Intereliant 

Choosing a Domain name?

Finding the right domain name is a delicate business and needs careful consideration. It has to be short, memorable and descriptive. Here are a few points and ideas to begin with:

1. Your company name or brand name with a .com would be best. Unless you can get a great .net name, use a .com name. They are the most widely known, the most sought after and the most valuable domain names currently available.

2. Keep it short and meaningful. Sometimes there are exceptions to this, but they are quite rare. Always grab a two letter name if you can get it. These are extremely valuable as they are so few of them. Decent three or four letter names are usually winners too.

3. Generic names are best if you can get them. Select names that appeal to a large corporate audience if you can. This will ensure that your prospective buyers have the resources necessary to make an acceptable bid. Example swimwearshopper.com.

4. Regional names only make sense if you develop them with local content. Then they can become great profit centers like gatwick.net.

5. Is the name easy to say and understand? What if you heard someone tell it to you over the telephone for the first time? Would you understand it or would they have to spell it? If you have to spell it, then forget it.

6. No foreign languages (other than English) unless you have a specific target market in mind already. Names that contain foreign characters are a complete waste of money. Most people won't be able to type them into their browser and search engines may also have problems with them.

7. No telephone numbers unless you already own the actual phone number. They are useless otherwise and registering them is begging for trouble.

8. No 'accidental' period omission names (e.g. wwwmicrosoft.com) that try to capture misspellings in a web browser. Their lawyers will get you.
   

What is Digital Branding?

From a business viewpoint, branding in the marketplace is very similar to branding on the ranch. A branding programme should be designed to differentiate your cow from all the other cattle on the range, even if all the cattle on the range look pretty much alike.

A successful branding programme creates in the mind of the prospect the perception that there is no company, product, service or place in the market quite like yours.

Can a successful brand appeal to everybody? In a word: No! Yet widening the customer base and developing brand extensions are all popular trends in marketing which in the long term ultimately undermine the power of the brand. How to identify and create the differentiating factors that build a powerful future focus for a brand is the role of the specialist brand developer.

Digital Brand Management

The role of a specialist brand developer is to identify and create the differentiating factors that build a powerful future focus for a brand.


Much like a company name, brand, logo, or 800 number, a domain name has marketing value when customers can easily remember and associate it with the organisation. Several million domain names have already been registered world-wide, hence it can be difficult to find a good domain name.

If the required domain is already taken, you may want to ask the owner if it is for sale. A domain name value is roughly 10 times its annual revenue or marketing benefit.

The Role of Branding in Marketing

Marketing has become too complicated. In many companies marketing is done by many different specialists:


• Market research
  
• Product development
  
• Advertising
  
• Sales promotion
  
• Direct marketing and so on.
  

Integrating these specialist groups has become a major activity in its own right. If Marketing is to fulfill its promise as the driving force in a company, the marketing process itself has to be simplified.

So what is the glue that holds the various marketing functions together? It is the process of Branding. Marketing is Branding. Marketing is building a brand in the mind of the prospect. If you can build a powerful brand, you will have a powerful marketing programme.