Defining.com: Defining Brands. Building Value

What is a brand?

Code — Thu, 01 Feb 2024 05:49:16 +0000

The Billion-Dollar Brand Blueprint: Lessons from the Trenches.

Ask 10 people and you’ll get 10 different answers. I’ve been in Branding for decades and have heard every possible answer to this question one could give. Get the answer right, and it could be a game-changing growth hack. Get it wrong, and it could cost you immeasurably.

Here’s how we define “brand”…

Technically speaking a brand is a collection of words, images and experiences used to shape one’s perception of a company, product or service.

Our process for defining a company’s brand is by observing how its customers engage with it: What pain points do they exhibit? What rational needs are being met? What emotional feelings are they seeking, but are unable to articulate? We also scan the competitive landscape to see what others in the category and doing, what common languages are being used and what opportunities exist for distinction. And lastly, we look inward within the organization itself to uncover cultural cues, core values and personality traits to document the authentic “truths” about the company’s core essence.

Armed with this information, we distill this data, gathered from various sources, into a collection of Unique Selling Propositions (USPs), Company Mission, Vision and Values, Corporate Tone of Voice and many other attributes that define—with distinction, relevance and authenticity, the company’s brand in written form. That single document is the foundation from which all future decisions shield be made.

In the branding world, we call this a Promise of Distinction, and our goal is to establish trust within a specific target audience or tribe, and be as clear and specific with our overarching USP as possible.

Great companies understand that brand loyalty begins and ends with trust. Trust that the promises a company makes will be of value to the recipient, but more importantly, that those promises are lived up to in each and every touchpoint one has with that company. Fail to accomplish that, and you’ve not only lost a valuable customer, but you’ve compromised your reputation as a brand, doing far more harm than good.

Let’s take a brief look at some companies that have built world-class brands, and as a result have enviably loyal tribes of their own. Let’s start with a game of fill-in-the blanks…

1. Southwest Airlines is ________________.

2. Volvo is ________________.

3. Nike is ________________.

4. Apple is ________________.

5. McDonalds is ________________.

Odds are, you chose words like…

1. Southwest Airlines is Economical.

2. Volvo is Safe.

3. Nike is Empowering.

4. Apple is Innovative.

5. McDonalds is Fast.

These companies have invested billions of media dollars to reinforce these mental mnemonics in our minds, but as importantly, they possess the organizational discipline to ensure that every operational decision is “on brand”, bringing us back to the concept of promises. It’s one thing to make them, and another thing entirely—and much more difficult for that matter—in keeping them.

In the case of Southwest, it means that every decision they make as an organization—from the layout of the cabin, to the in-flight food they serve, to their uniforms, scripts and booking engine is in total alignment with their promise to be economical. That commitment to their Promise of Distinction is what makes them one of the most successful companies in the world.

The same holds true for the others on this list—they’ve all staked claims to owning not only words, but feelings in the minds of their audience, and are relentless about reinforcing their brand values in every minute detail along the customer journey. That’s the holy grail of branding and should be your goal from the get-go.

We’ll close with one more critically important ingredient in establishing trust with your audience—your domain name.

When on the journey of converting strangers to loyal tribe members, first-impressions are invaluable. And nothing conveys credibility, trust and confidence like an exact-match ultra-premium domain. It’s why we subconsciously trust firms branded on them over their peers. Just glance over the list of Fortune 1000’s, Crunchbase’s Unicorn Board and Forbes’ Top 100 Global Tech firms. Almost every single one has built their brand on their exact match .COM. That is not by coincidence.

Why? Credibility and cost efficiency.

For the past 30 years, we as consumers have been conditioned to subliminally trust companies branded on their exact match .COM because it naturally feels safe and trustworthy.

To further illustrate my point, which of these financial services firms would you most trust based on domain alone?

Chase.com

Chase-Bank.ai

ChaseBank.io

GetChaseBank.xyz

Of course it’s Chase.com, because they’ve made the investment to tell the world that they, and only they have the worldwide ownership of the Chase brand, in spite of the fact that there are 5,700 companies in the world branded on some derivation of “Chase.” Doing so shows an investment in one’s brand as well as their customer base.

Building great brands relies on an ability to distill the complexities of one’s service offering down to its core essence—one of distinction, relevance and authenticity, and then ensuring that every future operational decision is “on brand.” Create your Promise of Distinction, launch your brand on a credible and authoritative domain and then watch it flourish.

For more insights in the world of brand building, visit us at Defining.com.

The post What is a brand? appeared first on Defining.com: Defining Brands. Building Value.

How A Domain Upgrade Spurred Massive Growth

Code — Wed, 31 Jan 2024 19:37:06 +0000

How A Domain Upgrade Spurred Massive Growth

I recently sat down for a coffee with Tim Hargis, the former VP, Marketing & Business Development for Tuft & Needle, an American direct to-consumer mattress and bedding brand acquired by Serta Simmons Bedding in 2018. We had a great chat about domains and branding, and the impact that the right premium .COM can have on a business. The interview has been reproduced here. — Kate Buckley, CEO, Buckley Media | Defining.com

Kate: Tim, tell me about your role at Tuft & Needle. What initiatives were you charged with enacting?

Tim: As is the case with most startups, when you join very early, you can expect your role to change over time, and that was certainly the case while I was at T&N. When I joined, I didn’t have much of a defined role even though I was the first person on the “marketing” team. Over time, I went from marketing to business development, landed wholesale deals with Lowes, Crate&Barrel, WalMart, etc., and then I eventually shifted over to the real estate side where I helped lead search and lease negotiations for our retail store expansion before transitioning out of the company to pursue new ventures in mid 2018.

Kate: What were some of the issues you were experiencing with your existing domain name, tuftandneedle.com?

Tim: For the first few years, the majority of our limited marketing spend had been centered around digital channels—primarily AdWords. So our domain wasn’t much of a concern at that time. As we expanded into OOH channels like billboards, radio, and TV, it became challenging because of how long the domain was. Also, “tuft” is not a common English word. So we were forced to squeeze “tuftandneedle.com” on billboards due to space constraints and it caused serious readability/legibility issues. In addition, on the radio, “tuft” sounds very similar to “tough,” so there was consistent confusion around that.

We ran some analysis and realized what consumers were actually searching for when trying to find us online, and it was pretty eye-opening. It became obvious how difficult it was to spell and remember our name, let alone pronounce the correct version. We’d get search queries for “tough mattress,” “tough needle,” “needle mattress”…

Kate: Who had the idea to acquire TN.com and why?

Tim: I’ve always been a domain name nerd and big believer in the value they add, so I brought up the idea casually, and there was a fair amount of immediate support from different people inside the company. We all recognized the challenges the domain presented, but we were a bootstrapped company growing very quickly with limited financial resources. We knew that a super-premium domain was going to be high 6, to likely 7 figures to obtain.

It was really more a question about the right timing.

We continued to seriously talk about it more, and then brainstormed potential alternative domains. We thought of the most “obvious” options (that would have cost significantly less), but each of them had clear problems. We knew if we went with “TN.co” most consumers would just go to the .com (and also drive up the price of the .com in the future), “tan.com” wasn’t ideal because it was read as a word and not an acronym, “tuft.com” presented the same spelling challenges we already had, and an entire new brand was off the table.

