Brand Marketing Archives - Page 57 of 66

Microsoft Buys Bing Typos: Bimg.com, Bibg.com, and Others

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October 17, 2009

In a shrewd move that many (probably most) companies don’t consider before launching a new product or service, Microsoft went ahead and purchased many Bing related typo domain names prior to launch. Some of the domain names now owned by Microsoft include, Bimg.com, Bibg.com, Bihg.com, and Binf.com.

All of these typo domain names were previously owned by other people and companies before Microsoft acquired them. One common link between these names is that it appears they were acquired by a company known as Media Market of Boise, Idaho between being owned by the former owner and Microsoft. You can see the Whois lookup for Bibg.com from February as an example.

One interesting domain acquisition they made was Bing.com. The reason it’s particularly interesting to me is that it was previously owned by General Mills, another Fortune 500 company.

Unfortunately, there were many Bing typos that Microsoft didn’t and/or couldn’t acquire. Among them include Bong.com, Bingo.com, Bin.com, Big.com, and Ing.com. I don’t know if the traffic increase can be linked directly with the Bing launch, but just look at the Compete scores for Bong.com, Bung.com and Bin.com after May.

Promote Your Websites Locally & Help Good Causes

Brand Marketing

Elliot Silver

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October 15, 2009

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Lately, I’ve been running in more races to stay in healthy, and I have completed 5k races, 4 mile runs, and a biathlon. I also run, walk, and bike frequently in Central Park. One thing that I’ve noticed is that half the people working out seem to be wearing high tech workout gear from Under Armor, Nike, Reebok…etc, and the other half are wearing shirts from previous races.

In New York, because most of the races I run in have thousands of participants, the race sponsors listed on the back of the shirts are big companies like Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and other large businesses. There aren’t as many local companies, but those that are local are very large.

Because I own a few city .com domain names, I am tapped into community events taking place in these cities, and there are many smaller races and walks that take place just about every month, many of which have a charitable cause the participants are supporting. These events generally have under 1,000 participants, but almost all of them offer commemorative t-shirts for participants.

If you are looking to promote your website – whether it’s local or national – sponsoring local runs or walks can be a great marketing opportunity for your company. Not only will it help promote your brand on race day, but people will wear these shirts after the race, too. Additionally, you may be able to take some sort of charitable deduction, but you’d have to confer with an accountant on that.

It seems that most events with anywhere from 100 – 1,000 participants charge between $100 – $500 for shirt sponsorships, and this looks like money well-spent. In fact, Lowell.com is sponsoring a Thanksgiving Day race in Lowell. I just wish I was able to be there to run!

MSSB.com is Now Morgan Stanley Smith Barney

Elliot Silver

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October 14, 2009

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Back in June, I discussed how important it would be for Morgan Stanley Smith Barney to buy the MSSB.com domain name, which had been privately owned since at least its current creation date of 2003. The private owner didn’t really have a better buyer than the newly formed financial giant, and the new company really needed the domain name to advance its online presence, since it’s inevitable that people would shorten the firm’s long name to MSSB.

It appears that Morgan Stanley Smith Barney understood this need, and instead of going through the legal route to get MSSB.com, it looks like they bought it (the name was in Moniker’s Escrow Account at the end of September). Despite the fact that the company was formed well after the owner purchased the domain name, many companies still feel that they deserve a name like this and use the court system or UDRP process as a means of bullying. They may have even had a shot because the parking page showed financial PPC links, but we’ll never know.

In any case, as of today, the domain name is in the possession of Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, and the domain name forwards to their long url, morganstanleysmithbarney.com. Kudos to Morgan Stanley Smith Barney for “getting it” by getting the important domain name the company needed.

ItWasTheBestNightEver.com – How I Met Your Mother

Elliot Silver

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October 12, 2009

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The writers for CBS’ How I Met Your Mother did it again. On tonight’s episode, one of the characters mentioned a website that was created by another character about a fun night they had, which they dubbed “It was the best night ever.” The domain name they used was ItWasTheBestNightEver.com, and as they did before, they set up a mini-site with a funny viral video (embedded below) about the “best night ever” 🙂

Last season, CanadianSexActs.org was one of the funny urls a character mentioned, and according to a couple of analytics companies, the website received a considerable amount of traffic, and it still receives residual traffic. They’ve also done this several times in the past. Unlike television shows that have phone numbers mentioned that have to use 555-1234 or something similar, the show is using story lines from the show and expounding on them online.

