There’s a lot that goes into the checklist of a successful business. Capital, location, partners, and a business name are among the key things you can include in your business plan checklist when starting a business.
While everything you need to start your new business is vital to its success, finding the right name can work wonders for your business entity.
However, choosing an outstanding business name is never easy for many business owners.
How do you pick a suitable name for your business?
We devote our time and expertise to help businesses come up with business names that directly identify with their target audience.
We’re here to make naming easy for you through our world-class business-naming strategy.
Our goal is to help you develop a business name that leaves a mark in the industry; a name that won’t be easily forgotten, and allows your business the opportunity for long-term success.
Choosing a Befitting Business Name: The Best Practices
When you’re starting a new business, you can’t afford to overlook the significance of choosing a name for your new business.
Why? Two things. The right name can quickly make your business popular, and a wrong name can doom your prospects.
That’s why you need to understand the right strategies and standard procedures to follow in coming up with a name that benefits your business and attracts your potential customers.
Opt for a Name That Allows for Business Growth
Let’s face it. Your business structure can shift a lot during the lifetime of your business.
When this happens, you don’t want to be changing names every time you expand the business or introduce a new affiliate service that wasn’t originally there.
There are a couple of ways you can choose a name that allows business growth.
First is to consider an aspirational name. Consider what your core goals are, and draw a name from that. For example, here’s what Bantam Tools say about their business name:
“Our machines are easy to set up, work as expected right out of the box, and like our namesake, the Bantam rooster, punch above their weight class, allowing you to stay ahead of schedule and under budget no matter what project you’re working on.”
Bantam Tool’s goal is to sell machines that increase efficiency for a cheaper cost. Their business name reflects exactly. As Bantam grows, the chances are their core goal will never change.
You can also pick something completely meaningless. For example, Amazon was originally a bookstore but they never associated their business name with selling books. Amazon went for something more vague and when their business grew, they never needed to change their name.
In other words, you want to avoid names like ‘your one-stop online books store’ if you’re opening a bookstore and intend to offer additional services in the future.
Also, ensure your trade name isn’t limited to a particular city or region, as this could restrict your jurisdiction to such regions.
A localized business name will only attract local customers who search for local services on Google and other search engines. This makes it a challenge for your business to have a global online presence once you expand it.
Get Into a Brainstorming Session with Experts
You might have the best business naming ideas and think it needless to brainstorm or work with agency naming experts like NameStormers.
However, once these names are out to the public, you might run into several problems without consulting an expert first:
- The business name might not resonate with your target audience.
- The business name may already be taken.
- Your name might not be as good as you thought. Getting an unbiased second opinion is essential.
Remember: You need as many viable ideas as possible to come up with the right and unique name.
Brainstorming and working with brand naming experts such as NameStormers is an ideal choice as we can help you create a name that’s attractive, resonates with your target audience, and won’t run into legal problems through improper trademarking.
That’s why you must spare significant time to think freely and creatively together with professionals for naming ideas.
At Namestormers, we apply a tried and tested 7-step process for our company naming projects:
- Gather: Our experts meet and get to know you, your target audience, your competition, how you want to use the name for your company, products and services.
- Rapid idea generation: Quick and successive generation of hundreds of name ideas.
- Screening: Conduct preliminary trademark and law usage screenings on every name we present.
- Pitching: Present you the top names and constructively and strategically explore them together.
- Fine-tuning: From your feedback, we refine your favorites and perform a Customer Validation Study on them.
- Testing: Take a deep validation study and memorability study with top names and test their potential impact on your target market.
- ROI: At the end, you have a set of solid names, taglines, screenings and more with a clear understanding of their positioning and differentiation from the competition.
Our goal is to remain focused to ensure you end up with reputable business names to pick from.
Invest in Good Domain Business Names
Top business operations that outrank their competitors in Google always invest in remarkable domain names.
However, most customers associate a .com domain name with an established business, so you might want to consider investing in one.
Yet, the problem comes when the domain name you desire is already taken. For example, finding a single-word domain name can be difficult, especially if it’s your first time handling a new venture.
The easy solution to this is to consider adding extensions to the end of your domain name. For example, if you’re a solar energy business called Radiant, you could still register your domain as radiantsolar.com or radiantsolarenergy.com.
Either way, it’s essential to know about the domain availability before deciding the name you choose to settle for.
NameStormers offers domain name screening services to help you assess .com statuses. We also make suggestions about how to secure a domain that works for your business.
