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7 Dimensions that Domain Names Impact A Brand – with Chris Zuiker

Explaining that “domain names are like real estate” isn’t enough, and it leaves significant money on the table. If you don’t understand specifically how domain names impact brand values, you limit your ability to sell your domain names, to invest wisely, or on the other end as an entrepreneur, to maximize your brand’s potential.

Today’s Sherpa, Chris Zuiker, describes 7 specific ways in which domain names impact brand value. Learn to speak to the specifics and overcome objections.

All investors and entrepreneurs who are looking to understand the intersection of domain name and brand values should watch this show.

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This Show’s Sherpas

Chris Zuiker
Chris Zuiker
Chris Zuiker is the senior broker at MediaOptions.com, specializing in technology and retail industries.

Prior to Media Options, Zuiker held multiple sales positions at companies including Infantino, Timex, and Stanley Black & Decker.

Zuiker holds a bachelor of arts in psychology from Franciscan University of Steubenville, and an MBA from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.

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Tess: On today’s DomainSherpa, Media Options’ Senior Broker Chris Zuiker joins us. He shares seven dimensions of how domains impact brands, and he gets worried that he’s sharing too much of his secret sauce. Stay tuned.

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Hey Sherpa network, Chris Zuiker and I are excited to be here today, to talk with you about the seven dimensions of how domains impact brands. Chris, you have been such a prolific writer for the Media Options blog and you’ve said that that’s your learning style. You’ve certainly created a learning opportunity for everyone in the domain industry. Tell me more about how you’ve come to have your perspective and put them into these you know, really thorough blogs, great for corporations.

Chris: Awesome. Hey, thanks Tess, you know it’s interesting. I love that intro by the way. Because that’s really where I came in at right, I never three years ago, you couldn’t have told me hey like, you’re gonna be selling domain names. Because like three or four years ago… I think it’s like three and a half years ago now, like I didn’t own a domain name, I had no idea there was a market for domain names, or the impact of domain names. I was probably like your typical executive that you’re reaching out to right on a domain name and so…

Tess: That’s the key Chris, I mean you were just golden. Because of that, you understand corporate America, you understand what they want, you understand… Did anybody ever talk to you about domains and you think that was dumb or didn’t make sense?

Chris: You know, they talked to me about marketing. Okay so just a recap. I managed accounts calling on Walmart, Target, Sam’s Club for 15 years maybe 16 years. And I actually worked at Walmart corporate headquarters, and so I managed like very large accounts. Accounts doing $100 million in revenue okay, that was the largest one, obviously scaling over the years, but a lot of money right.

So I had access and I had responsibility for big budgets including marketing budgets directly related to my account. And so no, they didn’t come with domains but I remember like the social aspect of marketing like we’re still stuck back… I think still a lot of companies are still stuck back in the old way of marketing. They don’t truly understand the new way of online and digital marketing. So I think when I… my experience of the community down here of Walmart suppliers is that lot of them still don’t understand, I think we’re still at the cusp of online marketing, still understanding this. And so it’s interesting when I…

Tess: I just wanted to say for our viewers you live more or less at…

Chris: Good point.

Tess: …Walmart’s international headquarters in…

Chris: In Bentonville, Arkansas.

Tess: Yeah, Bentonville, Arkansas and people think like Arkansas, that’s podunk. And I mean I remember visiting a few times and I was so impressed. I remember…do you remember this, that we went to a party with…and that’s the you know, a reception or something with all master’s business students at the university. I mean that’s just not the first thing a lot of people think of when they think of Arkansas. And I was so impressed by how educated, corporate, brilliant all these people were, because Walmart is there then all these other enormous [crosstalk 00:04:39]…

Chris: Right. Every supplier, manufacturer has an office down here in Bentonville, Arkansas. I mean I must have been in the MBA program then because I went to the MBA U of A, Sam Walton School of Business, right, Walmart, but anyway so I had that experience…

Tess: [Crosstalk 00:04:53].

Chris: Yeah, so I had that experience right, that experience of corporate America, coming to domain name. So fast forward right, so three and a half years working with domain names, and I use the blog really as a way to…you said I mean it’s perfect, like research and come to this understanding of domains names, like how do we educate the community on domain names but at the same time, help to sell more domain names, right?

That’s one of the reasons why I write them, because when you can bring education back to the investment, back to like domain strategies, you can help to sell them. Okay, that’s a very crude way but here is what happens, okay, so in sales 98% maybe 99% in domain names of the people you contact have a different world view. And that world view does not allow them to buy domains because they’re not in-tune with domain names, okay. And so what you have to do…

Tess: Even at marketing companies?

Chris: We’ll, okay, I mean…

Tess: Sorry.

Chris: Yeah, no, no, a good point. I mean there are people… like when I say 98%, right, I’m talking about the broader market of businesses, okay. Now when we narrow it down, we narrow down the people that communicated with us and buy us, it’s obviously a different segment of that. What I am saying is that when you do outbound [inaudible 00:06:10], so I’m like on my 60,000th contact point for domain names.

Tess: Sixty thousand people you’ve contacted.

Chris: Thousands. I talk to a lot of people yeah, a lot of boners, I’ve been told no, a lot of times, I’ve been cussed at a lot of times okay, I’ve had it happen. So here’s the key is that their world view doesn’t allow them. So that’s what my blogs are there to do, is there to show them and have [inaudible 00:06:37] the world view is not going to get at them where they need to be in this new economy right, the digital economy, from a digital strategic standpoint.

Breaking their frames, breaking their world view, so that’s where I came up with, that’s the title of today’s talk right, the seven dimensions to a domain name. Like what are the seven ways that a domain name impacts a brand, that impacts a company, impacts the digital marketing strategy?

Tess: Yeah, it’s great, great question. And you know, in a way I feel like domains are assets a lot like art or jewels, that they grow in value, it’s easy to you know, avoid some tax circumstances. You know, they’re pretty liquid and so I just like the little visual here, when you say the seven dimensions, I see a diamond or a ruby, like these are…

Chris: Like it.

Tess: …sparkling valuable assets and there are many facets, many dimensions. And I really appreciate Chris how you bullet point it out and make it so, oh, no pun intended, crystal clear. So let’s go, seven dimensions of how domains impact brands. Global positioning you said is number one…

Chris: So yes.

Tess: I don’t want to steal your thunder, so maybe you wanna say it.

Chris: It’s kind of from start to… from macro to micro right, so why don’t we recap first, Tess, so that we can kind of hit each one of these. And I had a point I was gonna make…

Tess: Wait, why did you macro to micro?

