This might blow your mind but as a namer, I don’t feel that the availability of a name’s .com URL is a make or break factor. There are lots of good reasons why a name might still be a good option for you, even if the .com isn’t available.
Who Needs Dot Com?
There are also some critical watch-outs, though (whoever has it can’t be in your same business, of course!). Check out this #tellthetruths video to see more.
This video originally appeared in LinkedIn
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TRANSCRIPT:
– Hey guys, it’s Rebeca with BrandTrue Who needs dot com? Not you. Okay, so you’ve got a name, you’re in love with it, but somebody has the URL <name.com> and I’ve seen so many clients say, “that’s it! We can’t do it. We don’t have the dot com.”
Okay. Here’s the deal – dot com, it’s the the gold standard? Sure. It’s actually considered more trustworthy, more like established? True. But less and less so over time. Actually, because people might be finding your brand through ads or through the result of Google searches, where they’ll be clicking on it. They don’t need to enter it. They don’t think a whole lot about it. And you can work a lot of different creative ways around not having the dot com.
You have to make sure that who has the dot com isn’t competitive to you, right? Like Dove Chocolate and Dove Soap. These two companies have the same name. They’re not in the same business. You make sure that they’re not in the same business. You’re good to go. Then you can do things like Hint Water. Their URL is gethint, no drinkhint.com. So they found a creative way around it.
You also don’t need to have dot com. You can have some creative extensions that are available now. They can be really, really powerful for you. I would argue potentially even more powerful than the dot com. Say you’re a toy company? Dot toys!
We advised a toy company we named recently to use that extension. Or say you’re a realtor? Dot realtor exists! Agencies? Dot agency exists! So the point is, of course you don’t want to be named the same thing as someone else, but just because the url dot com exists, don’t let that dissuade you. You’re good. That’s what I think. Let me know what you think. Thanks. Bye!
