How to Give your Business the Right Name

While hiring employees, setting aside budgets, identifying a good office space tend to be the prime focus of most new start up ventures, a major aspect of starting something new that is commonly neglected is selecting the right name for the business. While it is important to make decisions with respect to the product design, packaging and pricing; many times, the right name for your business can give your set up the much needed boost.

Whether you intend to set up a new restaurant, or a new accounting firm, understand that names can be quite powerful. Getting the name right is the key to effective marketing and branding. Here are some things you need to consider to determine the appropriate name for your business –

1. How does the name sound when it’s said out loud?

When customers and members of the target audience speak out the name of your business, it should sound pleasing to them. A number of brands choose to use alliterations to add to the ‘catchiness’ of the name. Dunkin Donuts, Best Buy and even BlackBerry have been able to leverage their catchy names.

2. The name must mean something, and must communicate a benefit –

Try to pick name that conveys what your business, product or service is about. For example, brands like ‘Health 360’ makes it’s quite evident that they provide comprehensive healthcare facilities. On the other hand, by adding names of cities into the name of your business can sometimes limit your market, unless you are able to convey the origins of the product. This isn’t always an easy task.

3. Avoid Playing with Spellings –

In a day and age when everyone wants to look you up online, it is important that the name of your business is easy to “Google”. Avoid using funny spellings, and irrelevant words which are a task to memorize for your target audience. For example, GiftsForYou is a much simpler brand name to identify with than Gifts4u.

4. Avoid Using Initials

Depending on the type of business and your TG group you may not always get away with using initials as your brand name. Try to keeping is interesting but short. You may not be as lucky as IBM or DHL.

5. Be Specific –

Avoid using generic names. By using them, you may as well be advocating your competitors. Try to make the name of your brand or business fun by adding specific terms, leverage numbers and time. The book The One Minute Manager and the chocolate After Eight have been able to employ this very effectively for their brands.

In addition to this, make sure that your name can be trademarked. If you are looking to scale up your business, it is crucial that you take this into consideration. Also test out the name of your company on Google Adwords to assess is effectiveness of the name of your business online. It is important that you make physical as well as virtual considerations while identifying the appropriate name for your business.