Chris: I mean it’s not macro to micro but there is…so…

Tess: Can I say I can…

Chris: Well, you know, let’s just go through them and you’ll see right. So first…

Tess: I see you as capturing the sales funnel macro to micro. You know, Chris, I’m really blown away with how you think. Okay, so we’ll hammer them out, and then go into the details. Numero uno.

Chris: Okay, so the first one is global positioning… Okay, I’m gonna go through all seven. No, you know what, we won’t go through all seven, because somebody would have to listen to this whole video, okay.

Tess: No, no you do it however you want.

Chris: No, no, so the first one is this global positioning and it’s interesting. So the more companies that we reach out to, the more companies I talk to, the more I truly believe that global positioning is one of the most overlooked aspects of domain names and branding. And here’s why I say this is that only one company can own the globe positioning for any keyword right, the dot com. So purple.com I think the first time we started talking about this call it was like purple.com.

Right? It was [inaudible 00:09:19] talk about purple.com I was like I don’t know if I can talk 30 minutes, probably could, but let’s expand that out. So purple.com. There was Purplebricks, they’ve raised like $300 million right, there’s Purple Mattress, they’ve obviously raised quite a bit of money, they bought purple.com, but now they own the global position for purple. And where this is important is that when the messaging starts to take effect, they… like they’ll always hold a piece of the mind frame of anyone who does marketing around purple now.

So Purplebricks they’ll do their marketing and great, they’re gonna hit their consumers when they need them for real estate. But guess what, like if someone has seen the commercial for purple, they’re going to think like… Okay well, they’re gonna hear that and think Purple Mattress right. There’s this halo effect of natural, and it’s because of how they own it. So another example is Kraken…

Tess: Okay wait, so purple you’re saying right there are a bunch of brands that have purple in them somewhere?

Chris: Yes.

Tess: purplebricks.com is this real estate.. A startup that…

Chris: No, it’s pretty established, I think they’ve raised $300 million. It’s primarily in the UK, they’re coming to the United States.

Tess: Yeah, well I know they…March 26th of this year, they secured $177 million investment, and that is basically what they’re using to start in New York. They’ve [crosstalk 00:10:46].

Chris: Okay, yeah, so another $100 million, what’s $100 million between friends right, yeah that’s…

Tess: One hundred seventy-seven million, if I that 77 doesn’t matter to you I’ll take it.

Chris: Round up, round down.

Tess: I prefer rounding up when I’m receiving money.

Chris: Okay, you know what, I think I do too. But yeah, so they’ve raised the money Tess right, and I’m sure like you hear this, “Well hey, we’re Purplebricks.” Listen I got it, but here’s the thing. You just opened the door to make your brand irrelevant. Because the messaging now of purple is going to be dominated by Purple Mattress.

And so how many…like we think about how our brains work, and there’s a study done by Rees and Rees [SP], it was a positioning study. I think it was Rees and Rees, or rees.com [SP] a positioning study done in the ’70s, it talks about how when you ask someone, “Hey, name the top five brands in any industry,” right. We rank them on how they impact us, okay. So if you’re someone who’s cheap you’re… or you know, if you’re someone who’s affordable right [inaudible 00:11:47] it’s luxury it’s gonna be done luxury.

You rank them…we rank brands right, that’s one thing there’s ranking brands. There’s a study done by Siegel and Gale, it talks about simplicity, and how we need a lot of money on the table because we make things complicated instead more simple. So there’s all these studies that are done that show the impact of branding, now they own that.

Now I wanna just switch gears here to Kraken, because I think Kraken we could put a little… some numbers behind. So Kraken… I talk about this is in several of my LinkedIn videos, LinkedIn posts, and Facebook, and I think we have it on our website, Kraken…

Tess: Yeah, on the Media Options website, yeah.

Chris: Yeah, Media Options, yeah. So Kraken Exchange and Kraken Rum. So Kraken Rum came out of I think a year or two years before Kraken Exchange they went out with krakenrum.com. Most likely they said, “Hey, we don’t need Kraken, right.” What they did is they opened up the door for another brand to come in with Kraken, Kraken Exchange, there’s the global positioning right. So they spent $13 million in advertising the first year, and if I got the number wrong just…

Tess: The rum people?

Chris: The rum people, yeah. So if I got that wrong correct it in a link down in the comments below, okay. But they spent a lot of money advertising, the first year or two years right, and I had this on our blog…

Tess: Thirteen million is a lot of money.

Chris: They had a massive head start to their brand okay, that’s not including in the amount of money they spent over the years marketing that. But because they didn’t acquire kraken.com, another brand came in, Kraken Exchanges… now back then I’m sure they’re thinking I mean crypto come on, like, that’s never gonna be a thing. Don’t even worry about it right. Boom, last year hits and it takes off, now if you look up Kraken, they dominate the positioning on search for Kraken. They dominate that position.

So that’s what I mean by global positioning. When you have that…when you don’t own the dot com, when the dot com is available and you don’t buy that, you’re leaving that open for another brand to come in and make your marketing irrelevant. Even with that head start that they had, and the investments they had, when you look up Kraken, Kraken Exchange dominates. So you’re looking up Kraken Rum, you’re thinking okay, look up Kraken right, it’s rum. I mean, that goes by default. Boom, now you’re seeing Kraken Crypto Exchange right. So that’s what I mean by saying when you don’t own the global positioning and it’s available, another brand with financing, with advertising that gets it is going to come and…

Tess: What are you saying?

Chris: Another brand that has financing that can come in and gets it…listen they’re gonna come in and they’re going to potentially make your brand irrelevant [crosstalk 00:14:07].

Tess: Yeah, I see what you’re saying. So if you’re gonna try to go global or even if you’re not, if you’re looking you know, like Kraken and purple, they seem kind of like different, and like not tons of people took them. So that makes them a good target but then that’s what everybody’s looking for, so it kind of backfires. And then they don’t invest in marketing, or they do invest in marketing but not in the domain aspect of it, even if you have a trademark. If you don’t own kraken.com or purple.com and someone else does, they’re gonna bulldoze you. They’re gonna bulldoze you.

Chris: There’s 45 different primary classes for a trademark, 45. So I’ve got a trademark, I’ve got a trademark, I’ve got a trademark, like there’s many different… Like yes, they have Kraken Rum, okay yes, Kraken Exchange is not gonna be used for Kraken Rum but they own Kraken. And what it is it’s the voice and the communication for all things Kraken, the voice and communication for all things purple.

Tess: And when you say voice and communication what I see in my head is page one, page two, page three of Google.

Chris: Yes.

Tess: Right because even if you, you know say something on…if I search Kraken, something on kraken.com is gonna come up first, second, third, fourth, right.

Chris: Yeah, or purple now, right.

