5 Minute read
How Elon Musk's Strategy that "Skyrocketed" his Companies

Written by
Kristian F.

Published on
Feb 5, 2021
Tesla has recently topped Instagram as the fastest-growing brand in the world.
According to the London-based company "Brand Finance".
This shouldn't be too surprising tho, after all, they positioned themselves well in some of the fastest-growing & most popular industries like electric vehicles, sustainable energy, and even space travel.
And they're being led by an outspoken, media-savvy, polarizing leader, Elon Musk, who is basically a walking and talking marketing machine.

So while their business growth may not be surprising, what is shocking is Elon Musk and other Tesla insiders claim that Tesla does not do advertising, and yet they've still managed to grow 64.9% just in the last year alone.
So how did Elon Musk and Tesla Become the fastest growing brand in the world without spending money on advertising?
Well, the first thing you need to understand when unpacking Elon Musk and Tesla's claim that Tesla does not do advertising is really understanding that advertising does not equal marketing, but rather Advertising is just one small part of marketing.
And in Tesla's case, a very very small (nonexistent) part of marketing.
But that doesn't mean that Tesla doesn't do marketing because they do, and they do a lot of it.
Under the "marketing umbrella", you also have a ton of other things like content marketing, social media marketing, public relations, and many more.
All of these are marketing tools that Tesla uses and all of them cost some kind of time, money, or energy.
For example, when Tesla launched their Falcon Heavy rocket into space they also sent a Tesla roadster along for the ride.
Well, that was marketing! Marketing that just so happened to cost just under 100 million dollars.
Now, this little trip to space wasn't advertised, wasn't advertising at all but, it did include elements of content marketing, social media marketing, and public relations.
But when it comes to finding new and creative, innovative ways to get attention to do marketing that isn't advertising well, Tesla isn't alone.
In fact, there's a number of other popular and well-known businesses that spend very little or nothing at all on advertising.
Companies like Google, Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Uber. All of these have built massive empires on the back of marketing but not necessarily of paid advertising.
We will take a look at what is at the core of their marketing strategies in just a second, but first, let's tackle and answer the question:
What's wrong with advertising anyway?
When it comes to launching a new brand, a new business, or a new company, the traditional way is to create something, spend a ton of money on advertising, and try to reach as many people as possible.
When this is done right and when it's paired with an actual good product/good service/business it can be quite effective.
The problem is... that rarely, this approach is done right.

And more often than not, advertising dollars (throwing money at the problem) are spent, instead of spending time on strategic thinking, creativity, problem-solving, and really getting to the core, and the underline principles of what's truly going to result in business growth.