Once you have your business or product name, the next item on the list is to register the name.
Register Your Product and Business Name
This page follows on from How To Name Your New Product or Business – Part I
It is very important that your business or product name is clear, descriptive and memorable.
If it is a business you are working on launching (e.g. an online service) then make sure you register your business name with the appropriate authorities in your country. Every country has its own requirements for this step so you will have to go online and research what is required.
There are many reasons to register the business name including compliance and tax but above all you want to ensure that you can use that business name in your country. Most countries won’t allow you to register a name that is the same or substantially the same as another business in the same or a similar market.
If you are registering a business called McDonalds Bookkeeping and there isn’t another bookkeeping company with that exact name then you will probably be granted registration. But if you want to name your business McDonalds Hamburgers you may not!
Sometimes this is another opportunity to put a THE in front of the name you want if it isn’t approved as you originally requested it.
Don’t skip this step because above all you want to know that you are protected from someone else registering your name and you later finding you have to change your name.
If it is a product you are creating then you absolutely must register your trade mark (see below).
Buy your domain name
Once you have made your decision on a name, you absolutely must buy the domain name if you can.
When you buy the name you will be asked if you want one, two or five year’s registration.
Here are some of the considerations:
- The more years you buy the cheaper it is per year
- Google makes decisions about how authentic an online business is based on many criteria, one of which, is length of time of domain name ownership, having said that, Google changes its algorithms frequently and that may not always be a consideration
- Consider buying several versions of the one domain. For example if the dot com is available as well as your country’s domain for the same name then perhaps you consider buying both – more as protection from someone else owning your domain name in your local market, than the need to have two domain names to manage.
- If you have another market in mind (for example a country you are planning to launch in the future), such as the UK market, you may consider buying the .co.uk version of your domain name for a year if it is available
- Make sure that the email address you use when registering your domain name is your most permanent email address because domain name registrations come up for renewal every year or two (depending on what you select). You will want to make sure you are contactable when your domain name requires renewal.
You may also be asked if you want a private registration which means that if someone wants to know who owns your domain name they can’t look that up on the public domain. I have never bothered with private registration, but it may be important to you.
Long names and hyphens
As the internet gets older and more domain names get registered, there appears to be a tendency to create extremely long domain names. I would avoid this if you can. Although there is a lot of clicking that goes on to get to your website, so perhaps you are not concerned about people having to type in your domain name, there are many times when you will have to write out your domain name and a long name is a huge issue when it needs to be written down.
This is especially evident in your advertising. On Facebook, on brochures, business cards, online advertising just about anywhere you intend to advertise your product, you will be writing “Buy online at www.abcdefgh.com” If the URL is really long that will always be problematic for you.
In the early days of the internet there was a tendency to put hyphens into domain names. That was mainly due to people not being aware that a string of letters would or could spell out several different words. So instead of having a domain name that was unitedtravelinsurance.com it would have been united-travel-insurance.com
But the internet and its billions of users have matured now and we know that there are often several words in there and we know to look for them.
So what’s wrong with a hyphen? It is mostly problematic when you are saying a domain name out loud. Imagine yourself having a conversation with a potential customer and you have to say blah hyphen blah dot com. Rather than blahblah dot com. Much easier to remember and as I say, no real need for the hyphen these days.
Unfortunately like many things to do with the online world, there is an exception to this and that is when someone is trying to own a particular keyword or group of keywords in organic search. In this instance they will want to own all the variations of a specific keyword or long tail keyword.
This is a very common strategy utilized by members of affiliate advertising programs who want to own every derivative and variation of a common search term.
Trademark your product/brand names
While it is important to register your business name and your domain name there is one final very important step. You must trademark your name.
The trademark is usually a visual registration that encompasses the name, the logo design, its colours and its industry/use.
This is to prevent anyone else from having a similar name business doing the same thing as you in your geography or industry. The last thing you want to happen is for you to find your hard earned dollars are promoting someone else’s business.
Worse still, that you can’t own your own name because it was never available in the first place.
Registering a trademark can cost a bit of money but it is an absolute must.
Patents
This leads to the consideration of patents. This really goes beyond the scope of this book, but I wanted to make sure that it was mentioned so that, should you have invented something unique for your business, that you will take the time to get some advice on the application of a patent.
Patents can be very costly and so it isn’t something you would go into lightly, but if you have indeed something to protect, the protection will be far less costly than losing your idea to someone else down the track.
The Business Plan Template
At the very least, take the time to fill out the business plan template provided on this blog. I have made sure that the most vital elements are covered. But please note, if you are planning at any stage to apply for finance or seek an investor then you will need to complete a more comprehensive business plan.
The business plan template provided with on this blog covers the minimum. Should you require a more comprehensive version, there are plenty on Google.