Target Brands, Inc. has launched a new home collections brand for kids, Pillowfort.
Pillowfort focuses on kids furniture, bedding and decor.
How did Target do “Domain Wise” on the new brand and offering?
Target announced the brand on its website February 7, 2017, filed a slew of trademarks in March 2015 with the term and secured the matching domain name April 6, 2017 according to whois records with the help of Marksmen domain buyers.
The good news for Target, they did the right thing and acquired the best, exact match .com domain name for the brand, Pillowfort.com.
The bad? They “let the cat out of the bag” publicly well before acquiring the domain name, which can increase the purchase price. If you are doing a new brand launch, consider acquiring the domain early. It is always best to secure the domain prior to publicly announcing in any fashion, as it creates demand and can alter your course. What if you can’t secure the important domain? It may force you to go with a different brand name, because you need the domain!
The website
Target has decided to use a page on its main Target.com website to house the collection and not use a stand alone website. This is the right move! The Pillowfort.com domain name does a redirect (with tracking) to the URL: http://www.target.com/c/pillowfort-brand-shop/-/N-4vp6f%20?ref=sr_shorturl_pillowfort.
The Pillowfort.com domain name not only helps secure the brand for Target, it also gives them many options on how they wish to use it. It would be wise to use it in advertising, to easily allow consumers to find the products on Targets main website. It can also be used on social media and more. A domain name always looks much cleaner than a long URL.
Search engines
Target is running Google ads for the term Pillowfort, which is a good thing. The main URL displayed in Google is Target.com/pillowfort which is also good and clean. One thing that could also help them “secure more spots” in Google, is to use a server side redirect with the Pillowfort.com domain name. This allows the domain name to rank in the search engines, display a meta description and still allow to redirect the domain name to the URL they currently are.
No focus on the domain name as a search term. Although people already know what they are looking for, people often type a domain name into a search bar. aka, pillowfort.com into Google’s search bar, instead of the browser. Since a server side redirect isn’t used, the Pillowfort.com domain name isn’t ranking in the search engine. That is a mistake IMO and it should be focused on.
Overall
It’s still early in the game. The best thing, Target secured Pillowfort.com and that is very important in many ways and is 100% the right thing to do. I like the brand name! It’s fun, catchy and associates with kids well. How Target uses the domain name overtime is unknown but they have many options with it.
One of the best moves Target could make is to hire you, Jamie, as their SEM consultant!
Great analysis.
Thanks for sharing Jamie!
Crazy to see how such level of big companies don’t bother securing the domain before they announce their new brand/product/service publicly.
One reason I can think off is some might want to buy it at high price and make publicity stunt by promote their new brand this way! Else repeating such mistake more than once for the same company (not targeting Target.com) doesn’t make sense… at least to me.
Good observation. I completely agree with you, I would’ve secured the domain long before mentioning anything about the name publically. They’ll still do great imo.