What are the traits of a strong business name? There’s no universal answer to this question. Every client that comes to us has a unique set of needs, which means no two NameStorming sessions look the same. That’s why we’re delving deeper into a client case study: to show you how the sausage gets made and to illustrate a clearer picture of the process that led to the creation of the name Practice IQ.
Practice IQ: Breakdown of a Good Business Name Example
First, we get to know the client. Who is the target audience for this business? What is the number-one demographic that needs to be inspired by this name? Second, what’s the objective for the name? We try to distill the list of goals into a single overarching objective.
In this case, a large health insurance provider wanted to be able to approach physicians and pitch to them a software platform that would make filing insurance claims and running their practices easier.
Target: Physicians
Objective: Streamline and simplify a task
It Appeals to Their Target Audience
Now that we know the audience, we consider their point of view and the challenges they face. What’s the specific pain point in this situation? A physician’s primary task is to care for patients. They don’t want to spend their time filling out paperwork and dealing with a lot of back and forth between their office and insurance companies, but at this point, it’s a necessary evil that they and their staff have to grin and bear.
So what we’ve figured out by this stage in the process is that the name needs to be physician-centric. It needs to make it clear to the target that the platform solves a problem and meets a challenge. It needs to convey in just a word or two that it will lessen the communication lag between physicians and insurance companies, and allow them to devote more precious attention to actually taking care of patients.
It’s Concise and Memorable, and It Conveys the Objective
The purpose of the new business was not just to make the administrative side of things easier for the physician, but to leverage technology to make it smarter. The name needed to evoke automation, intelligence, streamlining, and efficiency. Now, you can probably see where the puzzle pieces from our brainstorming started fitting together. The word “practice” implies that this software product and the entire business built around it is for the physician. It cuts straight through any confusion and says “this product is for you.” Meanwhile, “IQ” implies intelligence — essentially, with just a single word and a brief acronym, we’re now able to paint a picture of what the product does and who it’s for.
Memorability and concision were also nonnegotiable components. Everyone is busy nowadays, but physicians are certainly some of the busiest. Administrative tasks are not their raison d’être, so we needed a name that stuck in their memory. Even if physicians didn’t have the time to research the software platform upon first hearing the name, its memorability would allow them to do so at their convenience, with a very low likelihood of confusion caused by mispronunciation or misspelling.
It Cleared Extensive Screenings
Trademark screenings, web screenings, and linguistic screenings make up a big slice of what we do. The trademark screening most clients do on their own is only about 5% of what needs to be done. The United States Patent and Trademark Office has a database that anyone can search, but its searching tools are somewhat limited and it doesn’t include state registrations. We realize that the devil is in the details, and we use many of the same tools that trademark lawyers use.
In addition to performing the trademark screening, we also made sure that Practice IQ was as unique as we believed it to be, and not already in use in a way that would confuse the target audience.
While Practice IQ was not the only name that we presented to the client, it stood out and won their approval because it was effective, concise, memorable, and available. It was a win for us both!
If you need a name for your business, get in touch with us. We can’t wait to start brainstorming with you.