ONLINE PROTECTION
Making the most of the digital domain
The COVID-19 pandemic threw a spotlight on the best practices for building a successful online presence. WIPR spoke with Haydn Simpson of BrandShelter, a CentralNIC company, to find out more.
COVID-19 has accelerated the need for businesses to offer goods and services, and to make revenues, through digital channels. Now more than ever, businesses need to secure digital IP to prove their reputability.
Acquiring domain names is a crucial step for any business to take in order for its digital presence to be viewed as reputable and secure. Failing to do so could result in businesses losing customers to third parties that appear more trustworthy.
WIPR spoke with Haydn Simpson, Head of Brand Services at CentralNIC, to understand this transformation, what it means for businesses and how best to manage and protect online assets.
What are digital assets and why do they matter?
Digital assets can be considered as the online manifestation of a brand’s IP and can include domain names, social media accounts, website content and images. Collectively they make up a brand owner’s identity in digital channels such as the internet and social media platforms.
What are users of digital channels looking for?
For businesses and consumers alike, not being able to physically purchase goods and services in face-to-face environments due to the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the need to source them by other means.
Digital channels, such as websites, marketplace sites and social media are rapidly becoming the primary means of finding, interacting with, and buying goods and services. Users of digital channels are looking for the ability to find and transact with businesses of all types in a trusted digital environment.
How does a business get what it needs?
Twenty years ago, digital channels used to focus on providing information on products and services, which would influence what purchasers would buy in brick-and-mortar stores. But in today’s world, digital channels are not just the first point of contact for consumers but represent the entire ecosystem used to buy and sell goods and services.
“It is rightly said that IP is the lifeblood of any company. In fact, it is becoming more and more important as activity shifts into digital channels.”
Haydn Simpson, CentralNIC
For businesses to thrive online a clear strategic understanding of how these channels work and the opportunities they provide is essential for future success. Specialist providers are there to help with the complex tasks of acquiring, managing and protecting digital assets such as domain names, social media presence and overall digital strategies.
How do brands excel at doing business online?
Having the right digital assets in place so that people can find the right content at the right time is fundamental to doing business online. That’s why digital assets, particularly domain names and SSL certificates (a digital certificate that enables secure connections from a web server to a browser), are so important. They are the key mechanisms for establishing and providing a trusted environment where interactions and transactions can take place.
Without these assets, brands run the risk of losing customers, through lack of trust or to third party brands, counterfeiters or fraudsters.
What does the modern digital landscape look like?
The modern digital landscape is ever-evolving and often difficult to navigate, representing very real threats as well as boundless opportunities.
For brands, there has never been a better opportunity to harness the power of the digital world to reach buyers of products and services. For criminals, it has never been easier to impersonate brands, commit fraud and to distribute counterfeit goods by targeting individuals and businesses with digital scams.
How do domain names relate to digital IP assets and why are they important?
Domain names are fundamental digital assets and a significant part of a brand’s online presence. IP, brands, goods, and services are often represented directly by domain names and they remain a trusted go-to platform for buying and selling goods.
Unlike trademarks, domain names are unique. There is only one polo.com (it belongs to fashion brand Ralph Lauren) and there is only one polo.co.uk (which belongs to Minninnooka Polo, a polo club). Securing the right domain name in the right jurisdiction can provide a brand with a platform from which to launch its online presence and to clearly signpost its business.
Proactive domain name strategies can secure valuable portfolios that drive traffic and revenue, becoming principal destinations for digital engagement.
How has the domain landscape changed over the last few years?
While the digital landscape has and will continue to evolve, the principles of domains and domain name management have remained relatively stable. Owning and consistently reviewing the right domain portfolio to match your business needs and reinforce your trademarks is crucial.
This goes hand-in-hand with key focus areas of controlling online costs, maintaining the correct security, and protocols around portfolio management and optimising portfolio use. In the case of most brand owners, there are still areas for improvement in the above, particularly now that more companies are relying on digital channels to generate sales.
Looking forward, many brand owners will be considering how some brands have used their own top-level domain (TLDs) to create “safe” ecosystems on the internet that users can trust.
Brand owners should be acting now to evaluate the costs and benefits of owning a “dot brand” (eg, .com or .org) and the strategic and operational gains they can make from owning and operating their own piece of internet infrastructure. This option remains relevant and valuable.
“It is rightly said that IP is the lifeblood of any company. In fact, it is becoming more and more important as activity shifts into digital channels.”