At that point, we were boxed in and had one option—TN.com. Even though we knew it was going to be the most expensive option, by far, it was clearly the best option for the company.

Kate: Talk about the acquisition and negotiation process. How difficult was it to secure TN.com?

Tim: I originally reached out to the domain broker who was representing the name in mid 2015. Once we determined who owned it, we knew we weren’t going to be getting a “deal” by any means—and the broker was also a great negotiator, I must add—but we were committed to pursuing it.

I went back and forth on it for about 2-3 months, as their original price and our offer was vastly different. Eventually we negotiated close enough on the price and terms that it made sense to just go for it. So we acquired the domain. After we agreed on the deal structure, it took about a week or so to get the purchase contract drafted and executed. We then finalized the transaction through escrow.com.

Kate: There are only 676 two-letter .COM names in existence. It couldn’t have been cheap! Are you able to share the acquisition price? If so, how did you determine how much to pay based on the domain’s potential value to the company?

Tim: Ultra-premium domains are interesting in that they seem very “expensive” from the outside looking in, but after owning one, you recognize very quickly how incredibly undervalued they are relative to what they cost.

Of course, the tricky part is you don’t realize this until you have one (and why it can often be hard to determine if it’s worth the high price tag to begin with).

To put it in perspective, at T&N we were bringing in 9 figures in revenue (this is publicly stated at close to $200m in 2018), and most DTC e-comm companies are spending 20-25% of net revenue on marketing—some are even much higher than this. So, if for example, a company is spending $40-$50m a year on marketing, while increasing the budget every year as they grow, you can expect $200-$300m in spend over the next 4-5 years. Why would you not allocate a fraction of 1% from that entire spend on the entry point (domain) you’ll be driving all the traffic/eyeballs to…AND it’s also an asset that continues to appreciate?

At this stage, we were still under the radar and knew that if we waited and became even more well known as a brand, the price would just continue to climb and we’d become a victim of our own success. It just made sense to stretch ourselves a little initially, rather than run the risk of it being sold out from under us in the future. That would have been a huge missed opportunity, and if we had taken that risk, the potential alternative outcome would have been significantly worse.

I can’t disclose the exact price, but it’s been stated publicly before (by one of the Co Founders) that it was seven figures—that I can confirm. I think it was a fair price given other two letter .COM end user sales.

Kate: And it had to substantially impact user experience! How did the domain acquisition impact your marketing strategy? What did you do differently as a result of landing TN.com?

Tim: Initially, we used TN.com exclusively on billboards so we could accurately segment the traffic coming from that channel (to get a directionally-accurate measure of the ROAS) while we continued to use tuftandneedle.com on our digital channels.

Prior to this, we’d used tuftandneedle.com on billboards—having TN.com made a huge difference in the amount of traffic that channel generated. If you’re going to be doing any meaningful amount of OOH marketing, you must have a great .COM or you’re likely just throwing money away through inefficient ad spend, and blaming the marketing channel instead.

Once we ran this test, we switched all of our OOH channels to TN.com.

Kate: Did you see a measurable difference in traffic or conversion rate —or a reduction in your cost of customer acquisition? What was the biggest difference or impact that TN.com had on your business?

Tim: This gets very complicated to accurately determine, especially when you’re in many different channels, but we definitely noticed an increase in mobile traffic when we started using TN.com in OOH. Assessing whether or not our blended acquisition costs dropped as a result of having TN.com would be much harder to definitively say one way or the other.

But do I believe our marketing was more effective by having it? There’s zero question in my mind about that. I believe it more than paid for itself in a relatively short period of time, and think most would agree it was one of the best investments the company made.

But putting that specific impact aside, there are many other benefits it brought: credibility and legitimacy (because typically only larger brands have very short .coms), its strong visual “appearance” on packaging/products/creative/ tc, and fewer email issues. For example, we’d run into issues surrounding customers spelling the company name incorrectly when emailing support. The domain [ TN.com] is just far easier to remember.

Interesting story: We had an employee at Tuft & Needle (that had previously worked at a domain registrar) who saw our billboard one day and thought, “How did they get a two-letter .com?!” and applied for a Customer Experience position and got hired!

Kate: Tuft & Needle was acquired by Serta Simmons Bedding in September of 2018 congratulations! That had to have been an exciting ride. Do you think the acquisition and subsequent deployment of TN.com played any role in this acquisition?

Tim: It’s hard to say if the domain itself played much of a factor, but there’s no doubt it was a huge asset in growing the company (which of course helped the business become a desirable M&A target).

Kate: How did this experience impact the way you view premium domains as tools for marketing and business development?

Tim: I’ve always been a believer in the value of premium domains, and it’s good to see more and more companies building on them and leveraging their impact. They’re an asset, not an expense—and if your “marketing agency” doesn’t understand this, they should be fired.

It still boggles my mind when I see companies that are clearly spending a fortune on marketing, attempting to drive traffic to a mediocre (at best) domain that is hard to remember, easily misspelled, and often confused. It’s like spending millions of dollars remodeling a $100,000 hom —it just doesn’t make any sense.

Kate: Do you own any premium domains personally?

Tim: I own a super premium one-syllable, one-word .com with a partner that we had planned on using for a startup (prior to COVID) and have a handful of other average domains. I’m not an investor or broker—I just geek out on (and love) domains. My friends think I’m super weird, and they’re probably right!

Kate: What advice would you give to any company that is considering upgrading to an ultra premium domain name?

Tim: First, I’d suggest trying to make the move sooner rather than later, even if it feels like a little bit of a stretch financially. If you have product-market fit with clear traction, and ambitions to build a company of any meaningful size, it becomes an asset that you can’t afford not to have.

Super-premium .coms continue to get more and more expensive as they becomerarer and rarer—so waiting and hoping that the price comes down over time isn’t a useful strategy for extremely desirable domains.

There are plenty of creative ways to acquire and finance domains, if the cash purchase price is currently out of reach (lease option, seller financing, etc.). These structures at least allow you to secure the domain and begin leveraging it right away, while providing a payment plan that’s manageable for your company.

Secondly, engage with a great domain broker who understands the premium domain market (strong 6 to 7 figure sales) and knows how to approach these domain owners with a reasonable and compelling offer that gives you a real chance at securing the name. The owner profile can alter the strategy and offer you make, and you need someone who has successfully executed high-value name transactions before that can effectively navigate these negotiations.

In addition, using a domain acquisitions broker gives your company anonymity and ensures the price you pay is fair and in-line with current comparable sales (most of which are never publicly disclosed and likely only known by the top brokers inside the domain community).

Good luck acquiring your premium domain—I can assure you that you won’t regret it after you get the opportunity to begin utilizing it!

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A Generic Word Combined With .com Can Be Valid Trademark

Code — Wed, 31 Jan 2024 19:30:49 +0000

A Generic Word Combined With .com Can Be Valid Trademark

Today, in a huge win for generic domains, the Supreme Court, in an 8-1 decision, ruled that, as a general matter, you CAN trademark a generic term + .com. So while you can’t trademark “booking,” you CAN trademark “Booking.com,” rendering top tier domains more valuable than ever.

