5 Marketing Lessons Business Owners Can Learn from Elon Musk

Undeniably, our generation has been shaped by entrepreneurs like Elon Musk. There is a lot to learn from him for every entrepreneur. And that’s why in this blog post, we will be sharing with you 5 powerful marketing lessons you can learn from him to grow your business.

There is hardly any business owner on earth who won’t want to learn from not just the richest man in the world, but the most innovative entrepreneur of our time.

The marketing lessons you are going to learn from Elon Musk from this post will change the way you think about your business. His life alone is a marketing masterclass.

So, without much ado, here are 5 powerful marketing lessons business owners can learn from Elon Musk and take their business to another level.

 

1. Build for Transformation, Not for the Money

For most entrepreneurs, money is the only motivator. Their focus is on the profit margin. This is not so for Elon Musk. Elon Musk focuses on building products that solve problems for humanity and this makes it easy to market his products.

Check out all the companies he has founded. They are all into creating products that are likely to most affect the future of humanity.

His products market themselves. Look at how Tesla came into the market and got everyone’s attention. With just a little PR, everyone wants to own a Tesla car.

If you find it difficult to market your product or service to your target audience, it means the value of your product to your target audience is small compared to the price you are asking for in exchange.

This technique starts with your mission statement. What is your mission statement? When your mission statement is about your target audience and not about the company’s achievement, then this mindset will control the positioning of your product in the marketplace.

Here is PayPal’s mission statement, “Our mission is to democratize financial services to ensure that everyone, regardless of background or economic standing, has access to affordable, convenient, and secure products and services to take control of their financial lives”.

When your mission statement is strong towards your people, you won’t need to market your product too much before they will buy. Your customers will see what is in for them in your product and will run towards doing business with your brand.

The key to successful marketing is creating a product that resonates with your customer’s desires. Check your product and see if there’s room for improvement and innovation.

2. Building Hype Before Launching

This is one marketing tactic that every business owner should learn and adopt for their business. Most entrepreneurs are doing it and are getting good results with it. Elon Musk is fun of doing this with Twitter.

Elon Musk builds suspense before he launches a new product. The trend he creates on Twitter alone about a new launch gets people paying attention to his posts to get updates.

Do you build suspense about a new launch? You don’t need to be as big as Elon to do this. Irrespective of your social media audience, you should adopt this marketing strategy for your business.

And it mustn’t be Twitter or social media in general. It can be billboards, newspapers, television, and even radio.

You should let your target audience know that there is a new product coming and what it can do for them. Get the market talking about your new product. Let the press carry the story. Let the launch date be on the lips of your target audience. This will get them ready for the product.

Even Apple does it when they want to launch a new iPhone. This might be what is missing in your business!

3. Feedback

Bill Gate once said in a Ted Talk that feedback is how you grow. This also applies to business. Feedback from your customers is how you grow a successful business.

There was a time Musk sent out a Tweet asking fans what Tesla could do to better their lives. This got people sharing their experience with the electric car and Musk was reading to take observations.

Someone responded to the tweet saying that people often leave their cars at Supercharger stations even when fully charged to full capacity. Elon took note of that responses and thanked everyone for their feedback.

The very next day, Tesla introduced an idle fee to discourage Supercharger hogs. So, for every additional minute a car remains connected to the Supercharger, the owner gets charged.

This little development brought an increase in charging bay efficiency.

So, are you taking feedback from your customers? Have you bothered to give your customers an opportunity to air their views about your product?

Also, it is one thing to ask for feedback, it is another thing to listen to your customers and implement a change. Customer service is a good marketing strategy.

4. Community Building

Every entrepreneur should focus on community building. This is how you create free publicity for your brand during a new launch. Elon Musk has over 100 million followers on Twitter. He appears in media interviews not because he has to but because that is how he gets people to like him as a person and follow him on Twitter.

Each of his products has an email list they use in communicating with its subscribers. Are you building a community around your brand? How big is your email list if you have one?

5. Zero Marketing Strategy

Do you know that Tesla doesn’t spend money on ads, yet the demand for its electric cars is already high? Elon believes in $0 marketing. He will prefer to use the money meant for advertisements to create a fantastic product because great a product market itself.

Every successful business starts with a good product. Ultimately, a good product will stand the test of time and outsell inferior products (even with good marketing).

So, as an entrepreneur, you should emulate this from Elon Musk with what he is doing with Tesla. Make your product so great that it markets itself. That’s how you build a successful business.

Conclusion

A true entrepreneur, Elon Musk is one of a kind. Despite the odds, he has created thriving businesses where many people said it was impossible. Take these marketing lessons to heart and implement them in your business.

What else has Elon Musk taught you about marketing? If you follow him, feel free to leave a comment!