Tess: Then what’s gonna come up after that are people talking about kraken.com, links to kraken.com, and then Kraken Rum is like…

Chris: Right, right.

Tess: Right?

Chris: Right, yeah or you know, Google will…you know, you type in purple and Google automatically boom you know, puts it in right.

Tess: That’s true, yeah.

Chris: So it’s this thought that when you don’t own your domain you very easily are going to…your brand…there’s a huge massive risk to your brand, massive risk to your investment. Now could Purplebricks have bought purple, probably wouldn’t have even see the purchase. Yeah, they probably could have, they probably could have acquired that much easier, right. Could Kraken Rum, I forget who owns that, could they have acquired kraken? Absolutely, and they’d own it, and they would keep another brand from coming out with the positioning for Kraken, right.

So it’s like a hedge right, you’re keeping the… Let’s say you don’t even use it, you’re still keeping another brand from being formed from the dominant market position. Now this can go positive, negative, right, if there’s a fraud case around that, well now they’ve sullied possibly your brand. So global positioning is a big first dimension to why domain names are important.

Tess: Okay, hang on I just heard fraud and all of a sudden I’m thinking, gee, Kraken Exchange that’s money, basically a financial institution. And Purplebrick, they’re real estate and I know what kind of documents I share with my real estate agent, right, I mean highly sensitive documents. And so all of a sudden I’m thinking even if you’re not worried about another brand coming in there there’s also a lot of security concerns. Even if an investor owns purple.com and they don’t…I mean they don’t, but whatever your brand is, and they don’t have it you know, really secured or set… It’s easy to spoof something like that, that’s scary.

Chris: I would say it’s easier the other way around right, so I mean when we look at some of these domains that are complicated, listen like you switch one letter around and all of a sudden…you know, so we can hit that when we talk like domain strategies.

But yeah, brand global positioning is very important, where I was going is that let’s say that the person like purple they’re… you know, or one of these brands if there was ever something that was bad that created ill will in the market for that keyword, well then that has a halo effect also on the way down right. So there’s the halo effect up from them, there’s also halo effect off down from them. How goes that? So I would just say this, I think that global positioning is the most under looked reason why brands need to own their keyword domain name on the positioning.

And I would say that with Kraken Rum for instance how many millions have they spent you know, $13 million plus subsequent like investments, what could they have had the domain name for back then? I mean probably like low six figures maybe five like you know, who knows right, it’s 13.

Tess: Let me just spell it out for anybody listening on the podcast, it’s K-R-A-K-E-N, like that couldn’t have been that hard to acquire with a how many million dollar budget, you know.

Chris: Yeah, so they could have owned it and they didn’t, and now look at their marketing right. So the build up they’ve had for their marketing now, it’s this halo affect of Kraken, they’ve lost social positioning. Yes, I mean it’s just not worth…

Tess: Yeah. And it could be the other way too you know, Kraken Rum, like rum is all about drinking, partying, having fun. I’m envisioning people on a boat or on a beach, right. And if it were the other way, if you’ve got you know, something that you wanna be a serious financial institution, and all of a sudden some rum company comes along takes yours then you’ll look… That’s what you’re talking about, the reverse halo right?

Chris: Here’s another example, I just saw this sample today and it was Casey [SP], a guy I follow on LinkedIn. His name is Casey, Case I’m so sorry I can’t remember your last… I’m gonna put in the links below, okay?

Tess: Did you just say Casey Kasem?

Chris: No, no Casey, it’s Casey I forget Casey’s last name, but I follow him on LinkedIn. He brought up cleo, cleo.com, and meetcleo.com. There’s a company out there, an AI company that does AI for your bank accounts and it came with meetcleo.com. Awesome idea, but then cleo.com is this other entity that’s highly branded cleo for domain documentation and whatever. On first view they don’t look like they’re connected at all, so I don’t know maybe they’re…I don’t believe they’re connected.

But that’s another great example of like the position is taken, they’re trying to come with something else, all they’re gonna do is create confusion for the other brand. The other brand is so strong it looks like…

Tess: Kind of the same thing-ish. It’s like cloud applications, big data, business intelligence, and even though I think maybe to someone like in our audience that we can see the difference between those two things and clearly you can get different trademarks for those two things. To your average like business person might just think they’re at the other place you know…

Chris: Yeah it’s confusing, right.

Tess: It’s AI, it’s cloud, it’s other people doing things for you, being efficient and they just move on.

Chris: Yeah, it’s confusing, okay so that’s just one, how long have we gone for, Tess?

Tess: Let me see, okay we’re 19 minutes in, I love your enthusiasm.

Chris: Oh, okay. We’ll have to do a second edition now because now we can only get through like two right. What is it a 30 minute?

Tess: No, we’ll go till we’re done. Well I don’t know. We’ll figure it out.

Chris: Be like two hours, [inaudible 00:21:23] to talk forever.

Tess: Well I mean we had a long intro, so number two, we got number one, global positioning. Number two.

Chris: Global positioning is very important. Number two is industry positioning, okay so what is the industry positioning for your brand? And I gotta look here on the… Give me one second here.

Tess: Okay, while you look I’ll just say so global positioning is basically against anybody anywhere in the world, industry positioning is you know, Mattress Firm against Mattress Firm more or less. You know AI to AI.

Chris: Yes, yeah. I don’t know why I can’t…

Tess: Are you ready?

Chris: Come on you gotta be kidding me. I’m trying to look up…because I have an example here of the payment space and I can’t find that email so just bear with me.

Tess: Is it Sendinc?

Chris: No, no, I just had an example of all the domains in the space, and give me just two more seconds, sorry viewers for this delay.

Tess; Now you’re really, really impressive at researching because the delay of you looking it up is nothing compared to the delay of other people never finding it you know.

Chris: Okay, so I remember what I did, I did a podcast on this is what I did, but I found it. So yes, to your point, Tess. Industry positioning is how does your brand relate to your competitors? So when someone like… So often in our minds we think we operate in a vacuum, but we don’t, like today nothing happens in a vacuum. And how your customers find you, and how they research you, is done through Google right, or like a search engine sometimes. Or there’s a percentage that will type it in, they may see your ads, but there’s also search engines right.

Like let’s say they either come through an ad, they may go back, you know, pull back and look at the general brands. And so you are dependent upon like the page in Google right, could be 10 or 14 right, or 18 whatever. However many ads there are, how many organics there are, you’re not seen in a vacuum. And so one of the things that most companies people look at, is they scroll down, they look at your domain name, because let’s say you’re looking up retirement plan or ERP software or any of these domain names, guess what? Like all the descriptions are the same practically like seriously right. Go look up stock photos like they’re all the same.

