Your URL is W-R-O-N-G! (Steve Olenski)

Drew’s Note: As I try to do every Friday, I’m pleased to bring you a guest post. Meet another thought leader who shares his insights via the blogosphere. So without further ado…Steve Olenski. Again. Enjoy!

Welcome to my first guest post. Have a seat. Please make yourself comfortable. If you’re anything like me, your attention span is as short as… where was I again? You get the point, and now let’s get to my point.

For my initial Guest Blogging foray, I want to talk about something that burns my branding britches.

Everyone and their mother and their mother’s mother knows that having an effective website is vital in ensuring success for any company. Yet for all the bells, for all the whistles and for all the groovy Flash intros – many companies have forgotten one minor detail: If your potential customer cannot find your website, what’s the point?!

Case in point: Driving home the other day when a radio spot comes on for a local home remodeling company. The spot sounds great; the VO is good, the music, the script is fine… that is until they get to the part where the URL is referenced.

This establishment in question has a very ethnic sounding name (lots of vowels and syllables), which is fine in and of itself. Hey, you own a business and want to put your name to it, go for it, that’s why we live in America.

But just because your name is on the door it does not mean it should be in your URL! I heard the URL referenced three different times in the spot, which from a marketing/branding standpoint is good. However, if I were to try to type the URL in, I would fail miserably and eventually give up.

If you asked me right after the spot was over what the URL was I would have said something to the effect of "For information, log onto BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH dot com."

It’s a shame too because the spot was very well done from a production standpoint; kept my attention (no small feat) and I was at the very least curious to learn more.

So what’s the lesson here? Easy. Unless your last name is Smith, Jones or some other household name, resist the urge to put your phonetically challenged name in your company’s URL!

Instead, get creative and come up an easily remembered AND easily recalled URL. In this instance, something such as HomeRemodelForYou.com or even something like CustomRemodelDoneRight.com would have been much better.

Steve Olenski was born and raised in the City of Brotherly Love. He is a Sr. Writer at a major East Coast ad agency, well versed in all mediums: TV, Radio, Print, Direct Mail, cereal boxes. He’s a huge sports fan who has never thrown snowballs at Santa nor booed him. He’s been married since 1992 (best 8 years of his life as he puts it) and has two children, one dog and a goldfish. He blogs at Inside the Eagles, but don’t let the name fool you. He writes about much more than his beloved Iggles. His online portfolio is also available for viewing.

Every Friday is "grab the mic" day. Want to grab the mic and be a guest blogger on Drew’s Marketing Minute? Shoot me an e-mail.