As Jess Collen wrote at Forbes.com: “The Supreme Court just this morning affirmed that an Internet domain name including a generic term – specifically Booking.com – can function as a trademark. …

“Most small and mid-sized businesses frankly cannot afford such a high-level domain, which will often – if not usually – sell for seven figures plus. Up until now, companies have been buying those names because they are so memorable and are common words that consumers would use to find products in a specific category. That the Trademark Office now must allow registration and that these names have been ruled protectable makes a huge advance in their value.”

It’s worth taking a look at the wording in the (considerably long) decision; here are some notable excerpts:

“Generic names are easy to remember.”

“Because they immediately convey the nature of the business … the owner needs to expend less effort and expense educating consumers”

“a generic business name may create the impression that it is the most authoritative and trustworthy source of the particular good or service”

This is a definitive win for top tier .com domain owners everywhere—dramatically increasing their value. SCOTUS gets it in spades.

The post A Generic Word Combined With .com Can Be Valid Trademark appeared first on Defining.com: Defining Brands. Building Value.

SCOTUS rules generic word combined with .COM can be valid trademark

Code — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 19:48:22 +0000

SCOTUS rules generic word combined with .COM can be valid trademark

In a huge win for generic domains, the Supreme Court, in an 8-1 decision on June 30, 2020, ruled that, as a general matter, you CAN trademark a generic term + .com. So while you can’t trademark “booking,” you CAN trademark “Booking.com,” rendering top tier domains more valuable than ever.

“Most small and mid-sized businesses frankly cannot afford such a high-level domain, which will often – if not usually – sell for seven-figures plus. Up until now, companies have been buying those names because they are so memorable and are common words that consumers would use to find products in a specific category. That the Trademark Office now must allow registration and that these names have been ruled protectable makes a huge advance in their value.”

It’s worth taking a look at the wording in the (considerably long) decision; here are some notable excerpts:

“Generic names are easy to remember.”

“Because they immediately convey the nature of the business … the owner needs to expend less effort and expense educating consumers”

“a generic business name may create the impression that it is the most authoritative and trustworthy source of the particular good or service”

This is a definitive win for top tier .com domain owners everywhere—dramatically increasing their value. SCOTUS gets it in spades.

The post SCOTUS rules generic word combined with .COM can be valid trademark appeared first on Defining.com: Defining Brands. Building Value.

Do Premium Domains Help with Funding?

Code — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 15:36:08 +0000

Do Premium Domains Help with Funding?

The short answer is: Yes. Premium domains not only make VC funding stronger, but are for companies who want their brands to be taken seriously, even revered; who want to achieve brand notoriety—woven into the fabric of the culture for decades to come.

Why? Quality premium domains are lead generators, brand enhancers, and appreciating assets. All three lead to increased ROI and higher company valuations—while reducing the cost of customer acquisition. As MicroStrategy’s CEO, Michael J. Saylor, said about the $30M sale of Voice(.)com (2019): “Ultra-premium Domain Names like these can help a company achieve instant brand recognition, ignite a business, and massively accelerate value creation.”

Here’s a just a few of my favorite examples of companies leveraging a premium domain to accelerate value creation (you can find more at casestudies):

Diapers(.)com: ”The new name [diapers.com] made the company more efficient, because it had to spend less money to acquire new business.” —Leonard Lodish, the first outside director for Diapers.com, which got its start as 1-800-diapers before upgrading to Diapers(.)com
Hive(.)com: Another great mini-case study on brand equity is the case of Hive. There are 12 companies that call themselves Hive…but only one can own the .com. When Hive bought Hive(.)com. they saw a 45% increase in their traffic overnight. That’s the power of a premium .COM. That’s brand equity in motion.

As renowned angel-investor, Jason Calacanis famously said: “The name of your startup is critically important to its success—six letters or under, generally easy to spell and certainly unique. Great entrepreneurs tackle and solve challenging issues like naming their company well, and if you can’t name your company well, you’re simply not worth investing in. I know it’s a harsh statement, but it is true. better you hear it now while you still have a chance to hit a home run.

“If you go into a VC or angel meeting with a crappy name, they will look at it the same way they look at you unshaven with a stain on your shirt and a deck full of misspellings: that you lack focus and attention to detail. A stunning domain name paired with a world-class logo makes you look like a killer. That is what you want when you’re in a meeting asking people to give you money: Credibility. Under no circumstance should you settle for an ok or bad name, except if it’s just a placeholder and you’re not showing it to investors.”

It’s also worth noting that premium domains also provide a safety net for investors as well:

“The inherent multimillion value of an ultra premium domain name serves as a key startup venture asset to raise capital that protects the investor’s investment. It’s like a piece of raw land in the financial district of New York City. No matter what the success of the building built on that land the land itself is a concrete invincible asset that will never lose value and always increase in value.” —Kevin R. Leto, Venture Capitalist

Want more proof that premium domains make VC funding stronger? Here are some recent VC/PE/Fortune 500 domain upgrades:

Aura(.)com was recently acquired by Aura, a device and data protection platform, in a stunning upgrade from AuraCompany(.)com: $150M in funding

“Acquiring the Aura.com domain is an investment in the Aura brand as we grow our business and build the best all-in-one digital protection platform for consumers.” —Lark-Marie Anton, CCO, Aura

ROOM lands $12.5M after acquiring Room(.)com for $1.5M. The New York-based startup, which makes modular offices and soundproof phone booths, raised $12.5 million in a Series A round led by Slow Ventures
Pattern, a US-based reseller offering brands a way to optimize their sales on marketplaces like Amazon, has raised $52M from Ainge Advisory and KSV Global after acquiring Pattern(.)com.
Smalls a direct-to-consumer pet food company for cats, raised $9M in a Series A round led by Left Lane Capital after acquiring Smalls(.)com.
Superchat․de acquired Superchat(.)com six months before securing a $15M Series A round of funding.
Procurement automation platform Approve(.)com just secured a $5 million seed round, led by Aleph, aimed at helping the Israel-based company enter the U.S. market.
Packet acquires Packet(.)com; secures a $25 million Series B round of funding
Tactic acquires Tactic(.)com, then secures $11M funding round led by FTX Ventures
Meter acquires Meter(.)com in a stunning upgrade from MeterUp(.)com; secures $38 million Series B funding round
Dune Analytics acquires Dune(.)com; secures a $69.4 million Series B funding round that valued the company at $1 billion
The Series B funded CultivateAI acquires and rebrands to Cultivate(.)com: $8M Series A funding
Notarize acquires Notarize(.)com: $35M round led by Spark Capital
Cisco acquires Umbrella(.)com for cloud services
OrchardHomes rebrands to exact match Orchard(.)com: $280M funding
Hero Entertainment acquires Hero(.)com: $288M funding
GetUpside rebrands to exact match Upside(.)com: $165M funding
CapsuleCares acquires and rebrands to Capsule(.)com: $288M funding
In a stunning upgrade, Nuggs acquires Simulate(.)com: $4M Series A
Bubble.io acquires and upgrades to Bubble(.)com before raising $100M funding
Zapgram acquires and upgrades to Pilot(.)com before raising $158M funding
Waldo.io acquires and upgrades to Waldo(.)com before raising $15M funding

It’s also worth mentioning the impact of Ultra-premium Domains on company valuation. Monaco, a Swiss payments and cryptocurrency platform start-up, purchased Crypto.com for $12M. Here is the stunning part: The morning when Monaco announced the purchase of Crypto.com their MCO token was trading at $8. After the announcement, MCO was trading roughly 20% up at $9.50. That is a $22M increase in terms of market cap . Bottom line: The PR bump and the fact that they bought Crypto.com made their currency go up more in value than they actually paid for the domain name.

