Dot Tel Domain Directories – Five Marketing Considerations

By Bill Rutherfurd

The Dot Tel Domain is a new Top Level Domain which has been created especially to hold contact information and some text. It has been available for purchase, and registration to the public for less than a year. It has clearly increased in popularity because registrations have grown by 2.75 times since not long after it went live.

One type of Dot Tel web site is the directory which is a collection of contact information and text about services, products, or places. Marketing a Dot Tel Directory involves a number of steps. The first step is the Pre-Marketing Phase which takes place before the developer has even started to develop the directory.

Ideally, this pre-marketing phase takes place before the domain name is purchased. This is not always possible especially with the names of cities, which were snapped up largely before the public availability of the domains. It is also not advised because, while doing pre-marketing research someone may take the name if it is still available. Registering a Do Tel Domain is not expensive and it is a good idea to be on the safe side and know that a domain is available if it shows pre-marketing potential. There are five considerations in the pre-marketing process:

1. Keywords

The domain developer should do some online research about the proposed directory’s keywords. If the keywords are reasonably popular, the domain name should be purchased. This protects the name while the developer does more research to see if the domain is worth developing.

2. User Cost

The developer should talk to mobile phone providers to find out their mobile phone web browser prices and what the Dot Tel Domain users will be charged to access domains from their mobile phone web browsers. This is important information because if the directory is expensive to use, no one will use it.

3. Competitors

The developer should now consider the competition for the proposed directory. The competitors are likely to be the Yellow and White Pages of telephone companies, online business directories, online travel directories, online product directories, and other directories that may have been set up for the same purpose as the developer’s domain. All of these areas need to be investigated before the directory is developed. What prices are other directories charging customers? How many listings do they have? How good are these directories’ mobile phone web sites, and how much data is in each page compared to Dot Tel data? Many other questions will emerge from a study of the competitors.

4. Traffic

A Dot Tel Directory must have traffic in order to be able to charge its customers for listings, and advertising. The amount of traffic is normally the first question a customer will ask about when they are asked about a listing. A domain also needs traffic in order to get users clicking on the Cost-Per-Click advertising. In March, 2010, AdSense will become available on the domains.

The developer needs to know that they can drive traffic to the directory they want to build. A good supporting web site structure to get traffic is to have a blog. It to promote the directory’s keywords by adding good content, and explanations about the Dot Tel. A Twitter account is also a good support, and can build up a following from both the blog and by the developer following other Twitter accounts. The advantages of a blog and a Twitter account, are that they are free and can be used to just what kind of interest there is in the keywords.

5. Revenue

The proposed Dot Tel Domain can generate revenue from customers from multiple sources. These include tiered listings for customers. Prices can be charged depending on what information a customer wants to be included in their listing. Paid advertisements can be placed on any page of a domain for a customer. The developer needs to find out whether advertisers will support the domain. This is where pre-marketing becomes quite hard. It is really about doing the footwork necessary to obtain the information to make a decision on proceeding with the Dot Tel Domain’s development.

These five pre-marketing steps will help Dot Tel Domain owners to decide about whether to develop their Dot Tel Domains. They are recommended for people who do not want to waste time and effort developing something that may turn out to be unprofitable for them. But all owners should remember that the technology is new and most people whom they approach will not know yet about Dot Tel Domains.