The Important Role of Powerful Domains: 10 Brands Rise Above The Noise

Think about the last time you had to remember a website. Odds are, you didn't remember the exact web address — you remembered a meaningful domain name instead.?

A powerful domain name is one of the most important (and overlooked) pieces of a strong branding strategy.?

It's how people learn to remember your brand, and it's one of the first things that people will see when they search for your company online.?

In this blog post, I discuss the importance of domains in branding and tell 10 stories of brands that have used their domains to rise above the noise.

Crushing Some Branding Myths

As I covered in Brand Intervention , branding is "the art of differentiation."

Domains are part of this narrative that will either help differentiate you or fail to do so.

Sometimes, a website's domain will exactly mirror and amplify the name of a company like Tesla.com, Apple.com, or Nike.com helping to differentiate and multiplying a brand's impact.

Each of those examples is a big brand that has amazing PR and tons of dollars to build name recognition.

But what if:

1. You're in a category that has had tons of competitive noise?
2. Or you're going up against brands that have had years to build name recognition?
3. Or do you have a name that is challenging or less memorable but yet has a more powerful slogan?
4. Or do you have (as part of your brand) language that evokes strong, positive emotional reactions in your audience?

This is where a strong domain will come into play, as a tool of differentiation, in addition to design, narrative, and other more known tools of differentiation.

Domain Names: Stir the Imagination

Domains are not the only thing that's important for a brand, but they are an extremely powerful tool that should not be ignored.?

While some of these are longer domains, they are more memorable and most importantly successfully differentiate. And as a result, they stand out.

Here are ten examples of domains that rise above the noise using language to make them stand up against noisy competitive industries:

1. MonkWithoutTheFunk.com
2. CapturingTomorrow.com
3. BeyondMastery.com
4. StrategicSoftSkills.com
5. FactsNotFiction.com
6. ReplacingRisk.com
7. Neverstopconquering.com
8. RealEstateRelief.com
9. CreateWant.com
10. EbonyAscent.com

Let's look at them in more depth to see how they come to life.

MonkWithoutTheFunk.com

Keith teaches anyone (particularly baby boomers) how to turn back the clock and remain independent and healthy getting off medications and becoming stronger and fitter than they ever thought possible.?

The challenge? How do you stand out in the very crowded space of fitness where there are tons of instructors, diet plans, nutritional experts, and more?

The answer was this new name for his practice, his site, and this T-shirt to break through the typical "XYZ Fitness Studio." It's impossible for Keith to walk around with this shirt on and not be asked to be told more about "the monk without the funk."

(Pro tip: You want people to ask about something on your shirt? Write "Don't ask.")

CapturingTomorrow.com

Financial and investment advisors seem to be everywhere, and they seem to speak a different language yet 98% of them offer almost the same thing, one to the next.

So when GRIT Partners needed to stand apart, we crafted a new type of narrative and a new type of domain that would speak to the rest of us: CapturingTomorrow.com

Here's how we framed their distinction:

"Why did we create this??Because the current system does not empower people to properly stand up for themselves and defend their own assets as informed individuals to protect their assets, their wealth, their family, their future, and their lifestyle.

"This is why we created our proprietary financial vehicle built upon the greatest minds in investing history. Existing investment models and options offered today fail to service and arm individuals with the correct knowledge either because they don’t know it, or they’re unwilling to share it and are being self-serving.

"We provide this alternative to today’s broken model of wealth preservation. In order to protect your wealth, your decisions, your lifestyle, and your future with one goal in mind: helping you capture tomorrow."

And here's how the brand and its narrative came to life in video form:

BeyondMastery.com

Grammy-winning cellist Eugene Friesen is someone I've been honored to work with for over 20 years so when Eugene came to me and said, "David, I need to help classical musicians go beyond their technical skills and reclaim their musicality," I knew where we had to go.

The challenge is classical musicians are technical wizards who have sheet music as a tool yet needed to be liberated and reminded of their ability to unleash their own musical ingenuity.

First, I needed to define the story:

Mastery is a random standard. Mastery is someone’s idea. Mastery is today, not tomorrow. Mastery is relative. Mastery is context. Mastery is a box, a set of parameters. You are so much more.

Welcome to the ultimate community when the sheet has hit the fan…

It’s a world beyond technical proficiency where you are given back your wings to rise, to be taken by the winds of inspiration and liberated so the wings of imagination and inspiration finally take flight.

And the ideal domain that was music to our ears? BeyondMastery.com?

Here's how it came to life:

StrategicSoftSkillsInstitute.com

After 40+ years of serving some of the world's top organizations as SMS helping them elevate how they lead, interact, and influence others, it was time to redefine the brand with a name that reflected where the company (and clients) were headed.

Part of this was finding language that not only ranked better online but was also more meaningful in conveying the true long-term value they brought to companies.?