Consider Your Target Market
It’s super important you consider your target market when brainstorming a business name.
For example, if you’re targeting a younger audience you should consider a name that uses purposeful misspellings (like Krispy Kreme). This resonates with younger audiences because it makes the business sound more approachable and fun. However older audiences might find this unprofessional and untrustworthy.
Similarly, you should consider your target audience’s sex. A business that targets females wouldn’t do well with a masculine business name like “The Gentleman’s Club.”
Remember: If you’re unsure whether your business name considers your target market, ask for second opinions. NameStormers can help, but you can also ask other team members in your business for their advice too.
Finally, consider the lifestyle of who will be visiting your business. For example, if you’re a surfboard shop that targets thrill-seekers, you wouldn’t want a bland, boring name like “Surf shop.” You’d want something exciting, like “Rocking Waves.”
Conduct a Trademark Search
You have the right name already, but you aren’t sure whether it is a business name you can legally use or if there are trademark hurdles to jump. There are several ways to find out:
- Run a thorough pre screening process. (Our expert team uses the same process as attorneys, and checks common law usage, federal, and even state trademarks).
- Conduct a series of online searches for the specific business name.
- Seek expert help by working with extensive and certified trademark screening professionals.
Working with qualified experts helps you determine whether your selected name is low-risk through rigorous trademark checks. Furthermore, such experts also perform state checks, web screenings, and global trademarks searches if necessary.
Pro-Tip: Always consider going for a new business name instead of tweaking an existing one once you find out it’s already trademarked.
Adding symbols or shifting to .net or .com to sound different from your competitor might get you into an expensive legal battle you’ll likely lose.
Evocative vs. Descriptive Business Names
Another important consideration is whether you should use an evocative or descriptive business name:
- Evocative business name: Business names that aren’t usually related to what the business does. For example, Apple and Amazon.
- Descriptive Business Names: Names that make the business objectives clear. For example, ToysRUs sells toys and PayPal is a bank.
Both naming options come with their advantages. For example, with an evocative business name you have absolute freedom in the direction you take your business. There’s tons of opportunity for expansion. However, you need to have a more substantial marketing budget to get these names out into the public since they’re more difficult to associate with your business objectives.
Descriptive business names, on the other hand, while being the safer option, are more restrictive and difficult to get through the trademarking process. That said, descriptive business names are much cheaper to market as they’re clear in their objectives.
Honestly, your best bet is to brainstorm both evocative and descriptive business names and find out which resonates with you (and your target audience) more. You can also talk to us, and we’ll be able to suggest whether an evocative or descriptive name suits your needs better.
Become a Business Owner: Register Your Business and Business Name
Every reasonable step you take towards finding a matching business name ends by registering your new-found name and business with your state authorities.
It is always beneficial to register your business as a corporation, limited partnership, or a limited liability company (LLC) in the US. This helps to register your business name alongside the general business registration.
Sole proprietorships and general partnerships are registered by the local or county authority where the business is situated. If you’re registering any of these, you’ll not have to undergo the trouble of getting registered with the state.
For sole proprietors, there’s always an option to register a DBA (Doing Business As) name so you can use your DBA in place of your legal name.
Finding a reliable DBA starts by linking up with a team of experts to help you pick the best name for your business’s new image.
A case in hand is a contract we had with SmartBim Technologies to help them change their name to Concora as their DBA.
You also hire a team of professionals such as NameStormers to handle your DBA needs as you attend to other business demands.
Settling for a unique enterprise name is a daunting process, but one worth investing your time and money in.
Even as a small business owner, a successful choice and registration of a business name go a long way into announcing your presence in the business world. You significantly begin your business branding process by choosing and registering a name for it.
Let NameStormers Choose a Business Name for You
Once you’ve decided you need a business name for your company, there’s no stopping. A good business name comes with a quality business naming company.
You need a company with a team of top-performing experts to help you with various business-naming services, including:
- Company naming
- Product and service naming
- Brand naming
- Trademark screening
- Domain screening
- Linguistic screening
- Naming research
- Logo creation
Our experts will help you acquire a remarkable business name in a seamless and straightforward naming procedure.
You can check out our podcast page for a deeper dive into what it takes to create compelling brand names.
You might also want to look at some of the prestigious awards we’ve earned over the years for the exemplary job we do here. We’re confident that you can always trust our services, and rest assured that we’ll consistently deliver what you want when you want it.
Contact us today and get started on your business naming journey.
Featured Image from: Freepik by Katemangostar