In our previous article, we learnt in detail about the SWOT analysis of Bridgestone. In this article, we are going to elaborate on the marketing strategy of Bridgestone, one of the leading tyre manufacturing companies across the globe.
Shojiro Ishibashi, a seventeen-year-old Japanese kid, began the history of Jika tabi (socks with rubber soles used as work shoes) in 1931 and utilised the capital to start making tyres. As the top manufacturer of tyres in the world, Bridgestone has now developed a standard.
Bridgestone’s marketing initiatives are another factor that helped it grow into the titan it is today. As the world is becoming more digital, brand marketing evolves. If you’re interested in finding out what’s new, check out our Free MasterClass on Digital Marketing 101 taught by Karan Shah, CEO and founder of IIDE.
We will discuss Bridgestone’s advantages, drawbacks, possibilities, and challenges in this blog. Let’s start by learning about the business’s background, history, offerings, and successful track record.
About Bridgestone
Bridgestone is a Japanese company based in the city of Kurume, Fukuoka, Japan which manufactures auto and truck parts. Bridgestone delivers a wide range of tires to customers around the world, such as tires for passenger cars, trucks and buses, aircraft, construction and mining vehicles, motorcycles, etc.
Bridgestone’s journey began in 1931 when Shojiro Ishibashi started manufacturing tires. Bridgestone’s manufacturing of rubber was dependent on European and North American technology and largely on Japanese technology. Gradually the company improved its manufacturing process which led to the business rapidly expanding in domestic and overseas markets.
Today, Bridgestone has about 180 manufacturing plants and R&D facilities in 24 countries. The revenue market of Bridgestone consists of 24% from Japan, 45% in America and 13% from China and the Asia Pacific regions. Whenever you want to travel and you look for innovative technologies with comfort, Bridgestone is one of them which provides quality, safety, and technologies for the passengers inside the vehicle.
| CEO | Shuichi Ishibashi |
|---|---|
| CMO | Sara Correa |
| Area Served | Worldwide |
| Industry | Auto and Truck parts |
| Market Share/ Revenue | ¥3.246 Trillion (Fiscal Year Ended December 31, 2021) |
| Vision | To provide world-class customer service and be an outstanding corporate citizen in the communities in which we live and work. |
| Tagline | Solutions for your journey |
Marketing Strategy of Bridgestone
Bridgestone’s marketing strategy assists in achieving the company’s aims and objectives while putting the brand/company in a competitive position in the market.
Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning
Bridgestone company is mainly focused on and segmented for the automobile industry and car racing. There are 47 tyres manufactured by Bridgestone that can be used on bikes, scooters, and cars. In India, Bridgestone tyres are priced from Rs. 2666. One of the best manufacturers of tube-type and tubeless tyres is Bridgestone. MRF, CEAT, and Goodyear are three other notable manufacturers that compete with Bridgestone.
The target group for Bridgestone industry brands is to cater to SUVs, luxury, passenger, heavy vehicles, and racing cars.
The Bridgestone industry, from the start, has been widely known for being innovative and environmentally friendly with its tyres and automobiles. Their tires are technology-smart and comfortable in all types of cars.
Marketing Campaigns
Bridgestone maintains competitive pricing and focuses the sale of its products on the assurance of quality and its expertise in the tyre industry. When compared to industry norms, the margins are high.
Bridgestone has conducted a campaign to celebrate and appreciate the ‘heroes on the road‘, the truck drivers.
A story of a truck driver is highlighted in this film who didn’t shut shop during the lockdown and drove across the nation to provide supplies of goods he used to deliver. He narrates his struggles, like having to cook his own food during his long drives since roadside dhabas were shut. He had to sleep in his truck too.
Since every one was scared of greeting people, when his truck broke down, people didn’t help. It also throws light on how the brand sanitised truck fleets across 22 cities and provided ‘life-saving’ kits to 3,744 drivers.
With the NFL and several other professional sports leagues, Bridgestone has created a number of sponsorship and promotion strategies.
