Question

Topic: Branding

Using ".com" In Your Brand's Names?

Posted by memclellan on 2/12/2019 at 11:19 AM ET 125 Points
I work with an affiliate marketing platform and am having a disagreement with a colleague and need some input on this...

Do you think it's a good idea to use ".com" on with a website brand?

(Below is for example only, I do not own or work on this site in any way - just needed a simple URL example that is similar to some of the sites or brands we do work with)

Say we own the URL: www.trustedcarloan.com
We're updating the website content and want to brand the site as "Trusted Car Loan" but my colleague believe we should be branding the site as "TrustedCarLoan.com". Essentially the difference means the logo and any mention of the brand in content/advertising will use the "TrustedCarLoan.com" rather than "Trusted Car Loan".

For some sites/brands I've seen this done and it makes sense for them, but as a general rule of thumb I don't think it's a requirement for a brand to have a ".com" attached to the brand name when the brand's primary face/storefront is their website.

She believes that using the .com in the brand name will help with SEO and ranking with search results? In addition she thinks because of the rise of more domains likes .xyz and .net we need to keep the .com for the website as part of the brand name.

Our brands we're talking about are not trademarked at this time.

So I need thoughts on this — when does it make sense to brand a website with the URL name, including the .com versus not? What are the pros/cons of having it versus not having it?

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RESPONSES

  • Posted by mgoodman on 2/12/2019 at 1:37 PM Accepted
    I understand the arguments pro-and-con for both alternatives. My net take-away is that for brand names that describe the business or its core benefit you should NOT include the .com in the brand name. Including .com could confuse prospective customers and make the brand name/benefit less memorable.

    When you have a nonsense name (e.g., "ABC Enterprises") or a very short name (e.g., "Acme") including the .com TLD probably doesn't hurt.

    To me, the most important consideration would be relevance to your primary target audience.
  • Posted by Jay Hamilton-Roth on 2/12/2019 at 3:17 PM Accepted
    Also, if you can purchase the (popular) alternative domains, then the argument is moot.
  • Posted by Gary Bloomer on 2/20/2019 at 5:34 PM Accepted
    The presence or not of '.com' in any name won't brand anything.

    The best way to learn more is to run a split test of two ads, one with the '.com' element as part of the name, one without.
  • Posted by Shelley Ryan on 3/4/2019 at 2:52 PM Moderator
    Hi Everyone,

    I am closing this question since there hasn't been much recent activity.

    Thanks for participating!

    Shelley
    MarketingProfs
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