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Call to Action: .tel Marketing ! I am wondering if there are some simple and cheap ways to spread the word about .tel faster, considering that the .tel platform can now publish information in hundreds of thousands of .tel domains and that a relatively large number of .tel owners might be interested to help to make .tel more widespread . My idea is not to tell Telnic how to do their advertising (like spend bazillions dollars on major marketing campaigns which would be nice but might or might not happen), but to put our minds together to provide practical realistic feedback and cheap easy improvements in .tel marketing, especially with regard to how .tel owners can now use their domains and marketing efforts to spread the word more efficiently and by working more in synch with the marketing campaigns of Telnic. So I am asking everybody interested to please identify potential marketing factors that might slow down or speed up .tel awareness. I will give you a few ideas, and please share with us your thoughts on this and other ways to achieve this- Telnic might appreciate the feedback and the brainstorming too: 1) The marketing materials from .tel are very nice and professional. We do need however more of them: for example I think that it would be useful to have short brochures explaining to the public the top 3 (one page) or top 5 (2 pages) reasons to get a .tel (in addition the “top 10 reasons brochure” that is great for people who are more interested in .tel). Give us please 2 different versions of each one, for example different top 3 reasons… Lack of public awareness of .tel is currently probably the main problem with adopting .tel today more rapidly on a global scale, and there is no easy simple way to explain to people the more important facets and advantages of .tel. However, we should start by keeping it simple. The other main problems with .tel adoption are that many people today have short attention spans and technology overload, and that the slow gloomy economy is also not favorable to having people open to any new projects. Therefore on one brochure you might choose to emphasize: (1) simplicity of use that even a kid can do it, (2) financial benefits of .tel use, and (3) optimization of speed of .tel domains for both computers and mobile devices (that would clearly spell out the fact that the limits imposed on .tel data were done intentionally to favor the speed and utility of .tel contact data over complex content that might slow down other domains like .com). Therefore Telnic and .tel managed to establish a new utility standard that both .tel users and .tel domain owners should now expect from a .tel domain, making .tel special and distinct from other domains like .com. However, .tel domains are still not so easy to grasp by the public because they (4) offer multiple useful applications like digital business cards for individuals and companies, fast and convenient access to digital directories loaded through Telpages and search engines like Google, etc. (5) mention in the marketing materials a link to the Press page from telnic.org 2) As they did in the past, Telnic could make the ,.tel forum community aware days in advance when there will be a more active marketing campaign with significant press coverage coming up like I suspect that it is going to come in the next two months, so that .tel owners who want to spread the word about .tel might be better able to synchronize their own marketing efforts with that of Telnic. Meaning, if I decide to approach somebody about .tel or .tel advertising it would be better/ will make more of an impact if I do so when there is more recent active buzz in the media/ Internet about .tel, in case that person decide to do a quick search. |
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It was already disscussed earlier, that the best and the most realistic way to do this - is for every tel-owner to build a tel-directory which will land on the first page of Google search - when a lot of people will learn not only about the existence of "TEL" (which can be not interesting for most of them) but about that it is possible for them with their TEL to land on the first Google pages also - with very little money invested - and this can be very interesting for people. I personally try to do this for some of my TELs - not so much because of idea of promoting Telnic, but because I think that it will help to develop my own business. “It is better to stake not on the virtues of people, but on their shortcomings…” - Dumas, “The Three Musketeers”[/size] |
I have a idea: Let us work closely together with the registrars, and create a fund, from which we shall pay them for promoting .tel on their websites. All we would need is a person to administrate the fund, collect donations and payments, and distribute them to the registrars. And each registrar, that would get a payment, would promise, to advert and promote .tel, and make some more efforts, to spread the word. |
Simple The answer is very simple ... still. Just like Google. Just like YellowPages. Just like MySpace. Just like Facebook. Just like LinkedIn. You focus on the main point ... TelPages.com You create the book of starting points, and people fight to get in ... Get TelPages.com complete, consistent, launched, and you have a winner, easily. There is no "LEAD POINT" for .tel domains in practice, only concept; Just "grains of sand scattered about the Earth", with no "beach" and no "beach party" as a result. TelPages is its own marketing tool, create it well and let it fly ! |