Tess: And that’s funny, you’re right.

Chris: You know, so the only differentiation is your domain name, and it’s like hey, do I trust this domain, do I trust the link, do I trust the string, right, of this location. So industry positioning is very important, how you’re viewed. We call it pre-positioning, pre-framing, okay. There’s a book that I like here “Pitch Anything.” It’s pre-framing, you’re pre-framing your brand. It’s very important. How you come across, how you communicate, how you pre-frame, is done with your domain name right there.

And so here’s an example, so with the payments place there is… I’m just gonna read some brands to you right, and how do these brands…were broker and domain name, retirementplan.com, as you can see some of these brands right. For Finance, AccessPay, Adyen, A-D-Y-E-N, Airwallex, Behalf, Built Trust [SP], Payza, BlackRock, Braintree Payments, Buzztime, CardFlight, Clearent, CloudPay, Quantify, Coins, CreditShop, Currencycloud, CurrencyFair, Dream Payments, Ethoca, Exactuals, Ezbob, EZ-Tap, Flint, Flyt F-L-Y-T, Flywire, Go Karla’s [SP]. Okay, you get the point right? That’s like…

Tess: All I’m thinking is dear God, our transcription service is gonna take an extra week to get this done because how do you spell any of those?

Chris: Boom, there you go.

Tess: And to our viewers if we were on…like I was listening to the radio this morning with my boys, and they were like doing their Friday morning contest right. And I’m like I can have a Friday morning contest right now, who can remember one of those brands that you just said? I remember the bad spelling one, was it F-L-Y-T or something?

Chris: F-L-Y-T, Blooom is another one, B-L-O-O-O-M with three o’s. But here’s the thing though…

Tess: And that’s a retirement plan like yeah, B-L-O-O-O-M.

Chris: Well, I don’t know if that… I reached out for that one, I’m sorry this was a different domain [inaudible 00:26:01].

Tess: Either way, they need a new domain.

Chris: But yeah, like exactly like, it’s industry positioning like how people come, like consumer intent when they come and they… I mean we make unconscious decisions all day long right. Four to five seconds I think is what they say the unconscious decision is, it’s in a millisecond we hit a domain name. There’s a book that I read it is “Pre-suasion” by Cialdini.

Yeah, we make it in a nanosecond, and so your domain name…like you’re judging these brands, when they come like do they match my consent, okay does it look like it’s something I would trust my finances right? Even if you click on it there’s that hesitation because of your brand right. Especially you [inaudible 00:26;47].

Tess: And even if it’s not your retirement plan, I’m trusting them with my finances if I’m buying something from them. I’m giving them my credit card. Guess what B-L-O-O-O-M, you’re not getting my credit card, because I don’t know what you’re gonna do.

Chris: It’s a big company and they have raised a lot of money. Okay, the domain name I was brokering was pmt.com, short for payment.com.

Tess: I like that one.

Chris: It was in last month’s [inaudible 00:27:14].

Tess: So what you’re saying is I’m hearing some vocabulary here that I think everyone who wants to sell a domain, or explain the value of domain needs to know. You’ve said pre-framing, pre-suasion, and there was another one like pre-framing, pre…

Chris: I don’t know.

Tess: Well, whatever.

Chris: We should charge for this video honestly, I think this video we should charge for, because this is like my secret sauce here, okay guys like how we’ve sold a lot of domain names. And my view coming in from the outsider coming in not knowing much, and having to kind of reinvent this and coming up with these.

Tess: Yeah, well you’ve got more secret sauce than just what you know. What I see in this video Chris, is your energy, your enthusiasm, that’s contagious, and also your confidence. I see you just grabbing a book right there like you didn’t plan that, I know you’ve got 10 books right there, boom, boom, boom that are the best business books. You know, like you’re always really well informed, and I think it’s difficult for someone in a corporate position who doesn’t own a great domain, to talk with you and not walk away saying, “Wow, I want some of that guy’s knowledge.”

Chris: Tess, you’re too nice. But I think… I mean like what we have to do in the domain world, we have to take these best…these marketing books, these books and apply them to domains, and how we sell them, and how we communicate them. Because the days of saying hey, it’s like real estate, it’s over, like it doesn’t work, it’s too general. It doesn’t like boom punch through their… How did I say in the beginning of this pod? I said they have their perspective right, what did I say, you had to punch through…

Tess: Yeah their…you did like their world view.

Chris: Their world… Yeah, it doesn’t break their world view, it’s not going to come in. It’s like real estate like I get it like I like that analogy [crosstalk 00:29:13]…

Tess: Well yeah, but in a way I feel like I own a house, I already have one. I’m not gonna move. That’s what people think. They’re like I have a domain, I have a brand, I invested in it, I set it up the way I want.

Chris: Say hey your $100 million of marketing is going to make me relevant next year by the way, because this other company bought this, and they’re gonna put money. It’s a little different like, okay, wow, like I better think about that you know, like global positioning, industry positioning are pretty important and I mean…

Tess: Okay, should we talk more about industry positioning?

Chris: Okay, so that’s really it. There’s examples in every industry right. So industry positioning also comes up to how your… your domain strategies okay. So for instance, the domain strategies that we talk about are what your brand… I did have a blog on this, so Tess I don’t know if we can link it down below again.

Tess: Yeah, we’ll figure it out.

Chris: The first link. So I did it on domain strategy. So there’s the like owning your brand, owning a sub-brand. If you have multiple brands like a P&G for instance, they have you know, multiple brands right. Tide being one of them, they own P&G and they own Tide. Then there’s marketing campaign domains right, so how teaspoon is owned by… I always get it wrong, they’re in Minnesota, I don’t know how I forget it’s like one of the biggest food companies.

Tess: That’s okay, Kraft.

Chris: No, no, I was thinking 3M, no, it’s General Mills. They own teaspoon.com right, so babies are owned by J&J.com right, surveying.com is owned by one of the biggest surveying companies okay. So that’s your marketing campaign domains. Look at Merrill Lynch, they own… Merrill Lynch owns a ton of domain names regarding like golynch whatever right.

Those are marketing domain names they use, [inaudible 00:31:05] find domain names are marketing campaign domain names. So like an erpsoftware.com right, theretirementplan.com, like stockphotos.com, [inaudible 00:31:18] contentmarketing.com. Those are marketing campaign/branded domains, or they can go either way. But they allow for industry position, they allow you to dominate, and dominate and control the conversation for that positioning.

So I don’t wanna get stuck here on hey, it’s just owning your brand, how you brand comes in because that’s very important right. How your brand plays among your competitors because you will be judged in like less than a second or three seconds whatever. You’re gonna judged. How does your brand stack up to other brands in the category? Is it fun, is it relevant, does it match the ethos of your brand, is it trustworthy?

