I love brandable domains. I think they offer fantastic asymmetric upside with low acquisition cost and high potential for sale.
For brandable domains, it can be very good to help people imagine what the brand could be and to give them some idea about the short domain as a complete digital brand. Logo production is relatively inexpensive, e.g. $25 is not uncommon as a production expense, particularly when producing logos in bulk. The average brandable .Com name that sells is like around $3000. The more expensive brand investment is a trademark. This is optional but has the added benefit of providing freedom to practice even if no TM is awarded. If the logical use is narrow, a TM can be good.
As for printed goods, unless you are planning to do targeted promotion, probably not a great idea. I remember a time when I was exhibiting at the National Restaurant Association expo and let it be known that a dining-related domain was in play, and that led to qualified inquiries. If you have a very targeted domain for a specific vertical, you can use social media hash-tags during a major conference event and get tremendous visibility for free because people are watching those hash-tags during the conference, even if you are not physically at the conference. However, if you do actually do print, you can spread your collateral around the trade show, or hire people to stand near expo entrances and hand them out aggressively.
The key is to effectively position and target your brandable. The more obvious the name, the easier to target and the easier to achieve word of mouth. For example, Epik manages Patents.com. I think we'll use the above tactics at the next INTA conference in May 2019 to make sure that domain finally gets sold to a logical buyer even if that buyer is not obvious. It just so happens that INTA attracts most of the logical buyers even if we have never heard of them. It is just a fact that many capable buyers choose to fly below the radar and so the conventional research methods will never find them.
