5 marketing Strategies from Elon Musk

I learned 5 marketing lessons from Elon Musk, and I’m about to share them with you.

One can easily vouch for his prowess as a business tycoon.

He is the closest we can ever get to ‘Tony Stark’ in real life.

From being highly involved with SpaceX, Starlink, and Tesla, an electric vehicle manufacturing company,

Elon Musk has helped broaden our horizons.

Over recent years, Elon Musk & Tesla have put tremendous pressure on carmakers that have been established for decades.

They are changing the way we buy & drive cars every day.

One of the most impressive elements in this transformation is that Tesla is not spending its money on advertising like the other car manufacturers.

Check this out.

See how other companies are spending millions on Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter?

But why?

We’ll get back to this in a minute.

I’m truly amazed on how this fairly recent car company has carved a solid spot in car buyers’ minds with amazing products.

Although Tesla is suffering from issues just like everyone else, they have delivered to date over 300,000 vehicles to consumers with under 500 sales points.

What I love about Elon Musk is this: He’s not keeping secrets about how they are doing things.

He’s actively sharing where the company is headed and why.

This has to resonate in customers’ minds and translate into positive word of mouth.

Word of mouth

Speaking of which, this is the first marketing strategy you can steal from Elon Musk & Tesla.

Elon Musk has repeated on numerous occasions that word of mouth is the most powerful form of advertising.

Plus, it’s free! But here’s the catch. Your customers have to LOVE the product. If they only like it, you will most likely not get that free press.

Tesla is purposeful in building products people LOVE.

Most importantly, he’s giving people reasons to talk about the vehicles on their own.

Remember the time they launched a Tesla Roadster into orbit?

Elon Musk has a track record of successful launch campaigns.

I’ll talk about how they run these in a minute.

Elon Musk is Tesla’s Attractive Character.

While most car makers are banking on brand awareness, Musk is pulling people to him instead.

Want proof? Elon Musk has nearly 6 times as many Twitter followers as Tesla.

Sure he doesn’t only lead Tesla but can you imagine for a minute how much feedback he can get on a feature he’s thinking about?

His imperfect character helps people around the world relate to him even though he’s a multi-billionaire.

One of the reasons for this is his deep understanding of the meme culture, which has brought a considerable number of millennials into his ranks.

A very important demographic in terms of buying power for the next 30 years.

Overall, being relatable adds a human touch, something the carmakers and even car dealerships desperately need.

High Perceived Value

Elon Musk and his various companies have always concentrated all efforts on building a better products.

They are actively building High Perceived Value products.

When you follow Elon and look at what he’s doing when announcing new features on social media or at events.

He gets people excited. He listens to what people want and they work hard to make it happen.

Starlink is bringing high-speed internet to parts of the world that were still disconnected from the web even today.

The boring company will reduce travel time between major cities.

Tesla for example is helping people buy cars online. They’ll even share their autopilot open source code in hopes to improve the industry’s standards for autonomous driving safety.

Musk understands something that Steve Jobs answered a tough question at the 1997 Worldwide Developer Conference about customer experience.

Jobs said “You got to start with the customer experience and work backward to the technology”

Related video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeqPrUmVz-o

This is something Elon Musk has done brilliantly with Tesla over the years, identifying customer frustrations with the current vehicles and dealership ecosystem.

Elon has been able to create high perceived value with Tesla products.

Want proof, try to get negotiate for a Tesla and get a “deal”.

You can’t.

There’s never a discount at Tesla, no special offers on financing or cash rebates, and they’ve been pretty much sold out for years.

Not bad for a business that’s been called “not a real car company” on many occasions.

Failures

Elon Musk has been a public figure for a long time.

His intriguing character seems to always surprise us, with new ideas and new products

Since the 2000s, Elon has been open and transparent with his failures.

From PayPal being voted “Worst Business Concept of the Year” in 1999 to failed launch and landing attempts at SpaceX, breaking the mold has its risks.

Remember the Cybertruck Armored Glass fail back in November 2019 is a good example of this.

Let’s watch it again:

The way he handled it with humor was the way to go.

If you’re like me you’ll be left wondering: was this planned? Because it was by far the most talked about and shared story on social media for the following week.

I strongly believe it was an “engineered failure”

Every news outlet had some kind of story on it.

We’ll probably never know but whether it was accidental or intentional, it’s been a great marketing stunt by Elon Musk at Tesla that would have cost tens of millions of dollars for the same amount of exposure.

And when you think about it, even if the bulletproof glass “fails”. It’s not a big deal because most of us don’t need that thing in the first place, hopefully.

Launch campaigns

Every recent Elon Musk’s companies have been launching products successfully, and it’s not because of luck. Everything is perfectly planned.

Elon Musk has simply mastered a key marketing technique: Launch campaigns.

Where most businesses run advertising campaigns, a real launch campaign is about the build-up.

It’s about dropping teasers MONTHS even years before actually launching the product.

Think about how movies are sold before they hit the theatres or popular video games.

You’ll see trailers at least 1 year before you can watch it.

Building suspense before launching a new product of yours could take your own business to new heights!