3 Creative Techniques for Building a Captivating Brand Name
Make a Great First Impression on Your Clients by Using This Technique When Coming Up With a Name
Every company owner should have a clear grasp of the kind of brand name that would be most effective for their startup and niche before starting their quest for a fantastic name.
But what if you don't know where to start? What if you struggle to ignite your creativity? Or maybe you worked on it for days, weeks, or even months, but your name still lacks that creative oomph?
Naming is a critical part of starting a business and branding, and tons of new entrepreneurs struggle with overcoming this challenge. So, we've designed this short naming guide based on what we’ve discovered while assisting more than 35,000 founders in finding exciting business name ideas.
Let's get started.
Three Smart Steps to Crafting the Best Company Name
1. Understand Your Brand Completely
Your brand's name is a complete embodiment of your business’s identity, and so it is something you have to understand before starting your journey to the perfect name. Doing this would help you avoid misrepresenting your brand.
Now, when we refer to a brand, we do not mean your business. Your business is what you do and the services you provide, whereas your brand symbolizes who you are as a company and how you want your clients to see and interact with you. Understanding your brand will help you know what name fits your goals and services.
Consider the consultant firm Accenture. Whenever you come across the name, what emotions does it stir up within you? To us, the name has a refined, classy, and modern tone. The name works excellently well for one of the most prestigious consulting firms in the world.
But you could not name a regular tech product like the iPhone or Alexa like that because it wouldn’t fit with their brand identity.
Therefore, at the end of the day, you should be able to properly picture your brand and know what should and shouldn't work for it. You can do that by carving out time to visualize your brand’s personality.
- What should my business look and feel like?
- What does my business value?
- What tone should it communicate?
- What kinds of emotions should it awaken in my customers?
2. Brainstorm
Now comes the exciting part: the actual naming! If you have a team, gather them together in a quiet place, and grab a whiteboard, some pens, a notebook, and a marker. Then, let your creativity run wild.
Remember that this creative stage is simply for coming up with names and not evaluating them. So, you don’t need to examine the words you come up with. Simply unleash your imagination and go with the flow.
Don't just cherry-pick and write down only good name ideas; list bad names as well. We highly urge you to list all your ideas, including those you're not so sure make sense. You never know how useful they could turn out to be. Here are some essential tools and resources to add that flair and excitement to your namestorming process:
- Thesaurus
- Brand name generators
- Visual words, maybe about a specific color
- Industry jargon
- Rhyme
Furthermore, having a diverse group of people of all ages on your creative team is also essential since their opinions on fresh and current vs. traditional and trustworthy names will provide you with a unique perspective.
By the end of the brainstorming session, ensure you have at least 200 potential business name ideas. Doing this will give you a lot of potential brand names to pick from.
3. Select and Verify
Now we focus on analyzing each name and narrowing down the list you’ve gathered. Ask yourself the following questions when analyzing each name:
- Does the name align with what my brand represents? For example, Gmail works because it perfectly describes the services the business offers.
- Does it match my desired brand tone? If you want your company to have a fun tone, you need a name like Jollibee.
- Does it sound good in the ears? Is it catchy? Think Groupon and WhatsApp.
- Is it easy to spell and pronounce? Think Apple and Amazon.
- Does it support future growth? For instance, Google is such a versatile name that the company didn't need to rebrand as it scaled.
You could add your unique questions to the checklist; just ensure your questions are customer and brand-focused.
At times, your finalist might not be a single name but maybe around five to ten names, and that's okay because the final step of the validation process would further narrow it down.
Don’t be in a hurry to start celebrating after gathering the top names from your brainstorming because your ideal names must first pass a few more tests. This final step of the validation process ensures that the name(s) you chose would be acceptable and available.
So, go ahead and validate by checking for:
- Audience Feedback: Customer comments are essential for authenticating your brand name. You can accomplish this by getting honest feedback from friends, family members, or even complete strangers that fall within your target age demographics. Feel free to walk up to them, tell them what you’re doing, and ask for their honest feedback.
- A Matching Domain Name: A website is essential for all companies, as is a good domain name. So be sure you check and determine if the desired domain name is still available for your use or if you’d have to buy it from someone else. In a perfect world, getting immediate access to nameofyourbusiness.com shouldn't be a problem. But typically, things don't work out like this, and getting it could cost you a lot of money.
- Trademark Availability: Although you might find this procedure particularly enjoyable, it could essentially save you a lot of future legal trouble. Enlisting the aid of a legal professional can help you more accurately assess if the name of your business passes the trademark test.
Conclusion
Your company's performance and earnings can increase with the help of a catchy and memorable name, as well as give you the advantage you need to beat out the competition. Selecting a brand name that connects with your company's identity is an amazing way to get your target market fired up about your firm.
Grant Polachek is the head of branding for Squadhelp.com, 3X Inc 5000 startup and disruptive naming agency. Squadhelp has reviewed more than 1 million names and curated a collection of the best available names on the web today. We are also the world's leading crowdsource naming platform, supporting clients from early-stage startups to Fortune 500 companies.