Bridgestone has adopted a strong marketing approach and served as the World Series of Hockey’s title sponsor. Bridgestone was the first company to do so, signing a 4-year contract with the new television channel of the International Olympic Committee.
Recently, Bridgestone conducted a marketing campaign in which they highlighted the Alenza AS Ultra tires manufactured by Bridgestone in the USA. In the video, Bridgestone is showcasing how the Alenza AS Ultra tires deliver an excellent balance of wet, winter and wear performance, including improved acceleration in wet conditions. The 18-second digital and TVC commercial got more than 3.9M of viewership within a short period which indicates that Bridgestone had applied the right youtube marketing strategies.
Social Media Marketing
Bridgestone may be the world’s largest tire and rubber company, but on the other hand, its social media marketing is also quite impressive.
On leading social media platform Instagram, Bridgestone tires have 91.2k followers with 1,180 posts so far and seem most active on Instagram.
On Facebook, Bridgestone has 1.3 million page likes with the most engaging content. There they post collaborations, posts explaining the benefits and advantages of purchasing Bridgestone tires, driving tips and guidance, charity posts, and some attractive pictures and videos of cars using Bridgestone tires. Hence, we can say looking at their social media pages, they are actively posting their content.
SEO Strategies
As we can see, most of the traffic is coming from searches made online, 129,097 organic visitors per month, and the rest comes from paid ads and campaigns. Its SEO keyword ranking is 29,371.keywords. This results in showing that Bridgestone, being the biggest company in the tire market, has great Google organic SERP results and success.
Influencer Marketing
As we saw, Bridgestone has an immense number of followers on their social media. They also collaborate with many influencers and content creators on their respective platforms by showcasing their brands in many different ways. They create engaging posts and videos, sponsoring influencers. They have proper marketing strategies to gain the eyes of the audience towards their brand.
Also, in India in order to increase the influence of Bridgestone on Indian audiences and reach a wider audience, Bridgestone India Pvt Ltd, a division of Bridgestone Corp, has committed to becoming the associate sponsor of the Mumbai Indians. As the majority of people in India are fans of IPL, promoting the brand by partnering with such a big event is a great move to increase brand presence.
E-commerce Strategies
No, they don’t have an online selling option for tires or any such, but yes they do have their own online website which provides everything you need to know about Bridgestone, from investors to products and innovation, and also about sponsorships. This site has a high rate of organic traffic every month.
Mobile App
To make it easier for fleets and dealers to compare and access information on the Bridgestone family of commercial tyre brands, Bridgestone Commercial Solutions (BCS) has released a mobile app.
Content Marketing Strategies
Bridgestone has just landed and made its way to social media homes. They post their content and their products, awareness, etc. Also, they are active on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter posting their content and updates on their projects.
On the website, the company has different types of content for users to consumers including news & updates, a corporate gallery, sustainability, innovation & strategy, Bridgestone’s philosophy etc. and many more. One can get a lot of information about the brand and content related to the tire manufacturing and supply industry from Bridgestone’s website.
This ends the elaborative marketing strategy of Bridgestone. Let us conclude our learning below from the marketing strategy of Bridgestone.
What’s Unique in Bridgestone’s Marketing?
With a significant global presence, Bridgestone is a well-known and renowned company. Customers all across the world can purchase a variety of tires from the Bridgestone Group, comprising tires for motorbikes, construction and mining machinery, buses, trucks, and passenger cars.
We highlighted that it is one of the oldest tyre manufacturing companies still in operation today and has excellent sustainability and innovation. This could overcome some risks and weaknesses to seize the worldwide market.
Increasing your digital marketing presence is one technique to overcome obstacles. It can improve the efficiency of its marketing by entering the digital age and developing a social media presence across a number of channels.
If you want to learn about digital marketing, check our Online Digital Marketing Course if you want to learn more and improve your marketing skills. Alternatively, you can enrol in one of our free online masterclasses led by IIDE’s CEO, Karan Shah, to gain insight into the field of digital marketing.
We hope this blog on the marketing strategy of Bridgestone has given you a good insight into the company’s marketing strategies.
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