You many not think that naming your company or product is all that important, but of course any marketing professional will tell you otherwise.
Please don’t give your company its name by using your initials and please don’t call your product a name that no one can pronounce or spell. You would be wise to take some advice on the name game.
Here’s a start:
How to name your new product or business
This step is worth spending a lot of time on – I always do. No matter what your business is going to be, whether it’s a product or a service, you will be building a brand and that brand begins with the name you choose at this vital point in the process.
It can be a daunting process and you may feel that all the good names are taken. But they have not! Get out the dictionary and a large piece of paper and be prepared to try dozens of different ideas and spellings. I would of course, suggest you hire a professional agency for this and if you have the budget, then do that! But many new entrepreneurs just don’t have the budget.
Get family and friends involved. Once you have a few ideas, test them out on other people. I once had a name that I was very 50/50 on, and once I tried it out on others, I was 100% on it. My family and friends were right, it was a raging success!
Since you are going to be selling online you will ideally need to find a name that is available as a domain name. Go to one of the domain name suppliers like Go Daddy (www.godaddy.com) and type your proposed name into their domain name search tool on their home page.
Let’s say you want to name your film business “ScreenGoddess” and you find that the dot com domain is not available, then there are several things you can do:
- Add a different extension to your domain for example .com.au or .co.uk or .com.fr and preferably use the extension for the country you will be launching in first.
- Add “The” to the beginning and search again for TheScreenGoddess.com
- There are new domain name extensions being released all the time, so be sure to check them out too (eg .biz)
Before you opt for a close variation to an existing domain name ensure that you are not in the same business or location as the existing domain name owner. Specifically that you will not be competing for and confusing the same customers.
Own your domain name
I can’t stress enough that owning your domain name (or URL) is vital for an online business. If you aren’t quite ready to launch your business and reading this book at a very early stage, I would suggest if you have a name in mind that you test the domain name availability now and purchase it for just 12 months. That will usually only cost you a few dollars. There would be nothing worse than to come back to this in six months’ time and find that someone else has registered your name.
Be strong in your name resolve. If you find that the absolute ideal name is taken in every single domain you want, then I would suggest you go back to the drawing board. I did that once and I still mourn the name I couldn’t have because someone else had it. I wasn’t even launching a product that would be sold exclusively online, but I was extremely committed to owning the domain name and so I just had to go with my plan B name.
Suggestions on how to find a name and how to brainstorm a name may include using an online thesaurus and typing in some of the words that describe your product and looking for less common terms for the same thing (synonyms).
Keep a piece of paper with you at all times and jot down names as they come to you then research them online later.
Always check on the meaning of words you use in your business name, making sure they are not derogatory or inadvertently offensive in some obscure way.
Look for anagrams, alliteration and spoonerisms. Also look for fun ways of saying something very ordinary and common, for example using a play on words for a cookbook and calling it “Stirring Events” (which by the way, at the time of writing is available as StirringEvents.com, so don’t listen to people when they tell you all the good names are taken).
Just do your best to come up with a name that will work with your USP and preferably has a good domain name available.
Further reading: How to Name Your New Product or Business – Part II