Spoiler Alert - If you haven't seen the final episode of MadMen, read no more. MadMen was weekly TV series that ran on AMC and just came to a brilliant concluding episode. I found the show intriguing on multiple levels. First as a period piece into the advertising industry roots of the 50's to 70's. The characters were well formed and wisely engineered into an almost historic account of advertising growth as it was woven into American culture. The final episode tied it together with a twist I didn't see coming until the classic Coke ad brought it home.
Don Draper's smile while chanting as the new dawn arose could have been that he finally found peace, or was it that he just got the idea for one of the best ad campaigns in history. The next scene was the 1971 "I'd like to buy the world a Coke" commercial. Brilliantly written, directed and executed. (standing ovation). Through the course of the series the ad firm grows into a multi-million dollar empire. What's ironic now is that there is a new dawn in advertising again. The ad firms and TV stations that got rich during the MadMen period a now seeing a seismic shift in the platform, welcome the internet. The dawn is over but the sun hasn't full risen. The day hasn't even begun to warm yet. It'll be interesting to see how history and culture remember this segment of our development, who'll be the next Don Draper's and just how technology will evolve.
Opportunities are everywhere. Internet growth and online advertising are set to explode. Where will your business be?
The key method of developing your business is advertising. Call it integrated marketing with all the other forms of getting your message out, but it still boils down to advertising, which is making it public and memorable.
You may advertise in a trade magazine or on a billboard, but your website is the only form of advertising that's constantly available to your audience. Your domain name is the focal point for all of these marketing components, at the corner stone, and the foundation from where you build your brand upon.
Get a dot com name. Other extensions may gain popularity in 20 years, but for the foreseeable future your marketing efforts will end up in the junk folder. Even in tech where .io and .ai have some traction with start ups, it translates into they're in beta, not ready for primetime. As a decision maker can you back your choice of doing business with an organization that's not really established?
Read my last post about Branding for Authority and Affinity for more information. Here are some premium domain names that I have for sale.
Here's a company I discovered while looking for some keyword analysis on my GeorgiaBeachHomes.com website, Wordstream. Not only does Wordstream offer keyword advice and optimization, they have a suite of utilities to tune up your marketing campaigns. Wordstream is a Google and Facebook Premier Partner leading the industry in search optimization. I like the design of their wesite too and they have a wealth of information for those of you just getting started with online advertising. Spend a little time reading though the Pay Per Click University and learn about bid management and conversion tracking.
Advertising in 2018 and Beyond With the Super Bowl Lll just around the corner, I am always interested in what 30 seconds of air time is selling for and what the best commercials will be. Last year companies spent up to 5 million to get in front of the 111 million viewers watching in the US, and then their money was gone. Advertising online has more than begun it's shift upward while other mediums, aside from radio, are sloping down. In an article on MediaPost.com The Winterberry Group states 2018 will be the year of digital media and spending will surpass all off lime marketing. In 2016 online spending surpassed television, now it's growing overall. That's because online advertising works and everyone is on all the time. As a business owner you know you need to be online, but finding your customers in this digital ocean is the next challenge. SmartInsights.com just released a digital marketing mega-trends guide and they have several digital marketing tool kits. The article was scientific citing the effectiveness of Amazon's trial and errors as they grew. One point not expressed enough is to acquire a memorable and easy to pronounce, easy to pass along domain name. (Note: KeyInsight.com is for sale now. Don't delay building your brand, what you put off now, will later only be more difficult and increasingly competitive to navigate.
Go Eagles!
Domain name values are rising for several key reasons:
First, they provide unprecedented advertising abilities and can reach out to new clients and interact with them 24X7 where no other media can't even compete.
Secondly, absolute creditability. People judge your domain name, your url, your address, this is how they find you and get to know you. How well your site looks and works is also a factor, I hope that is obvious. Don't lose the fish at the dock. But, if your domain name is off center, or has extra words, hyphens, number, all these make it weaker and harder to business with your organization. Look at how you view and surf, how fast are you gone and less likely to put a credit card up when these two key points are off? 77 percent are gone in less than half a second.
Domain names are like real estate, they're virtual real estate, but the difference is domain names rarely and infrequently come back on the market. Once sold, they are gone. If they do come up for sale, it's usually in the aftermath of a merger and for 100X what it last sold for. Like real estate, inventory is low and depleting. The pool of good names is drying up at an accelerating rate.
Get the .com extension or you'll be giving business to it. Maybe a .org depending on what your business is, and a .us maybe a good thing 10 years from now, but get the best .com names while you can. For the all the reasons above, and most prominently, domain names are the most powerful advertising mechanism in place for the next 20 years.
Prices are going up. Open to offers, take a look here.
From and article on WinningWP.com about getting the best domain name possible by Karol K, he provides 22 essentials tips to help those new to the industry. There's only one other tip I would add to this post, it's well worth it to buy a great domain name. Memorability and validity make your business standout. Not everyone can afford a million dollar domain, but there's a reason why they are worth those kind of numbers, specifically site traffic and being the brand authority. Remember you are building a brand when you build your website, and there's no point to building all your collateral advertising around a sub par domain name.
Even with a busy schedule I try and keep an eye on movement in the tech industry. Where money is being placed shows the direction of the market and what the results of all these industry gurus research and decisions are being backed by speculation. Follow the money and you're following the end results of all these great minds. In an article on SIIA.net there's a comparative breakdown of the last three years worth of investments in different sectors of technology that leads in with some analysis on Q1 2018. Out of the gate, 2018 is up 124% compared to 2017 and the money is on tech enabled services up 207%. Marketing, analytics, database and information services have unprecedented increases. With stronger consumer confidence the market outlook for technology related goods and services is very healthy, as a consequence advertising and marketing via tech soars along side. Seems obvious to those involved with technology that this isn't going anywhere but up. Take a read through the numbers, what they mean is a future more interwoven with tech than anyone can imagine. The article is from Matt Kinsman, former vice president at Connectiv now at Accruent.com citing info from JEGI.com.