HOW TO NAME YOUR BUSINESS

HOW TO NAME YOUR BUSINESS

A brand’s name is almost everything to itself. Having a strong and memorable name that sticks to a consumer’s mind shows the start of a great brand which lets your customers remember you easily while you’re building a connection instantaneously. Your brand’s logo and name are essential to creating your overall brand image, so make it the best you can think of. You ready? Let’s do this!

First off, you’ll need 3 necessary names to begin with: Your BRAND NAME, your TRADE NAME and your DOMAIN NAME. (Shoutout to my website hosting team over at Hostrident.com)

1. A Brand name is the label or identifier to distinguish yourself from other businesses. Ex. My brand’s name is Sole Slam (Originally Sole Slam Manila)

2. A trade name is used for business purposes and is also applicable if your business is incorporated in some way. Ex. My brand Sole Slam’s trade name is Sole Slam Industries Inc. since it is a corporation.

3. A domain name is the name of your website. Ex. My website for Sole Slam is www.soleslam.com

Here’s 4 important tips for coming up with a brand name c/o the Hostrident.com Team:

1. Make sure to opt for a namesake brand and use your own name as much as possible.
2. Use a brand name generator online. There’s plenty of them if you need to look for one.
3. List keywords that just pop up into your head when thinking about your brand and try mixing combinations of those words, then see if it makes any sense to you.
4. Hire naming experts (ahem, yeah that’s me) to help come up with a new name. I’ve helped hundreds of companies with their brand names, startup or expansion brands, even renames for older brands.

4 important things to take note of:
1. Your name is an important visible attribute because it will appear in all of your marketing materials.
2. Register your name as a trademark at least first with an IPO to prevent others from using your name. When another company uses your name, you can sue them for using your registered trademark name easily.
3. Triple check to make sure your name isn’t already being used in the industry to avoid tedious and expensive legal issues down the road. Imagine having a successful brand name in a year, only to find out that a dormant company owns the rights to your namesake. Let’s avoid that disaster, shall we?
4. Along with your logo, the name is the first touch point with your customers. Make sure it blends well with your logo. Usually the name comes first before the logo, but I’ve seen logos come first before a name.

5 things to avoid doing AKA my mistakes before:
1. DO NOT adopt a brand name that is arguably immoral, scandalous, deceptive and misleading. You do not want to be infamous as a brand. It’s stressful.
2. Avoid using words that are likely to become outdated. Think about the future of your brand. Most brands die fast because they base it on fads.
3. Always get the written permission of a living person if you’re going to use their name as your brand. Example, if you decide to use my name as your clothing brand, get a written permission from me directly.
4. If you plan to expand to foreign markets, check to make sure that your name doesn’t mean anything inappropriate to your target market. It’s also worth noting to make it easy to comprehend as well.
5. Don’t even think about super long names and long syllables. Also, names with strange wordings and unusual spelling as a big no-no, including names that are hard to pronounce. There’s a reason why H&M’s name is that and not what those 2 letters mean instead.

We continue on Monday’s blog (November 30) with the Pros and Cons on using your own name as the brand name.

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What people talk 1 Comment

December 14, 2020 Khel Lawrence

These are great tips to consider because it is really difficult to come up with a company name. For me, I focus on the core values of the company and its vision.

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