Please help me choose which is the better brand name or domain name?

[RyanShahed]

I am helping a friend and getting involved in looking at launching a taxi service in a major city. Now this is for one of the major cities of world. A big part of the branding of the company or service will be the unique and memorable telephone number this company owns. This company is not expected to be anything huge, just a good small local business. However, we are trying to utilise online marketing which I feel have not been utilised by this cector that much..

The telephone number is something as good as 100 1515, but slightly better. These numbers are hard to get hold of and even when there is one available it's often very expensive. So a big part of the company will be getting that number seen everywhere.

As it's a regional business, just for that one city, and for taxi services having a good telephone number that people can easily remember is important. However, most people now use smart phones, and people will often search on their phones or ipads for "birmingham taxi" or "birmingham taxi service" and so on.

I have the opportunity, as an example to either go with "getbirminghamtaxi.co.uk" or "getabirminghamtaxi". So the choice is between "Get Birmingham Taxi" or Get a Birmingham Taxi" - the difference being putting the "a" in the middle like a sentence.

I also thought of exact match domain "birmingham taxi" or birminghamtaxi.co.uk but the owner wants between £3,000-£12,000 (so  between $5,000-$20,000) for it.

I feel with a domain purchased for just £3 ($5) I would be able to test the market, and if I found it was successful, we could then consider acquiring a more expensive EMD.

I feel that services like private taxi hire firms are small tiny regional businesses, and they don't really do much on search and SEO. I feel if our one did, it would stand out, and I do think quite a few people search online for taxi's, and I know I do. I am also aware that there are now app's like Halo but there is room for a small business to thrive doing a lot online and offline marketing with a great number.

This is not for Birmingham. I have just made that up.

So I would welcome people's feedback in terms of which domain name would be best, with or without the "a"? If you have an alternative suggestion I would welcome that. Also if anyone has any other comments or feedback about this market, doing business, marketing, or any knowledge that you have that you would like to share with us - then that would be appreciated.

Thank you.

[Travis_Bailey]

You can honestly go with either, in my opinion. But how are you going to differentiate yourself from all of the other services? What if you partner with a food delivery service.. pizza... kebabs... whatever, and have something ready at or near the time of arrival.

I'm thinking about the bar crowd. What do you think? That's a bit of differentiation in my book.

[RyanShahed]

Thanks Gregory. Yes I thought of the domain with just the number. However, I think "GetBirminghamTaxi" works for me without the "a" and even as a name because when we say it verbally, we will often say let's get a London taxi or let's get a Birmingham taxi. So I have been leaning towards that from the beginning. I posted this question, in case someone points out something obvious that I may have missed. Sometimes people view things differently and can point things out that could be valuable to your business.

[GregB123]

Since most customers will be typing on a phone, I suggest not using the "a".

But if a really cool phone number is part of the marketing plan, maybe you could use it as part of the URL. Something like Taxi1515.co.uk or BirminghamTaxi1515.co.uk  -  doing something like that would let you get a good URL for just the minimal cost of a registration...