We don't sell cars, but helping customers solve digital problems is our passion, calling, and expertise. Do you think Tesla is in the electric car business? Yes, Tesla makes electric cars, but they are a tech company. Tesla creates technology to win customers' hearts and minds. When everyone is in the tech business your company's most crucial goal is to create products, content, and websites capable of winning customers' hearts, minds, and loyalty. Here are five marketing tips you should steal from Tesla:
What business are you? Answering that question may be more complicated than you realize. You may be in a different industry than you realize. We frequently help customers explore this question because technology changes everything. For example, Tesla creates electric cars, solar roofs, and satellite TV to solve digital problems to win customers' hearts, minds, and loyalty. We are all tech companies now. How are you using technology to win customers' hearts, minds, and commitment?
It's hard to beat Tesla's saving the planet cause, but cause marketing is a marketing tip most companies should steal. Today's technically sophisticated customers want to join, collaborate with, and contribute to their favorite brands, websites, products, and companies. Here's how McKinsey describes your customers' journey.
The decision-making process is now a circular journey with four phases: initial consideration; active evaluation, researching potential purchases; closure, when consumers buy brands; and post-purchase, when consumers experience them.
Brands, websites, products, and companies earn loyalty when customers feel empathy and approval for a company like Tesla. And there is the marketing rub Tesla navigates brilliantly. Tesla creates feelings like they are "like me" while inspiring customers to join the save the planet movement. Movements are powerful things your customers want to join.
Today's marketing must be humble enough to promote "like me" identification and, at the same time, inspire customers to search for and aspire to become their best selves, to be better. Ever wonder why some products, books, and people have hundreds of reviews or millions of followers? What new information can be shared by the four hundred and first review?
The four hundred and first reviewer wants to join the tribe, to join the brand. This loyalty psychology, the desire to join, applies to negative or positive reviews. The last sentence may sound strange, but there are two reasons why consumer loyalty psychology is the same – Google and social media.
Google organic search, what shows up when you type a search that is not an ad, is strange. Pages with "current" content tend to outrank static older pages. Since a new negative review is "current," adding one to a page may help the page while "hurting" the product. Hurting is in quotes because we buy things like many of you after reading negative reviews.
Social media means customers can become contributors, yet contributors are rare. Typically, only 1% of your customers will contribute content such as reviews, comments, or submit forms. Nine percent will share your content mainly when contributed by someone "like them" (such as other reviewers). Read a great post by Susan Kuchinskas about the 1-9-90 Rule (linked in resources at the bottom).
When everyone is a tech company, the brand, product, website or company with the best data wins. Imagine the information you share daily via your smartphone. Location, searches, and website visits are the tip of any smartphone's data-collection iceberg. Now imagine what Tesla learns about you. They know where you live, work, eat, work out, shop, and attend church.
Tesla's demographics (your age, income, where you live), psychographics (things you like to do), and their car's usage data create a powerful marketing trifecta. As a result, we see future partnerships with insurance companies, banks, grocery stores, and other companies.
Bet many of the biggest brands are already using Tesla's Big Data about you, me, and everyone we know. Tesla's marketing lesson is simple but hard to execute – the essential things in any Tesla are the people, and the most valuable thing we (Tesla) own is their data. Data is Tesla's most important product. If data isn't your most important product, we can help.
We build responsive websites. Responsive sites seamlessly adapt to different screens. Responsive web design is crucial when more than half the web’s traffic uses phones. Mobile-first is a higher-level commitment to creating content for mobile consumers. And then there’s Tesla.
Tesla’s cost almost a hundred grand, AND we didn’t have to look hard to find bad reviews. Tesla, like Apple, appeals to its customers’ better angels to borrow from Lincoln’s first inaugural.
Today's marketing must be humble enough to promote "like me" identification and, at the same time, inspire customers to search for and aspire to become their best selves, to be better.
Creating a smartphone-like driving experience is how Tesla creates a tribe of fiercely loyal customers. Tesla's big screen, user interface, and intelligent features make driving a car similar to using your smartphone. In addition, Tesla's in-car technology crushes anything from Detroit (for the moment), so customers who want the most remarkable technology and have a hundred grand buy Teslas.
Tesla is riding a more significant wave – the app-ification of our lives. Apple's "There's an App for That" slogan is prescient and increasingly accurate. So how can your business develop apps to win your customer's hearts, minds, and loyalty? As you may have guessed, WE have an app for that.
If Tesla can use artificial intelligence (AI) to self-drive a car then there are ways you can adopt AI in whatever you’re doing. The AI wave is here and your company, brand, website, and content need to surf. And finding easy ways to add AI’s power isn’t hard. Understanding how, why, and when to use AI is harder. While we don’t yet have a “how to add AI to your website” app, we’ve helped customers profitably add AI to win customer hearts, minds, and loyalty.