For those of you who have attended my seminar on Internet Marketing Strategies, I hope you rushed back to the office and immediately started registering additional domains, above and beyond your company name.

If you haven't, I'm going to urge you to do so now.

Why Do You Need Multiple Domains?

First and foremost, it is a cheap way to protect your future business. Even if you have only one web site, buying multiple domains and pointing them to your web site will drive additional traffic to your site. It's much cheaper than buying banner ads on other sites and enlarges your presence on the web immediately. As you continue to invest in your Internet marketing strategies, these new domains will allow you to expand your presence by adding fully developed web sites for those domains.

How Do I Choose Additional Domain Names?

Obvious first choices are your trademarks. You should buy a domain name for each. Not only does this protect your trademark in cyberspace, but recognized trademarks are a first search strategy for people looking for this brand.

The second choice would be to try "owning" a niche in your target market. For a reference book publisher, how about www.reference.com. For an elementary publisher, how about www.languagearts.com. For a trade publisher specializing in outdoor adventures, how about www.hiking.com (Oops – already taken by a Spa in Canada!) For a vocational publisher, how about www.jobprep.com.

The third choice would be to further refine your market by looking at specific subject niches within your product line like www.atlas.com.

To see this in action, click on http://www.spelling.com and you'll see that this domain points you to another domain called www.dictionary.reference.com.

Smart companies are already using this Internet Marketing technique and you should be too!

A Personal Vision

In the beginning of the Internet, it was easy to be the biggest and the best "whatever" on the web simply because the competition was limited and the audience was small. Today, that strategy of becoming the Mega site for anything is a difficult, expensive, and perhaps even unachievable. We publishers know that no one publishing company has ever become the "sole source" of any of our markets. In fact, schools, libraries and book buyers have prided themselves on offering a wide selection of materials from a variety of sources to their students, patrons and consumers.

However, there have been companies that have dominated a specific niche within the broader market and this is the strategy that can migrate to the Internet and build a successful Internet presence in the future. So, start thinking about your Internet Marketing strategy as a series of web sites – all with their own domain name, and all inter-relating to each other. Building your Internet audience a niche at a time will help you focus on the needs of your customers and result in a broader and deeper penetration of the total market.