Wheels have become the most important part of our life. Be it going to malls, picnics or visiting your favourite place, transportations is the basic requirement nowadays. But with transportations comes a good engine and great tyres as well. Even when we buy a new car in the house, we always first upgrade our tyres.
Apollo tyres have always been a boon to drive with excellent braking efficiency. Apollo tyres are growing in the tyre industry with their thoughtful and informative campaigns. Marketing has been an important part of branding oneself in the market. Its a process of creating, communicating, delivering and exchanging offerings to the customers to gain loyalty and trust.
Before we dive into the Marketing Strategy of Apollo Tyres, let’s know about the company.
About Apollo Tyres
Apollo Tyres is considered to be an Indian Multinational Tyre manufacturing company located in Gurugram, Haryana. situated in 1972, its initial plant was entrusted in Kerala. The company has more than two manufacturing units in India, Netherlands and Hungary have only one unit. It has 20000+ exclusive outlets and a network of more than 2000 dealerships in India.
They produce 26% of their income in India. Apollo began to be involved in two-wheeler pieces in March 2016 with a manufacturing contract. It is the 17th largest tyres making company in the world. Since we have got to know about the company.
Let’s dive into 4p’s of the marketing mix.
Marketing Mix of Apollo Tyres
The marketing mix is the study of a set of actions that an organization takes to promote a brand or its product or services. It consists of 4P’s Product, Place, Price, and, promotion.
1. Apollo Product Strategy
The manufacturer goods of Apollo tyres are tyres, flaps for passenger cars, buses, trucks, farms, motorbikes, industrial, earthmover and tubes. Below shown are the types of tires according to the category of the vehicles and major category of Apollo tyre’s products as follows:
- Passenger Car:- Apollo tyres offer tires to SUVs and vans in this category. This also includes brands Radial and Crossply. In this category, Apollo tyres offer popular brands such as Amazer 4G life, Apterra AT and Apterra HT
- Trucks and buses:- Under this category, it depends on the type of things being transported and the type of terrain too. This includes brands Radial, Cross Ply and Kaizen. Some popular products are my Lug, XT-9 Gold, Endurance LD
- Farm or Agriculture:- In this category, they offer tyres for tractors, harvesters, Trailer implement, etc. Some popular products are Bhim, Powerhaul and Krishak. They even provide tires to brands Dura Tread and Dura Tyre
- Motorbikes:- Under this category, they provide tyres to brands such Suzuki slingshot, Pulsar and Honda. Some of their products offered in this segment are Actizip F3 and Actizip S2
- Industrial:- In the industry section, Apollo offers tyres to different vehicle types such as Backhoe, compactor, Loader, Excavator, Grader etc. Some of the products offered in this segment are ALT 118 and AWE 713
- Earthmover:- Offers tyres to the vehicles used in the mining industry such as Loader, ADT and RDT. The products offered in this segment are AWL 822 and ATL 188 TX
2. Apollo Tyres Price Strategy
In the tyre market, Apollo Tyres has been facing really good competitors such as JK, CEAT, MRF, Bridgestone, Goodyear, etc. Apollo’s using a penetrative marketing strategy by giving its product at a lower price than its competitor to attract customers. Also, not only pricing but the product and service plays an important factor here to lure customers as Apollo’s price sits very close to its competitors. Apollo Tyres business is really good in the market due to their products offered, even if MRF is at the top of their segment. Apollo even has good tie-ups with automobile companies such as Volkswagen and Mercedes, etc.
3. Apollo Tyres Place Strategy
An extensive distribution network in India and Europe. Apollo believes in offering the right product to the right place. Hence, their distribution channel includes factories, regional distribution centres, dealers and some agents. Apollo always focuses on understanding the needs of customers. Below pointers will explain the strategy used by Apollo for the place section:
- In 2016, 4000+ retail dealers of which approx 1000+ are exclusive retail dealers of Apollo in India and around 3050+ dealer outlets in Europe
- 19 state offices across India
- 5 manufacturing units in India, Netherlands and Hungary has one each
- Approx 150 sales and service offices in India
- Approx 17 regional distribution centres in India
- A wide specialist network such as Apollo Super Zone, Apollo Point, etc
4. Apollo Tyres Promotion Strategy
With the help of innovative campaigns and ads, Apollo Tyres has become a big brand name in the tyre segment. The advertisements of Apollo Tyres emphasize the long life and durability of its product which interests the customers. The company engages in different strategies such as encouraging customers for better driving habits, segmenting customers according to lead ad mileage requirements and running tyre loyalty programs. Some great advertisements or campaigns are as follows:
- Social media campaign #RockTheRoad, music was done by DJ Hardwell, won Global Dolphin Award at Cannes
- Advertisements related to the personality of a famous person or nature quality are made to show Apollo’s durability
Since we have seen 4p’s of the marketing mix. Let us see the analysis of competitors now and compare them with Apollo Tyres.
Apollo Tyres Competitors Analysis
The Indian Tyre industry is dominated by few main companies. The analysis among the competitors is as follows:
- MRF is at the top of the tyre manufacturing industry due to their social presence and SEO ranking.
- Bridgestone also has a good SEO rank, but it ranks below Apollo Tyres due to its social presence.
- Apollo Tyres implements Google ads more compared to JK Tyres.
