Should I Market My Company or My Software?

If you are a service oriented company then market your company (you don't have any other choice)

If you are product oriented company then market your products. Products will carry your company name forward.

Please see my answers below in italics.

1.Should I focus on marketing my company or my product? Furthermore should I buy a domain for mycompany.com or myproduct.com.

Both and yes. It is important to market both your company and product. Realistically, until your company is well known, marketing your product to an audience that will benefit from it is more effective. I would focus on both simultaneously, however, with a lean towards building marketshare on the product side. This will help pay the bills and build a loyal customer base.

2.Again, for social media (fb + twitter + blogs)... for which brand should I try to build equity.

With social media, link your product with your company name at every possible opportunity. Everytime your product is discussed, your company name should be included in the discussion.

3.How can I be most effective considering the short time frame?

You need to have a short-term strategy and long-term strategy with reasonable goals and expectations. However, a combination of online pr, social media, article, blog, and SEM can be introduced quickly and produce great results. You don't have to spend a fortune here either. You simply need to invest the time.

4.Ive settled on company and product names based on wanting to build them by creating conversation online, and not on any micro testing. Should I be worried?

Micro testing is valuable for some companies, but not all. Everything is driven by online search results today. I would base your company and product names on terminology that avoids search result clutter and can be effectively "owned" by your company. You want to make sure that you can manage your domains, blog, twitter, etc. Make sure someone else hasn't already taken your product or company name out there and make your choice on what offers you the best online uniformity.

Please let me know if we can help. http://www.dnavertical.com

Clients attach to products/services, not companies.

Market what makes you money. If it's the product, market the product.

The company is what's behind it. Later, when/if you make other projects, you can cross promote them through the company.

If you're looking to build clientele, it's for a product, which is owned by your company.

All the best.

My recommendation: Feel free to reserve both domains (company and product) but focus on marketing only one. It is hard to build a single brands - so why try building both.

Which one? I think at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter. You will likely find your product being used in different ways than you originally planned, and you will likely want/need to 'rebrand' at some level.

Here are my thoughts:

1. Unless you have multiple products, I would focus on your product. The product is what people are going to purchase, not the company. Go to nxdom and look for good URLs for both!

2. For social media, I would build brand equity for both -- with a lean toward the product. This is much easier as you can use a tool such as Hootsuite, SproutSocial, to manage multiple social media accounts from one dashboard.

3. You can be most effective by writing blog posts about the industry your software company (and product) resides. Make sure to reach out to those already writing on similar topics. Start networking and building relationships with these people as well.

4. If you are committed to building them it probably is too late at this point. Just keep working hard and hopefully it will work out...

Final piece of advice: help other people! Aside from the positive karma, you will be able to build relationships and meet people who may be helpful. You have "1" point here -- if you want some solid answers consider contributing to the community!