Therefore, in response to the demand for more available domain names, ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) announced that it will be delegating new generic top level domains. This process is already in progress, and many new top level domains such as .marketing, .industries, .company, .services and .business are being introduced into the marketplace.
This represents an outstanding opportunity for new businesses entering the online space, and for existing businesses who are looking to realign their websites, rebrand or create increased brand awareness for new products or services.
Using New Top Level Domains for Website Realignment
Companies often grow, change and evolve as time passes. As Internet trends change, a website that was once acceptable can become outdated and unworkable. For a company whose website is in need of realignment, it could be beneficial to consider changing the website’s URL in addition to upgrading the site’s contents and structure.
This could be of particular benefit to a company that started out producing one type of product, but has expanded to include offerings in ancillary niches or markets. If a company’s current domain name no longer accurately encompasses all the company’s offerings and activities, it could be advantageous to choose a new domain that better describes the company’s mission and purpose.
The new TLDs offer such businesses ample opportunities to succinctly express the company’s current focus, and to choose a domain that coordinates well with both the desired corporate image and the realigned company website.
Of course, it would be advantageous for such companies to keep their old domain names, perhaps redirecting them to the newly realigned websites. This is important because existing customers who were used to a particular existing domain name may experience some initial challenges in making the transition to a new one.
Using New Top Level Domains for Rebranding
A company’s domain name can make a significant difference in its overall brand perception. It’s all too easy for executives to make domain name choices that negatively impact their companies’ branding, simply because the right domain names were either unavailable or prohibitively expensive.
For companies who initially made the wrong domain name choices, the new top level domains offer an easy and reasonably affordable opportunity to fix the situation.
Again, for companies that choose to rebrand, it is also worthwhile to keep and redirect the original domain names as well, because it would be tragic to lose customers who remembered and identified with the old domains.
Branding Top Products or Services With New TLDs
Many companies offer products and services that would benefit from having their own well-branded websites, separate from the parent companies’ websites. The new TLDs offer exciting opportunities for positioning these new websites on the Internet.
Using New Top Level Domains for Marketplace Entry
Obviously, the new TLDs offer some exciting opportunities for new businesses that are entering the marketplace. There are more domain name choices available than ever before, with more on the way shortly.
Savvy business owners now have an abundance of creative options for choosing generic top level domains to use for branding their companies, marketing their businesses, and realigning their websites. These options create distinct opportunities for companies to distinguish themselves and market their products and services creatively.
