Business Plan and Implementation Strategy
5016SSL Digital Business, Marketing and E-Commerce
Abstract
Tesla is an American international company that produces electric cars, residential solar panels and a Lithium-ion battery that purposely used for energy storage. The company is based in Palo Alto California. Tesla was founded in 2003 by T Marc Tarpenning and Martin Eberhard, and the significant contributor was Elon Musk (Carlson, 2015). Social media has developed and become a vital marketing platform for companies. Companies have enhanced their communication through social media platforms an attribution to unlimited number of advantages social media is marketing. With increasing innovation, companies are enhancing their marketing on social media platforms in a bid to increase their market space. With the rising popularity of social media as a developed platform for marketing for companies over the last decade, Tesla is no exception one of them to take advantage of the social media platforms to enhance its marketing effectiveness. Tesla is currently using Facebook, Instagram and Tweeter as the marketing platforms. The following are some of the changes that can be made by Tesla to build these social media platforms responding to customer’s needs, enhancing communication with customers, beef up blogging and install Pin it button.
Table of Contents
Social media platforms used by Tesla in marketing 4
Advantages of using social media in marketing 6
Increases search engine ranking 6
Social media marketing is cost-effective 7
Challenges of Social Media Marketing 7
Maintaining frequency of content uploads 7
Elon Musk may not have time to read all the complains 8
Elon Musk used to post things that negatively affected Tesla’s image, and he is the face of Tesla 9
Introduction
Tesla is an American international company that is specialised in the production of electric cars, residential solar panels and lithium-ion batteries that are used for energy storage. The company is located in Palo Alto, Americain, California. Tesla has more than 30,000 workers globally with 212 stores. Tesla released the first Tesla Roadster in February 2008, and the company production of Roaster increased to 500 cars in 2009. In 2012, Tesla released the Model –S, a fully electric luxury with a high sedan performance than the previous models. Tesla has improved its car manufacturing ability from Roadster to the new car yet to be released Modl Y. Tesla has several times stated their mission of clean start building of driver with a sparkling of evolution.
The company’s aim is to continuously increase innovation towards building the most suitable and efficient models of electric cars (Carlson, 2015). Tesla has segmented its structure of business towards manufacturing electric car and empowered green energy companies. Tesla is currently using Tweeter to post its new products to customers, Instagram where they post new product videos and photos of their product to customers, Facebook and Emails where they get in touch directly with their customer is concerning their products. This report will first introduce the social media platforms, Tesla, in use, the advantages of using these social media platforms, challenges of using these social media platforms and lastly provide recommendations to these challenges.
Social media platforms used by Tesla in marketing
In most cases want Elon Musk will notify his follower’s days before the exact day. The company will post images of their brand on Facebook so that their followers may air their views. The company has vast Facebook fan base close to 25 million. Musk usually takes time to respond to comments and questions on his social media platforms (Lee, Hosanagar and Nair, 2018: 5105-5131). The CEO Musk makes daily updates on his Facebook account about the company’s progress on different products and even tells customers to give their feedback. Through these approaches, most of the fun feel empowered since they have the opportunity to converse with the CEO. The level of communication between the CEO and his followers gives their followers time to get more information about the company and its product thus always support the company endeavours, unlike Toyota which has a total of total 14 million fans creating a disparity in terms of marketing between the two companies (Sajid, 2016).
Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, has more powers in his social media platforms hence have a massive influence on his followers. Musk has 30 million followers on his tweeter handle as at April 2020 while the company has 3.4 million followers unlike the company competitors like (Shafigullina and Palyakin, 2016: 1) which have 10 million followers on Tweeter. When introducing a new product in the market, the company CEO Musk will first alert his follower on his tweeter hand by either posting a video or a photo of the product. The CEO makes updates on Tweeter almost on daily updates to keep the customer up-to-date. Customers can post their comment on the tweeter account, which is letter assemble by the company for scrutiny. Instead of paying an influencer to market Tesla product, Musk, the CEO uses these platforms’ to market his product. This strategy does not necessarily reduce the cost of advertising, but it also increases the of the company brands.
Tesla has frequently used Instagram to post and advertise its products. The company keeps public updated for development to production by posting the phases of production on Instagram. Since Instagram has a room for posting both picture and videos of the new product to their followers. The company has taken this advantage to post any update about manufacturing on social platforms (Sajid, 2016). Tesla has used Instagram to post short videos or photos of its products to its followers, enhancing its communication with its follower. Although other companies use social media platform for advertisement, only Tesla has taken advantage of social media to share the company’s stories with their customers and followers regularly. Tesla transparency has enhanced the humanization of its brands in all the social media platforms. Through Instagram posts and adverts, Tesla has been able to add a visceral element of connection with the community, unlike other companies like BMW that is not active on Instagram giving Tesla some control of the market.
Advantages of using social media in marketing
Social media marketing has many benefits and power in influencing customer purchase. The next section of this report will discuss some of the advantages of using social media as a tool of marketing.
