Editor’s note: Here are some good tips to get you started with ideas for creating your small business brand or name. We would add, one way to save a lot of time is to look through the great names we have posted here in our Domain Name Marketplace.
Guest Article: Check out this article offering ideas and tips about branding your business, “How to Create Your Small Business Brand or Business Name.”
Naming a small business or small business product depends on a few key factors. If you know these you’re far ahead of the game.
Naming a small business or small business product depends on a few key factors:
1. The guiding philosophies of the business.
2. The goals of the business.
3. The business landscape and climate (the market, competition, etc.)
4. The sales process and expected growth strategies.
If you’re trying to name the business and/or products in house, work with a select group of people from the business or friends and family (make sure it’s a good cross section and not just the “creative minds”). Brainstorm until you want to cry, using a thesaurus, a rhyming dictionary, and even a cliche dictionary.
For each item, create a list of no less than 100 made up words, word combinations, etc. Pick out 3-8 that resonate with you and your people. Then pick your favorite. If you can test it with clients or prospective clients, all the better.
I do not recommend naming a business or product based on what domains are available, by the way. Name it for what it is, not for what you can get.
Be creative! This is not the stuff of formulas.
Think about your company, your vision. Start making a list of words that either describe your vision or what your company does. Get out your thesaurus. Don’t judge, just write. Write down everything. Look at your list, combine words, shorten words. Play around with it. Enlist help from friends - they may look at the same list of words & see some spark you missed. Then, of course, there’s the option of going with some completely unrelated name & trusting you’ll be able to build name/brand recognition.
And then you have to deal with protecting the mark. You may find that you have to go through the process of finding a name many times because the obvious name choices are already claimed.
Remember the patent, trademark, and copyright implications too. Under United States law I suggest you follow this (other countries may have different law which would make for a different answer).
To start … sit down at your computer with a blindfold on and just randomly and rapidly clack on the keys for at least 30 seconds, preferably for one minute. Then look at the gibberish that is produced to see if there is something that the human lips and tongue can form into an intelligible sound. There usually is; if there is not, repeat the exercise.
This gibberish-word can often become a fine name for a product (or even a company). As a “fanciful” mark (a word that didn’t exist before), it is then very, very easy to protect under (at least US) trademark law.
I don’t like brand names that describe the product or service; you can do little to protect such trademarks (i.e., if you call your fish market “Fisch Market,” you cannot take that term for a fish market
