If you’re read this blog over the past few days, you’ve probably already gathered that we’re bullish about .CO. The numbers so far have been astounding. And Google’s decision to treat .CO as an international (generic) TLD goes even further to position it as a viable alternative to .com. So now we’d like offer a few thoughts on how you might be able to effectively market .CO based on what we have seen with other new TLDs and what we have seen from some of the first resellers out of the gate.

On Your Site

The easiest thing you can do is add some messaging to your homepage (or the beginning of your domain search path) to let users know that .CO domain names are now available through your service. But success will mostly likely be driven by how you integrate .CO into your search results. Customers in the online world are a finicky bunch. Button placement, colors, menus and user interface all play a critical role in determining how much of a consumer’s hard-earned money you will earn. We mocked up a sample search result page to give you an idea where we think you could see results.

Identify .CO domain names as “NEW.” It may also be wise to have a help button a registrant can click on in order to learn about .CO and why it’s a great choice for their business. They key is to reinforce (.com-like) universality and credibility.

Place available .CO domain names at or near the top to grab a registrant’s attention and encourage them to act. (It is actually always a good rule to give better real estate to results that are available than result that are not.) If .CO is buried too low or even behind a “more options” link,  the customer might never even consider it.

Suggest a two year registration. (This is actually a suggestion for all domain names.) When the default is one year, most customers will register for one year. When the default is two, it is surprising how many customers will register for two years. So, a good suggestion might be to start with a two year offer (perhaps with a discount), but make sure it is very clear how to change the term to one year.

In Other Communications

Besides having your front-end tuned to convert, another important step is to communicate the .CO news directly to your customers. An effective way to do this is through an opt-in email marketing campaign. Assuming you have an email list of customers, here are some suggestions that have produced results for our resellers in past TLD launches:

• Don’t assume your customers know about .CO. Sending a simple email about the availability of this new TLD could be enough to drive additional business.

• You could perform a batch check on your customers’ current domains and see which .CO equivalents are available. Many customers will want to protect their name across all generic TLDs. For example: “Dear customer, we notice that you have companyxyz.com…we want to advise you that companyxyz.co is now also available….”

• If you have the data, you can also look through past unsuccessful domain searches and reach out to customers where the exact-match .CO domain is now available.

• In your marketing messages, it might be worthwhile to note that Google (and presumably other search engines) will be treating .CO domain names as generic TLDs. (This addresses fears that a .CO name will only get SEO results in Colombia!). You might also mention that the .CO registry is spending significant marketing dollars to make sure Internet users (your customers’ visitors) will know and respect .CO when they see it.

We will continue to monitor what folks are doing and what seems to be working to share with the network.

Please let us know if you have ideas or questions.