toyota-digital-marketing-strategy

4 Lessons to Learn from Toyota’s Digital Marketing Strategy

Toyota Motor Corporation is a Japanese automotive production and sales company headquartered in Aichi, Japan. Founded by Kiichiro Toyoda in 1837, Toyota is the largest automotive manufacturer.

Its team of experts designs each Toyota digital marketing strategy according to the analysis of choices and expectations of the customers.

Its strategies vary across different practicing areas at several levels including national, regional, and global levels. They take action based on the assessment involving the target customers’ choices, purchasing capacity, and the market condition in a specific area. They are the key elements in designing Toyota’s marketing strategies.

Toyota is also guided by the concept of continuous improvement including the principles of Kaizen, Challenge, and Genchi Genbutsu. Kaizen is a way of thinking referring to make continuous small improvements to business processes, which is likely to contribute to Toyota’s use of social networking sites.

Challenge principle infers acting bravely to complete the mission when a challenging task is encountered. The last principle stands for retracing with a self-checking process to ensure that you have the necessary knowledge to achieve. 

“Before you say you can’t do something, TRY IT!” says Kiichiro Toyoda’s father, Sakichi Toyoda who is also a Japanese inventor and industrialist. 

As the internet has become more accessible in the last decades, social media and digital campaigns have gained great importance. Toyota, as an innovative company, shares attractive content on its social networks and creates digital campaigns contributing to enlarge its customer base by engaging more people to convert them as their customers. 

Here we summarize the most favored lessons to learn from Toyota’s digital marketing strategy including the focus on creativity and imagination, audience engagement through social media, an eco-friendly approach, and attractive commercial films.

Focus on Creativity and Imagination

Embracing social media as the core of its digital marketing strategy, Toyota shares spectacular images and videos to connect with the target audience. 

Currently, Toyota’s official Facebook account has over 17.5 million followers and over 2 million people follow its official Instagram account. Through its catchy slogans and creative posts, Toyota aims to promote the imagination of its followers and inspire them to follow their dreams to come true as desired. 

Here you can find some examples retrieved from its official YouTube channel promoting Toyota social media strategy:

This commercial titled “Start Your Impossible” presents the story of a young boy traveling around Tokyo and bringing to life a new way to move through Toyota’s mobility products. The striking slogan of the commercial is “When you are free to move, anything is possible”. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asTFtXaX1BQ

Another example is one of the best Toyota digital campaigns announcing an art contest about dream cars. The motto of the contest is “inspire the world with your dreams” targeting playful and creative children to visualize the car of their dreams.

This is a way to let children’s imagination run free and inspire others to dream and draw their own dream car. This campaign had thousands of participants from several countries and became a trend organization for children.

Audience Engagement through Social Media

Toyota social media posts follow the current trends in many respects. To increase the trust and engagement with its customers, the company attempts to develop emotional appeals for its vehicles through its approach focused on who to reach and how to.

Rather than only sharing the pictures of their cars and trucks, Toyota social media strategy is based on interaction with followers by asking open-ended questions and talking about their experiences with Toyota. The more you interact with customers, the more feedback you get to boost your performance and customer retention.

Toyota highlights the expectations and needs of its target audience through creative social media posts making the brand more approachable without being advertisement-like. 

Toyota’s Pinterest account has 10m+ monthly viewers and helps the company improve brand appeal through this platform. The concept of mobility through short videos repositions the brand in the marketplace. People have an opportunity to observe the exclusive Toyota experience and decide what they desire when they get a car or truck. 

An Eco-Friendly Approach

The latest fashion of the automobile marketplace is the concept of sustainable development through environmentally friendly solutions. The demand for energy-efficient, greener, and safer vehicles prompts the companies to find out the best possible use of our natural resources and lower the operating costs.

Being in a prominent position as a global green brand, Toyota is a company with patent and acknowledged efforts in sustainability and the use of green marketing. This is a powerful reason why most people prefer Toyota vehicles. 

Toyota team emphasizes that there is only one planet with life, Earth, and which is why Toyota developed a line of vehicles by ensuring Toyota’s facilities optimize efficiency while minimizing waste and energy use. Here you can get detailed information about Toyota’s environmental initiatives.

Effective Commercial Films

Toyota ads and commercials introducing new Toyota models steal the hearts of many people with entertaining and striking scenarios. Here is an example: 2016 Toyota Prius commercial titled “The Longest Chase” released during the Super Bowl 50. 

A group of bank robbers becomes folk heroes when they achieve to escape from the police officers thanks to Toyota Prius as a getaway car. Then, police officers understand that the only way to catch the robbers is driving Toyota Prius again. The main theme of the commercial is that Toyota has no competitors to be compared with.

Conclusion

With the right strategies on social media and commercials, Toyota has a prominent place in the market. By operating creative content inspiring people, engaging more people through social media, being an eco-friendly brand, and attractive commercials, Toyota will definitely continue being one of the most preferred automotive companies. 

If you want to look at another market leader company for marketing tactics you can read Apple’s digital marketing strategy article.


Toyota uses digital marketing ideally to optimize customer engagement and retention. It seems that being available on several platforms, creating multi-channel campaigns, and interacting with the followers through social media posts will keep Toyota’s seat in the marketplace for a much longer time. Check our best digital strategy agencies in the USA if you’re looking for one.

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