When starting your own business, your brand is your identity. Like someone using your own identity, you do not want another company using your brand name.

Reasons for Buying Multiple Domains

Benefits of having multiple domains
Maintain and enhance your brand
Keep loyal customers
Account for misspelling in your URL
Protect from cybercriminals
Should you buy all of your domain name extensions?

Your reputation can make or break your enterprise, so you’ll want to be careful about how your brand is portrayed to your target market. Your brand is even more important than what you sell. Sometimes to protect your brand, you need to buy multiple domains.

Benefits of Having Multiple Domains

We all know that famous Shakespearean quote from Romeo and Juliet:

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.”

No, no, no! The name is significant. When we talk about a brand, we are talking about a range of brand attributes that have been painstakingly developed over time. Not a flower that has always had a beautiful scent. A brand name is at the very root of your brand delivery. It is the name that people turn to when they expect a range of predictable brand attributes. The key to a solid brand is keeping your brand messaging consistent. All your marketing communications must reflect your brand attributes. A strong brand name is worth jealously guarding. Consider for one minute a brand like Apple. Even if Apple began marketing a product like coffee machines, potential customers would have a preconceived notion about that coffee machine based upon their brand perceptions. They will know it will come beautifully packaged. They will understand that its controls will be intuitive and easy to operate. They will know it has a high design aesthetic. Your brand name is your most integral asset, and you should protect it at all costs. One of the benefits of having multiple domains is protecting that brand.

Maintain and enhance your brand

Reputation is king. You do everything in your power to ensure that you deliver a consistent level of product and customer service to your customers. That reputation has taken years to establish but can be destroyed in minutes if another business that customers believe to be you does not deliver to the same standard. This ability to damage is even more dramatic in the online space, where more and more customers rely on online reviews as part of their purchase decision-making process. Protecting your brand name puts you in control of your reputation and eliminates the risk of damaging your business within the marketplace. Sometimes the only way to secure that protection is by buying similar domains that a disreputable competitor might use.

Keep loyal customers

Over time you build up a customer database of loyal returning customers. A simple trick with a similar domain name may see your loyal customers inadvertently returning to a competitors site. Buying a range of closely related domain names or misspelt domain names may assist in keeping control over your customer database. Protecting your brand name restricts the capacity for other businesses to, whether purposefully or not, poach your customers.

Account for misspelling in your URL

You know your brand inside out. You know precisely how it's spelt and how to enter your URL correctly. Customers are busy. They have a lot of choices and do not always type the correct address. We’ve all done it. So registering a domain in its most apparent misspelt versions and creating multiple domains for one website is a great way to secure your brand.

Protect against cybercriminals

Cybercriminals create fake domains to trick customers into sharing their personal information, like login credentials and bank account details. Protecting against these cyber criminals becomes very important for legitimate sites, particularly e-commerce sites. Fraudsters may discover a domain name variation that is available, register that variation and use it to steal your customers’ personal information. Your customers will see this as a significant breach of trust and will be less willing to trust your brand in the future. Google is one brand that takes this very seriously. Alongside its primary domain name, google.com, the internet giant has more than 50 additional domains registered, all its primary domain name variations. This strategy protects Google from imitators trying to profit from their brand. While the government has increased its efforts to keep consumers safe from such scams, it is still essential that business does their bit to ensure it is difficult for their brand or online presence to be easily replicated

Should you buy all of your domain name extensions?

By registering multiple extensions for your domain name, you can also minimise the likelihood of someone else registering the same name. There are many types of domain extensions; from Top-Level Domain (TLDs), like .com, .net and .org; to Country Code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs), like .com.au; and New General Top-Level Domains (New gTLDs), like .melbourne or .ninja if you’re feeling strong. Start by picking the most popular TLD extensions to register, like .com, .net and .org. Note that, to register a .com.au domain, you need to have a current Australian Business Number (ABN). Once you have registered all the likely domain extensions for your name, your brand should be relatively safe. If you operate out of a city with its own New gTLD, like .sydney or .melbourne, you may want to invest in that; however, these domain extensions tend to come at a premium. Don’t forget the new .au domain extension, launched in Australia in 2022. It’s shorter, easier to remember and very Australian.

How do I protect my brand?

Once you have the domains you require to protect your brand, it is essential to know how to manage multiple domains. You need to ensure you manage your domain renewal process so that no domain registration is allowed to elapse. There are domain name protection services available that enable you to keep tabs on domain search and domain registration activity that may impact your digital presence and diminish your online brand. Webcentral is Australia’s leading online service provider with more than 25 years of experience assisting small to medium-sized business make their mark in the online space. Talk to us today about your multiple domain name needs.

J Mckinnon