Acquiring and investing in category-defining, and/or exact match domain name brands not only massively accelerates value creation, but also enhances exits and—when done first—makes VC funding stronger. Premium domains are both addresses and assets and leverage value exponentially. Reach out today for a complimentary consultation: Kate@Defining.com

Note: My thanks to Crunchbase, along with industry colleagues Jamie Zoch, Elliot Silver, and Andrew Miller, whose reporting assisted in the compilation of this post.

The post Do Premium Domains Help with Funding? appeared first on Defining.com: Defining Brands. Building Value.

What Smart Companies Know about Domain Names

Code — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 15:33:21 +0000

What Smart Companies Know about Domain Names

Location: Brand Credibility & Market Share
Brand Recognition + Generic/Authoritative Credibility = More Brand Recognition

Companies often acquire category-defining domains to lever existing efforts, rebrand, or launch new consumer-facing campaigns—for instance, I sold Rate.com to Guaranteed Rate, eBike.com to Bosch and Advance.com to Advance Publications (Conde Nast); Oracle utilizes Sales.com, Retail.com and Think.com, and L’oreal owns Skincare.com and Makeup.com; Barnes & Noble owns Books.com; Honda owns Motorcycles.com; Intel owns PC.com; PetSmart owns Dogs.com; Frito-Lay launched Snacks.com, and the list goes on and on.

This is not only a smart move offensively, but defensively as well—for instance, many times a company will lock up a domain name to block competitors from acquiring and developing it. In 2013, Brian Sharples, former CEO of HomeAway spent $35M to acquire VacationRentals.com just to keep it out of Expedia’s hands! Which worked. Expedia later acquired HomeAway in 2015 for a whopping $3.9Billion. You can read the article/see the video with Mr. Sharples’ comments here.

The case studies on the inherent advantages of leveraging a premium .com are legion. Look at Russian Standard Vodka’s $3 million acquisition of premium domain Vodka.com. Furthermore, look at the timing: the Russian company was one year into their first foray into the lucrative US market. For three straight years after the acquisition of Vodka.com, with US growth rates at 56.5%, the brand received honors and awards for understanding and achieving consumer appeal. Acquiring the premium domain name was an integral part of this success.

And, as a startup, Mint.com credited their investment in a premium short, brandable, memorable domain as a primary factor that enabled their brand recognition up to the 20 million users they now report.

What these case studies show repeatedly is that when companies utilize a premium domain name, particularly with a name in direct alignment with their brand and positioning, they see a huge bump in traffic and conversions.

What do these smart companies know that you don’t?

Premium domains (authoritative, one-to-two word .coms) do very well in natural search, particularly if developed correctly—think: a content-led strategy in traffic. Moreover, their authoritative nature leads to trust and credibility—resulting in higher click-throughs and conversions, not to mention intuitive, type-in traffic (direct navigation).

Here are some of the other inherent benefits of owning a premium domain name:

Category-defining domain names are intuitive brands
Instant authority, perceived market credibility, perceived market leadership, respect
Establish company, product or service dominance
Highly identifiable and recognizable globally
Easy to spell / high memorability
Passes the “radio test” easily
Advantageous brand recall when advertised or marketed
Marketability: Exciting branding or rebranding opportunity
Desirability: Tens of thousands of businesses would love to own it, only one can have it
SEO/Search engine traffic opportunity
Search engine positioning: Historically exact match keywords are rated higher for relevancy, search engine placement
CPC opportunity: Increased click-through rates due to user’s recognition, familiarity, trust, and respect
Asset value: The domain is likely to hold and increase its value over time

Acquiring an ultra-premium domain names is a one-time investment that yields dividends for the life of your business—conveying instant trust, authority, and brand recognition, reducing your incremental cost of customer acquisition while increasing your bottom line and overall company valuation.

Most companies are in the digital equivalent of an arm’s race with their top competitors; an ultra-premium domain name provides the key differentiator they need to prevail.

How can you begin developing your own domain strategy and building out your portfolio?

Don’t just buy your own exact-match .com domain name (although this should be your first step). Get serious about investing in domains for your key offerings. For example, Calvin Klein has deemed Underwear.com as valuable as CalvinKlein.com or CK.com.
Get creative and invest in category-related domains and leverage them to create unique, engaging experiences or channels. And to defensively protect your brand from every angle!

Interested in learning more about domain strategy, and what a premium domain can do for your company or startup? Contact us today for a complementary consultation.

Defining.com has a carefully curated list of premium domains for sale and you can find them at the simple, one word, English dictionary .com: Defining.com. Please keep in mind, this is a short list, and contact us with whatever kind of domain you need, as it’s a good bet we can get it for you. Defining.com works diligently with both buyers and sellers to ensure a smooth transaction. We pride ourselves on our matchmaking skills—developing deals that benefit both parties.

Here are just a few of the smart companies that have acquired and aligned themselves with premium, generic, short .COMs:

