Monday, March 05, 2007

Web Strategy: When Life hands you lemons...

The best marketing is proactive. Usually. Sometimes, however, a quick reaction can save the day. For example, a few months ago a prominent trade journal ran a short article about one of my clients. They even mentioned the client's website. The problem? They misspelled the website. Since the publication was already in the mail we had great publicity -- but the wrong contact information. The solution? We bought the misspelled web site name!

That little story generated thousands of hits to the web site that would have been lost if not for our quick response. Often a quick, creative solution can turn lemons into lemonade.

In our experience, it's usually a good idea to buy multiple domain names and point them all to your site. For instance buying a common typo or misspelling is a good idea. (Misspell hotbot.com as htobot.com and you'll get someone else's search engine.) Also, buying the .net and .org extension for your domain can save mistaken identity. (For instance, yahoo.net and yahoo.org both point back to yahoo.com).

- Phil Sasso

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