What’s In A Name?

When starting up a new business the all important question apart from what will you sell or offer is, what will you be called?! It’s a difficult decision to choose the final name for your business but it is an integral part of your marketing.

So what actually is in a name? It is the first thing people hear when meeting you, it’s a point of association and it will stick with you until the end. For a business it’s important to create your name to reflect your products and services but also to appeal to your target market.

A name can be powerful and is especially important when starting up a business. It is an aspect of this new development that needs a lot of thought invested into it. It is vital that the name you decide sounds good once said out loud. Don’t make things too long or with too many syllables, it will make it hard to remember for future reference. It should be easy to pronounce and be able to read without difficulty. Word techniques like alliteration can be catchy and easy to remember. Words that start with the same letter tend to be more memorable and easy to learn rather than those that don’t. “Peters Pizza” and “Bobby’s BBQ’s” or even “Coca-Cola” have a tendency to just roll off the tongue and stick.

Always keep in mind how the business name may be interperated locally and globally. Be sure that it doesn’t cross any boundaries and offend people or unfortunately it will be doomed from the get go.

Depending on your target market, crafting your name to tailor their interest plus reflect the personality of the business can be difficult to juggle. Sometimes plain and simple worded business are easy to remember and can form space to incorporate family names. This is generally apparent in Law firms and family restaurants. If your business offers a service or sells a particular product, include these in your brainstorming. Memorable idea names can be thought up by devising words with relative nouns and adjectives. For example “Jims Mowing”, “Claire’s Creative Cuts”. These help when consumers are quickly scanning for a service.

When brainstorming there are many directions in which you can take to craft your business name. There is the chance available to get highly creative and word a name that is suggestive and hinting. They can be quite appealing but when said out loud, it may be misinterpreted and the public may not perceive the name in its correct sense, such as chips and bytes (software) to chips and bites (food).

Try to steer away from being too generic and make sure your name will be able to be stamped as a trademark and also available as a domain. Coming up with your website name can be just as important as your business name. Again it has to be easily readable, try to avoid hyphens, difficult spelling and abbreviations. When spelling it aloud to a client it can become confusing. Keep it as relative to your business name as possible. This will also add to being memorable to customers and other professionals you may cross paths with.

Deciding on your companies name is a huge decision. Think hard and think outside the square. Test out the name and see how people react and their honest opinions. Keeping trying until something sounds great, suits your business and will stick in consumers minds.