Marketing with Domain Names
A domain name is your address on the Internet. It serves most basically as the access point of your site, but there are other important uses that domain names can provide. Having multiple domain names allows you to experiment with these different uses. Considering the relatively low cost of domain names, using multiple domain names to develop an online marketing strategy is a great investment.
Domain names can be especially great tools for monitoring the results of advertising or marketing campaigns. By using a unique domain name for a specific campaign (see below for examples) you will be able to gauge the amount of interest that the campaign generates. You can do this by tracking the website statistics through your account (more info on this here). This data can give you an understanding of the most worthwhile direction to take in advertising to maximize your return on investment.
Before you start advertising a domain, however, you should think carefully about the domain name you select for each endeavour. There are thousands of possible word combinations for domain names, but you might find that all the names that you want are taken. It is true that a lot of the “good” or obvious domain names are unavailable, but you can still find effective names just by spending a few minutes thinking about it. For instance, I searched a handful of names over the last 5 minutes. Many were unavailable, but I was able to find some good available options as well – www.HigherSalePrice.com was available, as was www.DreamHomeToronto.ca. Domain names like these that are fairly easy to remember, are descriptive, and use common extensions (.com & .ca are best) are generally the most effective.
Before you use a .ca, however, consider this. Many people will erroneously type, or even remember, your domain with a .com extension due to the years of conditioning. Have you ever heard anyone refer to an Internet-based business as “another .ca company”? The entire industry seems to be related to .com, regardless of the extension. So, to ensure you don’t lose your hard-earned traffic to a competitor, check the .com equivalent of your .ca domain and make sure it is not a direct competitor. If your .ca domain has your city in it like the DreamHomeToronto.ca example above, chances are the .com equivalent has to do with homes in Toronto as well, though you may get lucky and find that it is a site for a home stager or local architect or something like that. If people heading to your website accidentally enter .com instead of .ca, you want to ensure they don’t end up on your direct competitor’s site.
The choice of domain name also depends on the medium. If you are advertising on a bench or subway shelter, generally you are advertising yourself as a Real Estate Professional. In this instance, the most appropriate domain name to list would be www.YourName.com/ca.
If you are putting out more of an informative ad in the newspaper, directed toward having people go to your site and fill out a form, for example, you would probably want the content to be less focused on you as a salesperson, and instead more focused on the tips or information you are providing. In that case something like www.HigherSalePrice.com would be more appropriate to cite as the domain name. If you list your www.YourName.com/ca address in the ad, readers are more likely to feel sceptical about your motives for providing the information, and in turn be deterred from visiting.
Another common space that many real estate agents advertise is on signs, or sign riders. Generally, when people pass a sign they are in a vehicle or walking by. They are not prepared to stop and absorb the information, or write down any details they saw. But if a property catches their eye, they may scan for your domain name and mentally note to look it up later. This makes it important for your domain name to stand out on the sign, and be short and easy to remember. A valuable domain name to choose in this instance will incorporate the address, such as www.123StreetAve.com, for example. Another benefit to this technique is the ability to point this domain name to the specific listing it is advertising – that means if someone goes to the site, they will get all the information for the listing right away.
In all cases, it is strongly recommended that you write some sort of tagline above or below the domain name as a “call to action” of sorts. Domain names are so common nowadays that people often don’t even take note when they see one. You need to give readers a reason why they should take note of yours, or they likely will not. Creating a short but effective tagline that reinforces your message and why it is so important.
Here are some examples:
FREE Advice on How to Get the Best Price for Your Home!
Moving to Toronto? Find Your Dream Home Today!
Notice we capitalize the first letter of each word. It is important to note that the Internet does not discriminate between upper- and lower-case letters in a domain name. Sometimes, anything after the slash (/) may be case-sensitive, but your main web address is not, so you can use any case you want for that. Upper-lower case, as we have used in the examples above, is easier to read and retain than, for example, www.highersaleprices.com, especially on a drive-by.
Now that you understand the variety of uses that domain names can have, why not get started on your own online marketing campaign? Head on over to www.tucowsdomains.com and perform a “WHOIS” lookup. This will show let you know if a domain name is available, or already registered.
To register a domain name, just submit a Support Ticket from your Real Web Solutions account with the name you’d like. We’ll take care of the rest.
Authored by: Tara, Client Relations