By Bill Glenn, Vice President of Marketing at Rightside
To say that interest in and use of new domain extensions has exploded recently is an understatement, with approximately 12 million already in existence.
Instead of being limited to domain names such as .COM, .ORG, .EDU, etc., businesses can select from literally millions of other options, with extensions such as .NEWS, .LIVE, .ROCKS, .ATTORNEY, .REVIEWS, and .VIDEO.
Companies ranging from Apple to Google to Dow Jones to Major League Baseball have embraced the use of new domain extensions, believing that more descriptive and targeted url extensions offer diverse benefits such as better calls to action (CTAs) and enhanced brand recall supporting both on-line and off-line marketing initiatives. One of the newest domains is .FAMILY, which was just announced last month and it has already been embraced by companies worldwide, including Amazon, BMW, Deutsche Telekom, Google, Johnson & Johnson, Tyson Foods, Viacom, and more. And, it’s not just brands, it’s also people buying domains to secure their family name or an easy to remember email address for business cards or redirecting to an existing personal website.
And yet many companies are hesitant to take advantage of the new opportunity created by new domain extensions, often because they are unaware of their existence or are still unclear of the value they can deliver to businesses and individuals alike. In the following piece, we’ve addressed three common questions about new domain extensions that will help you learn more about these new discovery tools and may even have you saying, “the new domain extension opportunity .ROCKS!”
1. I already have a .COM address, why would I need anything else?
So much work effort goes into selecting a domain name and if you already have the .COM, that’s great! But what happens when you grow your business, start running ad campaigns, have more competition and need to stand out on mobile and the web? Imagine that you’ve spent thousands of dollars on an ad campaign only to use a bit.ly link or QR code as your call to action. When was the last time you were driving down the highway and remembered a url on a billboard? This is why companies like Nitro Circus now use the url nitrocircus.live to take web browsers straight to their tour dates page. You don’t have to create a whole new website, you can simply forward viewers who visit your new domain to content on your existing .COM and get zero SEO penalty for doing so (see number 3 below)! New domain extensions enable you to promote your campaign with a playful domain name that illustrates your brand and creates better brand recall and a stronger call to action that should translate into an increased conversion or response rate.
A company’s online presence is often spread across several different platforms. While the nuts and bolts of their business may still live on their primary website, content like blogs, video, photos, and other social media are almost always hosted somewhere else. That “somewhere else” usually means the loss of control over the brand, with the company name getting stuck after the slash at http://www.youtube.com/user/ or www.twitter.com/. Complementary domains give businesses the ability to maintain more control over their brands and create a better experience for their customers. “Complementary domains” simply means differentiating the url through the top-level domain (TLD), while keeping the domain name itself static. The Los Angeles Times‘ web properties are a good example of this strategy, splitting various pages into LATimes.VIDEO, LATimes.SOCIAL, and LATimes.NEWS.
2. What is the business value for a brand to invest in new domains?
One determinant is whether the domain extension is a Branded domain, a relatively new option focused on a company or brand name. For example, Apple has the ability to create iPhone.Apple, instead of iPhone.com. In this case, Apple becomes the domain extension instead of .com, and iPhone becomes the second level domain. This is much more expensive because of the exclusivity aspect, which applies to any domain extension where exclusivity is desired. Still, for large companies or big brands, the opportunity to use the premium brand name as the domain has beneficial implications for both web bots and human searchers alike.
The International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) summarizes the benefits in this way:
- Companies can create shorter and easy-to-remember internet addresses
- They can intensify brand awareness among consumers, who will be able to access information regarding the company’s products and services more easily
- Companies can control and diversify their web presence by creating second-level domains for disparate products and services
- There is increased security against trademark abuses
- New opportunities for website marketing campaigns and strategies become possible
3. What is the Search Engine Marketing (SEM) value of new domains?
New domain extensions are a boon to SEM efforts. A controlled, PPC marketing study testing the use of different domain names to promote diamond jewelry found that new domain names have a dramatic impact on search engine results. The test compared http://ift.tt/1wDT9hJ to www.3Carat.Diamonds using the same Google Adwords ads and landing pages loaded with search-friendly keywords. The test found that the domain using the .com extension cost twice as much on a CPM basis and was a third less effective in producing conversions than the new domain extension.
Like any relatively new technology, data regarding the impact of new domain extensions is still accumulating. Many early adopters who grasp the ways in which new TLDs and complementary domains can enhance the effectiveness of marketing initiatives are reporting favorably on their experience. New domain extensions are steadily growing, and brands, marketers, individuals, etc. will soon see that these domains are a new part of our online ecosystem.
Vice President of Marketing Bill Glenn oversees all aspects of marketing at Rightside. Previous to joining Rightside, Bill served as the VP of Marketing at Socrata and held the position of Vice President of Marketing and Alliances at TalentWise. Bill has over 20 years’ experience working in the technology industry and has held marketing or business development leadership positions at Software as a Service (SaaS) companies ranging from early stage startups to Fortune 500 companies in the greater Seattle area.
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