If you are following our series, then you should have downloaded our FREE E-Book: Building Your Brand – A 7 Step Guide To Branding Your Business. In that E-Book, we walk you through essential foundational pieces that are needed in order to create a proper brand for your business. If you have not gone through this yet, click here and download your E-Book to be on your way to brand your business!
Branding Progress Made!
Who doesn’t love progress!? At this point, you should have:
- The Name Of Your Business: If you don’t, that’s okay! But maybe you have it narrowed down to your top choices. Naming your business is important and shouldn’t be rushed.
- What You’re All About: Your mission statement, slogan, and pitch.
- You’re Look: You should be at least thinking through the look of your company with fonts, colors, and symbol.
Wow! A lot can get done in one blog post, right?! Seriously, if you are unsure about any of these for your business or how to come up with them, download the E-Book! It’s important to get these pieces done first before you move on. We have made it easy in walking you through each step to begin properly branding your business.
Now! Onto thinking about Your Online Presence. It is important that you have a place on the Internet that belongs to your business. This is a main modern platform that enables you to communicate information effectively about your company and the services and/or products you offer to your customers.
Have you thought about your online presence before? Maybe you’ve imagined how cool your website will look compared to others you’ve seen. Maybe you’ve even envisioned the frenzy of customers that will go onto your page as soon as you launch. All these are good things, but have you thought through the nuts and bolts of it?
If you’re not tech or internet savvy, you probably have not. So let’s go through this together starting at the very beginning: your domain name!
Domain Name
A domain name is the address to your personal website! With there being only one Internet, there can only be one domain name registered with that spelling in the whole world. Domains are not case-sensitive and can be used with dashes (-) or and underscore (_). There is a growing list of extensions that can be registered, such as .co, .net, .org, .gov, but the most popular and memorable is the .com, so we suggest sticking to a .com first and adding the others at a later date.
There are many companies out there that allow you to register a domain name for an annual fee. We highly recommend using siteground.com. Brand Mentors uses SiteGround for not only domain registrations but for web hosting as well. We use them because we have found SiteGround to be cost-effective, easy to use with excellent customer support!
Go To: https://www.siteground.com/recommended?referrer_id=7632431
Type in the name of your business or your potential names with .com at the end of it.
Example: www.myamazingbusinessname.com
Make sure that your domain is available before you officially name your business! Having a domain name that matches your business name brings continuity to your brand. Remember, branding works only through consistency.
BM Pro Tip
You should keep in mind that there are numerous companies out there who make a business off of registering domain names and reselling them to startups at a much higher price.
Real Life: I once looked up a domain name that was already taken and they were willing to give it to me at a price tag of over $2,000! To say the least, I got creative and chose a different domain name.
So depending on your budget and desire to have your domain match your business name exactly, you may be willing to pay a higher premium. However, if you are on a tighter budget, we suggest searching based on your top ten names and modifying or abbreviating the name if necessary in order to find an unregistered domain name that will work for you. Using your city and even your service in your domain name will be tremendously helpful when it comes to being found on the Internet. You can even register multiple domains at this time to avoid them being registered by someone else.
Once you have found a domain that is available, you’ll want to secure it quickly by registering it, because your choice may not be available at a later date.
Web Hosting
After acquiring a domain name. You’ll need to think about who will Host your website. Web hosting may seem like an obscure thing. You may think, “Do I really need?” Yes! You do.
Here is what it is: Web hosting is a service that allows businesses to post a website on the Internet. They also provide you with the technology and services needed for your website to be viewed by your clients online.
There’s more they do, but without completely boring you with the nerdy details, a web hosting company can provide additional security to your website by allowing an SSL certificate and forcing your site to have an https. Simply put, https allows your website to be secure and not be flagged by Google with a scary page. (See Below)
You never want a potential client to get hit with this message the first time they try to access your site. So make sure your web hosting provider will do this!
BM Pro Tip:
When you register your domain name with siteground and choose them as your web hosting provider, they will automatically apply these things to your website!
If you’re looking to have a company to professionally design and build your website, you can either do these things on your own or have them do it for you! Remember, to secure your domain name as soon as possible as a company cannot guarantee they will get the same domain name you saw available a month ago (or even a day ago!).
There’s much more to talk through with your online presence, but hopefully, this has given you a wealth of information on the two key pieces you need to begin building your website: domain name and web hosting
Read our next blog to learn more about how to translate your business to the internet.
