gTLD Clever - Use your URL to build brand recognition

Posted:
March 19, 2014
.vegas image for blog

We present to you a fresh opportunity for brand building – and room for a little creative license.In a sea of URL’s that have become increasingly long in order to obtain the .com at the end, the addition of new specific domain extensions will make finding your perfect web address a lot easier.The .com landscape is crowded. As of mid-2013 there were a reported more than 250 million domains registered worldwide. Trying to find an available .com without making your URL a paragraph is an exercise in futility. The .com domain extension has been around for nearly 30 years, but the new top level domains are just coming on the scene now. It’s like developing a rural area, there’s space to build your own little palace.Make it workFor example, take the It’s On Me app. The Vegas-based app lets users buy (and redeem) specific items from participating bars and restaurants. Want to buy your co-worker one of your favorite beers but won’t be able to meet them when they’ll be at the bar? Now you can. You buy it, they take their phone up to the bar and redeem their drink. The apps’ URL is itson.me, utilizing the .me domain in a way that works into their overall branding and marketing. Using the .me domain allowed them to keep their brand recognition without diluting it by adding unnecessary words in order to find an available .com.With so many new top level domains coming online in the next several months, imagine all the ways a business, organization or person could use a specific TLD to build brand recognition and set themselves apart from a herd of .com’s.What next?Recently United Domains ranked the top 50 most popular new top level domains. Some of them are wide open and will allow for a lot of different kinds of users, while others, like .movie and .phone will let users narrow their focus.Imagine the possibilities. What kind of business could grow up around a URL like whathappenedin.vegas? Or, a brand with a traditional .com website may want to create more of a targeted experience for customers with a new gTLD – maybe a clothing line could create (brand name here).shoes? What about a dating site or app that capitalizes on the popularity of services like Tinder but with a much more descriptive web address? Like, say, hithere.sexy?So, here’s the big question: what would you do with one of the new gTLDs? Tell us in the comments or find us on Facebook or Twitter.

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