Intro

Want me to tell you something on how you can motivate your market force in 2005. I will do so today. Tell you ideas that will power your marketing and promotions with force, if only you will appreciate their simplicity and common sense. Tell me.

A critical question: How simple, motivational and forceful are your communications and market

thrust? Is it all creativity, hi-tech and strategy, but no force? How easily digestible and real are your promotional messages?

Simplicity and Common Sense

This is a winning combination in today's marketplace, yet many corporate bodies and professionals discount them. The more complex your marketing, the more forceful, so they think. Not anymore. If you must lead the pack in your business, then keep your product packaging and marketing simple. You must stoop to the level of your consumers and communicate with force. These days, as you communicate and sell, you have to motivate your workforce and your customers. Why? Motivation and simplicity, they are the power, the market forces that will rule business this year. Without them, there is no force in your marketing. Some ideas.

1. Create your own medium

Your marketing costs should not be too heavy. You can keep it low by creating your own medium that is simple and cost effective. Here is what an American company does. It plants corporate messages right on the back of complimentary cards of its employees. The messages are seasonal. It can be on your vision/mission, ethics, quality control, or social responsibility. In not more than 30 words, you tell your story.

2 CEOs : Sweep the floor

CEO's. How do you communicate with your workforce? Do you limit it to managers? What about the staff at the bottom? They have information no one else has. Kenneth Hendricks, CEO of an American company gives this idea: "If you want to know really what is happening in most companies, you talk to the guy who sweeps the floor. Nine times out of 10, he knows more than the President. So I make it a point of knowing what my floor sweepers know even if it means sweeping the floor .

3. Business Mail

Who handles incoming mails for your company? Is it the corporate messenger? He collects all mails, sorts and distributes? Time to stop else you won't know when you sink. Besides, you can miss big business opportunities from a customer complaint or suggestion in a letter. Much depends on how your letters are handled. Handling mails can be a manager's job, no longer a messenger's job. Some CEOs insist on reading other mails besides those marked for their attention, or with their names. Treat all mails as if they are Letters to the Editor . Every magazine or newspaper worth its salt publishes such letters. Some even give financial rewards for the "star" letter of the week to encourage readers to write. CEOs, you can be the Editor of your incoming mails.

4. CEO Marketing

CEOs go out and sell. Do not limit your exposure only to your air conditioned offices. Go out and sell. When you do so, you power your corporate marketing and improve the bottom line. Do nott stay at head office holding endless management and board meetings. If that is your style, then watch out. It will soon reflect in your balance sheet. Next Annual General Meeting, shareholders will call for your head. You must motivate your market force. Take this advice from Jim Roch, CEO, the Boston Beer Company in the USA...."If more CEOs had to go out and sell their products, day in day out, they would pay a lot more attention to what they were making. When you are out there selling, there's no place to hide. It is the acid test".

5. Have an Open Day

Why shield your operations from your customers and other stakeholders. When they look at your business, all they see are corporate head offices, managers, titles, cars, promotions, and maybe your marketing team. And your customers are now wondering who are you? How do you operate? What do you do? What are your pains? Where are you going? They want to see you as you operate, not just bombarded by your marketing communications that maybe all promotions, no reality. Customers want persuasion now, not promotions. And persuasion begins with being real and open.

Educational institutions do that with Open Days. This is the day they throw their gates open for parents and other stakeholders to visit and see how they operate, how they teach, how the students interact with teachers, how they assess the pupils performances, to criticize, offer suggestions and get a feel the rhythm of the school.

You want your customers to measure your business pressure, have an Open Day.