Tesla Marketing Strategy & Marketing Mix (4Ps)

Published in Products category by MBA Skool Team

Marketing Strategy of Tesla analyzes the brand with the marketing mix framework which covers the 4Ps (Product, Price, Place, Promotion). These business strategies, based on Tesla marketing mix, help the brand succeed in the market. Let us start the Tesla Marketing Strategy & Mix to understand its product, pricing, advertising & distribution strategies:

Tesla Product Strategy:

The product strategy and mix in Tesla marketing strategy can be explained as follows:

Tesla is a leader in manufacturing premium eco-friendly & battery powered electric cars. Although the major product manufactured by Tesla is electric sedans, it also produces other sustainable energy technologies like solar panels, Tesla batteries, Tesla Supercharging Stations and much more- Powerwall, Powerpack and Solar Roof in its marketing mix product offering. The Tesla cars come in four models:

Tesla Model S: The first premium sedan launched by Tesla, has self-driving auto pilot feature, over the air software update and a powerful engine with 0 to 60 mph acceleration time of 2.28 seconds. It also has adaptive lighting for better lighting at turns and a bio weapon defense mode which creates pressure inside the cabin to protect occupants

Tesla Model X: Safest sports utility vehicle with 5-star safety ratings and can go 295 miles in one charge. It is pegged to be the quickest SUV as well as it can go from 0-60mph in just 2.9 seconds. It is very spacious with falcon wing doors which provide accessibility to the second and third row of seating.

It also comes with clean air technology to protect the occupants from polluted air and auto-pilot feature.

Tesla Model 3: This car is the most important part of Tesla vision as it makes the electric car technology accessible to the masses. It is a high volume low cost vehicle slated to begin manufacturing in 2017. It will go 225 miles at a single charge along with maintaining highest safety standards. But before these 3 models, Tesla had launched a sports car called Roadster.

Tesla Model Y: This model was launched latest and deliveries for this start began 2020 onwards. This model is a crossover utility vehicle, which can go upto 320 miles on a single charge.

The company also invested $1.5 billion in cryptocurrency, to use it as a medium of financial transactions.


Image: Wikimedia


Tesla Price/Pricing Strategy:

Below is the pricing strategy in Tesla marketing strategy:

Coming from a highly sophisticated technology, the Tesla products are categorized in premium pricing strategy in its marketing mix owing to the huge material and Research and Development costs, but when compared to competitors like BMW electric cars, it is still starts at a low price. A Tesla Model S ranges from $69,000 - $140,000 while the Model X is priced between $83,000 - $145,000 and Tesla Model Y, is in the price range from $51,000 to $61,000.

On the other hand, a BMW i8 is priced at $144,395. But keeping prices this high is not going to help achieve the vision of Tesla- a world running on sustainable energy. Therefore the carmakers have recently launched Model 3 which is an affordable car with prices starting at just $35,000. But even a higher priced Tesla Model S or X results in huge long-term savings with gasoline priced at $2.7 per gallon and charging costing only $0.12 per kWh. In other words, for every 100 miles travelled, the car saves owner $8.84 in gasoline and provides invaluable contribution towards saving the planet as well. 

Tesla Place & Distribution Strategy:

Following is the distribution strategy in the Tesla marketing mix:

Tesla is a US-based company operating worldwide with its headquarters located in Palo Alto, California. Its cars are produced in the 5.3 million square feet large manufacturing facility located in Fremont, California and is planning to expand the size of facility to nearly double the size at 10 million square feet in the coming years to support the huge demand of its products and timely deliveries. To meet the delivery timelines, Tesla needs to increase its rate of production and the most important part of its electric cars- the Lithium ion batteries are currently not in enough supply. To overcome this hurdle, the company is building Tesla Gigafactory in Nevada USA to manufacture Li-ion batteries for its cars so that it can ramp up the production.

Today Tesla has its presence in North America, Europe, Australia and Asia, China and South Korea.


Tesla Promotion & Advertising Strategy:

The promotional and advertising strategy in the Tesla marketing strategy is as follows:

Tesla Motors has absolutely zero marketing budget. It has no advertising commercial or bill boards, no ad agency, no CMO, nothing and that is the most awesome part about it. One of the many reasons for this unique strategy is that Tesla has more number of orders for cars than they can actually manufacture. But regardless, Tesla does a lot of promotional and PR activities otherwise which help it to stay in relevance and reach new customers without spending a fortune on marketing. Its supercharging stations are located on highways and have Tesla branding all over them. The destination charging ports located at restaurants, hotels and malls also have Tesla brand written on them. Apart from the customer touch points, Tesla also does online promotions through Twitter and creates a viral buzz online whenever some new product is going to get launched. The CEO Elon Musk is a public figure and keeps making appearances in movies (Iron Man), popular sitcoms (The Big Bang Theory) and interviews. He recently was in news for making all of Tesla’s research publicly available and giving up patents. This helped Tesla company gain a lot of positive public image and position itself as a do-gooder brand for the humanity. By 2020, over 1 million electric cars were manufactured by the company. Hence, this covers the insights about Tesla marketing mix.


About Tesla:

Tesla was founded in 2003 with the aim of building premium electric cars which use don’t use fossil fuels as a source of energy. All the electric cars existing in the market compared nowhere when it came to the performance of petrol or diesel engines, that was one of the prime reasons why even after so many years of existence, electric engine vehicles were not in demand. Amid rising concerns for global warming and depletion of resources, the founders of Tesla wanted to hasten the shift of humanity from fossil fuels to more sustainable sources of energy. This vision led to the creation of what is today the second biggest electric car making company in the world- Tesla, Inc.

The premium all-electric sedans from Tesla have award-winning design and performance. The futuristic designs and self-driving feature of Tesla cars is what makes them even more unique apart from having an all-electric powerful engine and is in line with the co-founder of the company Elon Musk’s vision to make earth independent of fossil fuels in the future.

This article has been researched & authored by the Content & Research Team. It has been reviewed & published by the MBA Skool Team. The content on MBA Skool has been created for educational & academic purpose only.

Browse marketing strategy and 4Ps analysis of more brands similar to Tesla. The Marketing Strategy & Mix section covers 4Ps and 7Ps of more than 800 brands in 2 categories.

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The names and other brand information used in the Marketing Strategy & Mix section are properties of their respective companies. The companies are not associated with MBA Skool in any way.

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