Multichannel Marketing with Linkets
On the Web multichannel marketing is often done by well known firms using domains. A firm gets its main domain, often directly derived from its formal business name. Then it buys a second domain, which might be a generic word for its products or services. It points the second domain to its main domain.
Flowers are a good example. Suppose you go to flowers.com. It takes you to 1800flowers.com, which is run by 1–800 Flowers. The main channel is for customers who type or bookmark the firm’s brand. Indeed the firm is well known thru decades of conventional pre-Web marketing. But flowers.com is aimed at a customer who just wants flowers and does not care which vendor. She might or might not have heard of 1–800 Flowers.
Another case is florist.com. A generic description of flower sellers. It takes us to ftd.com, another longstanding flower seller.
Nor is this restricted to flowers. Look at movies.com. A generic and valuable descriptor that goes to fandango.com, the movie ticket seller.
Look at those examples. Each firm bought the generic domain at some earlier time. Likely they bought it from a domainer who wanted $thousands. This is common. Domainers spent the last 20+ years buying up dot com domains that are English words with commercial value. It may well have cost FanDango $100 000 for movies.com. Perhaps…
