NetGains Marketing

This may be the biggest domain name sale ever. According to the Wall Street Journal, Go Daddy Group, Inc. which owns GoDaddy.com – the world’s biggest domain name registrar – is offering itself for sale in an auction that could see the company sold for more than $1 billion.

Go Daddy has hired technology banking firm Qatalyst Partners – led by iconic banker Frank Quattrone – to handle the sale. According to the Wall Street Journal, private equity firms are likely to be the prime bidders for the company, attracted by the consistent, and consistently large, cash flows GoDaddy.com generates on an ongoing basis.

GoDaddy, which is based in Scottsdale, Arizona, was founded by eccentric entrepreneur Bob Parsons back in 1997. Since then, while the Internet bubble rose and burst, and while the technology media  focused most of its attention on ‘sexier’ Internet companies – ranging from Amazon and eBay, to Yahoo and Google, to Facebook and Twitter – GoDaddy steadily became the leading domain name registrar, with over 43 million domain names under management.

Go Daddy hasn’t exactly been a ‘quiet’ achiever – its outspoken founder and CEO Bob Parsons has relished media attention and the company is known for his infamous TV commercials featuring the ‘Go Daddy Girls’. Nevertheless, it still shocks me how both GoDaddy and Bob Parsons have garnered so  little attention among the technology media.

Dare I say it might have been a different story had Bob Parsons started Go Daddy in Silicon Valley with venture capital, instead of building it in Arizona with his own money?

GoDaddy is also well known within Internet marketing circles for embracing and capitalizing on a range of innovative and lucrative conversion tactics. The company is one of the leaders – if not the leader – in attracting customers with cheap domain names (arguably loss leaders), and then up-selling and cross-selling them into buying a host of other services.

To this end, apart from being a domain name registrar, GoDaddy.com sells website hosting, website creation tools, security solutions, e-commerce services, domain parking, runs a domain name aftermarket, and has just introduced its X.co URL shortening service (see Go Daddy Launches X.co World’s Shortest URL Shortener).

According to the Wall Street Journal, all this adds up to an estimated $750 million to $800 million in 2009 revenues for Go Daddy Group, Inc.

So why is Bob Parsons selling GoDaddy? I can only speculate, but the fact that Go Daddy is seeking a private sale rather than, say, go public by filing an initial public offering (IPO) indicates that Bob Parsons doesn’t just want to cash out. It says to me that he no longer wants to run the business.

That’s fair enough and kudos to Bob Parsons for building GoDaddy into such a successful company. All the same, I have mixed feelings about the Go Daddy sale and, I presume, Bob Parsons’ exit from the company.

Okay, I’ll admit it: I have ‘Bob Parsons’ 16 Rules For Success‘ poster above my desk. Go Daddy is the classic entrepreneurial success story and I’m a bit sad that the company is going to be sold to a bunch of bankers (if that’s what happens)!

On the other hand, in case the domain name industry couldn’t get any more interesting, it just did. Which makes this industry all the more fun to be involved in. Watch this space.

Source: Anupreeta Das, “GoDaddy.com Goes on the Auction Block,” WSJ.com, September 11, 2010

Original article by Anna Johnson (Kikabink News) 

"PR people understand this but can never execute it: if you don’t like what is being said, change the conversation.” —Don Draper

As creative director at Sterling Cooper, the fictitious advertising agency at the heart of Mad Men, Don Draper is fast becoming an industry icon, unleashing timeless maxims on the nature of the advertising business. The show is set in the early ’60s, and yet his insights seem to strike a chord for those still plying their trade in the ad game. But when Draper advised a client in crisis to “change the conversation,” the show’s writers unwittingly showed just how much has changed since 1963.

In Mad Men’s era, marketers of all stripes — but especially advertisers — operated from the singular principle of top-down communication. There were fewer channels of communication and fewer media outlets, and so it felt like there were fewer voices. Much more importantly, there was less of a voice for consumers in that mix. The thought was that people weren’t really talking about brands with any sort of impact. And that’s why Don takes a swipe at the PR industry, which has always been about generating word of mouth rather than dominating it.

Sure, people would chat about advertising at the metaphorical water cooler, but the belief was that conversation couldn’t possibly have the same impact as a million-dollar commercial or network airtime. Advertisers thought that they could quite literally change the conversation — shut down one side of it until their message was the only one being heard. Draper may have called it a conversation, but he meant to shout louder and better than everyone else, until the conversation became a monologue — his monologue.

That’s all changed, of course. Marketing, PR and word of mouth are now deeply intertwined. The marketing monologue is a relic: it’s all dialogue, all the time. It’s an Internet-driven phenomenon, as the development of a two-way media channel has transformed the thinking in the industry to the point where consumer engagement to spread a message is now a part of most marketing plans.

