Sending buyers to LinkedIn has many advantages.
The other day I came across Domaining.com owner Francois Carrillo’s landing page for Faster.com (see image above). It’s a simple landing page that allows visitors to take only one action if they are interested in the domain: contact Francois through his LinkedIn profile.
If you click anywhere on the page it shows a message:
Clicking “OK” brings you to Francois’ LinkedIn profile where you can contact him.
I immediately thought this was brilliant. It weeds out any confused visitors. It forces the buyer to make a least a little bit of effort to contact you. It reveals the buyer’s identity. And even if they try to contact you through other means, they show up on LinkedIn in people who viewed your profile.
I reached out to Francois to ask him about this strategy. He stressed that it makes a lot of sense for premium domains. For lower priced domains he uses a lander with fixed prices. Here are the benefits Francois noted via email:
Logan says
Francois is a very smart man.
Scott Ross says
I confess, Andrew, at a glance, I didn’t quite get it. The implied command was the LinkedIn graphic and I didn’t want to pop open a 40th browser tab. That said, were I an interested buyer, I surely would have.
Your analysis, as usual, is sublime. So is Francois’s strategic rationale. But then, this isn’t the first time he’s been at the forefront of fresh ideas.
Of course, some prospective buyers are fiercely protective of their identity, for any number of reasons, including tactical negotiation. As such, there are still workarounds for buyers to remain stealth, including brokers, alleged brokers and the use of third party LinkedIn accounts. That said, the tells will be more apparent in Francois’s LinkedIn handoff, so it’s still got a leg up on more traditional, less transparent forms and phone calls.
I’m now going to have to suppress my itch to copycat Francois’ masterstroke. As you headlined, I concur, it’s brilliant.
Francois says
Scott,
In fact, Faster.com is an exception, it resolves in a landing page before reach my LinkedIn profile, simply because it’s a recent acquisition and I still not updated the DNS, the main idea is having the domain forward directly to my profile. such intermediary landing pages was my initial idea before realize it is more interesting to directly link to your LinkedIn profile:
First, because it’s a requirement to benefit of point (5)
Second, because you do not need to spend time setting up landings for each new domain you buy.
And the cherry on the cake for me who sometimes have my servers victim of DOS attacks, this will no longer affect my sale pages availability, LinkedIn is prepared to handle such problems.
It’s true Scott, that some may try to use stratagems to not reveal their identity but consider:
First, buyers who want to hide their identity are a minority. Remember it’s all the buyers who are anonymous through a marketplace or can easily mislead you through a contact form. There you see who is behind and thanks to the conversation you should quickly appreciate if it makes sense this person/company wants to buy this name for this strong price.
Second, now I see in the history of the visits most of the identity of people who have type-in one of my domains, even if they do not contact me. Sure, I do not know for which specific domain. But now I know this individual or company had some interest or curiosity on one of my domains. This probably may help to make a link between a strange demand and a company you saw visiting one of your domains a few times recently.
Andrew Allemann says
Do you think users who are automatically forwarded to your LinkedIn profile will be confused?
Francois says
Possible, some are even confuse when they see a classic make offer form in a landing page.
I no longer count the “idiots” who ask for a ride in my Uver.com domain for example 🙂
Andrew Allemann says
🙂
steven says
way to leverage linkedin francois 🙂
Gabe says
what is the 3rd reason?
thelegendaryjp says
Great domain!