How To Pick A Business Name That Sells - Developing A Business Name For Success
This article on developing a business name is is based on content summarized from the book titled Zag by Marty Neumeier.
In the book Marty outlines 7 keys to creating a good name. They are
7 Keys To Developing A Business Name
1. Differentiated
2. Brief
3. Appropriate
4. Easy To Spell
5. Satisfying To Pronounce
6. Sustainable For Brand Play
7. Legally Defensible
After reading the book I took each of the above seven to mean the following.
1. Differentiated
This is pretty straight forward, basically, it just needs to stand out from your competitors' names. An additional interesting point though that he outlines is that your name should stand out from other words in a sentence. This makes sense, if your company's name is in a sentence you want people to know it is a company name and you want people to immediately see your company name.
2. Brief
He advises 4 syllables or less. His thought here is that if it is more then 4 people will abbreviated, which could be detrimental to your brand if it is not intended to be abbreviated.
3. Appropriate
His advice here is to use a word that is not too descriptive that it could be used as a descriptor in a sentence instead of a name. If this can easily occur it will cause confusion. He states that when you hear the sound of the word it should also just feel appropriate to what your business does.
4. Easy To Spell
This is straight forward and exactly the title. I think the reasons for this are obvious.
5. Satisfying To Pronounce
The ideas here is that if people like the way it sounds and the way it feels to say they will say it more often. If they don't they will say it less. Anyway to get people to say your name more is a good thing. Things that can make a name sound great are having the first or last letters of words be the same, have recurring sounds in the name or have the name rhyme. A great example is Coca-Cola.
6. Sustainable For Brand Play
Basically this means your name easily opens doors to great communications, advertising, graphics etc. Basically it leaves the door open and makes creativity easy for when using your brand.
7. Legally Defensible
His final advice is that you want a name that does not sound like or look like other trade marks. This will make it easy for you to protect your own brand and also avoid costly legal fees from other existing companies who might think you are infringing on their trademark.
Once you have a name picked that meets the above criteria you may what to download our FREE Business Logo Design Guide as it will give you some good advice for making an image to got with your new name.
For some free business name ideas check out the website http://www.naming.net
That is it. I know this was useful for me when I created my company name. Hopefully if you are reading this article you have found it useful as well. If you are you starting up a new business and looking for an easy to use, low cost and flexible accounting program check out ours. You can find it at http://www.profitworks.ca/easy-to-use-accounting-software
If you are starting a new company I would highly recommend you incorporate to protect your personal assets in the unfortunate case your business goes bankrupt or is taken to court for a large sum of money. Incorporating can be a very low cost expense and probably the best financial protection you get get you can get for yourself when starting a business. The last thing you want to have happen is that your business goes bankrupt, either because if fails or is taken to court and ordered to pay a large sum, and then have to sell your house or personal belongings. A service I would recommend if your company is based in the US is CorpNet. If your company is based in Canada I have not found a company that I was overly happy with so I did it myself. If you feel up to the task, there is a lot of helpful information on how to do this on industry Canada's website.
My name is Chris R. Keller and I help small business in Kitchener and Waterloo, Ontario, Canada generate new customers. If you are interested in keeping up to date on issues related to generating new customers for B2B small businesses consider subscribing by email to this blog. I hope you have found this article on developing a business name helpful and insightful.
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