14 Secrets To Name Your Dream Business!
???? Rajalingam Rathinam ???? Coffee with Raja ??
Growth Architect | Author of ‘The Growth Matrix’ & ‘From Clicks to Connections’ | Driving Transformation in Retail, Healthcare & SMEs through Branding, Marketing, and Digital Innovation
Choosing the right business name will make your business half more successful.
As a brand expert, we interact with many businesses for their business names, product names, or service names. We follow more than 50 strategies to find the perfect name. More than 90 percent of first-time business owners fail to choose their correct business name and end up in a trademark issue or struggle to take their brand to their target customers. Choosing the wrong name can even kill your business in the long run.
Finding the right name is time-consuming, but it gives you a powerful impact on your business’s success. A great name can even reduce your marketing spend on brand promotion.
I am unveiling some of the major secrets to choosing the right name for your business!
What does your business name wish to communicate??
The business name is one of the key factors as it will become your brand identity. It is the first level impression and customer touchpoint across your communication, starting from the logo, stationery, product, promotion, and more.
If you are developing a product or service, you need to consider how best your name can convey it to your customers.
Brainstorm the possibilities
Despite many theories on business name recommendations, there is no single process formula for a successful business name.
Ask a few questions to yourself:
There is no right or wrong name. The name should connect with your targeted customer.
Take your time and finalize at least 20 names that look perfect to you.
Short and Sweet — No wrong spelling!
Most successful businesses have short names. Avoid obscure business names as it is difficult to remember and communicate. Avoid misspelled names, as they confuse customers. In your initial stage of business, you need to convince your customer often, and most of your business comes from referrals. It is hard to communicate wrong spelling to others.
The name should adopt your future business.
Do not pick a name limiting to what you do now. When you grow and expand, it might create a problem. So, name your business by keeping your future in mind.
For example, you might sell wallpaper now and named your company ‘Mystic Wall Papers’. In the future, you might add interior elements and lights, furniture, and so on. So, choose the name wisely.
Ask many, but you decide.
It is going to be tough for you to arrive at a name. Feel free to ask your friends and family. Take all their input but, you only know your business well and what you want to be in the future.
Choose your final list of 5 names and share it with your family and friends for their opinion. Consider their choice, and you decide on the final one.
Choose the name which has real meaning.
No Generic Name
To keep your business name simple, many try to use a common word as their business name. It fails to differentiate from your competitors. ‘The Coffee Shop’ is a perfect example, and many try to have this name and end up losing their identity as it is not a unique name in the market.
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Say ‘No’ to Long name
Also, many decide to keep the long name which can reflect their family tradition, business nature, and what they do. We come across a person who established his trust and comes to us after a year to change it. The name goes like this, ‘ Innovative Creative Education Networking and Environmental Social Trust’. He included all trust activity in the name and ends up with a strange long name. He refuses to change his trust name but wishes to get something different.
We finally give him the best option ‘ICENEST’, an acronym of his trust name, and he was happy.
Avoid Geo-Specific Name
It is common for people to include their local name in their business. For example, take the name, Virginia Vegetables. You produce your vegetables from Virginia and export them across the world, it seems to be a great name. It adds value as it reflects where it is sourced. If not, it is not a great idea to include a local name in your business. It will fail to connect with other countries' people as it sounds foreign to them.
Try to use other languages
When you are looking for a unique name, look up some foreign languages. Try old languages like Greek, Tamil, Chinese, and Latin translations of your business nature. It might give you a whole new business name.
Not to use government or legal names
Never use the name used by the governments. Also, countries do not allow a few listed names, check those and then proceed. It will lead to many legal complications for our business.
Check Name availability
Most of the business types are Corporation, Private Limited, LLC/LLP, Limited companies, and it depends on where you live. All the states have a name search option available online. Check whether the desired name is available in the state where you wish to start a business.
Trademark
This step is crucially important. We need to check the trademark or service mark availability for the chosen name. If someone uses the same name then it will confuse your customers. So, registering your business name with trademark and service mark is very important, and you can reserve your unique name on availability.
Domain Name & Social Media
Every business needs a?domain name. We normally recommend the “.com” domain for your business. If it is an NGO then we recommend “.org”. Getting those domains is very difficult as some might have already reserved them for their business. We can add some prefixes or suffixes to get your unique domain name. Now, there are many extensions available like .club, .agency, .shop, and also country-specific domains as .us, .fr, .ca, and more.
Sometimes, someone might have registered the domain name and be willing to sell it for a better price. You can approach them and buy them at a premium price.
Once your business name got finalized try to grab your desired business name on popular social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Youtube, and Pinterest.
Choose the Name that you Love.
Make sure that you love your business name as you travel with it for the rest of your life and even after. So, find the name that is very close to your heart.
Final Thought
Name is your identity, so get it right. Never start your business without doing proper name research as it will end up in spending more money in case of legal complications or if you wish to change it later.
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