TRUSTPILOT® is very successful at the moment, and most people always check the internet for recommendations, compare prices and read about the product on the company’s website before consulting a shop assistant in a store – if the product is even sold in a store.
Your customers probably do the same. Therefore it is no longer enough to have well-planned marketing campaigns and create nice store design. Today, the competition takes place largely on the internet; on both the B2B and B2C market, and therefore it is essential for your company to profile itself digitally.
Get visible with strategic domain names
The importance of the increased competition on the internet can be summed up into one word: VISIBILITY. It is crucial that a company is visible and easily accessible to consumers. This means that potential customers must be able to find you and your products or services on the internet without doing major detective work.
Visibility on the internet equals “strategic domain names”. Strategic domain names ensure that potential customers enter the company’s digital universe directly, and this is precisely what is crucial for your company’s digital success.
Time is money, and we do not have to click the mouse many times before giving up on our search. Or even worse – be charmed by a competing product that is within reach. You can lose a customer in no time.
In short, strategic domain names are essential in the digital competition.
8 tips for finding strategic domain names
1. Create a portfolio of strategic domain names
A portfolio of domain names is a necessity for most companies. There is no real limit to how many domain names you can register, but there is of course a natural limitation, because otherwise you can do nothing else but register and renew domain names.
You can either choose an aggressive strategy where all fairly relevant domain names are bought, strategic or not, or a strategy where you are more reserved and only buy one or at least as few domain names as necessary. However, there is also an alternative solution, namely the strategic domain names, which provide the optimal digital protection. Domain names that must be registered in order to be used actively, and domain names that must be registered to prevent others from registering these domain names.
2. Register company name and product name as main domains
As consumers, we will often search directly for the company name or product name. These are often also the company’s registered trademarks, and it is therefore important that you register the company name and product names as domain names.
If you have not registered the trademark for either the company and/or product name yourself, we recommend investigating whether another company has already registered the name in question as a trademark, because in that case it may affect your ability to use the domain name in the long term.
3. Consider whether the website should end in .com, .dk, something completely else or all of them
Whether to register the domain name with .com or .dk is up to the individual company, but you can use this rule of thumb: If your company operates exclusively in Denmark, consumers expect that they can find it on the national ccTLD (Top- level domain).dk.
If your company has commercial interests outside of Denmark, consider TLDs such as .com, .eu, .org, or .net or another national ccTLD such as .cn, .co.uk, or .us.
In several cases, it may also make sense to register both national ccTLDs and other TLDs such as .com in a long-term perspective.
4. Pay attention to the pronunciation and typical misspellings of the company name
Consumers cannot always remember how to spell a company name or trademark, but most people can remember the pronunciation. However, e.g., the letters ‘c’ and ‘k’ or “s” and “z” in many words have the same pronunciation, and who can actually spell e.g. NORWEGIAN® and SUZUKI® in their first attempt. Therefore, you can brainstorm on how the company name or trademark can be pronounced, and record the spellings and abbreviations that are most relevant and searched for. In this way, you can also minimize the type of phishing, where others deliberately try to use your company name or trademark by registering these so-called misspellings – sometimes also referred to as “typo squatting”.
5. Look into the future
Be at the forefront of registering strategic domain names for upcoming products or services. If your company has a product department and a marketing department, it is important that they are in constant dialogue with each other concerning upcoming products and services. In this context, it is also important to consider trademark registration of future products or services.
6. Redirect to the main website
All domains can be set to forward to another domain name, e.g. the main website. In this way, you ensure that potential customers enter the main website directly, even if they find your company via a subdomain.
7. Update the domain portfolio continuously
A domain portfolio should be active and updated continuously. Maybe some domain names in the portfolio do not need to be renewed, maybe there are domain names on the wish list that will finally become available, or maybe it is a good idea to have the portfolio reviewed by a professional.
8. Manage the domain portfolio collectively
Always make sure to register the domain names in the company name and not in the name of the individual employee. Gather the administration of all domain names in one or at most two places. It makes it more manageable to renew the domain names, so that strategic domains are not forgotten.
