The right marketing campaign can be the difference between making a splash online and fading into obscurity. It’s important to have a multifaceted strategy when you’re on a mission to market your brand or product. A sleek landing page, innovative customer outreach strategy, exciting samples and sneak peaks and a solid sales pitch all work together to turn bystanders into repeat customers. But have you thought about how a domain extension can play into your creative marketing campaigns?
While .com, .net and .org are popular across the net, using a newer domain extension is a smart way to create memorable landing pages for your customers. A .SUCKS domain can become a critical part of a nuanced marketing strategy, and can feed back into your sales and publicity goals in a variety of ways.
If you’re ready to take your digital marketing to the next level—and think that stale strategy sucks—read on.
Generate Buzz and Awareness
The concept that something just plain SUCKS is bold and clever—and relatable. Using your .SUCKS domain to make people think twice or laugh can be a great first step to engage them in your cause. Say you’re running a campaign fundraising for patients with lymphoma. What would be more effective than a domain that blatantly calls out just how badly cancer sucks?
Why try to sugarcoat the obvious? Think of how much more easily you can grab people’s attention when every aspect of your campaign, including your domain, is punctuated with honest, down to earth language they’d never expect.
Insincere branding sucks. Calling it like it is may be the fastest way to raise brand awareness.
Gain More Direct Traffic
The main disadvantage that most sites using .com, .net and .org face is that they simply aren’t memorable—those domains are often quite literally a dime a dozen. Studies have shown that visitors who arrive at websites through direct navigation—e.g. those who bypass online search engines by typing domains directly into the search bar—are twice as likely to take an action (such as completing a purchase or signing up for a newsletter) than those who arrive via search engines or other avenues.
Being invisible sucks. A memorable domain is a great way to encourage word-of-mouth advertising and gain more direct traffic.
Add Personality to Your Landing Pages
A .SUCKS domain can also be a great centralized place through which to connect various aspects of a particular campaign. Maybe a .SUCKS domain isn’t the right choice for every aspect of your business—but it could allow you to creatively highlight a niche aspect of your business.
Say you want to drive traffic to the landing page for your company’s loyalty program. A tongue-in-cheek domain like NormalTreatment.Sucks or WaitinginLine.Sucks could help pique curiosity and inform customers about the perks of becoming loyal members.
Boring marketing sucks. Why not get a bit sassy with your landing pages?
Engage Your Audience and Drive Conversions
You can also use a .SUCKS domain to inspire customers to jump on a limited promotion or sign up to your newsletter or blog. A catchy domain can let them know that MissingDeals.Sucks or BeingUninformed.Sucks and guide people towards a newsletter sign up page, where they could be further enticed by a discount or special one-time promotion.
If you’re throwing an event or offering a limited-time promotion, a .SUCKS domain can let customers know why they should pay attention. NotHavingPlans.Sucks or NowhereToGo.Sucks can hype them up about registering for an event, show or seminar. If you want people to download a coupon for an in-person sale at your brick-and-mortar location, PayingFullPrice.Sucks might do the trick.
Going unheard sucks. A creative domain can help you make sure your newsletters get read, your promotions get used and your events get attended.
The Takeaway
A .SUCKS domain can be an important part of your creative marketing strategy. Before your next campaign, take the time to consider how a strong web domain and landing page can unify and strengthen your efforts and get your message to the right audiences.
If you agree that traditional advertising sucks, grab a snappy .SUCKS domain to make your next campaign or project stand out.
Buy TraditionalAdvertising.Sucks
Photos: Shutterstock / dotshock, Shutterstock / Jacob Lund, Shutterstock / Jacob Lund