IMO, these are great viral sites and help promote this award winning comedy show.

Insure.com Sells for $16 Million – Highest Domain Sale Recorded

Elliot Silver

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October 9, 2009

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Insure.com, a publicly traded company whose shares trade on the NASDAQ stock exchange, sold its corporate name and related domain name for $16,000,000, and the company will be renamed Life Quotes. The company paid $1,600,000 for Insure.com in 2001.

The domain name was purchased by Quin Street, who as you may recall, paid $18,000,000 for Internet.com and related assets back in August. According to AboutUs.org, QuinStreet is an online performance marketing company helps businesses target their would-be customer audiences by using its proprietary technologies and media reach to generate sales leads.

I believe that this is the highest recorded price for a domain sale, beating Sex.com, which sold for a reported $12 million in 2006.

It’s going to be very interesting to see how the company now previously known as Insure.com will manage with the name change and loss of links. They may have a unique product (I do not know), but it will be difficult for them to re-climb in the search engine rankings after the name change. Not only do they lose their type-in traffic and inbound links, but they also lose the credibility that comes with saying, “hi, I’m from Insure.com.”

$16 million sure is a nice sum of money, and it’s a great ROI no doubt, but one has to wonder what they long term impact for the company will be. The company believes a name change “is expected to reduce revenues 10 percent to 15 percent for the next two to six quarters,” however, I think it will take a whole lot of marketing dollars to purchase the traffic that will be lost when Quin Street takes over the domain name.

Fortunately for us people on the sideline, we will be able to see how this plays out for the Life Quotes, since they are a publicly traded company and will have to report its revenues.

***Update***
Some people are questioning whether it’s accurate to say it’s the highest recorded domain sale. I believe so because Life Quote is retaining so much of its actual business. From the press release: “The Company will retain all of its remaining balance sheet assets, national brokerage contracts with 25 leading life insurance companies, 50 fully licensed insurance agents, call center operations, customer and prospect lists, and nearly all of its current inbound affiliate and traffic partnerships.”

Also, was the sale of Toys.com not simply a domain sale? It had a website previously, and it also had lots of inbound links as well. IMO, since the publicly traded company is basically keeping all of its assets, it’s a domain sale with good will.

Quick Tip of the Day: Direct Advertisers

Elliot Silver

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October 6, 2009

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Whether you are a domain owner or a web developer, the best advertising deals are usually direct deals with advertisers. In many cases affiliate relationships pay more, but for the sake of this post, I will focus on direct advertising deals since that is guaranteed revenue.

The first thing you need to do is obviously build a website on your great domain name. Once you have your site with unique content, add some Adsense blocks on your site. I generally recommend waiting until you are receiving search engine traffic before doing this to make certain that Google and Bing will see that you don’t have a “spammy” site with the sole objective of monetizing the traffic. I don’t have quantifiable evidence, but I’ve been told they may rank these sites lower.

Once your Adsense blocks are showing relevant advertising, you should make note of all of the advertisers whose ads are showing on your site. Make sure you have both text and graphic banners, as some advertisers might choose one over the other. You should also contact friends and colleagues in different areas of the country and ask them to email you those advertisers as well, in the event that there is some geo targeted advertising.

I would then do some research on the advertisers, and contact the companies who most likely have the smaller marketing department, allowing you to get directly in touch with the decision maker. Let them know they are currently advertising on your site via Google, and you would be willing to give them great space on your site. You might even offer exclusivity if you can make it worth your while financially.

Do some research to estimate what they are paying (using Adwords) and offer them a compelling deal. You might also want to keep at least one Adsense text block so you can keep an eye on new advertisers.

If you can make a good argument about why an advertiser should be advertising on your website, you just might score a great deal.

As an FYI, you don’t necessarily need to install Adsense on your site, as you can do the same thing simply by searching Google, although you won’t see banner advertisers.