But also industry positioning when you think about it, these category defined domain names are very important, because they also allow you to come in and dominate the conversation around them. Like overnight.

Tess: Yeah, overnight.

Chris: Like I often say like when people come back to me and say “Well that’s too expensive.” I say, “What’s the lifetime value of one client?” Lifetime? Like do you know that? Okay first, if you don’t know that you need to right, because it’s pretty important. Like if you get them in your funnel what’s the lifetime value over time that that client is worth? And so owning that category defined domain name, and being able to tell your sales people, “Hey, do you want some more information? We’re here, but we also have this other site,” like whatever that category defined domain name is right. Let’s say [inaudible 00:32:34] software, let’s say stock…whatever it is right? You can bring them back there.

And then that makes you look like a leader that builds trust, that builds that you’re able to dominate the conversation around that keyword because you own it. Industry positioning is how your brand is positioned so that goes into the different domain strategies that you have, but how your brand is positioned in the marketplace.

Tess: Beautiful, yeah, it makes sense and it gives I think a new vocabulary here. And more important than just somebody’s new vocabulary, I think it’s their vocabulary, I think it’s corporate America’s vocabulary. You’re right, we need to update from just it’s real estate.

Chris: Yeah, it’s more than that and it’s…yeah.

Tess: Okay number three, so back up. Number one, global positioning, number two, industry positioning, number three?

Chris: Number three we’ll go through these a little faster because I’m like dying. It’s like 100 degrees in my room here.

Tess: Why? Do you want…

Chris: It’s just where my room is located in my house, I don’t want to turn the fan on because it’ll kill the audio. Okay, so the third one is branding. Okay, branding. Now yes, branding is industry positioning, yes, it’s global positioning but it’s how your employees talk about your brand. Like how they talk about you, right it’s how your customers talk about your brand, it’s how your customers talk about you. It’s like the ethos of how your brand interacts, it’s the DNA of your company. Very important.

So when your domain name doesn’t match your brand, it sends this message of confusion that, hey, we’re not good enough to own our brand, you know, another company beat us to it, we have to settle for you know, meet something right, or try something. So that’s why if you go onto our blog, “Try Dave” it was a recent interview done by NamesPro or NamePros?

Tess: NamePros.

Chris: I’m dyslexic, okay, thank you. James does a good job with his interviews, like awesome, read every one of them. And he…like Dave I think they spent like $240,000 something like that…so once again check the blog down below. One of the things…

Tess: So it’s trydave.com, and they re-positioned as dave.com?

Chris: No, no, no, what they said is that we don’t want to be known as Try Dave, like we’re doing finances, we wanna be known as dave.com, not trydave.com, you see. So it was important that they owned that positioning for their brand up front right, so it wasn’t yes, it was global positioning, yes it was industry positioning, but it’s branding. It’s how their very customers were gonna talk about their brand. So there’s this branding aspect to it, that you don’t realize it but it hits the very…like hits the DNA of…

Tess: Yeah, well I mean I can say…

Chris: …of how you talk about your brand.

Tess: I mean maybe I’m a special customer because you know, of domain background, but you know, we have a host, Flywheel. I call them Flywheel and every time I refer to them, and pretty much every time I need to go to their website, I type in flywheel.com and then I go oh my gosh that’s right, they don’t own it. And then I go to getflywheel.com. But when you go to their website like their brand is Flywheel. I’m gonna do a Cntrl+F on their website for the word get, down below they say you know, get crazy fast load times.

Chris: Wow, okay

Tess: That’s the only time the word get is in there besides in the domain name. So why is their domain getflywheel? And how many internal documents do they accidentally send to that, how many times [crosstalk 00:36;14] employees say, “Oh, send that to us at fly…” I mean as you say, “Thanks for contacting Flywheel.” “I didn’t contact flywheel.com.” It’s confusing.

Chris: It’s like…

Tess: So that’s what’s you’re saying here?

Chris: Well, here’s what I say, I say there’s not an elite brand that does not own their positioning online right, elite brand, when you look at the elite brands. I mean, this conversation’s not to beat up on brands right. I mean we’re not here to beat them up, but like it’s very real, it’s like this confusion that you’re creating if you don’t…these first three right, it impacts your marketing. That’s not the next one but it’s very real to the ethos, it’s very real to your brand, it’s very real.

And that’s why… I think our next video we should do, should be about the three market factors in domain names, right. And how the market’s shifting and changing because that would be a cool nice video.

Tess: I like it, all right, I’m writing it down.

Chris: If people watch this one right, so we gotta make it interesting. I [inaudible 00:37:16] some like incentive right, if we don’t get more than like 10 comments I’m done. I’m not coming back right, like I wanna hear like some comments like, “Hey, good stuff. You stink,” right, “Horrible. You’re wrong.” I mean hey good, bad whatever…comment. Let us know you’re paying attention, right.

Tess: All right, all right, fair enough. Okay so branding I hear you, you’re saying you know, it’s hard to sell something, to back something when you don’t own who you are, what…who you’re saying you are.

Chris: Some of the best sales in history domain sales they’re effortless. You show the guy the domain name and they buy it because these founders, these CEOs, they understand branding, they understand…they’re elite at creating brands. They get it. And like a ring.com, listen a million bucks done, right, because they understand now the impact of a great brand, they understand the impact of this. So there’s that segment of the population, these are the guys you want to broker, like sell a domain to because like there’s no explanation needed. The use case for it, what’s the price, well done, great, many of them, these are like three of them…

Tess: Well I wanna jump in and say Mike Ciger [SP] interviewed ring.com, he interviewed the CEO and founder and said, “Why did you buy this, you know, years ago?” And he had a different positioning and plan than… I mean there are all these other doorbell sites out there, but guess which one Amazon bought, you know. And part of that also when you’re approaching a larger corporation for a buyout if you ever plan to do that you’re gonna stand out when you’re ring.com instead of… I can’t even remember right now. Actually I looked into buying…

Chris: It was doorbell something was?

Tess: Yeah, I can’t even remember.

Chris: So that’s another great discussion right? Sometimes the easiest people to sell to are not the big corporations, like you think, oh, they’ve got this big thing going. Because what happens is that you get siloed. You really have to have a laser focus on the correct content marketing on a bigger company.

Tess: Yep. And sometimes we have a marketing budget, we have a whole ecosystem but this… yes, SkyBell is the other one and that’s, you know, I remember when these all came out and we were all talking about the different ones. But I mean yeah, it’s just a different level.

Chris: Branding is so important and the next video we do on the three…so we can get more into that, because that one is going to be fun, okay.

