Name a business

Corporate branding is now one of the most important aspects of running a successful business and it all starts with a name.

Here I will attempt to underline some of the things you should consider when you are researching a name for your business.

Choosing or Changing your business name

There are many tools and wizards online to help you choose an accurate business name, but there is nobody who undersatnds your business as well as you, so there is no substitute for sitting down with a cup of tea and a thesaurus and doing a little brainstorming.

There are several things you may first want to consider.

What products do you sell?

What service do you provide?

The answer to both of these questions needs to be carefully considered. The best chance your business has is if the name perfectly describes what you do, or is very well branded to your company. The latter can be hard to do without a very large budget and exposure, so for now we will focus on how to find names which perfectly describe what you do or sell.

The first thing to decide is your primary service or product. If you offer several, is there an existing term to describe the collective offerings of your company? If you are not sure of this, have a look at some of your competitors, or maybe try and see how they categorise themselves in directories such as dmoz or the yahoo directory. It is worth considering the categorisation of your business from the consumer’s perpective- as an example, I have another business, which is an architectural ironmongers. Architectural ironmongers is a term well known within the industry, but it unfamiliar to almost anybody with no experience of it. Essentially, the business sells door furniture, such as handles, locks and latches, with the main product being door handles. The name is now brnaded around door handles, as this is what the majority of customers are looking for, and they know the company provides them instantly (by contrast if the business was named ‘architectural ironmongery uk’ for example, it would alienate the retail sector who are unfamiliar with the term). Obviously, there are many factors involved in this decision, but my point is really that you should consider the name of your business from a customer’s perspective also.

Its like the spate of business naming that went aroud 20 years ago, where there were countless numbers of ‘A. A. Builders, A1plumbing etc- in desperate attempts to be noticed in phonebooks- the same is true today, but in directory listings, internet search engines and the mind of your customer, it is important to be accurate with your name.

Generic Success

Strong generic keywords that are directly linked to the primary element of your company are very useful in a business name, but where can you find inspiration for these? A good place to look is on a search engine such as google. You can find inspiration from results about your industry keyword, but if you use the keywords tool from google and select the synonyms option, you can get some valuable suggestions, as well as the vlume of searches each month- this can be very useful in determining consumer search habits surrounding your industry.

Deriving a business name from a domain name

If your business will have an online presence, and especially if a large amount of business will be from online endeavours, it may be an idea to base your company name around a domain name that is available to you. Try searching various domain name sites, such as Accurate Name for names relating to your term. You can search for names available to register at most registrars, but be warned, many of these searches are monitored, and you may be disppointed to find a name which was available when you first checked it, has been taken by a company monitoring the search when you come back. Names purchased from a domain broker, such as ourselves, may cost more than just the registration fee, but there are many benefits which certainly outweigh this cost.

Firstly, all the best generic names have been registered. Lets take an example. Let’s say you have a shoe shop, you will be disappointed to see that not only was shoes.com registered in 1994, shoeshop.com in 1997, but also countless variants in different extensions, with every common prefix and suffix in the dictionary. Quite simply, this is because the better names with have a positive effect on the business behind them, whereas worse names can even have a detrimental effect on the company involved - “why?” I hear you ask:-

Authority
Bigger, better, generic names carry with them a natural authority - the consumer will see “Shoes.com” as a reliable, stable, serious business - “Bobsshoesandflipflops.biz” will not carry the same connotations. This trust can be achieved through huge spends on advertising, or by carefully choosing a great name in the first place. The top generic names are often referred to as “category killers” - as they do just that.

Traffic

Some generic names will carry natural search traffic - that is, a ready pool of customers who instinctively type the name with no prior knowledge of the business, just an assumption that it exists- this is only the case with the strongest names, but these “ready-made” customers convert into very real money, so the names are the first to go, and carry the highest prices.

Here we have just touched on some of the most basic fundamentals involved whn you are trying to name your business, there are so many factors involved, and so many which are specific to different business and niches that we cannot even attempt to cover them all, but if you are looking for help nameing your business, then please contact us and we can suggest names to you based on your criteria - just use the contact button above!

We hope to add to this article, developing the importance of branding, and looking at names which are ‘brandable’, as opposed to ‘generic’. This is a hugely important alternative, and often the option companies look to go with to create a unique brand, so come back soon, subscribe to our rss feed, or sign up for our newsletter!

Accurate Names

This question may seem incredibly obvious to anybody reading. At its most basic level, lets look at it this way My name is Chris, you would not get my attention with a “BOB!” or “PETE!”, well, certainly not as quickly!

There’s very little difference in the fundamental principals of internet domain names. The more accurate a name is to the product, service or information is, the more likely it is to grab a net surfer’s attention.

One of the most important elements in determining a domain’s value is to look at the number of people who search for that phrase each month. There are a number of tools that can do this including wordtracker, old yahoo overture data and google keyword analysis. These metrics help show the domain’s potential, as an accurate name to a searched term leads to benefits in search engine ranking for that term. It is also possible to determine the (approximate) amount of type-in traffic a domain receives, and this is a very valuable asset to a domain. Domains which are extremely accurate are very valuable, and generic domains with direct type-ins usually convert into the highest advertising yields.

This site was formed to allow the marketing of a collection of premium domain names to the public brands which will benefit the most. To stay up to date with th latest domains to come on sale please be sure to sign up for the newsletter.