1800flowers: Flowers.com
ABC Entertainment: ABC.com
Adobe: Flash.com
Advance Publications: Advance.com, Allure.com, Concierge.com, Details.com, Glamour.com, Gourmet.com, Portfolio.com, Wired.com
Aerial Group: Aerial.com
Amazon: AWS.com, Endless.com
American Airlines: AA.com, American.com
American Express: Open.com
Apple: Airport.com, Apple.com, Carbon.com, ME.com, Next.com
A&W Root Beer: RootBeer.com
BabyCenter: Baby.com
Bank of America: Loans.com
Barnes & Noble: Book.com, Books.com
Bayer: Aspirin.com
Bergdorf Goodman: BG.com
Berkshire Hathaway: Guard.com
BlackBerry.com: Good.com
Block.one: Voice.com
Bosch: eBike.com
Boston Globe: Globe.com
Breezy HR: Hire.com
British Airways: BA.com
British Petroleum: BP.com
Burger King: BK.com
Burlington: Coat.com
Calvin Klein: Shirt.com, Underwear.com
Campbell Soup Company: Soups.com
Capital One: Bundle.com
Captain Morgan (Diageo): Rum.com
CBS Interactive (CBS Corp.): TV.com
Cisco: Compatible.com
Citibank: Mortgage.com
CNET (Red Ventures): Download.com, Guide.com, News.com
CNN/Time Inc.: Money.com
Contract Hire And Leasing: Leasing.com
Cold Steel: Knife.com
Corel: Designer.com
CPAP.com: Sleeping.com, Snoring.com
DC comics: DC.com
Designer Brands: Shoes.com
Discount Tire Company: Tires.com
Disney: Family.com, Kid.com, Video.com
Dotdash (IAC): Brides.com
Ernst & Young: EY.com
Education First: EF.com
Facebook: Bulletin.com, FB.com
Fandango: Movies.com
Farfetch: Style.com
Fashion Nova: Fashion.com
Fidelity: 401K.com
Financial Times: FT.com
Fox Media: Fox.com
Freedom Mortgage: Freedom.com, HELOC.com
Frito-Lay (PepsiCo): Snacks.com
General Electric: GE.com
GE Healthcare: Coincidence.com
General Motors: GM.com
Goldman Sachs: GS.com
Google: Android.com
Guaranteed Rate: Rate.com
H&M Hennes Mauritz Fashion: HM.com, Seam.com
Hallmark: Easter.com, Mahogany.com
HarperCollins: HC.com
Health Magazine/Time Inc.: Health.com
History Channel: History.com
Honda: Motorcycles.com, Scooters.com
HubSpot: Connect.com
Intel: Chips.com, PC.com
Intercontinental Exchange: Ice.com
Internet Brands: Loan.com
Intuit: Payroll.com
Jansen Biotech (Johnson&Johnson): Cancer.com, JJ.com, JNJ.com
Johnnie Walker (Diageo): Scotch.com
Kraft Heinz: Mayonnaise.com, Puddings.com, Sauces.com
Knorr (Unilever): Sauce.com
LG (Lucky Goldstar) Electronics: LG.com
Lipton (Unilever): Soup.com
L’Oreal: Hair.com, Makeup.com
Lufthansa: LH.com
M1 Finance: M1.com
Major League Baseball: MLB.com
Microsoft: Docs.com, Live.com, Office.com, Start.com
Monster: Jobs.com
Morgan Stanley: MS.com
The Motley Fool: WallStreet.com
MTV: Film.com
NCR: Banking.com
National Basketball Association: NBA.com
Nestle: Meals.com
Netflix: Fast.com
New York Community Bank: Checking.com
Northern Pacific Airways: NP.com
Olga by Warner: Bras.com
Oracle: Retail .com, Sales.com, Think.com
Petsmart: Dogs.com
Porta John: Toilets.com
Procter & Gamble: Cheer.com, PG.com, Toothpaste.com
Prospect Home Finance: HomeFinance.com
Ralph Lauren: Polo.com
Reink Media Group: Investor.com
Rocket Mortgage: Rock.com
Russia Times Media: RT.com
Salesforce: Code.com, Data.com, Desk.com, Force.com, Site.com, Social.com and Work.com
Shutterfly: Treat.com
SK(Sunkyung Group) Group: SK.com
Société Générale: Warrants.com
Speech Processing Solutions: Speech.com
Standard Chartered Bank: SC.com
Test Masters: TM.com
TextNow .com: Touch.com
Travelocity: Vacations.com
UPS: UPS.com
Vanity Fair: VF.com
Vistaprint: Vista.com
VW Volkswagen: VW.com
Walmart: Lingerie.com and Jet.com
Warner Bros. Discovery: Discovery.com, WB.com, WBD.com
Weather Channel: Weather.com
Weight Watchers International: WW.com
Wells Fargo Bank: WF.com
WordPress: WP.com
Yellow Pages: YP.com
Zappos: Clothes.com

About the Author: Kate Defining.com is CEO and founder of Defining.com, a premium domains, naming and branding agency. She is an expert at premium domain consulting and brokerage, specializing in discreet, professional acquisitions and divestments of ultra-premium domain names. Kate has personally brokered millions of dollars in both private and publicly-recorded top domains sales.

The post What Smart Companies Know about Domain Names appeared first on Defining.com: Defining Brands. Building Value.

What Smart Founders Know About Domain Names

Code — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 15:24:08 +0000

What Smart Founders Know About Domain Names

When coming up with a name for your startup, or contemplating a rebrand for your current company, do you think about domain names? For too many founders, names are an afterthought—not integrated into the fabric of the brand story or brand promise, or, equally dangerous, paired with a subpar domain name or extension (translation: anything NOT your brand + dotcom). Even those founders who do carefully consider naming, might not be giving domain names their due—or thinking about them in the right way.

Smart founders use domain names to build their brands, while improving their bottom line and overall company valuation. Founders like Noah Kagan (Sumo.com), Aaron Patzer (Mint.com), Jamie Siminoff (Ring.com), Karn Saroya (Cover.com), Tim Campos (Woven.com), and many more learned firsthand the value of upgrading to a top notch one word .COM domain, one that is short, memorable, authoritative, and “passes the radio test.” As famed tech entrepreneur and angel investor, Jason Calcanis says, “If you have to spell it over the phone, you’ve lost.”

The top 5 factors that smart founders look for in a domain name:

One word: preferably a short, English Dictionary word
.COM extension — the gold standard, providing trust and legitimacy
Easy to remember and easy to spell — passes the radio test
Makes sense (Mint = personal finance, Cover = insurance, etc.)
Positive consumer resonance

Some mini-case studies from the founders themselves:

Mint Condition: “Four-letter words are impressive and easy to remember. But I never believed that until a few years ago. When I worked with Aaron Patzer at mymint.com, I was vehemently against him buying Mint.com. I didn’t think customers would care. “It only matters that you have a great service and product,” younger Noah said. Fortunately, Aaron was the founder and gave 3 percent of the company to acquire the domain. At the closing sale of Mint.com, that was worth $8.1 million. That’s how important the domain was to Aaron.” —Noah Kagan, CEO, Sumo (Entreprenuer.com)

Aaron himself said, “You will lose all word of mouth marketing if you don’t have a good name. Most people choose their name because the domain is available. That’s a really bad idea. I spent 3 months and $182,000 negotiating for Mint.com [and gave up 3 percent of the company], and it was the best purchase I ever made.” NOTE: Mint.com was acquired for US$ 8,100,000 (cash + equity deal)

You Say Oh-no, I say Sumo: His experience at Mint.com (above) led Noah to invest $1.5M into purchasing his own exact-match brand domain: Sumo.com. While that may seem like a lot of money to some, Noah knew it was money well spent.

Go Public: In 2019, Jannick Malling, the co-Founder/co-CEO of HelloPublic.com decided to upgrade his brand to simply Public.com. As a result, he saw a 2-3X conversion on his digital ads and a 50-100X conversion on traditional spend.

“Just like it matters for your brand whether your store is on 5th avenue or in a random alleyway—it matters what your domain is. If physical world is ‘location location location,’ digital is ‘trust trust trust.’ Public.com was clean, simple, serious…and easy to remember. What’s easy to remember, becomes easier to trust.”

Put a Ring on it: “Ring.com CEO Jamie Siminoff credits the incredible success of his brand to the foundation he built when he upgraded (to the tune of $1M) from Doorbot to Ring.com: Siminoff said getting the domain name was critically important to the company’s success, giving them an unforgettable brand and instant credibility that helped turn their product into a household name. Siminoff said the same thing about Ring.com. Putting it in dollar terms he said he would estimate the name turned out to be worth between $30 million and $50 million to the company. If anyone asks you if the right domain name is really worth 7 (or more) figures, no one knows the answer to that question better than Jamie Siminoff.” (DNJournal)

Cover Story: “We initially chose ‘Cover’ back when we built a prototype of the app, and the conversation lasted maybe less than five minutes. Cover just made sense. There is probably no better name to build a brand on in insurtech. You see companies using every permutation of the word, so why not own the word outright? Sure, we would save money buying the .COM domain for an alternative brand, but we also saw the long-term value of owning one of the most coveted domains in insurance. This struck us as the bigger opportunity.

