Should a Business Invest in Domain Names

Domain names are assets that arguably businesses in general undervalue as to their role to benefit their overall growth and worth. Larger businesses are more in tune and actively pursue acquisition of domain names relative to their business growth and brand protection. Lets look at a few examples.

Big companies are well aware of the importance of the Internet to their success. Domain names are a major marketing component to reaching more people online and increasing brand awareness, as well as protecting their brands.

For example, the Coca-Cola Company besides owning coke.com and coca-cola.com, they also own BourbonAndCoke.com, ades.com, ahh.com, ahhh.com, AlwaysCocaCola.com, appletizer.com, plus many others including in country code and alternative extensions. Chipotle owns BurritoWowNow.com, ChipotleCullinaryClass.com, FoodWithIntegrity.com, and many others. Smaller businesses in industries such as law, insurance, tech, travel and tourism, and many others are acquiring descriptive, product, and service matching domain names besides their primary domain. Space prevents us from listing domains owned by Amazon.com, Google, and many other companies. Why are they doing this?

There are a number of reasons for acquiring domain names to help grow your business identity and brand awareness. Here are some of the top ones:

1. Type-in traffic. By acquiring descriptive domains that are also keywords bid on by your competitors, you take advantage of traffic resulting from people typing them into the browser directly.
2. Branding opportunities. Companies may want to rebrand under a new, easier to understand and remember, name. Or they may want to launch new brands for new products and services. Also, by redirecting to your existing website a descriptive domain name that means something to everyone and promotes your business, then your slogan or what you do also is in the domain name to access more information about your business. It is an added marketing tool to raise awareness of your expertise in the minds of prospective customers.
3. Special campaigns. Slogans, phrases, or product/service names can be used to create special campaigns. This can be accomplished either through a new site or a landing page on your existing site and the domain redirects to it.
4. Brand protection. Many companies register domains that contain easy misspellings of their name as well as combinations of CompanyNameSucks.com and the like. The purpose is to send visitors to the right site even if they make a simple mistake in the spelling and to prevent disgruntled employees or customers from starting a negative campaign website.
5. Increase business valuation. Owning valuable domains is an asset that will grow the overall valuation of the business. Quality domains are harder and harder to come by and grow in value.
6. Future prospecting or investment. There may be a moment when a great domain name is available at a great price. You may not know at the time how you can use it but you know it has great potential that you may be able to exploit later on. Many companies redirect domains that are not necessarily related to their business back to their primary website. Great domains result in traffic and make for excellent investment opportunities.

There is no law or rule that you must settle on just one domain. Owning a portfolio of quality domain names has many benefits.