If 70% of .tels are parked or unpopulated, will 70% of Telpage results show empty or uninteresting sites, so 70% of people wil not be very impressed with what .tels can do. OK I know the maths don't really work, I was just making the point that surely content must be a factor affecting Telpages and .tel success. |
Telrific is correct. Once the Telpages is released and the new Telproxy is in place, the marketing will grow exponentially. It an interesting time in .tel to say the least. We are all getting renewal notices (just got one yesterday for several hundred dollars) that are scary but we are also days or weeks away from a whole new look and indexing tool. Then anticipation is killing me. |
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Yes Results Speak for Themselves![/size] |
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I hear you, but you can make the same argument for any of the places I mentioned: Just like Google. Just like YellowPages. Just like MySpace. Just like Facebook. Just like LinkedIn. Doesn't change the marketability or overall success based upon principal, or principle, use.[/size] |
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I second that emotion ![/size] |
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Not sure that's true: Just like Google. - Google popularity exists because they strive to deliver quality content. Just like YellowPages. - Not sure how poular that would be if 70% of the ads were empty, Just like MySpace - Wouldn't quite be the same if most of my space was empty space. Just like Facebook - Not much fun, if most of the faces were blank faces. Just like LinkedIn. - Not much use if most links just link to themselves. I would argue that empty .tels do affect poularity, and therefore marketability and overall success.[/size] |
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But they all DO have them. Doesn't mean that mainstream finds them. And they ALL had them in the beginning. Doesn't mean they'll end up that way. When TelPages.com is launched and promoted, there's a reason to care how they'll end up. In the meantime, you get effort equal to use.[/size] |
You can have worst domain, but it all depends of your own marketing, not third party marketing. |
Call to Action: .tel marketing I agree with Dialaroom (who has an excellent .tel). We can't expect Telnic to squander money on promoting .tel if we owners cant be bothered to create useful directories and other sites for others to find. Until a (random) search of Telpages produces a meaningful result more often than not WE have to do the marketing. I thank all of the developers and programmers who have posted on this forum and helped bring this domain and forum to the point they are at today. However, they are few, and most of their activity is aimed at attracting .tel owners and others to their conventional websites where they provide supporting services. I have no problem with this, these services will be essential when developing .tels as, or in conjunction with brand names but, owners of the majority of geographic names MUST get off their butt's and do some work for themselves. Too many people are contemplating their bank balances and complaining that others haven't done enough to allow them to sit back and watch the cash roll in. We didn't need a restyling of the proxy page. Adding the search facility and google adsense is good but, we had a unique corporate identity which I now fear will too closely resemble "web sites" and the brand recognition will be lost to potential customers. I dread to see the sorts of colour schemes and "personalisation" that are to come. If you own a .tel (or several/many) do something with it. Its my impression that most purchasers will have at least one .tel that has potential for easy, quick population with meaningful content. DO IT. NOW. I have one site completed just now - chagford.tel but, within the next few weeks I will have another thirty geographic .tel sites ready to take subscribers - mainly in the county of Devon, UK, so that as people become familiar with chagford.tel, they can search for nearby towns and find useful sites - growing awareness and use. With regard to marketing, I am doing it by hand. Taking the lead from the owner of bury.tel, I have produced a leaflet (see Stel's comment at the start of this thread) and am posting it through letterboxes. Next week I will be handing out simple business cards in the street. The .tel name is on the front and there is a simple explanation on the back, and people can slip them into their wallets/purses and eventually look at it and follow it up by looking at the site. PM me if you want a copy for info (I don't know how to post it here). Finally, it's no good simply copying info from other directories. That makes your .tel the same as the other directory and devalues the domain. .tel listings should display more than can be found in other directories, not the bare minimum of information. Anyway, the birds have just woken up and started to sing outside my little shed so I think I'll go and watch the dawn break. Roy. |