Tess: Okay, all right so next…

Chris: This is a tease for our next video. Okay, so next one is…

Tess: You’re really good in marketing by the way.

Chris: Hey, you know, it’s like there’s no value, like we’re not gonna tell the secret sauce here. So the next… What’s that?

Tess: Yeah, yeah, I’m trying to help you and your 100 degrees.

Chris: Okay yeah, the next one is marketing, the fourth dimension is marketing. Like marketing has a… how you market, how effective is your marketing for your domain name. Can you remember it right? So great example…

Tess: What’s your bang for the buck I think, right?

Chris: The return on investment, can they see that billboard, can they easily remember it? What’s the ROI from your domain name? Now that marketing… Listen all these kind of go hand in hand right, marketing with branding with industry positioning yes, but that’s why there are the seven dimensions right. I didn’t do two dimensions right, I mean, it’s like they all play in and when they all come together perfectly it creates like… It super charges your brand to like this infinite…you know, like significantly more, right?

So marketing like obvious, seems obvious right, I mean your internet digital, but how effective is your marketing, how effective is your brand domain name help your marketing? Now this can go once again in several different ways right, depending upon the type of brand that you choose, so is it mass consumer intent? And that’s one of things that we say is like with a [inaudible 00:41:23] to find domain name the powers that it matches consumer intent. Like consumers are looking for product, the intent is there maybe the description of your product, right.

So let’s say you are in the encryption space for emails because there’s a lot of like really tough domain names and brands in that space, right. Couple good ones right like Barracuda Encryption right, I mean you’re thinking you know, Barracuda because they have like really sharp teeth, right. So it’s like marketing, how well does it help your cause, how well does it match consumer intent? If it doesn’t match consumer intent, like how well…is it easy to remember, right? So there’s different facets of marketing that’s not just…right, so this is where your domain strategy and portfolio comes in.

Like many companies don’t have just one domain name, right. So ClickFunnels has clickfunnels.com, expertsecrets.com, right which is their book. That’s marketing, right. You can easily find it. Now it wasn’t like getexpertsecrets.com, it was expertsecrets.com right. He paid some money for that I’m sure, marketing. Should we go on or is that good enough?

Tess: No, I think that’s great especially if you want another…

Chris: I mean…

Tess: You know, Chris. normally…

Chris: We can do a whole show on marketing.

Tess: [Crosstalk 00:42:43] down new interviews. I’m loving you, you’re like, “Hey, this is what we’re doing for the next one,” I’m like…

Chris: Let’s hope we don’t run out of material but, yeah.

Tess: I don’t think we’re gonna run out of material.

Chris: You know we could hit each of these for one show really, I mean marketing we can go in-depth, you know marketing with case studies, examples. Just talking like how domain name impacts marketing, how does like branding strategy like we said earlier right sub branch strategy, marketing strategy, brand protection.

Okay, the next one is SEO, I did a blog on this, and so I think this needs to be highlighted because you have to read this blog, it’s very in-depth on how domain name impacts SEO. So interesting story, so when I first started, remember Tess, like the first year and I was brokering domain name. And I got with this executive in this big company California, right was in the insurance space and she’s like “SEO is like…domain names are dead SEO’s, you know, like there’s no value.”

Tess: They all say like, “Google made some update and now it doesn’t matter if your keyword is in your domain name,” like they all say that right.

Chris: Okay, mark that down for another show. That is algorithm changes. Seriously we could do a whole show on algorithm changes and the power of domain name. So in this example…

Tess: Actually I have… I guess if we’re teasing things we can tease a lot. We have someone coming on, I don’t know, I’m not gonna say.

Chris: Awesome.

Tess: I’ll think about it.

Chris: I wanna watch that, because that’s one area… Listen, I’m learning as much as people on DomainSherpa okay. I’ve only been in this business for three and a half years, I’m learning this, like this is new for me. So I mean I’m excited about that interview.

Tess: Good, me too. I mean I guess I could say Rand Fishkin, Founder of SEO Software company Moz, and co-founder of the Online Marketing Community, Inbound.org.

Chris: I never heard of the guy.

Tess: Don’t say that.

Chris: I’m kidding, are you kidding me? He’s like a legend, that’s awesome, that’s phenomenal.

Tess: I know, it’s a big deal.

Chris: Yeah, it is.

Tess: So really exciting, that’s not gonna be for a little while but I will make a note to ask him about that.

Chris: Yeah. Awesome.

Tess: Algorithm changes, check, check.

Chris: So let me finish the story right. So I came back and I remember three and a half years ago I didn’t have much experience, like I really didn’t even know SEO, right.

Tess: And you worked super, super hard to get a hold of this lady, you know, to get her, to get in front of her and she trusted and respected you enough to give her time, but then…

Chris: She crushed my frame, just crushed it like crushed me, like my frame and her frame like boom like all on top of me. And so that really led me to answer the question why are domain names important for SEO? And that’s why I did that blog, the in-depth blog. Now we have some of our clients are the best SEO experts out there, and I think after that blog Andrew was like, “They said you’re spot on Chris, you’re right there like for SEO.”

But it’s very important for…domains impact your SEO, they impact how you get back links, they impact like if people didn’t wanna back link to you, they impact the clarity that you bring. A definite… I’m gonna leave it there, like read the article. We can come back to do a show on SEO Tess, like just breaking that article down on SEO.

Tess: Okay, yeah.

Chris: I have something else but I forgot it.

Tess: So facet number five is SEO, learn more…

Chris: [inaudible 00:46:22].

Tess: There are tons of resources but the fact is SEO is today…

Chris: I know what I was gonna say. So now my new response is like.. when somebody comes back and says “Hey my SEO guy says we don’t need that.” I say, “Well, you know what, you should really fire your SEO team because they’re wrong.” And I tell you what, that response is great you know, I like boom it’s super charged so my negotiation. I don’t say it every time right, but that’s my response back, is like fire your SEO team they do not know what they’re talking about. Domain name absolutely 100% unequivocally impacts your SEO.

Tess: Yeah. And you know what’s funny is most people don’t understand SEO, so they just trust whatever their guy says, everybody’s got a guy. And the fact is if their guy doesn’t know a lot of times… I mean I’ve been working in this space forever and there seem to be a higher percentage than in the normal population of people who just act like they know. And everybody else like feels like they’re not cool because they don’t know, and so they’re like well that must be the way it is. I mean I don’t know why…

Chris: Actually I can imagine a commercial with that, okay, like, “Hey, do you know?” “No, I don’t know.” “You don’t know? What do you mean you don’t know?” “I don’t know, you don’t know?” Like, “What, SEO, what, you don’t know SEO?” [crosstalk 00:47:44]…

Tess: And this commercial ends with seo.com.