“We realized that despite all the obstacles — and costs — involved with committing to Cover as our brand, it was that the path of least resistance. We sell an intangible product and at the end of the day, we’re in the trust business. Owning Cover.com has lent an extra level of legitimacy to the brand and this, in turn, has translated into sales. We have seen firsthand how it helps get people over the hump when it comes to investing their money with us. Immediately after moving to Cover.com we saw our conversions rise, largely because customers would cross-reference our app on the internet before they made the purchase decision.

“It has become an important and valuable asset in the context of our business. Right off the bat, it felt like a shrewd investment. I knew that, in the right hands, the value of Cover.com would become exponentially more valuable. This is exactly what we’ve seen as we have used it as a platform upon which to build an insurance business.” —Karn Saroya, CEO, Cover (Entrepreneur’s Handbook)

Rate High: One of my favorite personal examples is the sale I made of Rate.com to Guaranteed Rate—an upgrade from GuranteedRate.com. The founder, Victor F. Ciardelli III, was getting ready to launch new consumer-facing technology and immediately got that acquiring Rate.com was the way to go. A stunning upgrade that looks even better up close. (Those huge Rate.com ads look great on all those commercials, billboards and in the White Sox stadium.)

Dream Weaver: Woven.com CEO, Tim Campos, knew it was important to pick the right name for his startup. The former CIO of Facebook, Campos knew the importance of selecting the right name to help it scale organically.

“I really had to start thinking about this as an asset,” Campos said. “It’s like I’m buying a house or I’m buying real estate. I’m buying something that will have residual value. In my business, I may create additional value for it. There may be brand recognition and other things that I’m going to put into it. But that’s just like putting improvements on your home.” As interviewer Andrew Allemann shared, “As soon as he got in this mindset, it allowed Campos to think differently about the domain’s cost and how to finance it. He ended up paying cash, but he realized he could even take out a loan for the domain because it has value on its own. It would also be easy to justify the cost to his investors. Woven was able to go to market with Woven.com as its domain rather than Woven.app or an alternative. Campos said this is critical to the company’s success as it grows its userbase organically.”

“We grow through word-of-mouth, through people tweeting about us and talking about us, so the address matters,” Campos explained. “As soon as you start to introduce a trick for the user, like, ‘Oh, it’s getwoven not just woven,’ or its woven.app, or its woven.io, you’re going to lose a percentage of those [prospective users]. Com is where people default.” Allemann stated that Campos believes that if the company were to have used Woven. app, its conversion rates would have be affected. “But more importantly, traffic would be affected,” Campos said. “People are much less likely to find us.” (DomainNameWire.com)

Raise Your Voice: In June 2019, voice.com sold for $30 million in cash. To put that in perspective, that’s more than double the previous record for a publicly disclosed cash domain sale. Why did they spend that kind of cash on a domain name? Here’s what the divesting company, MicroStrategy, had to say: ”Ultra-premium Domain Names like these can help a company achieve instant brand recognition, ignite a business, and massively accelerate value creation.” (Bloomberg)

Simply Brilliant: A hosting company based in Denmark called UnoEuro recently shared a blog post in which they announced that they are rebranding as Simply.com. They explained that this rebrand to a one word, English, dictionary .com makes it easier for customers to remember, spell, and type in the company’s name. Simply brilliant, if you ask me. In the company’s own words (courtesy of Google Translate):

“We are reminded time and time again that everyone has different ways to pronounce (and even spell) “UnoEuro” if we have been lucky enough [that they] remembered the name at all. That’s why we now rename UnoEuro to Simply.com — a simple name that hopefully everyone can remember and love.”

Teamwork(.com!) Makes the Dream Work: What is the Lifetime Value of a new customer? Which do you think will achieve higher CTR and conversions: teamworkhq.com or Teamwork.com? Which one would you trust? Which one provides immediate trust, credibility and global scale?

On that note, here’s a fantastic video clip of a talk from from the founder of Teamwork explaining the bargain he got on Teamwork .com (for $675K…all the way back in 2014!) and how it paid for itself in one year and his resulting explosion in growth. As he says, “Boom! We had a hockey stick event with instant credibility and trust.”

The Halo Effect: Aura, a device and data protection platform with $150M in funding, recently acquired Aura.com in a stunning upgrade from AuraCompany.com. “Acquiring the Aura.com domain is an investment in the Aura brand as we grow our business and build the best all-in-one digital protection platform for consumers.” —Lark-Marie Anton, CCO, Aura

They’ve Got Swagger: “There is so much value in a good domain name. From the very beginning our goal was to convert offline conversations to online purchasing. We wanted to be memorable enough so that when people are discussing their need to buy swag, their first instinct is to just type Swag.com directly into their browser. We started with the domain name and worked from there — being memorable was the first step to becoming the go-to source for swag. As a B2B startup you have to do whatever you can to be top of mind with customers.” –Jeremy Parker, CEO, Swag.com

Tune In: Here’s a great quote from a CEO of a D2C company who decided to invest in his best category-defining.com: “The Headsets.com domain has been the smartest thing we ever did, I think. It gives us credibility as a market leader, it’s an easy domain for people to remember, and ranks well in search engines.” –Mike Faith, CEO, Headsets.com

Investing In Your Future: “The most important change we have done was obviously the domain change…moving from ForexPros[.com] to Investing.com. It was a very costly event for us, both on the price of the domain and on the fact that we didn’t have growth during 2013, but it was the best move and the best strategic decision we’ve taken that now allows us to raise our prices, allows us to get partnerships and all kinds of cooperation with different companies that we found very hard to do in the past…” —Dror Efrat, Founder & CEO, Investing.com (Efrat paid $2.45M for Investing.com)

Make Your Name POP: “Yes, the domain was expensive. Roughly $1.5m… After starting with [the domain name] screen.so, we realized firsthand the importance of having a name that’s easy to remember and communicate. Also, instead of viewing the domain as an expense, it’s more of an enduring asset, which potentially increases its value over time.” –Jahanzeb Sherwani, Founder & CEO, Pop.com [NOTE: $1.5M for Pop.com was a STEAL. Easily a $5M name.]

Pilot Your Way to Success: Waseem Daher, Founder and CEO at Pilot, recently shared via a LinkedIn post how the 2017 purchase of Pilot.com for $400,000 (a steal in today’s premium domain aftermarket) helped positioned them for success (Pilot is now a billion dollar company). “We paid $400K for the Pilot.com domain. This is the story of why we made that decision. A good startup name: 1. Is a single word 2. Is easy to pronounce & spell 3. Has a .com that you can buy….$400K was a lot of cash. We only went for it because we had raised a $3M seed round, and I believed that the long-term branding benefit outweighed the short-term cost. I definitely don’t regret it.”

Close the Deal: “Beyond just the benefits of properly aligning our brand with the .com name, we knew that owning this domain [Close.com] would illustrate to future customers that we’re here to stay for the long haul.” -Steli Efti, CEO of Close. com

Ready to invest in your company’s success? As you can see from the examples above, acquiring an ultra-premium domain names is a one-time investment that yields dividends for the life of your business—conveying instant trust, authority, and brand recognition, reducing your incremental cost of customer acquisition while increasing your bottom line and overall company valuation.

Most companies are in the digital equivalent of an arm’s race with their top competitors; an ultra-premium .com domain name provides the key differentiator that they need to prevail. Interested in learning more about what a premium domain can do for your company or startup? Contact us today for a complementary consultation.