Hello, This is indeed a good topic to discuss and understand as individual user or investor, to my understand even now more then 80% .tel domains are for sale which is very bad in a way because as universal law when demand is less and supply is more it often crashes or rather gives it a uncertainty loop. i personally did go out back in January 2010 to a leading mall in Dubai with my .tel Advertising materials and laptop to make them understand what .tel is and how it can benefit and with the help of one Registrar ( i had the permission to give out free domains as part of marketing after survey ) not many people knew about it but i met over 35 people some of the comments i got. 1) Don't i have better things to do in life ? 2) Please don't waste our time ? 3) We have Nokia ( something online ) so why would we want a .tel domain where you can not even upload a picture ( that was before they announced the new proxy ) 4) No Thank you ( out of 35 people only 4 opted to take the .tel ) a) Branch Manager of Electronic Store b) Sales person of A mobile Shop ( who said he heard about it from a client ) c) Cashier working for Telecom Company here d) Internet Cafe operator ( who i talked with in terms of partnership for future sale revenues out of all these 4 people only one registered a domain and never even bothered to update it or use it. i did spend over 4-6 hours roaming around trying to get people to know or learn more about it, it was more like a marketing Survey ( Take Part and Walk with a Free .tel Domain Worth US$XX ) Now out of this survey which i did i myself i have the following points 1) i am very happy about the new proxy look up page i think it can really make a difference as its more personalized. 2) I have many directories i made to my credit which helps .tel in every and me as an owner of them gets me more exposure both from search engine and also Twitter.com a) www.AutoParts.tel is promoted also with the help of http://twitter.com/Marine_Parts b) www.MarineParts.tel is promoted also with the help of www.Twitter.com/Marine_Parts c) www.Aids.tel is promoted also with the help of www.Twitter.com/Aids_tel d) www.Equipments.tel e) www.EnglandHotels.tel is promoted also with the help of www.Twitter.com/England_hotels There are many simple ways to even promote .tel but i think the new proxy is more or less like a gamble ( to many it might do wonders but as blunder said it will give a look like a website so that's still a $ XXX,XXX,XXX Question ) just wanted to add my input on a real marketing survey instead of assumption or predicting. Thanks Shahid |
Well Shahid, that was an excellent marketing step, as it is always nice to personally speak to people and show them the a technology and communication products such as TEL domain. Going out into a cold sales like that, would still benefit of better preparation and chain of services and products. Giving out something, anything for free, might also give an impression that it is not worth much, and then why bother at all looking into it. Further, a mall is a busy place, and their attention is spread out all over the place. I have an experience in that business, and for malls, I can advice to keep one position, like one display, table, laptop and few posters and many flyers about TEL domains, and to prepare something fun for people, nice girls giving out cookies, with TEL sticker (order form) on them, or someone distributing drinks and cakes to people and giving them fliers. You have to catch their attention, and instead of going around, you keep one stable place and people come to you. By having people come to you by themselves, you have won the first step, and you know, you will be able to actually communicate with them, without being much distracted. You mentioned mobile shop owner, electronic store, those are all good targets for TEL domains, but they might be busy. Leave your flyers and business cards, let them rethink that at home and come back to you. I can tell from my own experience following: TEL domains are an exciting new product and some of our clients bought few of them just because I have shown what the power it has for search engine rankings. Not divine power, but TELs are good to improve exposure and search engine rankings. I have seen a client understanding by himself how it is used and actually populating a domain for his forex stuff. Then, the way we organized marketing for TEL domain exposure, was to make TEL domain forms, and get some people to collect the companies information and place it into the TEL domain. THAT WAS FOR FREE. So, basically, you make a local important domain, where you enter at least 100 business contacts, so that you start creating value. Then you make up forms, to enter THEIR free information, and you can give out those forms for free. In the same form, while they are writing down their contact information, they will get questions like following: * Do you give permission to advertise YOUR business in this DUBAI-EXAMPLE.TEL domain? (They say YES, of course, but they also understand "we promote him/her for free"). * Would you like free, one page, website made for you, including video and photo? And I actually make free pages for people, why not. It takes me few minutes, and they mostly understand it is limited page and like to have website for a year. * Then I have questions like: Would you like to have YOUR own TEL domain for 20 dollars, which gives you free website and free advertising for whole year, without web hosting? Once you have gathered CONTACT information, to be entered for free, you have got your clients understand MORE about the TEL. After that, you ask them, would you also like to have your own. It is process. * And I also have questions like, would you need a professional website for 100 dollars including business cards, etc. And by giving out such order forms, which are size of flyers, and have TEL logo on them and your OWN domain, you achieve many things:
