Corporate Communication Strategies: Tesla Motors
Communication strategies used by organizations to promote and publicize their affairs within the society began over 150 years ago. With constant development in the business dynamics for different markets, these strategies have evolved to fit in the competition. Organizational leaders, Chief Executive Officers, and HR professionals can all agree that a comprehensive communication strategy is a crucial propeller to effective and consistent business operations. (Chussil, 2005, p. 27) An example of a company in the present that this research paper will discuss is Tesla Motors (TM) which employs a range of strategies of communication and marketing to target potential and current customers. Tesla Motors deals in the production of electric cars and other solar products with the focus of having clean energy. The objectives of this research are to assess the corporate communication strategies of Tesla Motors, their functions, and effectiveness as much as the stakeholders are concerned, which is a discussion of corporate communication in Tesla Motors.
Tesla Motors is an American company that produces electric and other solar products vehicles focusing on clean energy. The company was founded in July 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning with the company’s name being a tribute to an electrical engineer, Nikola Tesla. Tesla managed to rank as the best-selling plug-in and battery electric passenger car in the world after 11 years in the market with Elon Musk, who was one of the three co-founders being the current Chief Executive Officer. The vehicle sales of Tesla Motors have been steadily rising with a 50% sales increase in 2019 and surpassing the 1 million mark for car production in 2020, shifting the dimension of car production industries to electric cars. (Wikipedia contributors, 2020)
However, over the past years, there have been increasing stakeholder concerns on the effectiveness of Tesla’s leadership in general, especially the ability of Elon Musk, the Chief Executive Officer to lead the electric automaker particularly. There has been a constant failure of the company to meet its announced target of cars to be produced and relatively significant amounts of losses. For example, in 2018 alone, Tesla posted a loss of $710 million. It later turns around in 2019 when the company surpasses sales of over $20 billion and being the highest performing automaker at the beginning of 2020 in terms of sales growth, return, and shareholder value. It has since worked well for Tesla receiving over 200, 000 preorders for their new vehicle (Lessons from Tesla’s Approach to Innovation, 2020), with the company shifting the automobile industry to an electric dimension.
In the year 2020, with the deliveries of the new Model Y, Tesla surpassed Toyota in July, becoming the world’s most automaker by market capitalization. Also, Elon Musk announced to work on a cheaper electric car in 3 years that would sell for $25,000. It shows that the company is doing well in rocketing its sales and also looking to attract more customers.
From Tesla’s official website, there is the utilization of the page to help the company communicate with its customers. By showcasing the company’s inventory of cars and solar products. which allows the company market itself by making its customers aware of new upcoming products, where to find the products and everything else about any product, a customer would desire. It is communicated both by pictures and videos. For example, the Tesla Motors website consists of images of cars and videos of the dates they were unveiled with further explanations on their abilities.
The Tesla website also gives a link to the Tesla forums. There are different customer discussion forums for various Tesla products in the inventory. This feature enables customers and potential buyers to be able to keep in a discussion on multiple products, reviewing them, and helping the company to make these products better. Also, with over 6 million followers on twitter, Tesla Motors has a comprehensive forum to interest potential customers in their products, spreading the message far and wide. With the use of multiple tweets, Tesla gets their followers excited about new announcements, with the first tweet generating a buzz and the following sharing the news. It is also achieved by Tesla posting unique photos and videos on Instagram, where the company has over 7million followers on its reach. For example, the self-driving feature in Tesla or a picture of nicely fitted Tesla solar panels on the roof of a house.
Such posts are found intriguing by most people online that could be potential customers for Tesla products. For example, someone would discover the self-driving Tesla car so fascinating that they decide to buy one for themselves. Besides, Tesla puts the CEO, Elon Musk on the frontline of the company, which tends to work well with customer communication as he is in constant connection with consumers on social media. The idea that Tesla supports an environmental sustainability cause is also a chief driver of its success. Tesla always educates about its brand and ecological sustainability in every post it makes, whether it’s a picture, a repost on Facebook, or a tweet on twitter. These strategies have so far propelled the company sales in an upward direction and enabled partial achievement of its mission.
Although Tesla Motors has achieved so much, improvement can still be made. First, Tesla can review customer comments regularly to take an in-depth look at how customers perceive Tesla products. Another recommendation would be that the company could invest more on social media platforms as it seems to have played a significant role in marketing their products and maintaining communication with customers and target groups.
References
Chussil, M. (2005). With all this intelligence, why don’t we have better strategies? Journal of Business Strategy, 26(1), 26–33. https://doi.org/10.1108/02756660510575023
Lessons from Tesla’s Approach to Innovation. (2020, February 18). Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2020/02/lessons-from-teslas-approach-to-innovation
Wikipedia contributors. (2020, October 11). Tesla, Inc., Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc.