What is brand naming?

Naming your business is one of the most critical parts of your brand building strategy. When naming is done right, it identifies what your brand offers, differentiates you in the marketplace, and remains memorable to your target customer. Without a memorable name, how could your company attract and hold the attention of your target market?

Today’s consumers use brand names for more than just defining their favourite brands. The right title can improve your chances of earning new customers, by showing people the fundamental values you stand for. Memorable names also generate customer loyalty and simplify the process of word of mouth marketing.

Importance of brand naming

Naming your new business, product or service is becoming increasingly difficult as the competitive landscape increases. Professional branding agencies can guide you through the process, as well as offering creative naming solutions.

Ultimately you're looking for your new name to have these five attributes:

1. Unique
2. Longevity
3. User-centric
4. Available (to a degree)
5. Likable
   

01 — Unique

This is a task easier said than done, but a crucial one nonetheless. Whilst it’s not always going to be a simple task, but there are some really helpful tools out there to help. 

1. Dictionary Corner: The first and most obvious is, of course, a dictionary and thesaurus. 
2. Keywords: Another great place to start is with some keywords related to your industry, a simple google search will yield what your competitors are doing, as well as some of the key terms in your industry. Other tools like Ubersuggest can help you find related terms to your primary keywords.
3. ‍Left Field: Sometimes it pays to think differently when coming up with a name. It doesn’t have to be literal, and in many cases, it pays to stand out with something unique, quirky, or completely different.

02 — Longevity

Your brand name is going to be with for hopefully a very long time, so it pays to make the investment now to get something you’re truly happy with.

You also need to consider that as this name is going to be with you for a long time, that it doesn’t restrict your future growth or expansion plans for the business. In time you may want to branch out into different areas, is this name going to allow you to do that?

1. What's your USP? How would you describe your company to others? What are you trying to achieve? What feelings do you want to evoke in your ideal clients? What adjectives come to mind? What do you do uniquely? Grab a piece of paper and a pencil and start writing it all down.
2. What’s your offer? If you’re a service-based business, having your service offering in the name can be helpful
3. Keep it simple. A business name shouldn’t be a mashup of words trying to accomplish too many things — it needs to feel good and evoke positive emotions and associations in you and your future customers.
   

03 — User-centric

One of the most important trends of recent times is ensuring user-centricity around everything you do within your business. It may sound obvious, but there are many areas people often overlook when choosing their name. Is it easy to spell? Is it easy to write? Is it easy (and direct) to find on google? If you’re saying it over the phone, it the spelling obvious? If it includes numbers, are they written in numerical form, or written form?

1. Define some parameters. As you get deeper into brainstorming, limit yourself to coming up with names with only one word or two syllables — it’ll help you focus on coming up with punchier name ideas. Other constraints to try? Coming up with only alliterative names, or words which only begin with verbs.
2. Get feedback from friends, family and existing clients. Put your shortlist of names out into the open, and gauge the response from people
3. Test across different touchpoints. How would it look on a web search? A business card? As a logo? Or spoken over the phone?
   

04 — Available

As soon as you've got a business to shortlist which you’re satisfied with, it’s time to do a little digging. For search engine optimisation and legitimacy purposes, you’ll need the name in your website URL, so check if it’s to available as .com to begin with. Now these days it’s almost impossible to get your exact name as a dot com.

1. Check if it’s available. Use a service like https://namechk.com which quickly performs a check across all social channels, as well as the most popular domains
2. Don’t be disheartened. If the name you’re after isn’t available there are other ways around this. You can add extra words around your name, popular ones include “app,” “get,” “weare” and “hello.” If you’re in a service-based industry, you can try adding your offering in the name. You can also try adding other elements, like hyphens or an underscore for social media.
3. Alternative domains. There are now a lot more options for domain names than just “.com”. Lots of top level domains have Lots of top-level domains have appeared like “.co” and ones specific to your geographic location like “.co” and ones specific to your geographic location
   

05 — Likeable

It goes without saying that you have to love your new business name and feel confident about putting it out into the world. That’s why we recommend brainstorming lots of different name ideas and taking the time to mull them over before selecting your final winner

One last thing to remember: Businesses rebrand all the time, but doing so costs time, effort and money. Try your best to get the name right on the first attempt to ensure your business is off to the best possible start!

Making memorable brand names is something we specialise in at Ratio. If you’d like to know more about how we can help, please contact us