New gTLD Marketing is What Interests Me Most

I think I’ve made it pretty clear that for better or worse, I am primarily on the sidelines when it comes to the new gTLD domain names. I would rather pay more for good names in a year or two (or longer) than buy new domain names now because I can determine whether they have enough investment value for my company at a later date. At this point, I have no idea whether it will be feasible for a domain investor to make money from the new domain names, so I am not buying many.

To me, the most interesting aspect of the new gTLD domain names is the marketing that registries and registrars are doing to sell their domain names. My background is direct marketing (my education and career), and I find these marketing efforts to be interesting.

We’ve already seen some pretty unique marketing and advertising tactics undertaken by registries and registrars. One example is .Club bus and taxi advertising, and another example is .Vegas advertising at McCarran Airport in Las Vegas. .XYZ teamed up with the New Zealand bobsled team, and 1&1 had an extensive television campaign for the new domain names. Several registries have attended industry specific trade shows or have plans to market directly to potential buyers at trade shows.

The marketing that new gTLD registries and domain registrars are undertaking will benefit people in the domain investment space. Companies have spent and will continue to spend millions of dollars advertising and marketing domain names. They may not be advertising traditional domain names, but their prospects will end up at a registrar or aftermarket website where they can make a business decision about what domain name makes sense for them.

Last week, I published an article that shared insight from representatives of new TLD registries and domain registrars about who bears the responsibility for marketing the new domain names to potential buyers. Regardless of who is responsible for the marketing, I think the marketing will benefit all of us in this business, and I think it’s pretty neat to watch.

We are in the midst of some exciting times right now. It’s exciting to see these great marketing efforts made, and it will continue to be fun to watch as new extensions roll out. If you see something cool being done to market the new domain names, I hope you’ll share it with me. I may not write about it on my blog, but it would be cool to see.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

8 COMMENTS

  1. The drop market could change considerably with all these new TLDs. Currently there is no aftermarket for them so within two to three years you should see quite a few drops. By then domain investors will have a clearer view of how they are being accepted by end users if at all. Imagine the challenge of looking for keyword drops in hundreds of extensions instead of merely looking at .COM. I guess one question which is not clear is whether the registries will retain the drops and try to resell them again with premium prices. .TV has been retaining two-letter drops so will Uniregistry and Donuts do the same with premium keywords?

  2. @Elliot. Your actions speak louder than your words. By not partaking in the registration of .crap, it is clear what you think. I, too, feel the same way but think you should be a man and call a spade a spade. The gtld’s are worthless .garbage and will never have the capabily of profit. As the publisher of a highly respected “domain investing” site, I think you owe it to your readers to tell the truth, namely, that gtlds are doomed to .fail

    • I disagree with you though on a couple of different points.

      My business has never been about inventory. It’s quality over quantity. Unlike many domain investors with thousands or tens of thousands of domain names, I have somewhere around 500. I buy higher value names and monetize or sell them. I’ve never been about casting a wide net and selling a higher volume of domain names. In my opinion, someone who wants to profit from the new domain names will need to cast a very wide net. I think some people will make money in the long term, but that isn’t and hasn’t been my strategy.

      I also think many new domain extensions will be adopted by end user companies. There are plenty of businesses who will opt for a better keyword .newdomain than a much more expensive .com comparable name. A small business that markets locally may not have as many concerns about confusion as a larger brand may face. To give you an idea, on a bike ride yesterday, I saw a small sign for a .Pro website. The comparable keyword .com would be $20k+ but he probably spent $20 on this one, and it seems to work for him.

      In terms of blogging, I give my opinion. I may not always be right, and I certainly can’t predict the future with any certainty. I do believe there will be some successful new extensions.

  3. The biggest event in marketing would be a series of multi-million dollar TLD auction battles, in particular between Amazon and Google. That could get wide publicity.

    I suspect it is not going to happen.

  4. The marketing by the registries is not much diffrent than the marketing done by registries of past GTLD’s, the ones that are almost forgotten.

    Yes, they target the public and private companies, imagine what would happen if they didn’t, how would that effect how domainers invest?

    In the end, it’s domainers who are the primary market for these GTLD’s, NOT end users.

    • I don’t agree with you completely.

      I think 1&1 would not have done their multi million dollar tv campaign if they were targeting domain investors.
      I don’t think the .Club taxi and bus ads are targeting domain investors.
      The .Vegas ad in the airport isn’t targeting domain investors.

      Yes, domain investors play an important role, but for a TLD to take off and get adopted, businesses need to use them, and I think the registries know this.

    • I never indicated the ads target domain investors, I made the point that it’s domain investors who feed on public marketing and invest accordingly..

      Follow the money Elliot, who do the Registries stand to profit from the most? When you consider auction revenue and Registration revenue, who are the majority of buyers?.

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