After we discovered?The Harvard Business Review?stated “…[these skills] constitute our ability to relate to one another and refer to aspects such as empathy, compassion, and authenticity,” we crafted language that led to this new name. Here's how it rolled out:

Hard skills alone are 50% of the equation: the engine of an organization. The moving parts. Yet no matter how good the engine is, it won’t run if it doesn’t have the necessary fuel. And the key ingredient of that human fuel? Soft skills.

Here's the transformation:

FactsNotFiction.com

Investigations firms aren’t inherently sexy.

Which means they’re ripe for reinvention and telling a tale nobody else bothered to notice.

The most startling part of this rebranding exercise was discovered (during the research process) that investigation firms hired to provide irrefutable evidence for their clients all committed one common crime:?none provided proof when presenting their brand.

Instead, they provided “hearsay” which not only wouldn’t stand up in court, it didn’t stand up when marketing their firms and their skill sets.

This blind spot in the investigatory industry collectively has turned every one of their corporate brands into a crime scene (and none of them had an alibi).

Which gave Prodigy the perfect opportunity and the perfect?domain: FactsNotFiction.com

ReplacingRisk.com

How do you take a suite of companies and align them under one unified brand architecture that unifies them so they convey the same DNA?

By finding the strand that connects them all.

When this assignment started, each brand looked like an unrelated orphan, nothing cohesively bringing them together.

So we started with isolating what the brand collectively stood for, and then created a brand architecture that unified them creating a visual eco-system all under the narrative of “replacing risk with health and wellness.”

And the magic happened first with the new name, IntellectAbility (instead of HRS), and then, even more, when we went from a domain that read?hrstonline.com?(impossible to remember, and even harder to say) and introduced this in its place.

(FYI: We use both IntellectAbility.com as well as ReplacingRisk.com to cover all bases.)

NeverStopConquering.com

Change management is a collective term for all approaches to prepare, support, and help individuals, teams, and organizations in making necessary organizational changes with the help of some very established big consultancies.

So we needed to help our client stand up against these Goliaths. Here's how this story came to life:

We’re here to challenge the way companies manage change and to dramatically impact the way companies evolve, adapt, and expand. Fast.

It’s no longer a matter of “managing change.”?

Instead, it’s about resolving redundancies, strengthening assets, elevating an organization moving companies from “us and them” to “we and how.”

And the domain to help capture this? NeverStopConquering.com

Because you want to attract like-minded companies and customers when creating a domain.

This achieved it beautifully.

RealEstateRelief.com

In the realm of real estate, too many deals are hasty, transactional and one-sided.

So when we started to look at creating a brand that fought for the seller and the buyer for the best possible outcome, we developed the brand based on this powerful and simple distinction:

The doors to our homes should be doors to freedom, not trap doors to financial duress, pressure, and stress.

This resulted in this new name, new domain, and a slogan that says it all: "Know the truth before you sell."

And for investors, there's this side of their brand as well: Know the truth before you buy.

CreateWant.com

The industry of "marketing services" has one very common flaw: almost all marketing service companies pitch their services like a Chinese menu.

A case in point is MarketingWeek that reported, “The relationship between clients and their digital agency partners is deteriorating as a skillset gap and confusion over clients’ priorities harm the dynamic.”

And Per WebFX, “You may have read the widely-spread statistic that 97% of all Internet marketing initiatives fail.”

So when we started helping to redefine what JP and Erica offer their clients, we asked these questions:

When did today’s glut of digital agencies become nothing more than a laundry list of questionable deliverables? Rather than being an uncompromising army that knows how to attract customers methodically?

These questions opened the door to a powerful new domain, brand name, snd slogan to usher in their next chapter of greatness and growth: CreateWant.com

After all, what does any company desire more than creating want and demand for their product or service?

Stay tuned as it will be live very soon.

EbonyAscent.com

When David Lee came to me, he said, "We need a digital platform dedicated to uplifting the black community and people of color to tell our stories and provide true tools of empowerment for mental health, finance, and leadership."

We crafted a beautiful narrative:

In life and in business, there’s one fact those who win never ignore: Failure?is?an option.?And no matter one’s race or creed, the necessary tools for a quality life, one that has meaning, traction, impact, and a legacy are far and few between. At best, those sources of information are scattered. Or random. Or for those who are already connected. And for blacks and people of color, we decided that was no longer good enough.?

And thus, EbonyAscent was born.

Any of these could have become predictable adding to the noise but instead chose a path of differentiation and rising above the noise.

When in doubt, always lean toward differentiation. It's how people will tell you apart from the deafening noise.

In Case You Didn't Know

I am the author of the international #1 bestseller,?Brand Intervention .?

I've helped clients around the world generate well over $6 billion in sales.?

I love creating amazing brands that defy the odds and outsmart the Goliaths.

I have no patience for mediocre and consider meeting expectations a failure. I am only satisfied when I eclipse expectations and love smart, funny conversation, excellent coffee, and dark chocolate.

If you have the goal of growth, impact, and raising your influence, let's?schedule a time ?to discuss your brand.