I don’t think successful outbound domain name sales is easy. In fact, it can be pretty demoralizing depending on the response to your outbound efforts. From not receiving a reply to being told off, there’s nothing really glamorous about outbound sales.
If you’re looking to sell an industry defining domain name via outbound, I thought I would share a tip to help find prospective buyers that goes beyond what I typically find with Google, DomainLeads, DomainIQ, and AI searches. Find an industry trade organization and reach out to some of the public facing member companies that would benefit from buying the domain name.
When using Google to find leads, it tends to be locating the largest companies that are best at SEO. Search results may also be weighted locally to where you are searching. There are likely more companies in an industry than can be found with a Google search.
When you use a helpful tool like DomainLeads or DomainIQ, you are heavily weighting your search to specific terms in a domain name. This can be great for very targeted prospects, but it is not the entire picture. There are many companies that don’t use a specific industry term within their domain name. For instance, a leading Avionics company may be called Flyvionical, and that company might not show up in those searches.
When you use AI searches like ChatGPT, you are going more broad, but probably not very deep. I think the results can be similar to Google results, but you are likely better able to tailor those results. I have found that AI searches will show me the largest companies in a field, and while that can be good, it can also be very difficult to find a good decision maker at a huge corporation.
By locating an industry trade organization, you may be able to see industry companies of all sizes in all locations. In addition, you can read some of the leadership pages and article pages to see who the biggest players are in the field. You can also learn who is leading these companies to find more accurate targeting. I have found that some of these organizations have contact email addresses as well, which is also helpful.
When I am doing outbound marketing, I generally do not contact more than a couple of handfuls of prospective buyers. I don’t believe in the spray and pray approach to marketing and think that’s super spammy. I also don’t need to contact a tiny company in the middle of nowhere to try and sell a high value, broad domain name when they are a hyperlocal company servicing their small regional market. Finally, I don’t send more than a couple of emails to prospects. If they haven’t responded after I send one follow-up, I think it’s safe to assume they’re not interested and additional messages will be more than unwelcome.
Outbound marketing to sell domain names is challenging. Good domain names tend to sell themselves when the right contact is made.
Outbound marketing is my primary method of selling the high value domains I am brokering, and also many that I own. AI has made it easier than ever, as I can identify the likely buyers, get verified emails from RocketReach and Apollo, craft the right email message, and send within literally minutes. I have tracking software which helps, as even though I do not get an immediate response, I can see the level of interest a company may have as I can see if they have clicked on my LinkedIn profile, or the press release link I may have enclosed, and if they have shared the email within the organization.
When it results in a sale, you forget the hundreds of emails that were sent with zero response. Remember, larger companies hesitate to engage until the decision to buy is near….they have internal conversations and discuss. So no replies does not mean “no interest.” Just 2 days ago I received an email request for a Zoom meeting with a global industry leader for a $1.5M name as a result of an outreach email. Great news, other than their executives are in Portugal and the Zoom is for 3:30 AM my time next Wednesday!!!!! But I will happily attend!!!!
Fred