We talked last week about the qualities of a good small business name, now this week we’re going to focus on the key steps in the naming process. We recommend using a professional for the development of your business name, and regardless of who you work with, this process should include certain key steps:
- Conduct competitor research and identify trends and opportunity. Starting the naming process with a competitive review enables you to assess the strengths and weaknesses of your competitor’s names. This in turn will help determine where to focus your positioning and branding efforts for your naming strategy. Finding a name that stands out from the crowd of competitors is a huge opportunity that you don’t want to miss!
- Develop a naming strategy that aligns with the business vision and performance goals. The more specific your business vision and goals are, the more effective name can be developed. A great name seamlessly integrates with a company’s business vision and goals. This is also an important step in the process because you don’t want to box yourself in with a company name that limits your product or services offering.
- Explore numerous different attributes, descriptors and word associations. Creating a list of descriptive words for your company and industry can not only focus the direction that the naming brainstorm will take, but can also help generate a much larger list of creative and unique names during the brainstorming process.
- Solidify domain and trademark availability. This could perhaps be the toughest step of all! Trademarks can get you into a lot of trouble later on down the line if your company name infringes on some else’s trademark, so our suggestion is to do a preliminary trademark check on your top 3-5 names, which will hopefully yield at least a few names for you to work with to solidify a domain name. Finding an available domain name can be a very frustrating, tricky process. The larger the web gets, the harder it is to find an available name. That’s where creativity and expertise in the naming process can help.
Using a focused naming process for your small business that includes these key steps will lead to a name that is unique, fresh, and a powerful part of your brand.