[size] Such flyers and order forms could be distributed to ALL citizens of a city or part of the city, or mall business users. So, far, I have not get anyone complaining. You have got impression, that some people are not interested, I am sure that is true. But persistence and marketing make results. You can improve your marketing skills by buying some good books on marketing, or by simply making real promotion. Don't think that 1,000 flyers are enough, you need much more to create an impact. You can remain in the mall center by talking to 35 people, for 5 hours, or you can be in the mall or shopping center and actually distribute such TEL flyers and order forms to shops, place posters, and have girls distributing them around. In such way, you can reach few thousands of people, and once you are back home, you would have people calling you days after, because you have left "yourself" physically in the form of the flyer. Distribute something like 100,000 flyers, then you can expect to gain some nice 50 clients out of that, not for TEL domains only, and they would paid all your expenses and you would be able to make profit this year and next year out of their orders for websites, and other services which you offer.[/size] |
@Shahid: Thanks, for your interesting report. I do think, that if I would do the same in Geneva, it would be a bigger success, or to say, a great success. However, your report is encouraging, and encouraging, to try to attract more interest, by following you and your example. I suggest, that we all form a group of "street promoters", exchange experiences, and have uniform materials, so that we can make them cheaper, and that the uniform look is better for global promo. I would like to see a example of your advertising materials. Perhaps a sort of connection and promo "Dubai-Geneva", would be interesting, when I could get attention from Arab people, and from whom a few would bring back the news to their home in Dubai. I could even promote for Dubay/.tel in Geneva, which however could be more effective, than promoting .tel in Dubai, at present. As you sure know: There are loads of Arabs in Geneva. Possible nearly as much as in Dubai (only kidding...). Anyway: .tel promo in Geneva, will not only reach the Swiss, but the whole World. Join me, assist me, send me your materials, etc., if you like, and I could even promote your .tel's in Geneva. If we could even set up a little fund, that would be fantastic. Please do not get confused by the Switzerland-Libia/Ghadaffi dispute, because the Muslim Brotherhood here, is not supporting Ghadaffi's suggestions: He only wants revenge for how we treated his son, when he acted violent, and against the law. Regrettably, we took a risk, but never wanted "war with Colonel Ghadaffi". I personally neither do support the general judge in Geneva, Mr Zappelli, who I personally call "little Napoleon Bonaparte" (as he is also from his birthplace), and who caused all this, nevertheless he was not able to foresee, what might result from acting according to the law. It was Switzerland trying to punish the son of Goliath, and Goliath is using his power and influence, now. However, one will be able to see, that I support Palestine and Gaza (blog, etc.), and will be active with domains and websites in Palestine, so that they can set up electric car networks, etc., there, as well. Furthermore, I strongly believe, that .tel domains might have the biggest usage and success in Palestine. Visit my "100% pro Palestine blog"... |
Thanks for sharing your experiences and ideas, including Shahid's experience, blunderer's comments and basically everybody else. The tips about marketing from JLouisBiz were particularly interesting- they apply very well to many other types of businesses and might work particularly well for .tel (or any business) at street fairs.... And I will try to remember Dial a Room and make the proper link to it when my .tel projects will be up and running- just a few years away ;-) Keep up the constructing environment! |
Just an observation While I am very optomistic, I have say that it is a little troubling that with close to 300,000 .tel domains sold, ther are about 15 active posters on this entire forum. 300K is a big number and you would think that there would be thousands of participants here. I hope that I am missing something. I am very much invested and committed to the technology |
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Isn't it obvious, the other 29,985 have taken stels Call to action to heart and are busy populating, buying, selling, optimising and marketing their .tels[/size] |
It would be good if we would actually have 300,000 TEL domain owners, but that is just domain number. Many own much more then 1 domain. Example is DotTelAds.Com, he has many domains, thousands. Then Shahid, with who knows how many, and other domainers, domain sellers and wannabe domain sellers too. So, the real number of domain owners is much lesser then 300,000. I did not do the statistics to say how much lesser, but as Mark Kolb already said, about 60,000 domains are active. That means, they have some contact info, some stuff, real people and real companies. Those are not "domains for sale". Finally, TEL is not a frequently changing website content. Just few out of those 60,000 populated domains actually do commercial directories. Many other TEL domains are published in two steps, DO AND GO. They don't change much, because phone numbers don't change frequently. E-mail remains the same. People don't travel everyday to have to change their summer vacation profile and so on. But, as more the numbers go up, the more active TEL domains will be there. The ratio is currently about 5 to 1. 5 domains bought, one active. The reason I am here on forum is because I am interested. And this is nice forum, with nice people. There are also other forums, but obviously TEL is more of interest to domainers, they discuss about it, and to business builders, such as TEL services. But normal people, they make their online business card and do their real work in the real world. To have 200,000 active domains, sales number shall be one million. 5:1 |
