Mind Share Equals Market Share

Studies have shown that generic domain names have a huge advantage over non-generics in advertising, outperforming them by a whopping 42%.

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Alan Hack does a beautiful job explaining this powerful phenomenon:

Transcript (abbreviated, edited):

SINCE generic terms live in the minds of millions of people — because we think about them, we talk about them every day whether it’s retirement, books, loans, cars, life insurance — these are things that we just know. And these topics live in the minds of millions if not billions of people.

These words have what we call MIND SHAREone of the MAIN objectives of marketing and promotions.

If you are going to promote that domain name in marketing efforts, it will be easier for people to associate what that domain is with what products or services you offer, and it will take fewer media impressions to effectively capture that mind share.

The Holy Grail of Domain Names

Real-Life Example:

Let’s say you ask 100 people, “Do you know what retirement is?”  100 out of a 100, especially if they are adults, will say “Of course I do!”

But what if you ask, “Do you know what “Bring Your Challenges” means?”

See Prudential’s commercial:
Bring Your Challenges

They will probably have a wide variety of ideas – it could mean personal challenges, health challenges, family challenges, life challenges, business challenges. This is because there is NO association in that phrase, “Bring Your Challenges” – WITH the term or the theme or the industry of retirement.

It will take MANY more media impressions and SIGNIFICANTLY more media dollars to help your target audience to associate “BringYourChallenges.com” with retirement than if you just simply used Retirement.com.

Prudential learned a hard (and costly) lesson, finally acquiring Retirement.com in 2016.

It just makes sense that SINCE these domain names have mind share already, it will cost a lot LESS to turn that mind share into market share.


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