Tips for the Journey of Choosing a Business Name

It’s a long, arduous road, coming up with a brandable business name. Here are my tips for your road trip to reaching your desired destination, a memorable and trusted brand name.

Plan your destination (plan for the unplanned) - Before you even start the journey of finding the perfect name for your startup you need to know where your coming from and where you plan for your business to end up. This attempt at plotting your final destination seems easy, but focus on more than where you hope your business to go, take into consideration where the business COULD go. Southwest Airlines, originally the small airlines from Dallas Texas has become the affordable flight of choice, their slogan “You are free to move about the country” says just that. However, their name no longer matches with what they do and what their slogan says. Planning for your business to go places you never expected helps ensure that your name will fit with whatever your business becomes.

Know whats happening under the hood – You need to know what your name is riding on to become a brand name – it helps with preparing for the road ahead. What you put into a word will add some serious content and memorability to the name, when a name is based around an expression or a real word (or word part) it makes it easier for clients to remember the name. A name like worldwideopen.com is memorable because its based around the phrase world wide web, but this real word name is anything but limiting – it does not state a specific industry, it can be used for an internet technology company or a travel agency for example. The name noctiva.com uses the word part ‘noct’ to insinuate ‘night’ — you can see this prefix being used in words like ‘nocturnal’, and it gives the name a definite connotation of night time. This could be used for anything from a security company to a blog about night life. Knowing what your name is made of helps you understand how it will be seen by your clients.

Don’t forget the details, pack snacks and games - The most memorable part of any road trip are the morsels of delight you ate and the road trip games you played. The little details are what give the tone and memory that sticks with you. The same is true for business names. The little morsels like having a natural spelling, length of a name, and pronunciation contributes to the tone of the name and aids in making it unique. The spelling isn’t so much about being correct as it is about being natural. Google came up with their name by a common misspelling of the word googol. The length of a name really comes down to the domain – the shorter the domain the less likely it is to be forgotten, if you call yourself Apaxo Advertising as a startup, use apaxo.com as the domain so that when your business expands to advertising, consulting, and marketing Apaxo remains a consistent brand and you can drop the limiting industry keyword.

Look out for potholes – If you’re not careful you could hit a pot hole, pop a tire, and never make it to your final brand name destination. A good way to avoid such disasters like not having a domain to match your business name is to search for a .com domain and business name at the same time. You always hear in the real estate industry that it’s all about location, location, location. In the domain industry, you will hear that its all about .com, .com, .com. Yes, .net and .org are great top level domains, but when saying “Go to the BrandBucket website” it will automatically be assumed that it is .com.

Ask for directions – After developing a product or business you may find yourself a bit to close to it and struggle with the perfect name. That is why people like us at BrandBucket are here! Inventing memorable brand worthy names is what we do. It helps to have an outside source give feedback and a new perspective on a name for your startup. We offer a more in depth look at brand strategy and choosing a name, you can search and evaluate domain names. It is a true test of creativity to choose a name for your start up that has the potential to be the big name brand. Remember, grab a map, do your best, and don’t be afraid to ask for directions.