What’s your advice for understanding how to build and maintain the optimum portfolio of vital digital assets?
There are three key areas of advice for brand owners:
- Align the strategy for your digital assets to your corporate strategy and your business goals, making sure key products, geographies and future initiatives are covered.
- Set up a digital assets council within your organisation, involving key stakeholders such as legal, marketing, finance and IT security, to give relevant colleagues maximum visibility of the part digital assets play in a successful business.
- Understand the return on investment that these assets give to your business, and visualise this internally with executives, to help them to see the power of online channels. This will give a solid foundation for future recognition of the importance of these assets and goes a long way to securing relevant budgetary funding.
Why does IP protection matter?
It is rightly said that IP is the lifeblood of any company. In fact, it is becoming more and more important as activity shifts into digital channels.
It follows that, if consumers and B2B buyers are looking to find and interact with brands online, revenue generation through digital channels is key to how companies will survive and thrive in the future. Proactive protection and enforcement of your IP online is an essential part of protecting and growing your revenue.
However, this also extends to your customers, helping them to buy products and services from legitimate sources and maximising the revenue potential of digital channels. Most brands will face challenges of counterfeit, fraud, or revenue diversion online, but IP protection and enforcement will reduce these threats and send a message to your consumers and those exploiting your brands that you are not an easy target.
What are common challenges in online IP protection?
You can’t register every domain name or social media handle. You can’t monitor every digital channel and take action against all infringements. Our clients tell us that this is the single biggest challenge they face: how to strike the balance between defensive registration and proactive brand protection.
It is normally a question of coverage and cost: cost of registrations versus the cost of monitoring and enforcement versus the cost of infringements and lost revenue. There is no set formula as each brand’s needs are different. Most of our strategic work is about helping clients to obtain the best coverage for their budget and, in some cases, how to regain control over their brands online.
How can a brand owner best get visibility of its IP risk and maintain control of its IP online?
There are lots of tools and expertise available to help you to understand what is happening in digital channels. Depending on your brands and your business strategy, you may want to focus on specific channels, geographies, or even individual platforms.
Tools can be affordable and effective—for example, domain auditing or monitoring gives a cost-effective real-time view of what is happening in the domain space, allowing for proactive decisions to be taken about what infringements warrant action. Pick and choose your battles and maximise every budget dollar.
“Sometimes the pace at which digital channels evolve make it difficult to keep up. However, one thing is clear, they are here to stay.”
How does a robust, secure, protected and optimised domain portfolio benefit a business?
The benefits of having control over your domain portfolio and visibility of the domain environment are many and varied. Some of this depends on individual strategies, products and geographies, but there are three central tenets that will benefit any business that has an online presence:
Digital channels are here to stay—embrace the opportunity
Sometimes the pace at which digital channels evolve make it difficult to keep up. However, one thing is clear, they are here to stay. One of the most common phrases to come out of the COVID-19 crisis is “the new normal”. It is hard to say what that is, but all the signs point to digital channels being the most important route to market for almost all B2C and B2B businesses in the future.
Early digital adopters are reaping the benefits, and many can follow the same path. Domain names are an integral part of that, central to how your consumers find, interact with and buy your products and services.
A trusted environment within which to excel at doing business
Domain name registrations are only part of the story. Creating a trusted environment where your consumers can interact with you in a secure manner is key, particularly as cybercrime is soaring. A robust domain name system, effective SSL management and domain locking are some of these key cogs in the wheel and are easy to implement. Plan, execute and maintain strategies that overtly show that you are offering a secure ecosystem and you will reap the benefits.
Turning digital assets into a revenue generator, not a cost centre
An area that is not often considered is your digital asset portfolio. It can, and should, be seen as a revenue generator rather than a cost centre. Domain names cost money, but a portfolio that is well managed can contribute many times the cost as a vital part of a revenue-generating ecosystem.
For example, amazon.com is the gateway to millions of dollars in revenue every minute, yet it costs less than $10 per year to register.
An outage on a site such as Facebook can reduce its share price by billions. Protect, measure, and share the success of your digital assets, promote how IP is helping you to win and shine a light on how important domains are to your business.
Haydn Simpson is head of Brand Services at CentralNIC. Over the last 20 years, he has advised countless brand owners on the registration, optimisation and security of their digital asset portfolios, with specialist expertise in domain management and brand protection.
He can be contacted at: haydn.simpson@centralnic.com
Images, from top: Shutterstock / goodluz, hutch photography, Andrey_Popov
