It’s safe to say that many new players in the TLD space are operating on the premise of “Build it and They Will Come.” But look at .jobs and .museum — two existing top-level domains that have been around for over 4 years, and ask yourself how many people know of them?
Clearly, just owning a top-level domain, even if it is an extremely simple and short generic word, is not the immediate cash machine you might expect. You will need to start thinking about how you want registrars, large domain investors, trademark holders, and your specific target market to find out about your TLD product offering. Here’s how we can help:
- Create a pre-application marketing assessment. No two TLDs have the same needs and requirements. Marketing a city domain like “.london” is different from marketing a generic term such as “.shop”. But both cost money, and these costs should be estimated before embarking on an expensive and time-consuming application.
- Help you design a full marketing plan. As part of the application process, you will need to convince ICANN that you have a viable business plan. A detailed marketing plan and budget is something we can help you with.
- Market your TLD to trademark holders. Your first customers will be the large trademark holders (Coke, Nike etc.) who may register during the Sunrise period. You’ll want to develop a communications plan — a hard sell will definitely not work here — to let them know exactly how the Sunrise will be run and to answer any questions they have. You would be smart to work with trademark groups such as INTA for this. Having been involved in many Sunrise efforts, Minds + Machines can help you get your message out the right way.
- Market your site to registrars. By mandate, you must sell your TLD through the registrar channel. It’s a channel we know well, and one we can help you market to, in a cost-effective way.
- Market your site to domain investors. One of the best ways to generate revenue early on is to convince large domain investors that your name space represents a good long-term investment. As past organizers of large domain conferences, such as Domain Roundtable, we know all the players and the most effective marketing channels to approach that audience.
- Market your site to end-users. Ultimately, depending on the TLD, you will probably need a coordinated marketing plan to drive awareness of your value proposition to your target registrant market. Depending on your budget, we can help you build a combination of offline and online marketing that will create street-level awareness of your product offering. Our principals have deep ties with the leading online advertising networks, and understand the best way to use social media to drive your marketing message through to your target market.
