Radix's Grass Roots Focus on Female Entrepreneurs in Florida Helped Fuel Ongoing Ascent of .Online

Now that "new" gTLDs have been with us for a full decade it is easy to see what has separated the biggest winners from the rest of the pack - creative and consistent marketing of their TLDs. Radix, who administers ten new TLDs, has been a standout in dreaming up win-win campaigns that have benefited both their TLDs and the communities those TLDs were created to serve. Last week Namecheap (the world's 2nd biggest registrar with 17 million domains under management) released their semi-annual Domain Insights & Trends Report that listed the most popular gTLDs - new and old - on their platform and Radix claimed three of the top ten spots with .online. .site and .store. .Online was in the top five, moving up two spots from last year after leapfrogging long established legacy TLDs .net and .org.

That's quite an accomplishment but Radix put in the hard work and financial investment needed to get there. The company has frequently drilled all the way down to the local level to run contests and events that have put tools, tips and money into communities whose grateful members have reciprocated by using and and spreading the word about Radix TLDs. Being based in Florida, we saw a perfect example of that during the recent NBA finals. As basketball fans know, the Miami Heat was in the championship series. Unfortunately for Miami fans, Denver won the series 4 games to 1, but thanks to Radix, female entrepreneurs in South Florida were still winners.

Radix ran an innovative month-long Spotlight.online contest, tied to the NBA finals,

that gave the winning entrepreneur a professional produced TV commercial that ran during the June 7 Heat-Nuggets game, putting the winner's company in front of 500,000 viewers. Radix and .online won big as well. The contest attracted over 650,000 social media views, nearly a million impressions and was also endorsed by top local influencers in the SMB space. .Online partnered with SMB communities including United Way, Venture Cafe Miami, and eMerge Americas for on-ground activities that engaged over 1,200 attendees. The contest also received attention from mainstream media, with prime-time coverage from NBC6, CBS Miami and the South Florida Business Journal, among others. 

The contest winner was Founder and CEO Susan Aran from Radiate Kombucha. Susan said, "Sharing Radiate Kombucha's story with over half a million people in South Florida and receiving significant media attention after the commercial was aired has been great for the brand. I am proud to be associated with a brand that is committed to supporting women entrepreneurs such as myself.  We love our domain, www.radiate.online, because it completely aligns with our D2C brand that ships nationally.” Here is the 30-second Radiate commercial TV viewers watched:

Susan also had to love the two-minute story about her and Radiate Kombucha below that CBS Miami's Channel 4 showed in their late newscast after the basketball game: 

Priyanka Panchmatia, the Brand Director for .Online Domains, said, “The intention behind offering a TV commercial as the prize was to level the playing field for a local, woman-owned business in South Florida. By providing opportunities that are otherwise exclusive to big-budget corporations, we wanted to give women-owned businesses a chance to thrive online and get marketing exposure that is often out of their reach.”  In a recent survey led by .Online Domains among women entrepreneurs in South Florida, 36% reported difficulty in securing funds to grow their business, while 54% found it difficult to compete in a crowded marketplace. This led us to launch the Spotlight.online contest.”

Last year, .Online Domains launched #FempowerOnline, an Instagram-led contest inspiring women entrepreneurs to go live with their business ideas. The contest ran for two months garnering 14 million impressions and over 700,000 views on social media. It was also endorsed by inspiring women influencers with over 4 million followers in total.  

(Posted August 1 2023)  

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