Looking for tips on how to jump start marketing for domaintower.com

Hi guys,

I have recently put the international version of my site online over at domaintower.com, and i'm looking for general tips & how to's on how to effectively market such a service online.


In short Domaintower.com is a multi user platform where you can register, add your domains, keywords, and data sources. We then monitor your domains for expiration, owner change, renewal, PageRank changes, changes in keyword rankings, availability of purchased/traded links (checks if they are still linking back), indexed pages, backlinks etc. We also track uptime, load time, and alert on any other state then up. We also offer web host/registrar independent DNS, to meet all possible needs. Basically we are a mashup of SaaS services available online, the idea is to make it easier owning and managing a domain/website and that no customer of us would ever loose a domain without knowing it is expiring.

we have a decent budget for a first marketing attempt, and i'm looking for some guidance on how to distribute our approaches. Generally i'm thinking Adsense, Commission junction, and SEO, but i am really interested in tips & to hear your similar experiences. We have tried some Facebook ads on our swedish sister page, and meanwhile response have been good for building volume on the facebook page, it hasn't been as effective for driving traffic to the site.

 

From my experience Facebook traffic is terrible for this kind of service. If you want people to do much more than click a button they'll usually not be in the mood if they come from Facebook since they are in an "entertain-me" state of mind.

As you mentioned there are similar services to yours. How do they get their clients? If you do have a reasonable budget I'd spy on them using spyfy.com or whatrunswhere.com.
No need to reinvent the wheel here...

 

I think that a really good step froward for your company would be to provide your customers with some sort of domain hosting/web hosting ability. Facebook can be very good, despite what the guy above has said because whether or not the customers mind set is entertainment, hes clicked on your page to be convinced, so the job of your Facebook page is to *engage* which is what people actively do on facebook...... This for me would be key here, and key to any form on social marketing tactic.

 

Since your website is in the domain industry niche, you will find that google adwords tend to be too costly and facebook ads do not convert well. Seo is also going to be tough as its a very competitive industry.

The best place to advertise is where your potential customers hang out in - forums. Infact you can run ads on this very forum (check the link at the top). Text link ads go for as little as $0.1 per click ($0.3 for geo-targetted). You have other forums like TrafficPlanet, WarriorForum, BlackHatWorld where you can either run banner advertising or run a classified ad (e.g WSO or BST).

My advice is to get involved with the community at these forums. The domain industry community is a tightly packed community with almost everyone visiting 5-6 forums. As long as you target the forums, you will have reached a large portion of your market.

 

The service looks pretty interesting, although I would give away a few more features(more keyword trackers for example), If you integrate an affiliate program, I would surely promote this on my blog.

 

Well, I don't have a lot of experience in the specific kind of services you are offering, yet what I can surely suggest is that a good deal of business will have to be TARGETED and for that direct contact, WSOs and forum signatures with special offers would be great. Like nikita12 says you'll need to get busy in the forums. Not only that, for a small start up fee you can ask other people to promote or make paid posts/threads. However if your budget is on the lower side, you may have to guide these paid posters or even tell them what to post. Any which way, it is good to get the word out and make a noise where it matters but the noise should never get into the grey area of spamming and thus degrading the reputation or perceived value of your business.

I also liked what MoritzB said about Facebook. Facebook likes and traffics are for generic niches and for your kind of service it makes little to no business sense. Maybe when you have more money for experimenting, you can run a few Facebook ads campaigns and see where that takes you.

Best of luck in your endeavors pal.

 

Look att this, lots of good answers, and i wasn't aware, must look at my email settings!

Anyways,

MoritzB:
Yeah, i have the same feeling, Facebook is not converting well for signup, but is working well for getting people to read posts and engage in other ways.

Thanks for the app tip, spyfu is awesome


AdamJ:
Yeah, we probably have a lot to go on our social media engagement.

Nikita12:
Yes, both SEO and PPC is tough in this business, a lot of large dragons to work with and around, we do have a pretty decent budget set a side for SEO and PPC. We also got contacted by 2 large marketing agencies that will advertise for us, and get 50% commission on everything they sell through ads and referrals. We have also applied for CJ, waiting to hear back from them.

Yes we are going to have to engage in a lot of related forums, thanks for the list, it helps narrowing it down to the top ones


Helge:
Thank you, glad to hear that!

We actually do have a affiliate program over at Affiliator.com, both for our Swedish (nordic) site, and for our Us/international site, although as i mentioned earlier in the post, we have applied for CJ too, hoping to get approved.
We will be adding more credits to all account types, and most important of all, we are adding uptime monitor and load time analysis as its own integrated tool in the platform to create more value for paying customers.


WebBuddy:

Thank you, we did set a side a decent budget for marketing, im trying to find the est way to spend it, i think i will be trying advertising here on DP too, the CPC level here is really good.
Yeah, we put a grand into facebook ads over 1 month, didnt give nearly as much as it should have. We also filtered for small business owners, but alot of the signups we got, are either to young to be business owners, or seems to be in school or have other jobs, so im a bit skeptical regarding the result Facebook delivered, considering the small niche vi targeted.

 

I can't believe if it's hard to market that type of website. YOu can simply put the signature with your link in this forum, post good stuff and bring value to the community, I promise you'll get good amount of TARGETED traffic from here.

=)

 

I would say take help of forum posting, hire forum posters who are specialized in posting in webmaster forums... it would help a lot to promote your website which is directly related to webmasters.

 

How about creating an explainer video showing why this service is so valuable to online business owners? You can place the video on video sharing sites and on your homepage. This should help you generate quite a bit of interest. You can also write a press release to help drive more traffic to the explainer video.

 

From my experience facebook traffic (or rather the conversion rate) is terrible period.

I was just thinking that youtube could be a way to go.

@FredrikNas I personally think you should have just one offer on a sign up - free. When a person signs up he/she shouldn't see paid offers. After they sign up and add a domain, they get a taste of your service. Then, when they decide to add another domain, they will be asked to pay something like $3-$5 per any additional domain. I maybe wrong, but I think that could work a bit better for you, as far as getting paid customers.