The Serbian National Internet Domain Registry (RNIDS) and CENTR organized the 15th CENTR Marketing workshop on 27th and 28th November in the BAH hotel in Belgrade. 34 participants have represented 21 national registries (in addition to the European registries, the Japanese national registry was also represented), the Catalan registry and the Council of European National Top Level Domain Registries (CENTR). After a long absence from this type of events, a representative of the Greek registry has also attended, and the representative from MARnet (.mk registry), attended the CENTR marketing workshop for the first time.
Danko Jevtović, RNIDS CEO, opened the workshop with a brief presentation introducing the guests to the history of Serbia and the Serbian Internet domains, as well as to the organisation and activities of RNIDS.
The event was jam-packed with interesting topics and discussions. The main topics included:
- Reasons for the general slow growth in the number of registered domains,
- Experiences with new generic domains associated with specific areas or cities (.paris, .brussels and .vlaanderen),
- Marketing campaigns with educational and promotional elements which registries have used to promote the benefits of national domains, increase their market visibility and strengthen domain brands,
- Competitions supported by national registries with a view to promoting their own values and brands,
- Cooperation between national registries and their accredited registrars.
As part of the topic on marketing campaigns, Jelena Ožegović, RNIDS associate for marketing and communications, gave a presentation on practical experiences gained from promotional activities on social networks, relating to the campaign “Things you can do with your domain..." and the prize competition “Come up with a domain, win a gadget!”. The data from a survey conducted before the workshop, where the national registries provided information about their experiences with communication channels and tracking conversions on their sites complemented her presentation. As expected, online marketing was the most popular, and visits to the WHOIS page and the list of accredited registrars are among the most interesting conversions.
Voja Žanetić, famous Serbian screenwriter, columnist and creative marketer, gave extra value to the workshop. The title of his presentation was “Shortest Hero’s Journey – Storytelling in Advertising”, and Mr Žanetić entertained and educated those present, reminding them that all stories should be told properly, even those in advertising, and that each story needs to have a hero fighting a bad guy. In advertising, the hero is the consumer and the bad guys vary – from poor hair volume to a poor Internet presence. The difference between marketing stories and all other stories is that marketing stories always have a happy ending.