GoDaddy is a publicly traded Internet domain registrar and web hosting company founded in 1997 by Bob Parsons. As of 2014, GoDaddy was said to have had more than 59 million domain names under management, making it the world’s largest ICANN-accredited registrar. It serves more than 13 million customers and employs more than 4,000 people. The company is known for its celebrity spokespeople, Super Bowl ads and as being an online provider for small businesses. GoDaddy also sells e-business related software and services.
GoDaddy Business Objectives
● A goal to serve very small businesses everywhere.
● GoDaddy on its mission to help Indian SMBs turn e-commerce entrepreneurs.
● GoDaddy was born to give people an easy, affordable way to get their ideas online.
● They connect with their customers and dream up digital masterpieces in state-of-the-art offices.
Approach/ Strategy Adopted by GoDaddy
· Bring in the brains– Irving has gone on a hiring blitz. Since joining the company in January, Irving has hired from Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Yahoo, AT&T and eBay.
· Obsess about product – While Irving speaks favorably of GoDaddy’s customer-care services, he says the software product is not where it needs to be. “It has been built in silos,” Irving says. “They haven’t actually built great product.”
· Keep it fun – Irving has a drum set in his office. GoDaddy offices are equipped with the trappings of startup culture, including treadmill computer stations, Ping Pong and foosball tables, video-game stations, couches and cable television.
Channels Adopted:
● Online Store : On Twitter, On Facebook, On Google+, On LinkedIn etc.
For regular interactions with the followers.
● SEO : Bring more traffic to your website with search engine optimization. One click submission to Google, Yahoo! and Bling Increase your search ranking, No technical skills required in this.
● GoDaddy Email Marketing (GEM) : CREATE and SEND gorgeous, business boosting emails in a minute.
EMAIL OUTPERFORMS OTHER marketing strategies, earning USD $43 for every $1 spent on average.
FREE 24/7 HELP from smart, friendly consultants. As always.
● GoDaddy Pro : Web hosting giant GoDaddy used to target mostly small online businesses with minimal technical needs. But the company is now trying to cater to a group that it admits hasn’t been much interested in its services before with a new GoDaddy Pro service offering.
Results Achieved by GoDaddy
Domain’s hosting is increasingly becoming popular and thus far remains a favorite for domain registrations. According to Webhosting.info it is growing at a rapid pace. Credit goes to their affordable pricing structures.
- In July 2012, GoDaddy announced it would acquireOutrightfor an undisclosed amount.
- In August 2013, GoDaddy announced it would acquire Locu for $70 million.
- In September 2013, GoDaddy acquired domain marketplace Afternic from NameMedia. GoDaddy will also acquire domain parking service SmartName and business name generator NameFind.
- On October 15, 2013, GoDaddy acquired web hosting service provider Media Temple. In a newsletter sent to its customers, Media Temple said that they “will continue operating as an independent and autonomous company.
- In July 2014, GoDaddy acquired Canary, a small Cambridge-based smart calendar service.
- On August 20, 2014, GoDaddy acquired Mad Mimi, a Brooklyn-based email marketing service.
- In April 2015, GoDaddy acquired Elto, “a San Francisco-based startup which had been offering a marketplace that helped connect business owners and other non-technical people to web developers who could help them establish and improve their web presence.
Learnings
- The IPO is just the beginning:“You have to continue to deliver and grow,” Wagner says, adding that Parsons never took a dime of outside money to build the company. Although GoDaddy isn’t profitable today, the business still has hundreds of millions of dollars in free cash flow to build and deliver new products.
- Customers still come first: “In the early years, the founding tenet of this business was caring for our customers,” Wagner says. Today you can still reach customer care specialists 24 hours a day to talk about any issue that overlaps with your domain and website, including issues you may have running a software product unrelated to GoDaddy.
- Use your IPO to reach a wider audience: “The IPO introduces the company to the general investing public in a way we hope and expect will raise the attention of people to what the company does at a global scale,” Wagner says.
Even if you have no plans to go public in the next few years, these are all things to think about as you plan to grow.
