How To Name Your Startup
Pulling your hair out naming your startup business or product?
You are not alone.
It’s a daunting challenge to tie your brand identity up in one, two or three words.
Why? When you pick the wrong name “one that doesn’t resonate with customers, is difficult to pronounce or spell or is too close to another business’s name” it could tarnish your brand, SEO and bottom line. According to Entrepreneur magazine columnist Jodi Helmer, in Naming Your Business, Consider these 3 Steps First.
How to Name Your Product or Company
A good name has layers of meaning and association, evokes emotion and is easy to pronounce. It sets your company apart from the competition and creates an emotional bond with customers.
Name to Take Over the World.
“While a descriptive name can help your product get discovered in search marketing, ultimately, such a name will probably limit your business. If you have taking-over-the world-sized ambitions, follow the Apple model. In a world of International Business Machines and Microsoft, Apple’s more abstract name allowed them to move from computers to music players and phones without consumers balking. It has brand extensibility.” Says Michael Trigg, COO HIghtail in his article “7 Tips for Naming (or Re-Naming) Your Company.”
Meet the design team that wrote this article.
A name is brand equity.
Take it from Debra Lamfers, Brand and Packaging Specialist at Lamfers and Associates. “When developed strategically, a good name can make your marketing easier and less costly over the long term. A good name will also become more and more valuable over the life of the brand. We call it brand equity, and it’s something you can start building immediately by choosing your name strategically.”
Make it Impossible for Me to Forget You.
According to Steven Mason, author of Names that got Game: 4 Steps To A Killer Name & Getting Buy-In: “DON’T go generic. If I want to name a new plumbing company, Sewer Rats is pretty cool. Quality #1 Plumbing is an absolute failure because it is absolutely generic, unmemorable, unremarkable, unbrandable, etc.”
Knowing Who You are is the First Step to Naming.
Take a look at the cover image of this blog post. Who you think you are, and who you really are may be different things.
When we market ourselves, one of the first milestones is establishing a persona. If your company were a person, what would they be like?
Just like building a persona, we begin the naming process by brainstorming the positive attributes of your product or company. You can do this by yourself, or with a group.
- How does this product make you feel? Comforted? Cool? Young? Protected? Wild?
- What does this product stand for? Modernity? Heritage? Authenticity? Motherhood? America?
Then brainstorm a list of words you would never want to be associated with.
- What does this product fight against? Tackiness? Disposability? Uniformity? Inequality? Sadness?
Attributes provide a creative boundary for people with too many ideas, and an inspiration for people without any ideas.
Urbandictionary.com is a Cheap Insurance Policy
The worst thing is to misunderstand what the public thinks of your brand. A group of people is a great tool to understand all the possible word associations and colloquial meanings. But when the decision makers around you are a little too much alike, here’s a quick insurance policy against naming accidents: Spend 15 minutes on the popular website urbandictionary.com. Search, search, search before you order business cards. You may be surprised what means what to a different demographic of people.
Clap Twice, Think Once.
“One of the best constraints I’ve found with startup naming is to try to stick to 2 syllables, says Joel Gascoinge, of Buffer in a recent article How to Name Your Startup.
Just look at some examples of two syllable names:
- Apple
- DropBox
- Hulu
- Flickr
Why Not Have Nature on Your Side? Name with Symmetry.
Why do we like pairs of similar sounding syllables? People are wired to like symmetry and order. according to livescience.com article, “…bilateral symmetry must have evolved for a reason, the thinking goes. And over the years, scientists have come up with a number of hypotheses about what that reason might be. According to one, a body that is bilaterally symmetrical is easier for the brain to recognize while in different orientations and positions, thus making visual perception easier.” Just like faces, we gauge music, design, beauty, nature, architecture with symmetry. So why not names? Twit/ter, Drop/box, Go/ogle, Hu/lu contain pairs of similar sounding syllables, and satisfy our taste for the bilaterally symmetrical.
The digital moat strategy
When we establish a client’s online presence at Focus Product Design, we work with clients to protect their brand identity by purchasing multiple domain names. .net, .cool, .org, .biz, .co — the list goes on. Also, if reasonable cost, to buy out any domain names containing phonetic spellings of their company or product name. This way as the list of available trademarkable names shrinks, your company will be safe from look-alike sounds-alike internet domain copycats.
Work Around Trademarks with a Little Creativity
The trademarkability, domain name availability, and the results of a Google search will determine how you name your company or product. Securing URLs and trademarks can be the most difficult part of naming a company. But misspelling a word or making one up for the sake of getting the domain name will just confuse people.
For example, a work around is adding words to your company name. Take the example from CEO Joel Gascoigne, “My current startup is named Buffer, but the domain name is bufferapp.com.”
You can always change your domain name, if you don’t get what you want on day one. Temporary domain names were used by many successful startups, such as:
- Square was squareup.com
- DropBox was getdropbox.com
- Facebook was thefacebook.com
- Instagram was instagr.am
- Twitter was twttr.com
- Foursquare was playfoursquare.com
Tick, Tick, Tick…
The clock is ticking. As you read this article, fewer and fewer names are readily available. Why? People broker domain names for profit. Most real words have already been bought out. You are likely to have to buy someone out for the name you want.
Naming your company or product can be an enjoyable process if you experiment with the guidelines above and keep an open mind.
Meet the design team that wrote this article.
Want to learn from the experts? Click on the links below to read the full articles cited in the blog.
Jodi Helmer’s Naming Your Business, Consider these 3 Steps First. January, 2014.
Steven Mason’s article Names that got Game: 4 Steps To A Killer Name & Getting Buy-In. January, 2015.
The Live Science article livescience.com
Michael Trigg’s article 7 Tips for Naming (or Re Naming) Your Company August, 2014.
Joel Gascoinge, Buffer, article How to Name Your Startup July, 2014.
Debra Lamfers, Lamfers and Associates. Coming Up with a Name that Sticks. November, 2015.
