End User Domain awareness

[mhdoc]

This afternoon my wife dragged me to the Parade of Homes which is an annual event where builders show off their latest and greatest houses. These are homes priced at three to four times the median home price in the area. All the builders, contractors, Realtors, and subs leave their cards out in hopes visitors will want to contact them.

I started collecting cards for the humor of the domain name awareness.

The stucco guy has a cheap card, has the dot net of his company name for email, but the domain itself is just an ad for getting your own website and has nothing to do with his business. The dot com is a parked page that serves popunders.

The granite guy has a nice three color card and shows a 17 character long dot com domain. However, he uses a Yahoo email address. The website is lovely, but since it is all done in flash, not likely to rank well on search.

The builder has a three color card on VERY stiff and fancy stock but has no email address or website. He does include his fax number

The wall texturing guy has a REALLY expensive, full bleed, heavy stock, printed on both sides card and includes his aol.com email address.

Finally, some of the floor tiles are made by a company called Dreamweaver. As you might imagine, they had a little trouble finding any form of that available, and had to settle for the hyphenated dot biz.

From where I sit it seems obvious that almost everyone who visits these homes and picks up a card would probably look over a portfolio site that displayed completed work. I think they could generate leads if they offered to let prospective customers visit sites which are in process.

This is a small sample, but I think some conclusions can be reached.

Someone who is using an aol.com email account is probably not going to shell out big bucks for a domain until their awareness of the value of a good website increases.

Local advertising is where the leads for these companies will come from so search engine placement isn't especially important. An easy to spell name would be good, but if someone has picked up your card or is holding your newspaper ad in their hand, it's probably not essential.

In terms of how a "Good" domain is defined on NamePros, every one of these businesses is a potential future purchaser of a quality domain.

Some posters worry that the best opportunities are in the past, but it looks to me like the demand for good domains still has a lot of growth left in it.

 

[Spade]

Some posters worry that the best opportunities are in the past, but it looks to me like the demand for good domains still has a lot of growth left in it.

Anyone who does their homework should come to this very conclusion.

BTW - Interesting data you collected! thanks. Rep Added.

Justin

 

[sashas]

Interesting thread which brings up another topic that I'd been thinking over
(not to hijack your thread though): Has anyone here tried to contact end users personally? The cornerstore that uses a crappy domain, for example...has anyone tried to contact these end users by walking in and talking about names in person? I think the potential for making sales are HUGE if you live in a decent sized city and have good communication skills.

Coming back to your post, I had an end user ask me, "But what exactly is a domain name?"

 

[lzy]

Very interesting read. Reps added.

 

[raceway]

Many people have not even realized the potential of having a online portfolio of there work.

I built my dad a site for his landscaping company three years ago for his birthday. He is located in British Colombia and he even got an e-mail from someone in Ontario that came accross his online portfolio while searching google.

It turned out that he just bought a house in the area where my dad was located and my dad landed himself a $15,000 job.

An online presence is really amazing and important for any business.

Thanks for sharing mhdoc, really good to know.

 

[MadAboutDomains]

I often see vans driving around with geocities addresses and crappy hotmail or btinternet.com email addresses written on them.

It makes me laugh, but also makes me want to register the names of businesses in the local area and ring them and sell them.

- Luke

 

[DotWeekly]

90% of the "Small Business" class has No Clue how much the internet and a good domain could and would help them!

 

[Pred]

Glad to hear the same elsewhere not just in UK

I't's shocking, but you can't really just approach businesses over the phone or in person as most will think you're a snakeskin oil salesman, lol

Its a tricky one, i think most enquiries you send out will be treated as spam, but these guys need educating as well.
I'm thinking about more telephone led sales approaches, but thats a tough area to be in , none wants to be approached like that really, myself included.

Do you think a letter (snailmail) & then folowed up by telephone call is best option?
I'm thinking that way.
what is peoples experiences of this?

thanks to o/p. so true what you're saying & is shocking really

 

[sashas]

I think the snailmail approach would be the best one. Most people don't regard snailmail as something threatening or intrusive

 

[MadAboutDomains]

I have a feeling that the whole world is going to get an email and a phone call regarding domains of their business.

|We,ve found a gap in the market that everyone in different areas can take advantage of.

 

[ferraristi]

I have a number of car related domain names that have obvious TM issues, however, I have thought about offering these to dealers as they would have a legitimate use for the domain

Any thoughts?

 

[shockie]

I have a number of car related domain names that have obvious TM issues, however, I have thought about offering these to dealers as they would have a legitimate use for the domain

Any thoughts?

your best bet is to cancel those domains.

 

[ferraristi]

I don't think so, I've had them for about 5 years and they earn me revenue.

 

[shockie]

any idea how much a lawsuit costs?

 

[christopher_c]

couldnt he just take down the domain after they contact him?

 

[acc]

Many people have not even realized the potential of having a online portfolio of there work.

I built my dad a site for his landscaping company three years ago for his birthday. He is located in British Colombia and he even got an e-mail from someone in Ontario that came accross his online portfolio while searching google.

It turned out that he just bought a house in the area where my dad was located and my dad landed himself a $15,000 job.

An online presence is really amazing and important for any business.

Thanks for sharing mhdoc, really good to know.

raceway - Great example and nice job building a site for your dad. ... Kudos to you.

Once a business acquires a good generic domain name (or domains) to use for their business, it is a very low cost means of perpetual advertising that provides good general name retention on minimal brand-building resources. Yellow pages are a good example. People think dictionary words first and brands second unless the "brandable term" has been beaten into their subconscious through years of advertising. I saw it written recently where someone likened a business using a generic term domain as "owning" that term in their business sector.

Diamonds may be forever but a good generic domain name for a business comes pretty close.
.