MobilePhones.co.uk - 91K - A Bargain?

Because "Bing's debut will feature a $80 to $100 million online, TV, print, and radio advertising campaign, according to AdvertisingAge."
http://www.pcworld.com/article/1654..._search_bing_massive_ad_campaign_planned.html

Ok, I'll expand my earlier comment a bit to add this disclaimer: "Any time you have US$80,000,000-US$100,000,000 spare to spend on branding, you don't really need a generic domain name (but it would probably still help!)"

 

Generics are good and can be used as an addition to the marketing mix, but I can't help but think at 80 type-ins per month this was oversold.

 

I would agree with you if the money paid was for those 80 type-ins (and you mean expensive rather than oversold). I'm assuming it wasn't bought on the strength of those 80 type-ins.

 

Yes, overpaid or expensive would have been better to say. It is midnight here.

 

The argument on generic vs branding predates the web. When a company really wants to dominate a market they will always use a brand. If a brand then comes to dominate the market the company often fights hard to prevent its name being used as a generic, otherwise there is nothing to distinguish your brand from any other in the market.

When someone states "Google it" they don't actually mean look it up on Google, they mean check it on any search engine, hence Google's legal fight to stop its use as a verb, which it has done since around 2003. The brand is becoming a generic. There are lots of examples Hoover, Portakabin,..

The web and use of search engines gives a new angle. When you are involved in providing a product or service in a mature market that in itself is generic in nature then the customer doesn't care about a brand, they just "Google it". If you want to book a hotel and there are 5 big sites that you recognise why not use Hotels.com? They all provide essentially the same service, any innovation one has will be strictly temporary until the others copy it. Add this to Google's (current!) policy of giving authority to exact match domains then generic domains are one way of being a winner. You can gain a share of the market with far less marketing spend than your competitors.

There's a flip side however. A generic is hard to brand, so you have to accept it will not dominate the market, just have a good share of it (note in this I do not mean dominate as in be No1 on serps!). There's a very interesting read on the ad agancy for comparethemarket.com on struggling to brand a generic service, and how they did it successfully.

All IMHO etc You can tell I'm bored in work today..

 

Plus, if you are BigCo PLC and you go to a marketing agency, where is the interest in them informing their clients of generics and the like?

Ad spend is changing, but lots of interests after the £

 

None whatsoever. After meeting hundreds of people on the Memorable Domains stand during two consecutive Internet World shows, I can tell you categorically that - across the board - the least interested folks were from ad agencies.

SEO firms, end users, email marketers, etc. were all pretty receptive, but with the ad agency folks it was like talking to a brick wall. Worse than that, some of them actually looked pained (in retrospect, the reason's obvious, since strong generics negate a whole lot of the "creativity" they're being paid heftily to come up with in order to market brands)

 

Re "So why did MS not buy, brand and use SearchEngine.com instead of Bing.com".

I think search.com would have been the one to buy if they could, that is a very good name, and could be "branded" too.

Rgds

 

Search.* would costs a hell of alot more than Bing.* to aquire.

 

Yeah but MS would have to spend less on prime ad slots with crap ads that make no sense. Mention it once and it will stick. BING? eh?

 

Sure, it would, but it might just be worth it. It's a name that could be a thread to Google. You'd still need branding spend, but it would be a powerful name.

On a related note, I feel LowPrices.co.uk is a good example of a brandable generic in the price comparison sector, and I hope to start raising awareness of this.

Rgds

 

This also makes me realise how weak the .co.uk is the long run as a brand, which is kind of obvious really.

 

Please elaborate. Do you mean it loses traffic to the .com?

Rgds

 

Microsoft went with Bing (or at least with something other than "Search") because just like Google is much more than search (Gmail, Calendar, alerts, etc. etc. - over 100 services at last count) so is Microsoft.

But for the 99.99% of companies that don't have a Microsoft-level marketing budget, a generic is going to set them on a firm footing. And for the probably 19 out of 20 companies that only do business within the UK, they're going to be best served with the .co.uk form of the domain name. Nominet's surveys have shown that that's what UK users have come to expect, and the regional SEs prefer .co.uk as well.

With billions of websites operated by millions of companies, I'm sure anyone can come up with a long list of sites for which the above doesn't apply. But there's a looooooooooooooooong list for which it does! And that's good enough for me

 

I think a good example here is 2 sites i was involved in, thinklocal and northwest, both .co.uk. Different looking sites, but they do both do the same thing.

Thinklocal crashed, never really made enough to cover the staffs wages (10 telesales people i think) Then northwest, less staff blew it out the water and also attracted a few really big advertisers.

So the outlay from thinklocal to buy northwest from me was a really good move.

I do agree with some other comments though, i for one wouldn't type mobilephones.co.uk, i would go direct to the car phone warehouse or something like, but mobilephones.co.uk is still an amazing name, and i am sure it will do very well.

 

Sorry mate - didn't realise you were in NZ!

 

but if they're buying the generic from you they'll need a MS type budget anyway...

 

its just the clout. i love a good .co.uk as much as anyone here but the .com is just always going to be the daddy for a true brandable or generic as it opens up a global market without trying, its just so solid.

You'll have excuse me but I feel sometimes having a top generic or brandable .co.uk is like masturbation without an end result... its good but not quite there...

 

Let's not forget that Microsoft own live.com, which is a fantastic name that could be used for their service, but choose to redirect it to bing. It demonstrates the power that they view a successful brand to have.

Also, I certainly don't think that going for a branded option is only relevant to big companies. Many smaller ones go for a half way house between brand and generic, and there is certainly logic to that approach too and many successful examples of it. It depends on the genre of the site too. The nature of the business. Entertainment sites are frequently more suited to exotic names in my view.

That said, generics certanly have their place, and offer a very real SEO advantage, as well as being memorable. There's a level of trust and comes with it, that perhaps can't as eaily be attributed to someone attempting to establish a brand that nobody has heard of thus far. As we have seen previously, big companies do go for generic names too. There's a certain prestige to using/owning them.

 

I think it depends on the aspirations of the company. If they only operate on a local level, then going with the .co.uk makes perfect sense. The same if there is a local branch to an international brand. A .co.uk could be appropriate in that case. The worldwide aspect is of course a great plus though, and that's reflected in the higher value that .com domains usually gain over regional equivalents.