25 Mar Multichannel marketing with linkets
On the Web multichannel marketing is often done by well known firms using domains. A firm gets its main domain, often directly derived from its formal business name. Then it buys a second domain, which might be a generic word for its products or services. It points the second domain to its main domain.
Flowers are a good example. Suppose you go to flowers.com. It takes you to 1800flowers.com, which is run by 1–800 Flowers. The main channel is for customers who type or bookmark the firm’s brand. Indeed the firm is well known thru decades of conventional pre-Web marketing. But flowers.com is aimed at a customer who just wants flowers and does not care which vendor. She might or might not have heard of 1–800 Flowers.
Another case isflorist.com. A generic description of flower sellers. It takes us to ftd.com, another longstanding flower seller.
Nor is this restricted to flowers. Look at movies.com. A generic and valuable descriptor that goes to fandango.com, the movie ticket seller.
Look at those examples. Each firm bought the generic domain at some earlier time. Likely they bought it from a domainer who wanted $thousands. This is common. Domainers spent the last 20+ years buying up dot com domains that are English words with commercial value. It may well have cost FanDango $100 000 for movies.com. Perhaps much more.
Even for large firms, this type of multichannel marketing is not cheap. If you are such a firm, once a generic domain in your field is bought by a competitor, what can you do? Pretend you sell movie tickets and you are not FanDango. Imagine what they would charge you for movies.com? Even assuming they would sell to you, their competitor.
There is another way. You buy a linket like [Movies]. This is a brand written in brackets, and issued by the eponymous Linket Corp. You already have a website at your domain, to sell tickets. You buy [Movies] from Linket (if they have not already sold it to someone). You make [Movies] a clickable link on some 3rd party webpage where you are advertising. The link has [Movies] as the visible text. You tell Linket to point [Movies] to your actual site, just like movies.com points to fandango.com. Now when a user clicks [Movies], she is redirected to your site.
You promote [Movies] as your brand. The brackets give it a unique aspect, different from movies.com, which is a proxy for your competitor.
For flower selling, imagine that is your business. You (try to) buy [Flowers] from Linket. You make your website at your actual domain name (=your firm’s name). You scatter instances of [Flowers] throughout pages at other sites. Where you tell Linket to point [Flowers] to your site.
But what if, as a ticket seller, you find that [Movies] is already being used to sell tickets? Search for a synonym like [Films] and see if it’s available at Linket.
For flower selling, if [Flowers] is not available, look for [Florist].
With flowers and tickets, the choices of good linkets are based on the most common (popular) English words for the subject. The number of choices is small, just like domains.
First come, first served.
At least, linkets levels the playing field by letting newer firms have a crack at generic branding.
We discussed English words, because in dot com, those are common. Linkets offer a much greater multilingual ability than domains, which de facto are restricted to Roman letters. Going back to flowers, the Russian linket is [цветы], the Chinese linket is [花卉]. Use these as generic brands.
Going back to English, look at what your competitors have as domains. For cars, there might be mercedes.com. But don’t get [Mercedes] for use with vehicles. ([Mercedes] is fine in other fields.) Instead maybe see if [Cars], [Autos], [SUVs], [Sedan], [Lorries], [Trucks], [Vans], [Transport] are available.
For computer games, look for [Games], [Gaming], [Scavenger], [Hunting], [Shooter], [MOBA], [Poker], [Bridge], [All In], [Mah Jong], [Snap], [Prizes], [Top Dog], [Leaderboard], [Best Gamers], [Multi Player], [Pool], [Billiards], [Cards], [Casino].
For oil and mining, look for [Prospect], [Mining], [Mine], [Mines], [Refinery], [Wildcat], [Driller], [Drilling], [Offshore], [Onshore], [Power].
Use your knowledge of a field and look at what generic brands your competitors already use for domains. They got their generic domains by being first or maybe by spending a lot of money. You should try to be first with linkets.
Questions? Want to buy linkets? Just ask.
Dr Wes Boudville
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