It is not all that often a company runs a TV ad and advertises with a Sub-Domain included in the ad. If the company does happen to use a sub domain, they often use a word as the sub domain but I still think it is confusing to most people that even see a sub domain in an ad. Well the Orkin® company went one step further last night during an ad that I saw and used a two digit number as its sub domain!

I was SHOCKED they would even attempt to do it. Not only was it any two digit number, they used a Zero in it. Zero’s and the Letter O can be confusing in the first place but then to make it 01.Orkin.com makes it even more confusing IMO!

Companies often do something like this for tracking purposes to see how effective the ad is in bringing people to the web site but I see using a sub domain or adding a number to the flagship domain as simply more confusing to the people seeing it and doing so could have a negative effect on converting the traffic to the site or the proper domain to track it.

Many companies have learned to use a Call To Action type domain name that resembles the main message of the ad for tracking purposes or simply to better match the ad run. Why? Because it simply makes sense with the ad, which means the people seeing it, easily remember it and often visit.

JK Harris runs an ad about Back Taxes and uses the domain name BackTaxes.com . It simply makes sense and makes the domain name to visit very easy to remember!

Back to the sub domain a little bit more.

The biggest problem is most people do not know what they are. They rarely see them and simply are not educated on them. This leads into the customer being confused. This confusion may lead into the person forgetting the . after the 01 and simply adding 01 TO the domain name Orkin.com. This results into 01orkin.com, a domain name that Orkin does not own! Sometimes people will add www. to the sub domain, making the domain name actually have 2 sub domains. Many developers often over look this and do not use a wild card sub domain forwarding. Orkin does in this case, but this all can and often does lead to missed traffic.

Orkin simply uses 301 redirection with the sub domain and sends the traffic to a free estimate page on the Orkin domain. This also causes problems because it does not allow search engines to focus on the keywords of the advertising message and one of the vital keywords used, the domain name with the sub domain!

My advise would be to use a call to action domain name related to your main message in the ad. Set up a micro site for that specific ad and use strong cross branding on that site to your main domain name. In this case, Orkin.com . You can still have a functional site on the call to action domain to fit your ad and brand awareness with logo’s and direct linking to your main domain on the micro site. This makes it easier to find the specific site and also allows for search engines to pick up the site to return it to searchers with a little SEO work. The micro site doesn’t only allow you to offer something specific to your customers, it also gives you another tool to rule the search engine page of your main keyword terms you are focusing on. If the vast majority of listings on a search engine for a specific keyword are owned by YOU, you will also be the one getting all the traffic!

Often times using a generic domain name will bring in "free" traffic as well. An example for Orkin and a good call to action domain name would be something like PestControl.com. People naturally search for the term online with No Advertising! People not only search for it, they also simply type in PestControl.com directly expecting to find a pest control company! If they wish to stick with the brand name as many companies do, OrkinMan.com is another term that the company is "known" for and also holds a trademark. This covers the brand name and uses a familiar term but still allows you to use a different domain for tracking reasons and further owning the market for specific search terms relating to the business. Orkin does own OrkinMan.com btw and forwards it to the same free estimate page but I have never seen them use the domain in an ad. OrkinMan.com would be much wiser to use than 01.Orkin.com IMO but it needs to be on a stand alone site to help with search engine traffic. With no listings, people do not see it and allows another spot for a different company to rank for that keyword.

American Express® is running a new ad campaign using the domain name ApplyDeltaCard.com . Northwest WorldPerks® miles (Visa®) are now Delta miles due to a merger of Northwest and Delta. The campaign is to get customers to switch to the new Gold Delta Skymiles® credit card by American Express. Customers that were using the WorldPerks credit card to earn frequent flier miles, no longer will due to the merger and have to switch to the new Gold Delta SkyMiles® card by American Express. The miles from the WorldPerks will transfer over to a linked Gold Delta SkyMiles credit card.

American Express does a pretty good job with the domain name they picked for the ad, because it makes sense to the market they are after. It also makes a lot of sense to send customers to a website, because they can apply online at any time, day or night from the comfort of there homes. Although it is a little bit of a "longer" domain, it is better to be longer with the domain name and make sense in the process. The bad thing I think with the domain name they used? The 3 word term just doesn’t have a natural ring to it!

"Apply Delta Card" is not something we would naturally say. Apply for a delta card, yes!

Simpler is always better. Just by hearing the ad talking about Applying for the card, gets that message into peoples heads. I always think the "Actual Card" is what people are going to remember. In this case, it is Delta Card. The term Delta Card is also shorter and easier to remember IMO!

By dropping the term "Apply" from the start of the domain name, Delta Card IMO would of been the best domain name to use to promote the card they want people to apply for. DeltaCard.com, in the perfect world, DeltaCard.com would have been the perfect domain for the ad campaign. The likely reason why they didn’t use DeltaCard.com, they do not own it. Could they purchase it? Likely, as the domain simply forwards to a payment processing website.

One other major flaw with the ad campaign is they are putting a lot of the focus on Direct Navigation. By saying the domain name in the ad, and showing the domain name in print ads will make a lot of people simply type in the domain name into there web browsers. On the other hand, a lot of people will use the term as a "search term" and go to a search engine like Google and perform a search using keywords in the ad. These keywords come from a wide aspect of the ad itself but will often focus around the domain name used.

It helps to own the exact match domain name to the term "Apply Delta Card", but American Express simply uses a 301 redirect with the ApplyDeltaCard.com to a flagship site. Doing this redirect doesn’t allow the domain name ApplyDeltaCard.com to get indexed in search engines. This means it will not rank in the SE’s for the term people search for! This is a problem for American Express, because their ad dollars are going to waste on visitors looking for them using search. This forces even more advertising on the web to "rank" higher with sponsored ads so people can find the advertiser. In this case, it is for credit cards, and those type of ads are Expensive!