Domain names for advertising campaigns: more is better

Now that Internet has become a customary medium to support advertising campaigns, an increasing number of companies couple a more or less temporary domain name to their offers. Indeed, it regularly happens that, when you hear a commercial on the radio (or when you see one on TV), you are forwarded for further information to a domain name where you can find the campaign website. But that doesn’t always happen the way it’s supposed to…

Radio is a spoken medium and the listener doesn’t “see” the way the domain name in question is spelled. Moreover, a radio (or TV) commercial passes by in the blink of an eye and our memory isn’t flawless. When we have heard or seen an interesting commercial and want to visit the website of the offer somewhat later, chances are that we won’t recall if the mentioned domain name ended with .be, .com or another extension.

So, those who plan an advertising campaign and couple a website to it should best register all possible variants of the domain name, taking all spellings and extensions into account.

People at Hyped.nl came up with an up to date campaign for trips organised by Neckermann Voyages (in the Netherlands). The company launched a campaign that allows holidaymakers who reserve their summer holidays before the end of January (providing certain conditions are met) to receive 50 euros by visiting the website 50eurocadeau.nl.

The authors checked if Neckermann reserved all the possible variations, like e.g. 50eurokado.nl or vijftigeurocadeau.nl. And apparently they did.

They however forgot to register the domain name with other extensions (like .com for instance).

Other people could do this, hoping to generate some income from people who visit the website that was not registered by Neckermann thanks to text adverts (Google).

Conclusion: those who wish to register a domain name for an advertising campaign should best register all the possible variations.

http://www.hyped.nl/index.php/details/20080121_50_euro_cadeau_met_de_juiste_domeinnamen/