Forum Moderators: buckworks & webwork

Message Too Old, No Replies

Best practices in pro-actively marketing domains to companies?

         

Edwin

10:01 am on Jul 12, 2005 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



If you market your domains directly to companies (i.e you track down potential buyers in the niches covered by your domains) is there anything specific you can share in terms of dos and don'ts? For example (not meant to be an exhaustive list)

How do you approach buyers? (email, fax, phone etc.)

What do you send/say initially? (brief email, price info, background to the domain industry, industry sales data, price justification, deadline, explanation of the sales/transfer process, benefits of domain name ownership etc.)

How do you structure a sale? (first to offer asking price gets it, open auction, sealed bid auction, offers over $X, etc.)

Did a particular approach work very well? If so, what was it (if you can say)

Did a particular approach fall totally flat? Likewise...

I sell a good number of domains "reactively" (i.e. from walk-in enquiries or in response to "Wanted" posts on discussion forums) and via domain for-sale forums, but I figured it was time to step up a gear and go after those elusive end-users!

Webwork

12:42 pm on Jul 12, 2005 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Administrator 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Who is the person with "buy authority"? Marketing? Advertising? VP of? Webmaster? So, who do you contact? There's no certain answer. I'd start with the people running the website. They might actually know what web analytics means. ;)

Why do "they" want to buy? Are you selling traffic? Is your argument "You will have to pay X amount to SEs for this type of traffic so buy this domain for $$$ and you are ahead on the numbers." Does the domain have traffic because it's a generic expression of an industry relevant word/phrase, one that is likely to convert?

Good luck trying to sell "brand domains". You'll need it IMHO. However, if brand=generic industry domaina/phrase = valuable traffic then it will be a numbers game in selling. Find the person that grasps the numbers, who can then sell the idea to the company . . . IF he/she is secure in their job.

Bottom line: The best buyers are always the buyers that find you. Domain sales mostly remains a pull, not push, business.

Edwin

1:36 pm on Jul 12, 2005 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I'm only thinking of pure generics, though not necessarily with much traffic - some industries don't get a lot of traffic even for the most relevant keyword(s)...

Would be a wasted effort trying to sell "brands", from past experience and looking at 3rd parties.