Boost Your Brand, Cover Your Ass

Some things to me simply make sense and “why” a brand does or doesn’t do the make sense thing is not always easy to understand. We are all different is one easy answer. Maybe they simply didn’t think of it, is another potential.

So today I wanted to touch on a new startup and some things that I see that they have missed relating to domain names and confusion created by some things they are doing.

Brand name: Booster Fuels

Offering: On-demand fuel filling service

Funding: $12.11 Million (source) ($9M of it is new)

On the company’s website, the logo is “Booster” with an image of a backwards B and a forward F welded together.

This tells me the company would like to be known simply as “Booster”. Nothing in the logo represents “fuel” or on-demand fueling.

Problem: if you are going to brand yourself as Booster, well, you better own the domain name Booster.com. You are an online company! Your website and app are the only places you can attract clients.

They do not own Booster.com, a crowd funding company Booster LLC does and uses the domain for its brand!

Do not confuse people right away! Potential customers need to find you in order to use your service, download your app etc. Creating confusion is costly in more ways than one.

I googled booster and well, Booster Fuels holds a #6 ranking position, below the fold. Not good! Booster.com holds the top 4 spots in Google, 5 if you include the adwords ad on the top of the page.

IMO, the above is a branding problem. It creates confusion and also lacks the trust/professional feel an exact match domain brings to a company. To note, Booster.com LLC doesn’t look to be going anywhere anytime soon! A domain upgrade for Booster Fuels isn’t out of the question but it holds a very low chance of obtaining it currently!

Problem two: Booster Fuels. We have a singular/plural situation and even a potential er issue. If you are going to be Booster Fuels, you darn well better own the domain name BoosterFuels.com (EMD) and BoosterFuel.com for those who forget the plural on fuels. Fuel is a much more common term than Fuels, so many will forget the S. To be on the very safe side, BoostFuel.com (for sale) and BoostFuels.com (not even registered) wouldn’t hurt to own.

Owning both the singular and plural is brand protection. Owning the singular simply prevents a lot of things… like: typo missed traffic, incorrect linking and somebody trying to impersonate your company (in and out bound email) are three of the biggest.

Well, Booster Fuels does not own BoosterFuel.com. It’s actually for sale for only $1,795 and the headache could and should be easily cured by acquiring it NOW! This is a very easy fix / brand protection but this is often not as easy as this case. To note, I do not own it, nor do I have any connection to it! (I have sent an email to Booster Fuels CEO to inform him of this prior to this article)

Overall

Putting a focus on “Booster” is cool and all, but don’t do it unless you own the best and most make sense domain name to it. In this case, Booster.com! The company does reference “Boost” so it may not be sure if they really want to “Boost” instead of “Booster”?

Not owning the BoosterFuel.com domain isn’t going to kill the company, but it’s an easy fix to acquire it and further secure the brand. Not owning Booster.com is a bigger problem if they keep pushing “Booster” without the “Fuels”.

A current small issue but still a problem: Booster Fuels is ranking a sub-domain name for its home page in SE’s. This may relate to the company having been in stealth mode, but BoosterFuels.com website in search engines appears as:

That “golden” is simply confusing and could result in a user by-passing the listing if the eye stops on “golden” or combines “Golden Booster”.

I personally feel that “Booster” is setting itself up for a bit of issue in the brand department. It wants to be “Booster” but hasn’t paid to play. These companies get lost in the crowd and a lot of it can relate to brand confusion.