How to Market Like Tesla

I love to look at markets outside of the online marketing niche to see what others are doing.

For example, Tesla.

In 2008, the electric car manufacturer was worth about $15 million.

According to the New York Times, today Tesla is valued at $100 billion. Yes, BILLION with a “B”.

Do you think we, as online marketers, could learn something from their success?

In 2016, the company rolled out a compact sedan named the Model 3 and priced it at $39,000.

Before the car was even available, Tesla opened preorders for the car with a smart sales funnel strategy.

Here’s what they did:

Tesla and its founder Elon Musk received a ton of free press for its vision of moving everyone away from gas-powered vehicles. This wasn’t an original idea, but they grabbed it and made it their own.

Next, they set up a webinar page for prospective customers to opt-in and learn more about the launch event. (Sound familiar?)

When the webinar went live, prospects watched a live video webinar about the new car.

At the end of the webinar, prospects were redirected to a call to action button that would take them to a checkout form, where they could make a $1,000 deposit to reserve their own Model 3.

Was it successful?

Customers placed over $14 billion in preorders. So yes, it was successful

In fact this could be the most successful product launch we’ve ever witnessed in all of history.

Here’s my takeaway: By having a vision, they got free press. And by taking preorders with relatively small deposits, they got commitment.

Once customers had committed to making the purchase, they were much more likely to go through with it. It’s a psychological principle in which once you ‘own’ something or you’ve made a commitment to something, you are much more engaged and positive about the entire thing because in your mind it’s ‘yours’. The decision is made, now all you need do is justify your decision, and as humans we are really, really good at that.

Are you launching a big product this year? What’s your vision for the product? How will it disrupt its current market? How will it change things or shake things up?

And can you generate enough interest to get people on a webinar and reserving their copy / seat / product / service or whatever it is that you’re offering, in advance?