By: RH
That was a reply I got when brokering a domain to a Fortune 1000 company. I was out with some people at a company get together and met the person in charge of marketing for a Fortune 1000 company. We were discussing domains for awhile, he mentioned he made the decisions for the company when it came to domain acquisition.
I told him that I had a domain that I was brokering and felt it matched the company perfectly, it was a short,generic, 16 year old .com domain.
He said that they had really cut back on domain purchases and that there was more of a feeling that Facebook was the Internet. He explained its where their customers were, it gave them the best platform to interact with customers and that they could not match that social feel on a new domain.
He certainly was willing to look at the domain for what he called a nominal amount of say $200. I explained that the name had value and had several offers over the years in the mid four figure range. At that price he was not interested and did not see the value.
I am sure he is not the only domain decision maker out there with these thoughts. These companies need to read stories like this one: http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2011/11/28/facebook-pages-offer-new-twist-on-domain-name-row/
The case covers a “Page”, which is operated by a business (or a public figure) and is different to an ordinary personal profile. The dispute involves two pharmaceutical firms: the German Merck KGaA and the US Merck & Co. The two have no business connection and are direct competitors.
Facebook is a part of the puzzle, but the domain is the board. All the pieces of the puzzle go on the board, no one piece is bigger than the board.
It looks like Smart Stop Self Storage was the $59,000 buyer of SmartStop.com this week. They are forwarding it to their main site which is on a different domain. That’s paying quite a lot for a brandable type domain, even if it is a great shortened version of their full name. If they use it for their email people will enjoy typing less.
Fact is many people still don’t get the value of domains, but it’s like anything else. Business people make good and bad decisions all the time, and people let good opportunities pass them by all the time, I don’t think there will ever be a point when everyone ‘gets’ domains.
I work for a small company and that’s how my boss thinks. Cheers
They just don’t understand the ‘walled garden’ aspect to it all