One of the great things about working inside of a dynamic marketing agency like Domus is experiencing all of the

ideas that people come up with – for the agency’s clients, for the agency itself, and for other companies, whether

or not they will one day become clients. No idea is too far out in left field to be considered, debated, and

developed. At a minimum, it keeps the energy level high and people’s minds sharp; at best it enables business-

growing or even business-saving strategies and tactics to germinate.

But what does this have to do with Ford and Star Trek (the other two thirds of this blog post’s title)? Well, two

things that have been in the news over the last couple of weeks had a connection that got the brain juices flowing:

the new Star Trek movie and the notices by Chrysler and GM that they were terminating relationships with thousands

of car dealers in the U.S.

I know this is stretching a little, but that’s how the brain sometimes works. One line in the narrated credits of

the movie was “…to boldly go where no one has gone before.” That got some of us thinking. These are extraordinary

times, which can benefit from extraordinary (bold) thinking. So we thought… We thought of all of the pain that these

thousands of dealers are being forced to go through; we thought of all of the press (generally negative) that

Chrysler and GM are getting; and we thought, “Who could gain? And how?” That, in turn, brought us to Ford, which

brings me to the following open letter to William Clay Ford, Jr., Executive Chairman of the Ford Motor Company.

“Just-in-Time” (JIT) is an inventory strategy designed to improve the ROI of a business by reducing inventory and its associated costs. The key to inventory reduction through JIT is the quick communication of stock consumption, which signals the need for new stock to be generated, which leads to savings in both space and costs. Materials are purchased and units are produced only as needed to meet actual customer demand. The philosophy of JIT is simple – sitting inventory is wasteful and unproductive. JIT is all about having the right material, at the right time, at the right place, and in the exact amount, when needed and only when needed.

Now apply this paradigm to service industries in general and the advertising industry in particular. The analogous “inventory”, though, is no longer made up of widgets. Rather, it is people resources – specifically, people skilled in creative, communicative, managerial, technical, and other aspects of marketing communications.

So, for an advertising agency to most effectively service its customers without passing through wasteful overhead, the agency (or PR firm) must have its “inventory” of skilled professionals available at the moment that its clients need them and only at those moments. Moreover, since each situation is different, the skill sets required in each situation will necessarily differ, implying differing available “inventory.”

In other words, an agency needs an extensive network of skilled professionals and specialists from which the right people can be picked for each project. To ensure quality and consistency, the agency will always need a core team of in-house staff to manage these dynamic teams and maintain effective communications with clients.

As the landscape of public relations, advertising, and marketing communications in general continues to change more and more rapidly, resource management models based on this concept are becoming critical to the success and even survival of agencies. Domus, a full-service Philadelphia advertising and marketing communications agency, has been an innovator and champion of JIT since its inception 16 years ago. Our clients have been reaping the benefits ever since. Our business model and ability to engage experts and resources across any category uniquely enable us to deliver strengths in just about any area that our clients might be looking for. Visit our website and give us a call to talk about our model further.

Inbound links to a website have a substantial impact on search engine optimization (SEO) and a site’s organic ranks for strategically important keywords. The volume of links and their characteristics, such as having relevant keywords in the linked text, can be manipulated by an effective linkage outreach and management program.

However, external sites, even those belonging to business partners, may be resistant to driving visitors away from their own site. So, how does one effectively increase the quantity and quality of inbound links without straining business relationships or wasting a lot of time barking up wrong trees?

Effective tools for increasing linkage may already exist within current marketing campaigns and business materials. A common SEO and linkage practice is to include links and URLs within press releases and other public relations materials so that, when they get picked up by media and news outlets, they link to and drive traffic back to a site. However, this paradigm can be extended to other content which is not normally taken into account.

Medium to large business that have business partners often find their site copy, collateral and trade information picked up and repurposed on others’ sites. While this by itself ensures that messaging remains consistent, it can be leveraged and even encouraged in order to increase inbound linkage and SEO. Including intra-site, inline links in site copy and other materials will increase the likelihood of partner sites linking back without straining relationships or wasting much time. Additionally, businesses can actively encourage partners to use their materials, which cuts development time and costs for these partners, through outreach and trade sections of their website. Practices such as these can increase inbound links and make a company look like a good business partner.

As SEO is a continually evolving field of marketing, at Domus we are always refining our strategies in order to maximize the quantity and quality of links back to our clients’ sites.