Increases search engine ranking
Posting on social media always increases site traffic as opposed to some of the required significant success. Using social media as a marketing tool can optimize Tesla’s ranking page as well as the business website (Sajid, 2016). Although social media does not increase the search engine level directly, many social media examiners have stated that continuous use of social media for more than one week enhancing search engine ranking. Constant use of social media forms a keyword that helps revolutionize business trafficking, which creates positive result for the business. Every Google user usually looks for information online, and it is difficult to navigate the first page without getting the result they need. These are some of the advantages of social media marketing mechanism that Tesla can enjoy using social media marketing
Social media always provide an avenue for communicating with customers. Social media has been used by businesses to syndicate content and to upsurge business viability. Social media marketing increases the customer’s base; therefore, increases, which intern give the company more avenues in the market (Sajid, 2016). Having people who interact with the company on social media builds the company awareness as well as its reputation in the business.
Social media marketing is cost-effective
Social media creating is always free, thus can be created for communicating with customers at zero cost. This makes it the most convenient method of advertising in the space of marketing (Vinerean et al., 2013: 66) Social media marketing is one of the cheapest way mechanisms of reaching client since it is convenient in many ways.
Challenges of Social Media Marketing
There are several challenges that Tesla should be ready to face in a bid to use social media as a platform for advertisement. The following are some of the challenges.
Maintaining frequency of content uploads
The process of creating substantial content that can spark the audience from a different social platform is always a challenge (Rugova and Prenaj, 2016: 85-97). Only new and capturing advertisement that can get people engaged. This is the biggest challenge that Tesla has to overcome in a bid to market its products. Developing contents that can naturally accomplish daily struggle may be demanding and challenging since most people consider some of these platform nuisances. For instance, a post from Twitter may be very different from one received from Instagram (Shafigullina and Palyakin, 2016: 1).
Only fresh and meaningful contents can spark and gain attention on social media. Tesla should, therefore, look into these challenges and come up with a mechanism of advertisement that can stir its followers on the social media platform in order to remain relevant in the market. However, discovering how to reach, engage, encourage and genuinely interact with the audience is a big challenge when the company wants to interact with followers on social media platforms (Kuofie, Gholston and Hakim, 2015: 65). Either it is essential for the company to know its audience through the personal level or through demographics; this can be achieved by analysing the response from each platform differently.
It is also important to bring the feedback and comment from the different platform to come up with a cohesive snapshot of who should receive the update and those who should not receive. In many occasion, many assumptions made about the social media audience making its results miss the needed opportunities (Rugova and Prenaj, 2016: 85-97). Tesla should, therefore, be ready to look into these challenges to reduce the impact of miscommunication.
Elon Musk may not have time to read all the complains
Elon Musk, as the Chief Executive Officer, is committed in other areas making it difficult to follow comments made in social media platforms. Social media marketing is demanding and need a good framework of management that should be on par with the customer’s responsibility. However, as the overall manager, Elon Musk may not have enough time to read all the comment made about the company or a product. Failure to read comment or feedback from customers is a big setback to the organization since it may create anxiety amongst customers. Customer is a very vital asset to the organization. The organization should, therefore, look for all the means of keeping customers updated about the products or responds to their complains if necessary to respond to customers, complaints make them feel part of the organization hence keep them glued to the company and its products.
Elon Musk used to post things that negatively affected Tesla’s image, and he is the face of Tesla
Elon Musk tweets have affected Tesla both positively and negatively. Musk himself has admitted that some of his tweets are complete nonsense and some sources have states that some of his tweets are indicators of mental imbalance. Some people have taken the tweets negatively and personal based on his responses denting the image of the company. Elon Musk is both a manager and a celebrity; therefore, his action can either shape the company or destroy it. The outrage cry from Tesla customers has massively affected the company reputation. Some of the Musks tweets do not spare customers who comment negatively about the company and its products. Every year some marketing campaigns usually undermine the good relationship between the company and its customer. Musk has clearly seen this; for instance, his April fool’s day tweet made the company lose in the stock exchange market by 7 percent that really dented the company market structure.
In an effort to reduce, the negative impact of frequency of updates Tesla should encourage potential customers to purchase o top of the current post. Frequency of updates usually keeps the customer up to date about the product the company is about to bring into the market (Serrat, 2017, 39-43). Customer is also able to launch they may have about the organization on these platforms for actions.
Elon Musk may not be able to go through all the tweets or response on social media. Therefore, the company should have a team of data scientist to filter text messages containing useful feedback regarding Tesla’s app or product design and feed this information to Elon Musk. This approach can enhance communication between the company and its customers.
Coordinate Elon Musk’s post with Tesla’s is also necessary to build a single coherent platform of communication between the company and customers so that any negatives outcome from communication on social media will be pre-empted.
Social media marketing has many challenges that every company should be ready to address in order to protect their customers. It is vital for companies to build search engines and specific communication platforms which a bed used by their respective customers to air their views and give their suggestions (Dahl, 2018). A good platform of communication does not necessarily help customers, but it is also building the company image and brand that is essential in development. Overcoming dominant companies in the market requires many strategies like reducing product prices and revenue benefits. Understanding customers also need one major challenge that the company should be ready to look into by proving them with avenues that can help them air their views about the company and its brands. Social media marketing is an excellent platform embraced by many companies due to the increasing level innovations globally.
References
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