A Letter From Norlin To Toyota
Dear Toyota Marketing Team,
I am a student at MSU studying digital marketing, and I have been a loyal fan of your brand . I am writing to you to address my gratitude for bringing such a fantastic brand to the market. In addition, I am taking this opportunity to analyze Toyota’s digital marketing strategy and hope my impromptu opinions could help Toyota to present a more thorough and appealing brand image on social media.
One of Toyota’s interesting social media marketing characteristics is that the brand has a vast number of social media accounts. Many of them are associated with local dealers and Toyota’s subsidiaries. These accounts have successfully led to the extensive coverage of Toyota on social media, with details of every aspect about the brand from Toyota Music Festival to the presence on Formula One competition. However, these extensive coverages and repetitive social media marketing might irritate and annoy certain customers. In particular, a Toyota fan would love to hear more about the brand. Yet, it is rather annoying when all Toyota related social media accounts were all posting about one event. In the extreme, some customers might unfollow certain Toyota accounts.
One possible solution to this issue of repetitive advertising is that Toyota marketing team of Toyota corporation encourages the dealers to repost or retweet the content from Toyota’s official account. In this case, all accounts are essentially sharing the same content coming from one unique post. Different Toyota accounts could join the discussions by reposting or retweeting the original post with their comments and thoughts. This alternative method still guarantees a similar wide coverage but also reinforces the fanbase of the brand’s official corporation account. In the meanwhile, this method would possibly stimulate much more participation as followers are all discussing under one post.
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Besides, the multiple Toyota accounts on social media have brought the issue of inconsistency, instead of millions of views and comments. In most cases, Toyota has assigned a personality or an image to the specific product line, such as that Toyota Highlander is a family-oriented sports utility vehicle, while Toyota Corolla is an economical compact car for the general audience. In the official account’s social media posts, we could see the distinctive marketing scheme and quickly comprehend the corresponding product images. However, many local dealers might mix up the product personalities and promote them together regardless of their traits. For instance, a New Jersey dealer redefined Highlander as a multi-function durable car while Corolla as a compact car for low-budget car buyer in its recent fall mega-sale promotion. These product images have contradicted the official characteristics associated with Highlander or Corolla. Hence, it might deliver a wrong picture to potential customers and confuse them with inconsistent messages. It is utterly a critical issue, especially for Toyota, a large-scale multinational corporation. Consistent advertising would strengthen the brand image and personality, while such inconsistent advertising would only reveal the unprofessional marketing scheme.
The solution to this issue of inconsistency includes a social media marketing database. A designated database would provide a platform for each Toyota social media accounts manager to solicit marketing texts and images conveniently and easily. Local dealers only need to download advertising material from the database and follow the instructions in social media marketing. It would substantially prevent inconsistency as well as cut the budget in marketing. The database provides the dealers with enough material to promote the products so that dealers would not need to hire a photographer to take pictures.
In general, Toyota’s social media marketing strategy of vast numbers of accounts to achieve a comprehensive coverage is inspiring. It allows local Toyota companies and dealers to post region-specified marketing contents so that a close connection is well-established between local customers and Toyota. Secondly, different social media accounts of Toyota could showcase various aspects of Toyota to its massive fan base. In specific, Toyota Formula One account enjoys thousands of subscribers interested in racing cars, while Toyota Green account shares Toyota new advancements in hybrid energy and eco-friendly fuel system. Finally, the most crucial advantage of numerous accounts is that these accounts have jointly formed a large Toyota family and generated a wide coverage so that advertising could reach more and more audiences. Even though this strategy would lead to issues of repetitive and inconsistent advertising, these two minor problems could be easily solved by the proposed solutions.
I hope my analysis and opinions could help you in future works on social media marketing. Wish the best for Toyota, and I will always be a loyal fan.
Sincerely yours,
Hanlin Xu