Chris: Yeah, that would be a funny [crosstalk 00:47:47].

Tess: No, you know what it should end with? Media Options is brokering. I didn’t tell you this, our scheduled call right after this I was going to tell you, we just got roi.com under contract.

Chris: Boom.

Tess: And I’ll tell you , you want some SEO ROI…

Chris: Yeah. That’s a huge one.

Tess: Get a domain name.

Chris: I love that one. I love that one.

Tess: Yeah. Get to work now. You don’t have time for this call. Go [crosstalk 00:48:09].

Chris: Okay, all right. Why don’t we wrap this up? The next one is email security. I think we should link to Drew’s, his video that he did at…he did it at…

Tess: The Amazon headquarters.

Chris: Amazon, it’s on email security. Email security is huge, I mean the amount of emails… it takes five minutes… once again I did a blog on this too. And it takes five minutes, catch all email, you get all their emails. And let me tell you something it’s very, very real, you can… like the emails that come through you can see it and it happens all day long. I mean the quality domains that we have we see the emails come in. And that’s one of the things that Drew in that video he says that, “A major pharmaceutical company bought the domain, because they didn’t realize the security risk that they had.” It’s a major security risk dependent upon the vertical you’re in and your brand.

Tess: Yeah, it’s called “email bleed” and it is not called like “email woopsy,” it’s called bleed, because bleeding is life and death. I have seen… Thanks, Chris I don’t know if you’ve just heard about it or if you’d like seen emails?

Chris: I’ve seen emails, probably not to your extent, but I’ve seen I mean…yeah, absolutely we see the emails coming through.

Tess: Oh, it can be scandalous. I mean the things you don’t think that your employees could send or receive or your clients you know, I have seen you know, people’s driver’s licenses, people’s passports, people’s social security numbers, health care, health care, health care like what is that? HIPAA is… like how can a company stay in business with like a billion HIPAA violations? And I’m not talking about from the customer, I’m talking the employees of the company sending HIPAA stuff, meaning to send it internally and they’re sending it externally, Woopsy. And then like WikiLeaks quality stuff like let’s say… Okay, this is a real example. Yeah. C-Suite executive checks in to a hotel, the hotel sends his bill to the wrong email address. I’m just saying what I saw on that bill was WikiLeaks quality, because of who he was, because of what he was…

Chris: So number one be ethical, number two lost your emails. It’s real Tess, and here’s the thing like I did a post on this or a blog or whatever, like, “Hey, stop sending your emails to me,” seriously it’s like…

Tess: I didn’t see that one.

Chris: Listen, it’s their problem. They’re sending it to the wrong email address, they don’t own a domain name. So it’s like tell your customers to stop sending emails, it’s real you know. And to your point I’ve seen… There was one company, one guy reached out to me on his domain name. I can’t tell you what it is. But it was interesting because kind of with the bleed, [inaudible 00:51:15] the bleed right. It was interesting from a traffic standpoint.

So this company went out, it was in the… I can’t tell you the vertical because it…you’d probably know it. But they created a new brand, they did a marketing campaign, spent millions of dollars in marketing, but they didn’t own the domain name. Or like one that was similarly close to it and they were driving all their traffic to this guy’s… similar, a competitor of him, his site. And he was getting emails, he was getting customer service emails, customer service phone calls, more importantly he was getting traffic. And he asked me, he was like, “Hey, should we reach out try to sell this thing?” I said, “I mean you’re a competitor first,” you know, I’m not gonna tell you what I said, in case it violates something, I don’t know.

But I mean it was like, it’s very real. Like, listen, that’s a whole nother topic, is how… like when you have the bad domain name and you literally are driving traffic to a competitor, to another branch, another industry. You’re giving them traffic. I think today one of the domains that Drew owns, it’s a coin domain. He sits like [inaudible 00:52:14] bought one of the domains. All of a sudden Drew’s seeing massive traffic increase in this domain name. All because they bought this domain name, they don’t want this other one which is similarly close, go figure right. So email bleeding, email security…

Tess: What you didn’t wanna say just now and I know you don’t do anything like…you would never do anything unethical, you just mean you know, you’re worried for how somebody might perceive it or whatever. But I’m gonna say…we have not talked about this but a lot of times in a situation like that an owner might wait for an inbound inquiry to position themselves where they’re not gonna get you know, a potential lawsuit. Even if they know they owned the domain first, they owned the brand, trademark first or whatever. But you know some people are nervous. So I would say you know, to larger corporations there’s a lot of value in acquiring a domain, in outbound seeking a domain instead of just assuming it’s not for sale and he’s using it. I mean I love how Drew says, “Anything is for sale. It’s perfectly priced,” you know. And of course, I mean we’re talking about a guy who’s brokered and traded it for ham, so he doesn’t just mean money. You know I mean one of the biggest deals that we did with… I don’t think we can say who, but I mean it’s like blow your mind who. They didn’t wanna sell a domain, it was his personal initials, and in the end, what closed the deal was a donation. A sizable donation to one of their charities you know. So it’s not always about…

Chris: Okay, do you wanna…are we saying that now or do you wanna?

Tess: No, sorry, I’m just on my tangent. Okay, so we’re at the grand finale here Chris, number seven.

Chris: Okay, number seven, this is it, this is the last one, you’re done with me after this. I just realized I was clicking my pen and I think in the last video someone said, “Don’t do this.” Listen I’m like part ADHD, part something else and so if that is loud, please like sorry, I won’t have a pen next video. But yes, so product…

Tess: You’ll have a cigar next to… Most of the time when I talk to Chris he’s got a cigar.

Chris: Yeah, yeah, I may have a cigar. I like that. So the next one is this. It’s being able to product pivoting and expansion. So if your domain name like pigeonholes you in a certain industry or certain area that’s not good, right. So the seventh dimension is a domain name that allows you to expand your product offering. Now a great example of this is ZenPayroll okay, they acquired and rebranded to gusto.com. And they did that… and there’s a lot of like, articles out there. But they did that because they realized that they wanted to be more than just payroll, like ZenPayroll I don’t know if they tried to acquire zen.com or who owns it. I imagine it’s very expensive. But they rebranded…

Tess: But if their name is ZenPayroll, they do payroll and only payroll. They wanna pivot their product or expand then Gusto is something [crosstalk 00:55:37].

Chris: Actually zen.com is available for acquisition. I don’t know the history there, so anyways, they rebrand for whatever reason they decided to go with gusto.com. Now could they have gone with zen.com, they probably could have. Maybe that wasn’t the exact ethos for the mission that they wanted. I don’t know. I know this though is that they had to rebrand.

