Protecting ideas and concepts is, without a doubt, one of the biggest concerns that must be addressed by businesses of all sizes and in every industry. As a result, this concern has spawned an army of attorneys that specialize in intellectual property, trademark and copyright law. And, not only can these attorneys be expensive, the process can be time intensive as well.

For entrepreneurs, this concern is especially challenging because they tend to have more ideas for products, services and projects than they have time or money to fully develop. As entrepreneurial CEOs, they want to protect their ideas, but they rarely want to go the expense of legally protecting every idea or concept they think of - many of which will be quickly forgotten or disregarded.

However, there is an initial, inexpensive step that every business owner - large or small - can take to protect ideas until they decide if or how they will use them in their business.

That is to buy a domain for the concept. While this strategy does not offer the level of protection that trademarks do, it does cast an anchor into the internet world and helps to protect the conceptual idea until further exploration can be conducted and decisions made about development. And, at less than $10 per domain and about 5 minutes time, it is an inexpensive layer of idea protection.

Once the decision is made to buy a domain, several other factors come into play when selecting the appropriate domain name.

The domain needs to be memorable if it is to anchor a branded product. To that end, every effort must be made to gain consumer mind-share. Generally, when prospects hear a domain name, they assume that it is followed by .com. Therefore, when buying a domain, buy the dot com version of the domain as the other dot whatevers are not as memorable. If the .com you initially want is not available, keep trying different domain names until you get a version that will work for your concept and, that you like.

The domain should be as concise as possible and easily understood when spoken. Avoid using numbers, hyphens, words that can be spelled in more that one way or words that can easily be misunderstood especially when spoken on the phone.

If you are developing a product, everything you do to package and promote it must be done to help build a memory anchor in the marketplace. As branded marketing is about owning consumer mind-share with a memorable anchor. And, that often begins with the right domain name.