How ambitious are you with your business desires?
I wonder how much thought you have given to your marketing plan?
In 2011, my opinion is that one needs to grab more web real estate than just a domain to penetrate the market with full force. One should choose an untraveled company name then secure the following.
1. The domain as .COM, .ORG, .BIZ, .NET, maybe more.
2. YouTube
3. Twitter
4. FaceBook
5. WordPress
6. Tumblr
7. Blogger
8. Gmail / Gmap / Google Places
9. Bing
10. FriendFeed
11. Vimeo
12. maybe even Ebay
Then create a page on each that links back to your mother website. You may not want to actively use them all at first, but squatters can really screw up your company value down the road.
The most important reason for this is that these accounts will draw the kind of new visitor traffic you will need to kickstart your business. Contrary to popular belief, just because you build it doesn’t mean they will come. You need crosslinks in toward your company website, and you need to wave down the traffic at, say, YouTube and re-direct them to you. In other words, these are billboard advertisements placed where the activity is happening, where people are watching and digging for something new.
A successful online retailer told me that Ebay was the place to get customers, then send them to your website for more merchandise and better deals by enclosing a website address and brochure or coupon in every shipment, that the website alone drew very little traffic without help from Ebay. There are other strategies, but the principal concept is still applicable across any business. You have to be where the traffic is to attract customers. At first launch, your website is not where the traffic is until you send traffic to it.
Down the road, when you are successful and want to sell the whole business for a lump sum, how are you going to explain that some teenager with weird ideas has a YouTube account using your company name?