About the Author: Kate Defining.com is CEO and founder of Defining.com, a premium domains, naming and branding agency. She is an expert at premium domain consulting and brokerage, specializing in private domain acquisitions and divestments of ultra-premium domain names. Kate has personally brokered millions of dollars in both private and publicly-recorded top domains sales.

The post What Smart Founders Know About Domain Names appeared first on Defining.com: Defining Brands. Building Value.

A CMO’s guide to navigating the choppy waters ahead.

Code — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 15:12:59 +0000

A CMO’s guide to navigating the choppy waters ahead.

Nearly 250,000 workers in the U.S. tech sector were laid off in in the past 12 months. And the reality is that many companies can continue operations with smaller headcount indefinitely. So it stands to reason that the coming year will see other tech firms following suit—slashing staff to send a signal to shareholders that profits matter and preservation of cash is critical.

As the tech industry continues to respond to rapidly-changing market conditions, CMOs face a number of challenges, but also opportunities to grow and rise above. In this blog post, we’ll explore some of the past year’s biggest pain points, as well as some of the more exciting trends that are shaping the industry at large.

Let’s start with one of the most obvious—customer acquisition and retention. The impact of the sagging economy over the next 4-6 quarters will likely include logo churn, a reduction in new business and overall seat contraction as headwinds force growth projections to slow—so attracting new customers and retaining existing ones will be mission critical. That means delivering a high-quality product while effectively communicating the unique value of your product is key. CMOs must find new and creative means to engage their target audience in authentic and differentiated ways.

CMOs must also demonstrate the value of their products to potential customers in the form of selling points that matter most to them as individuals. This requires a clear understanding of how to address customer needs by blending pain points and solutions—specific to role, industry and segment —in a clear, compelling and differentiated way.

Updating audience research, augmented with deep segmentation and profiling is a great way to stay in touch with the unique needs of your audience in order to speak to them in their language.

Finally, CMOs must be willing to continuously learn and adapt to changing market conditions—all happening at break-neck speeds. Some recent shifts worth mentioning include:

AI and machine learning: With the extraordinary advancement AI, the widespread adoption of these tools will mean additional pressure to augment and differentiate your offering. And with the free and easily accessible tools, this technology is now in the hands of the masses, further adding to the challenge of credibility and differentiation for more established firms.

Remote work: The pandemic has led to an increase in demand for SaaS tools that enable remote collaboration, communication, and project management. Understanding this trend and considering how you too can leverage remote work to reach new customers and build relationships with existing ones will be critical in the coming years.

Data privacy and security: Forbes reports that governments around the world are stepping up efforts to protect the data privacy of citizens. Predicting that by 2023, “65% of the world’s population will have personal data covered under modern privacy regulations, up from 10% in 2020.” That means you should be transparent about how customer data is used in marketing efforts. By being proactive and responsive to customer concerns, CMOs can build trust and establish themselves as responsible stewards of sensitive customer data.

Personalization: With the increasing availability of customer data, many SaaS companies are using deeper, more meaningful levels of personalization to tailor their products and marketing messages to the needs and preferences of individual customers. Some examples include:

1) Brands are starting to take a truly personalized approach with customers—going beyond using customer names or recommending complementary products based on previous purchases, and are now creating unique, one-to-one experiences.

2) Using predictive personalization, AI can be used to analyze customer data and deliver personalized content, including customized recommendations, unique web and landing page experiences with personalized calls to action, and email campaigns tailored to the customer based on their behavior.

3) As technology advances and data sets become larger, personalization will extend to longer customer journeys, allowing marketers to create personalized experiences throughout the entire customer journey, rather than just at specific points.

It seems the SaaS industry is in for a bumpy year, so being aware of these market shifts, and leveraging them to your advantage can make the difference between hitting your goals and missing them.

The post A CMO’s guide to navigating the choppy waters ahead. appeared first on Defining.com: Defining Brands. Building Value.

Top 10 Branding Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Code — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 15:04:10 +0000

Top 10 Branding Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

The big moment has come. You’ve taken that next bold step in your company’s evolution and are ready to invest in a brand refresh. You’ve made the executive decision that your old brand is history—it no longer reflects the ethos and values of who you are today, and who you will become tomorrow. It’s time to redefine your brand.

For many, this process is fraught with obstacles that, if not properly navigated, can spell certain disaster, costing your firm valuable time, money and risking loss of internal support. Fortunately, these mistakes can be avoided. I’ve compiled a list of the Top 10 Branding mistakes I’ve seen firms make over the years:

1. Defining a brand in tactical terms

A new logo or website may be a vehicle to convey the new image of the brand, but should not be confused with the most critical aspect of branding: Strategy. Branding lives and dies with strategy: What makes your firm unique? Why should your target audience care? How are you uniquely positioned amongst your peers? What do you stand for? What tone of voice do you carry? How do you solve your customers’ problems? How do you want them to feel when doing so? Not only answering these questions, but supporting them with defendable research is the first critical step to a rebrand. Creative is certainly important, but should exist to support strategy—in order to effectively tell a truly compelling and defendable story.

2. Focusing on features over benefits

It’s not about you or the impressive features your product/service offers to the world. It’s your ability to meet the needs of your audience, solve their problems and ease their various pain points. Stop speaking in terms of features, speeds, and feeds. Instead, get comfortable speaking in terms of emotional triggers or benefits. Show a strong commitment to the value you are bringing to your consumers. There will be a variety of features that will no doubt change and shift over time—all should be in support of the way you want your audience to feel.

3. Discounting internal champions

Branding involves input and support from key influencers across the entire organization. Welcome those perspectives early for broader buy-in and smoother sailing. Recognize that every stakeholder in the organization is a potential ambassador for the brand—within the organization itself as well as externally. That shared sense of ownership will help broaden the reach and ensure faster adoption. Mastering the fine art of knowing who to involve and when to involve them constitutes the difference between a successful deployment and becoming bogged down with too many cooks in the kitchen.

4. Failing to tell a compelling story

Automation and AI are phenomenal tools for optimizing many aspects of your business, but humanizing a story and telling it with conviction is what gets prospects to engage. At the core of all of us is our innate human desire for a good life, a good world to live it in, and our need to connect within our tribes. Audiences gravitate towards brands that pull them into the story in their world, connect them to the value of the story—and that tell a story that truly resonates. Capture their attention and captivate them with a relatable and authentic story that enriches their lives and they’ll keep coming back for more.

5. Thinking that research is merely academic

Your customers’ voice is the most important—in telling you what they want and what they need, as well as what they think of you. Brand perception—the good, the bad, and the ugly—is critical to intimately understand as you go about redefining your brand. Personas are great but can change over time, so do your homework. Talk to your target audience. Gather qualitative insights and quantitative data. Invest the time and the resources to fully understand your audience’s pain points and how your product or service can make their lives better. And build in the feedback loop for them to provide you with real-time input on what is working, what is not, and what they need moving forward.

6. Failing to launch your brand internally

Your brand is a living, breathing aspect of your business that reaches far beyond the deck in which it was presented. All stakeholders need to live, breathe and believe the brand ethos in order for it to take root. As noted in point 3, employees are the living, breathing ambassadors for your brand. What they know, what they believe, and how they behave defines the brand in aggregate. Are the brand promises aligned with the shared values of the organization? Are they believable? If so, you’re well on your way.