- MRF content on social platforms is quite similar but Apollo advertisements are great
If we did a price comparison with the competitors then,
- Apollo’s sedan tubeless car tyres cost approx around 43k-45k whereas Bridgestone costs around 58k-60k per tyre.
- In the trucks category, Apollo tyres cost approx 17k- 17.5k whereas CEAT costs approx 18k- 18.5k.
Apollo’s low pricing strategy works here. All the tyre companies have a great social presence but organic engagement on a national level is still low. There exists stiff competition between these companies but each has its uniqueness to promote its brand.
Since we have finished learning about competitors. Now we will go in-depth to Apollo tyres’ marketing strategy, which helped them stand out from their competitors.
Marketing Strategy of Apollo Tyres
- Segmentation:
Apollo tyres main segmentation is automobile and industry equipment manufacturers/ OEMs. Their current focus is on Radial and Tubeless types of tyres for passenger cars and vehicle segments.
- Target Market:
The target is towards passenger cars, LCV, HCV, SUVs, Agricultural and off the road vehicle manufacturers as well as users and service providers.
- Positioning:
Apollo tyres provide a wide range of tyres that caters to various needs for passenger and commercial vehicles. It also provides high performance, high quality, durability and safety. The consumer’s state Apollo Tyres as Value for money because of its high level of technology employed in the products.
Apollo tyres use Benefit positioning, which emphasizes the functional benefits of the tyres and stresses the communication more on long life, stability and how good their service is, which also ensures the customer gets the best from their tyres.
Apollo’s main aim is to increase the sales of tyres and their other products such as flaps, tubeless tyres etc. For this they follow the following marketing strategies:
- The traditional method of marketing i.e. Newspaper, tv ads and billboards.
- Pricing the products less than the competitors.
- For increasing awareness and contributing towards social as well as environmental issues of the world, they build a foundation to carry out CSR activities.
- By adapting the modern method of marketing, they started using unique hashtags for each of their campaigns.
- They also promote safety measures to take while driving in their ad campaigns.
Recently they had collaborated with Sachin Tendulkar for the TV advertisement, of which music is done by A.R. Rehman. The advertisement symbolized Sachin and Ganga river as a spirit that keeps India moving forward towards progress. They related this to their brand essence that is “go-to distance”.
They also promote their new launches in a very innovative cinematic way to lure the customers to buy the product. There are many such mind-blowing advertisements. If you want to watch the ads, you can see them on the youtube channel Apollo Tyres.
Moving on, let’s have a look at some of their campaigns.
Apollo Tyres Advertisement Campaigns
Apollo Tyres has engaged in many CSR activities on topics such as HIV, Clean India etc. In an HIV awareness campaign, they educate the drivers about the HIV condition by providing pamphlets, they also provide treatment, counselling and tests at their health care centres. They also did workshops, one to one interaction, musical dance shows, peer educators and street plays to spread the awareness of HIV. This initiative has been active for the last 11 years. They are committed to creating an enduring impact.
Apollo Tyres supports the Clean India campaign, the Apollo tyres foundation came up with SPARSH. The SPARSH is a short form of Segregating waste, Practice Composting, Awareness generation, Reduce-Reuse-Recycle, Safe sanitation. They work in solid waste management and conduct activities such as door-to-door collection, segregation, spreading awareness etc in the villages to keep the environments clean.
Apart from this, Apollo tyres have also tied up with United Manchester Football club to promote their brand as well as sponsors Indian tennis players at tennis competitions to spread brand awareness amongst the youth.
PR campaigns of Apollo, “Adopt a Pothole” have won the Lion Award in Cannes. A social media campaign, “RocktheRoad” also won the Global Dolphin Award at Cannes in the integrated communication category, of which music was done by DJ Hardwell.
A recent campaign is #BadRoadBuddies, a contest in which people had to share their enticing travel stories with pictures to win some exciting prizes. The prize hasn’t been disclosed. They have DMed the winners of the prize
Now let’s see how they have maintained themselves on digital platforms and what kind of content they are posting to engage.
Apollo Tyres Digital Presence
A digital presence in today’s world is very important for a brand. Apollo tyres have their presence on all platforms i.e. Facebook, youtube, Instagram and Twitter. The content on each platform is the same.
Let us have a look at each platform.
1. Facebook-
They have a page on Facebook with 902,061 likes and 911,194 followers. The content is mostly about the campaigns, contests and relating their product with pandemic by using #maintainthedistance.
2. Youtube-
They post all their ad campaigns on this platform. They have 44.1k subscribers.
3. Instagram-
The content over here is the same as that of Facebook with 24.3k followers. Their Instagram profile isn’t verified.
4. Twitter-
They tweet about their ongoing campaigns as well as about their foundation initiatives. They have 116.7k followers on Twitter.
The brand is keeping up with the new mediums of promotion and growing its connection with the digital audience.
Conclusion
Apollo Tyres as a brand has its own unique story on the road to success. The brand is sticking to its essence when it comes to connecting to its audience through its educational as well as innovative advertisements. With the upcoming digital technology, the brand’s loyal services are what gains them the most customers. Along with that, their marketing strategies are also improving.
We all know that the importance of Digital marketing has increased tremendously over years. Each industry’s marketing strategy includes exceptional branding on digital platforms to make themselves more visible nowadays. If you are interested in expanding your skills or keen to learn Digital Marketing, then IIDE provides many short-term as well as long-term courses too. Just sign up for the course and learn from top digital experts.
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