Okay. They were more than just ZenPayroll, wanted to do more than just payroll, if you look at the interviews with the founder, and so they rebranded to Gusto. Now great job I mean, it hits the seven dimensions here, gusto.com perfect, but that’s what a domain allows you to do. It doesn’t pigeonhole you, it allows you to expand your product, allows you to own the positioning, and come out with new things.

Like you don’t know where your company’s gonna go. You really don’t, right. So when you own that if you get… like if it’s something software okay, great you’re probably in software for a while okay, if it’s too niche like that. But anyways you don’t know where you’re gonna go, product positioning… God bless you. Product positioning and being able to expand is the seventh dimension. It’s a very important dimension and once again building the foundation for a quality domain name allows you to expand, it allows you to…as you get bigger.

I mean most people don’t go into business thinking wow, I’m just gonna get to this level and stop. Right? I mean you’re thinking hey, I’m going to get into it, and I’m gonna dominate, I’m gonna crush my competition. I’m gonna make millions of dollars, I’m gonna retire to an island somewhere, right. That’s your mission, so make sure that you’re set up properly upfront.

Tess: Yeah, good point, good point, yeah. And you know, this is awkward but I can’t resist. No, I think it’s great because if you think of your pivot like this. So sorry our primarily male audience and you Chris, but right, there’s like this revolution happening in like the tampon industry. But if you look at their domain names they’re all really pivotable. Nobody’s like differentkindoftampon.com. They are like bestfits.com [SP], shethinks.com. Right so I mean…and that is basically kind of…what can you say if it’s not the radio test, it’s the pivot test like…

Tess: Product expansion, right.

Tess: Yeah, and I think that probably in that industry I don’t know where they’re gonna expand to, but they’re speaking to something deeper, it’s the basic Dale Carnegie you know. I want flexibility right, so in all sorts of things in my life, and so I think in pivoting is more speaking to something like that. And so if there’s a radio test for how your name sounds maybe there’s a tampon test for how your pivot-ability you know.

Chris: Yeah, but it’s important. It’s consumer intent too, like consumer intent is very important right. So consumer intent to pivot, I mean yeah, that’s a great example. I mean how the domain name…like it’s just so applicable you can hit an industry maybe… You know what would be interesting to do, Tess, is like do a show where we hit an industry and we just kind of like…I don’t know how that would look. But like you have a couple of Sherpas on and they say, “Okay, talk to us about this industry,” like seven dimensions, whatever key bullet points there are and like you dissect it, right, because…

Tess: I like that.

Chris: Because you easily go into this and talk about each industry and where they’re at and…

Tess: Yeah, that’s really cool, I like it.

Chris: I don’t know. Anyways, that’s it, we’re done, you did it.

Tess: You’re like goodbye.

Chris: I’m not dead yet, I’m almost dying.

Tess: Okay, Chris, you’re awesome thank you, this was super valuable, I think really fun, let’s do it again.

Chris: Awesome, thanks, Tess. Cheers.

Tess: Okay, come again. Bye, Sherpa network, see you soon, thanks.

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17 Responses to “7 Dimensions that Domain Names Impact A Brand – with Chris Zuiker”

  1. Dan Beck says:

    Still one of the best interviews up here and about the 10th time I’ve watched it.

    Rather than A-Z, my journey on DS so far has been Z-Z. Zandi-Zuiker.

    Love the breadth and depth of the content on here from hustling to marketing to every possible approach and tool in between.

    The site is such an incredible resource and thanks as always to Tess and Chris.

    Thx– Dan.

  2. dee says:

    Really educative and informative.Thanks for this great interview.Will help me be a better domain investor moving forward.Thumbs up.

  3. Amphasis says:

    Is there still money to make in domain investment?

  4. Dr. Todd says:

    Chris,

    You shared some phenomenal ways to think about marketing and branding domain names.

    Dr. Todd

  5. Jeff says:

    Excellent Tess and Chris, very informative. And, very helpful given what I’m doing at the moment. That is showing mock-up images of how a domain could be used.
    i.e. Side of building, bus shelter, T-Shirt, etc.

    My acid test. Would your company domain look Professional on the side of a building, howbeit a mock-up one?

    Example:
    https://graphicriver.net/item/realistic-building-logo-sign-mockup-2/3098375?s_rank=4

    Note: Chris, going by the finance Google search. In many cases, it would look :-( to say the least. But quite enlightening to show companies just how :-( it would look.

    Big thanks and would love to link potential buyers to the You/Tess interview.

    Jeff

  6. Saro says:

    Great info guys,

    Definitely real life examples are one of the most interesting aspects of interviews.. Chris at some point would be great if you may do a show going in depth regarding 1 or 2 real life deal situations that you closed which you hinted to;

    What you had said, what they countered with, what you hit back with, how it progressed and subsequently finalized… maybe a “no / not interested” which turned into a deal.

    Thanks,
    Saro

    1. Chris Zuiker says:

      Hi Saro, are we connected on LinkedIn? If not lets connect.

      I do a daily post that includes this type info.

      https://www.linkedin.com/in/chriszuiker

  7. Donny M says:

    No matter how long you have been in domains you can always pick up something new.

    This is a great interview. Purple.com was a great example this co is in my home town.
    Not very often you can interview someone who was on the opposite side of domains and then made the switch to domain investing.

    Well thought out questions and answers I do think I will use under certain circumstances “Fire your SEO guy” :)

    1. Chris Zuiker says:

      Hi Donny, thanks for the reply. That is one of my favorite lines. Say it with a smile and it makes the point.

  8. albert says:

    Great show guys. Definitely one of the most informative this year. Thanks to both Chris and Tess.

    1. Chris Zuiker says:

      Thanks Albert, I appreciate the nice words.

  9. This discussion is absolute gold. I’ve listened to it twice and now taking notes.

    I think we all kind of already know this stuff but this show articulates the points in a structured way which is clear.

    Thanks for a quality show.

  10. Thanks, I appreciated the show and all the information I gained.

    One comment is that I think it’s called email bleed the same way that dyes bleed and colors bleed not because they’re actually making a statement about impending death.

  11. Dave Bhatia says:

    7 Ways Domains Impact A Brand is one of the best I have read or heard.

    Very helpful for all, newbies as well as pros.

  12. doob says:

    good show. lotta times show is too long but chris really filled the time with interesting stuff.

  13. SuperBrander says:

    Great stuff. Please host Chris often for more sauce recipes.

  14. tldboss says:

    Thanks Tess and Chris for entertaining, educative show + for sharing the secret sauce.

    Look forward to another session where you share more secret sauce :)

    Would be nice if you do two or three shows like this a couple of times each year.
    Well done!!

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