7. Holding on to the past

Your existing brand may be your baby. You may have founded the company, designed the logo and believe in the mission statement…but do your employees, your investors, your customers? Let go of past biases and let the brand evolve as needed. Origin stories are powerful narratives to embrace, but you need to tell your future-forward story in a way that connects with and empowers your various stakeholders so the transfer of emotional ownership can take place. Only then can a brand thrive—when a brand is owned by many, not by the few. Take a bold step forward and don’t look back.

8. “We can do this on the cheap”

The old adage “you get what you pay for” is never more relevant than here. Brand decisions made today will last years, if not decades…so hold off until you can give this investment the proper resources, funding and attention it deserves to ensure your new brand is built on a strong and defendable foundation. This will be one of the most important investments your company can make, so invest what is needed to do the job right—resist the urge to compromise. Eliminating research, failing to get broad internal buy-in, skipping straight to execution, hiring inexperienced freelancers—these are all ways that good intentions can lead to lackluster outcomes. The stakes are too high for mistakes and mediocrity.

9. Seeing it as a destination and not a journey

Great brands are living things…they can’t be created, wrapped, and completed in a few short weeks. A great brand is the lifeblood of any organization and requires attention, nurturing, and commitment. Settle in and commit to the journey. Cherish the opportunities you have to make a difference in the lives of the consumers you serve. Know that this process will take time to plan, time to launch, time to nurture, and time to evolve. Remain committed to the long-tail journey.

10. Resist the urge to DIY

Your internal team is talented but is busy serving your own customers—and can sometimes be too close to the company to see it objectively. Bring in seasoned professionals who possess a unique perspective to work alongside your internal team for healthy collaboration. Internal teams are often stretched thinly; you need external partners who can bring their experience and creativity to the table and implement—quickly—helping you to avoid the above pitfalls.

For the past 30 years, I’ve had the privilege of helping countless companies embark on this remarkable journey. I’ve been in the trenches alongside founders and new employees alike, conducted thousands of interviews, presented to hundreds of executives, and taken great pride in every new brand I’ve helped create. If you’d like to learn more about our branding services or learn the process for yourself, visit my Services page to get started.

The post Top 10 Branding Mistakes and How to Avoid Them appeared first on Defining.com: Defining Brands. Building Value.

Why Storytelling is Your Most Critical Skillset in a Virtual World

Code — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 14:02:41 +0000

Why Storytelling is Your Most Critical Skillset in a Virtual World

In recent years, the world has fundamentally changed. We have moved from a world where personal contact was the norm, to a world where most people primarily connect and engage online. The virtual world became our shared world—the “new normal.”

The C-Suite used to de-prioritize the role of Chief Marketing Officer behind Ops, Technology, and Strategy. Oh, how times have changed. With every business becoming a Direct to Consumer brand virtually overnight, the importance of marketing and compelling storytelling has never been more important. We all are all now forced to become effective storytellers.

Celinne De Costa, a former contributor to Forbeswomen in fact suggests that humanity is becoming the new premium. In a recent article, she noted: “When creating your marketing strategy, don’t forget the bigger story: what makes you human?”

How? Through good old-fashioned storytelling, of course. Story-telling is essentially using a narrative to communicate a message—ideally a message that resonates or touches the right audience at the right time. And when people are touched by a story, they follow it. They feel connected to the storyline. And a story well told will have prospective consumers buying into the brand—the heart of the story—not just a particular product. This is why storytelling really is your most critical skill set in today’s virtual world. Indeed, research has shown that a good 92% of consumers want advertising in some kind of story form (www.chiefmarketer.com).

It is a noisy, always bustling market place in the virtual world. Horns honking, hawkers everywhere selling every ware imaginable. Brand positioning, video, short-form content, webinars, social media…businesses need to look for compelling ways to break through the clutter and capture their target’s attention—someone’s heart in just a handful of seconds.

Here are some compelling tips on how to be better storytellers:

1. “Be Yourself. Everyone else is already taken”— Oscar Wilde.

To begin, establish a differentiated, relevant, and most importantly authentic voice for your brand. Your brand needs to stand out, needs to be unforgettable in crowded marketplaces. And remember, no other brand can tell your brand’s unique life story. Make it an interesting life story, the kind of story one always wants to go on to the next page because it is so damned riveting.

2. Be concise—Attention spans are growing shorter by the day. Tell your story in short and powerful headlines, followed by longer-form stories in video and other mediums.

Consider this: The average human attention span is now shorter than a goldfish’s. A recent study found that the average human attention span has fallen from 12 seconds in 2000 to eight seconds today. NOTE: Goldfish have a nine-second attention span.

The Google marketing team uses the concept of “micro-moments” to describe that brief moment, that blink of an eye, that click of a keyboard when a consumer wants to learn or do something right now. Target content to create micro-moments in your brand’s story.

3. Be empathetic—Stop talking about how great your product or service is and start talking about how you make the lives of your target audience better. Speak in their language for greater impact. We all know, because we have all experienced it—people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel (Maya Angelo, 2014). The top ten most empathetic companies in the Global Empathy Index are amongst the most profitable and fastest-growing in the world.

4. Don’t be afraid to break into new channels—One size does not fit all, so why focus on single-channel vehicles to broadcast your story. Re-examine your social strategy—break into new channels previously unexplored. Find creative ways to break through the noise.

Diversify platforms. While Google and Facebook continue to dominate the field (Google provides high return rate ad spends with approximately 44% of marketers. PPC Trends & Best Practices. Pull data through analytics automation channels—these funnels provide instant feedback so you can continue to adjust your messaging in real-time—making sure it is hitting all the high notes, telling people a story they can hear and feel.

“In a crowded marketplace where everyone is focused on doing things faster, more efficiently, and automated, be the brand who dares to be human” (Decosta, 2019).

Be that brand Who Dares. Create a compelling narrative that is like the book you couldn’t put down, the series where you were practically holding your breath for the next installment, the movie you wanted to see over and over, the story you couldn’t get enough of because it spoke to your heart. BE that Storyteller. Make your brand an experience that people will never forget.

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Defining.com: Defining Brands. Building Value

What is a brand?​

The Billion-Dollar Brand Blueprint: Lessons from the Trenches.

How A Domain Upgrade Spurred Massive Growth

How A Domain Upgrade Spurred Massive Growth

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A Generic Word Combined With .com Can Be Valid Trademark

A Generic Word Combined With .com Can Be Valid Trademark

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SCOTUS rules generic word combined with .COM can be valid trademark

SCOTUS rules generic word combined with .COM can be valid trademark

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Do Premium Domains Help with Funding?

Do Premium Domains Help with Funding?

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What Smart Companies Know about Domain Names

What Smart Companies Know about Domain Names

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What Smart Founders Know About Domain Names

What Smart Founders Know About Domain Names

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A CMO’s guide to navigating the choppy waters ahead.

A CMO’s guide to navigating the choppy waters ahead.

Top 10 Branding Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Top 10 Branding Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Why Storytelling is Your Most Critical Skillset in a Virtual World

Why Storytelling is Your Most Critical Skillset in a Virtual World

What is a brand?