They Just Don’t Care – Stop Thinking Like a Domainer
After my last blog post someone (anonymous of course) had submitted a comment asking a couple questions that I actually appreciated having the time to answer, although he/she must not of thought I answered fast enough but in reality I base my priorities on family and revenue so to be honest I do sometimes take awhile to respond to things that are not in direct relation to one of those. The person does not know our marketing and sales plan so I forgive them for the traffic question since there is no way for them to know the details of what we are doing and the packages we put together. Although I will say that we have had multiple customers already come to us to tell us that they are getting calls from people finding them online FOR THE FIRST TIME now that they are working with us.
But the more important thing that I want to hit on since I think it is important for us domainers to realize is that a small business owner in Arapaho, Nebraska (picked that out of nowhere) does not care that .TV is the cctld for Tuvalu or that .ME is the cctld for Montenegro, do you really think they are going to walk away from their cash register and search for Montenegro, no. Only domainers care.
We built our brand on Missouri.me, the businesses and communities we are working with appreciate the fact we are doing something for them and the advertisers only care that the traffic that our site gets is focused on consumers that are interested in their products or service. We bring them qualified, TARGETED traffic.
Now, understand, I believe in .COM so do not misunderstand the above comments, but I also know that with the right marketing efforts I can build a business on a solid cctld (like .ME).
I am sure many of you are ready to gripe now that I must be wrong, no way you are right, well I can say with absolute 100 percent confidence that there is actually one community that we have had such success with our efforts that we now get more traffic to their community portal than the newspaper site has. Think about that for a second...... I wish I could point out which one but for competitive reasons that would not make much sense would it:) There may be others that we have had that level of success but I have not checked on a community by community level yet.
Now to point out a could more sites that use cctlds that are from other countries/islands:
Do you think that either of them said, hmmmmm, people may not go to our site because its related to Tuvalu. Do you think that a cyclist watching Tour De France news thinks of that before watching the latest updates (as I do each day). Nope, they understood the branding potential of what they were doing.
Sorry to rant on this so much, but it is valuable to step back sometimes and think about how the people you are targeting think.
On a side note, I do not censor comments, but I will likely not let through any anonymous comments moving forward either positive or negative unless I see value in them. I use my name on everything I do so I feel people should either use their name or a user id people know them buy in the community.
How are the visitors getting to your site? Search engines, website referrals, or direct navigation?
All of the above, word of mouth is a great thing to say the very least.
Bruce: Great post, I think people will usethe extensions .TV and .ME because they are identifiable. I know a few radio stations up here in Minneapolis that are using the .FM extension. I also think in time that the .TEL will start to make sense because of the assoction with the word Telephone. Just my opinion.
Brian
amen, brother.
-Andrew Douglas
I totally agree with your post. Local businesses really don’t have a clue about online marketing. Just seeing the domain names they buy on their own is enough to convince you.
One of the BIGGEST things I have been trying to teach local businesses is the value of exact match keyword domains in their marketing, especially combined with the geo, for example:
Would a prospect be looking for JohanKozawlazkiPA.com or CityNameLawyer.com
T
T,
You are very right, funny enough my blog post for tomorrow is about exactly that:)
Brian and Andrew, thanks much!
Bruce
“On a side note, I do not censor comments, but I will likely not let through any anonymous comments moving forward either positive or negative unless I see value in them.”
Uhhh, how is this not censoring?=)
Unless a comment has been approved in the past the person must post a name (or common user id), etc before I will approve. My point is that I will not edit or change or disapprove a comment just because it is negative. I actually like open discussion. I just think people should not stand behind anonymous postings, I always laugh at the number of negative comments that come through anonymously, people afraid to say what they think using their own voice. Just weird to me I guess. Its not like I am asking for a first last middle plus social. Admittedly I cannot even confirm who they are, its just the principal of it:)
lol you go Bruce!!
So True! I agree! Everyone needs to realize that theworld is bigger than .com!
Mike
Not only do I agree with this post but I think if you are creative enough you can take almost any ccTLD and incorporate it into the brand that you build. For example dj.hn can be developed into the DJ Home Network, fully incorporating the ccTLD into the brand, Mortgage.cc could become Mortgage Credit Counseling etc. It doesn’t work all the time but a little thinking outside the box could go a long way.