How important is your domain name?

Question

I'm getting ready to start doing some direct mail marketing and want to set up a lead capture/generation page.  I already have a website for my business that I could modify for this purpose.  Or should I set up separate/additional domains names, i.e. webuyhouses . com etc?  There are some decent domain names available for my area but not sure it's worth maintaining a separate site for each domain.  What are your thoughts?

Michael Quarles · Answer

Good to meet you Paul

Be very careful sending people to your webpage as a means of their first reach back to you. Try and push calling first, Text Second, then website. On texting you can use phone friendly forms to capture the info without sending to the huge telephone book we call Google.

Text is great because you can capture their visit automatically and launch an outbound campaign back to them. Just use a service with a strong shortcode and a CRM attached for the follow up. Heck we have bought two houses using website chat this year.

As for URL. URLs are all about triggers and credibility. There certainly is a difference in the mind of the consumer between names like

www.ford.com and www.Isellfordstrucksintexas.com. which is why we see a lot of newly created words used as single words URLs. However the cost of branding is huge.

If you do go the URL route use as short as possible. And if not available descriptive words for the Service and Geo together are fine.

Happy House Hunting

Paul Bowers · Answer

Thank you for your insight @Michael Quarles, you're obviously the go to guy for this stuff.  I will rethink my direction on the original reach out on the direct mail pieces.

As for the URL that I use for my lead generation presence online would you recommend using a mycompanyname . com  or an ibuyhouses . com URL?  Do you think it makes any difference or is just google ranking that drives website traffic?  In my uneducated opinion it seems like there are a hundred different ibuy.... domain variations in every market and they seem a little "spammy" to me.  That being said, there's a 100 of them in every market so maybe that means that's what actually works.

Michael Quarles · Answer

Hi Paul.

If your Business name is descriptive or non descriptive yet widely well known then use it.

example

www.FlowerInvestments.com (Terrible Name)

www.PaulBuysHouses.com (Not so Bad)

And its going to take some time for google to like you unless your name is also a widely used search term keyword.  In marketing its all about message and relatability. Can you capture in seconds, if not dont try as it tends to distract?

An easy formula to determine if your name is relative or not is to jump on google Adwords and use their keyword tool. See the amount of searches of your name or description. Youll also find the answer to which name to use as well.

Also when marketing that you buy houses remember the best trigger is the word CASH. Build around it.