Taking advantage of this conversation means giving up control and engaging in the chatter on the street. One can’t join a conversation without first paying attention to what’s being said, and how, and by whom.

Nowhere is this more evident, lately, than in the sad death of bike courier Darcy Sheppard and the subsequent arrest of former Ontario attorney general Michael Bryant. The battle for Bryant’s image is already being waged, in advance of his actual court case. A fight that until recently would have been fought almost exclusively through television appearances and press conferences is now a conversation being had online. Sheppard supporters have annotated surveillance camera footage and posted it on YouTube to argue Bryant’s guilt (with tens of thousands of views); Bryant’s team has started a blog and a Twitter feed (both called “Bryantfacts”) to reply to “demonstrable errors of fact” surrounding the event; a counter-Twitter (there’s a new term!) called “Bryanttruths” has been established too. The last thing his team wants to do is to engage on this immediate, uncontrolled series of ground skirmishes — but they’re smart enough to know that a modern marketer has to join the conversation.

So what does this mean, in practical terms? How do we really follow the rules of a conversation in marketing?

First of all, we listen. And in this case, that means paying attention to what people are saying about our brands and companies (and in Bryant’s case, our public figures). It starts with regular, constant searching online for any reference to your subject. So join every Facebook group that makes reference to your company; search for your brand on Twitter every day; and pay attention to what is being said.

Next, we have to respect the rules of the conversation. No shouting, no overpowering, and we wait our turn. If you’re starting a social media campaign, make sure that your branded work looks more like the site that it’s a part of. Great branded Facebook pages feel like great Facebook pages first. It also means accepting that some negative feedback is a part of the deal, just as it is with any conversation.

And lastly, we give to the conversation. Increasingly, this means getting your message out there in as entertaining a fashion as possible — even if it sometimes means losing a little bit of that brand sell. Whether it’s an unbelievably entertaining 30 seconds of video or a terrific game or something else entirely, we need to let people know that they are going to like talking to us, and then they’ll come back for more.

By Max Valiquette (originally appeared in Canadian Business Magazine, Oct 2009).
Don Draper would certainly approve of that.

By Tony Bradley at PC World ; Fri Aug 27, 2010 1:35pm EDT

Google added new functionality to its real-time search engine, and moved it from an obscure feature buried in the options on the left pane of the standard Google search, to its own Web site. The new Google Realtime can be a powerful tool for businesses that know how to use it.

Search rivals Google and Bing were engaged in a heated race last fall to forge deals with social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter in order to incorporate those real-time status updates into search results. With the changes delivered by Google, the real-time data is more customizable, and more accessible--making it much more valuable.

Customer Relevance

Companies can use information gleaned from Google Realtime to "read the minds" of consumers. Conducting searches related to current or planned products or services can help identify what customers want and what concerns they might have.

As the next-generation Kindle launches today, e-reader rivals like Barnes and Noble and Sony can use Google Realtime to monitor real-world comments and feedback about the device. The information will let them know what the target audience likes about the new Kindle, as well as what customers still feel it's lacking or wish it had--enabling them to apply that information to their next e-reader models and stay a step ahead of consumer demand.

Proactive Support

Most customer contact centers maintain a database of known issues and resolutions for more efficient customer support, but that information is typically gleaned as the calls come in. Google Realtime enables businesses to monitor customer issues and complaints--in real-time--to track any pervasive issues and begin to develop solutions before the phone starts ringing off the hook.

The filters provided by Google Realtime can also help isolate an issue. If HTC were to monitor Google Realtime and see a spike in Droid Incredible customers complaining that the device can't get a signal, it could filter the results by location to determine if it is a prevalent issue with the smartphone in general, or if it is limited to a specific geographic area--perhaps indicating that the problem is with a Verizon tower rather than the HTC device.

Reputation Management

This is perhaps the Holy Grail of real-time search. What company wouldn't like to know what customers really think of it? Commissioned telemarketing or Web surveys are helpful, but being able to see what people are actually saying to one another behind closed doors is truly valuable.

The significance of monitoring real-time Facebook status updates and Twitter tweets is that it is raw, unfiltered information. When a customer has a bad experience at a restaurant, he is not shy about sharing that information with the Twitterverse. When someone really loves the movie she just saw, odds are fair that the Facebook social network will hear about it.

The best part for businesses that want to put Google Realtime to use is that it doesn't require hiring a full-time employee dedicated to monitoring Google Realtime streams. As Google explains in the blog post announcing Google Realtime "we've also added updates content to Google Alerts, making it easy to stay informed about a topic of your choosing. Now you can create an alert specifically for "updates" to get an email the moment your topic appears on Twitter or other short-form services."

Google Realtime is a valuable business tool. Check it out. Experiment with different search terms to understand how it can be applied for your business. Set up some Google Alerts to keep an eye on it, and put the information to use.

Original story -here