As an entrepreneur, it’s not a secret that creating a memorable brand name can massively boost your sales and impact your company’s financial performance.
With so much resting on your brand, it’s safe to say your brand shapes your company’s fate. And the best way you can make your brand shine is by giving it a great company name.
Your brand’s name is an essential part of branding your business, and therefore it must reflect your company’s tone, personality and appeal to your target demographic.
And today, we’d be showing you how to find the perfect name in less than twenty-four hours, even if you don’t have any naming experience.
- Understand Your Brand
The key to crafting a name that aligns with all the needs of your company starts with first properly researching your market, understanding your company, and creating a brand identity that can instantly stand out and capture your target client’s attention.
Searching for a brand name without a thorough understanding of your brand is a sure way to acquire a bland business name.
Take Accenture as an example. If you are aware of the company, the image that comes to mind when you see or hear the company name is its brand, but for those who don’t know anything about the brand, the name, Accenture, conveys the brand’s image to them.
And when most people hear the name, what they imagine is a classy, professional, future-focused, and luxurious brand.
So, start building your brand by knowing:
- Who you are as a company
- Who you are to customers
- How you compare to competitors
- What values your brand aligns with
- What tone do you want to convey
- What emotions do you need customers to feel
Doing this will set you on a clear path to building a compelling brand image and knowing if your company will be better positioned as a traditional business or a modern and trendy one.
- Brainstorm
Now that you’ve finished laying a solid foundation, things are about to get interesting! Start by preparing a list of key branding criteria your ideal name must fulfill. Next, assemble a naming team, discuss your business and brand, and bring them up to speed on your list of branding criteria. Once that’s done, start brainstorming.
Your priority right now shouldn’t be analyzing the names you find. Instead, focus only on jotting down every name idea that comes to mind, including those that you believe are excellent and those you believe aren’t.
Use these tools to quicken your brainstorming:
- Dictionary
- Thesaurus.
- Brand name agency
- Industry slangs
When your brainstorming session is over, you should have drafted about 200 potential business names on paper. This would provide you with a good variety of name ideas to filter.
Go through your list, analyze each name and select the ones that resonate with your brand and target customers. When you’re done, you should have at most ten names standing.
- Validate
We’re confident that one of your top names is the finest name for the company you’ve been looking for. But before we can be positive and declare a victory, your chosen name must pass a few critical litmus tests.
You can accomplish this by:
- Getting Audience Reaction: Your name must be appealing to your target audience, so getting their feedback is something you cannot afford to miss.
- Checking for Domain Availability: Verify that the name you’re choosing has an accessible ‘.com’ domain extension.
- Trademark: Visit the USPTO and confirm that you are not selecting an already trademarked name. Securing your name with a trademark will save you from legal battles down the road.
Conclusion
Your brand name is the fuel that ignites your brand’s success, so ensure you understand your brand, brainstorm short, unique, and catchy words, and validate your chosen name by gathering audience feedback.
Grant Polachek is the head of branding for Squadhelp.com, 3X Inc 5000 startup and disruptive naming agency. Squadhelp has reviewed more than 1 million names and curated a collection of the best available names on the web today. We are also the world’s leading crowdsource naming platform, supporting clients from early-stage startups to Fortune 500 companies.
