At the Domain Roundtable conference in Washington, D.C. last month, I noticed a lot of new faces with the Sedo team. As I started talking to them, I realized what was going on. Sedo had hired a number of people experienced selling to businesses. The company was making a focused effort selling to end users, and was hiring the right people to do it. These new employees are not domain industry veterans; they’re B-2-B salespeople.
As part of its push for end user sales, Sedo recently launched monthly themed promotions that it will promote to end users. The current one is for real estate, and future themes include gambling and pharmacy. These themes allow the company to aggregate good domain names and focus marketing to one vertical.
“We’re always trying to reach end users,” said Kathy Nielson, Director of North American Brokerage & Acquisitions at Sedo. “With auctions and themed verticals on a monthly basis it ties it all together. It makes our clients happy, but marketing-wise it’s so much easier to target one vertical and get end users to come to the table and buy domains.”
It has proven successful already. Prior to the current effort, Sedo has marketed a father’s day theme and to the adult industry. The adult industry push included ads in trade publications.
“Our end user sales have just skyrocketed this summer,” said Nielson. “It’s fun to see some of these companies coming in [and buying domains].”
The monthly themes feature fixed price domain names. Sedo (and its competitors) have found that domains with prices or price expectations are much more likely to sell than those without prices. Nielson explains that when buyers come in and see no price indication, the negotiations take longer and are less likely to result in a sale.
Sedo seems to be making all the right moves to sell domains to end users, and the results are starting to prove it.
Jamie Zoch says
Sedo has been doing a great job lately. They have been rocking the charts via DnJournal and it’s exciting to see the themed auctions and the fact they are marketing outside the bubble of domainers.
Patrick McDermott says
“Sedo seems to be making all the right moves to sell domains to end users”
This is fabulous news.
I hope Sedo also writes and distributes some
great press releases concurrent with the themed auctions.
Great job Sedo!
SL says
“Prior to the current effort, Sedo has marketed a father’s day theme and to the adult industry.”
Am I the only one who left the word “and” out of this sentence while reading it?
Johnny says
@SL……that’s funny, I read it the same way at first also.
jorge says
Here is my sedo real estate name…
BuildingSpree.com
I think its kinda optimistic in these tough times.
Lda says
Do Sedo still require you to buy one of their
‘appraisals’ before they will allow you to
put a price above $10K on a domain ?
If so, nice one Sedo,.. tell the punters that priced domains a far more likely to sell,
then extract an appraisal fee.
Win-Win for Sedo.
Stephen Douglas says
I’m glad Sedo finally listened to me about end users being the “end” of the domain value point.
Well, not just me, but lots of other domainers smarter than me. I’ve been ranting about end user sales marketing of domains since 2004.
END USER = FINAL DOMAIN VALUE
Robert Haastrup-Timmi says
Like Stephen Douglas has just said right here, there are those of us who have been ranting for years that the end user should be the primary target for aftermarket domains.
Well done Sedo for making the move!