you started, or you end up being over-sold. For the auto industry, this whole phase has become a big impediment.

The whole mechanism is circumvented by what Tesla seems to have done. Stop bringing confusing goods in front of your consumers. Keep them aware of your product line thoroughly. The key is to make the clients as happy as possible with the purchase process. This implies moving the control locus to the clients. Tesla avoids opening retail stores (unless needed to do so by law) and instead uses a clear web interface to generate its sales where consumers can move at their own speed through the process. This coupled with a successful launch and marketing of the product. Tesla avoids opening retail stores (unless needed to do so by law) and instead uses a clear web interface to generate its sales where consumers can move at their own speed through the process. This, combined with a powerful product launch and marketing strategy, allows consumers to conduct the entire process easily while allowing Tesla to maximize their income by removing the middleman.

Higher Proposition

One of the most effective advertising tactics has been to align oneself with a greater cause. Every sector has tactfully employed this tactic to attract followers, be it politics, consumer goods or even religion. As an electromobility company, Tesla offers a green and sustainable solution that leverages the best in class technology for the future. Musk also opened the company’s patents to speed up the adoption of EV by those in the field. All of this creates a picture of a business with the main goal of building a better future for the world, and also offers a strong positive press for it. What Musk has beautifully introduced is that, in a world where people are constantly searching for a better, healthier world, big ideas and dreams sell perfectly.

Marketing boardrooms are now busy with debates about how a $0 advertising budget corporation will go head-to-head with its rivals pumping billions of dollars on TV advertisements, billboards, digital banners and more. By changing the entire approach to product releases and consumer outreach campaigns using new marketing instruments and strategies, they have achieved this. A crash course on modern marketing will be offered to an entrepreneur by simply observing Musk’s activities. He may just be our generation’s greatest marketer. Using his examples, many entrepreneurs will help revolutionize their entire sales process and create a large client base (or as synonymical for Tesla, followers).