How to Choose the Best Name for Your Business
What’s in a name? A lot, and especially when it comes to startup success. The name of your company has a huge impact on how customers, partners and investors view you. The right name can give your company a real advantage over competitors, while the wrong one can doom you to obscurity and, ultimately, failure.
Coming up with a name sounds easy but, with so much riding on it, it’s easier said than done. You want to create a name that resonates with your audience and conveys the expertise, value, and uniqueness of the product or service you’ve developed. And, with 400,000 businesses born each year, you don’t want to get lost in the noise because of a mediocre name. Not to mention, compelling URLs are harder than ever to come by.
Not sounding so easy now, is it?
To help you choose a killer name for your business, here’s what I learned in coming up with a name for my brand, The Bouqs Company, and a few things to consider before you start designing a logo and company swag:
Descriptive vs. Lean-In
Typically, you have two options when choosing a name: descriptive or lean-in. Descriptive names provide an immediate explanation of what your business is all about. Take Fiji Water, for example. The name tells you right away what it is: water from Fiji. The name doesn’t leave you guessing.
Think of what your business does and write down different terms for it (make the thesaurus your best friend). Even if you don’t want your company name to be a simple description of what you do, these key terms can help spark ideas for a more unusual name.
Lean-in names, on the other hand, cause people to wonder, question and research. Which, when it comes to a budding startup, can be a good thing. While most of us know what companies like Uber and Google do, I think we can all agree it’s not because of their name.
There’s no real method for coming up with lean-in names. Have fun with it. Use descriptive or associative terms to come up with something unique. For instance, Microsoft is a lean-in name based off of two descriptive terms: microcomputers (what we now know as PCs) and software.
When coming up with “The Bouqs Company” for our cut-to-order online flower delivery service, we took a bit of different route. We combined the descriptive and lean-in approach to create a suggestive name; a name that is descriptive enough (Bouqs being short for Bouquets), but different enough and not-super-obvious such that it causes people to ask, “What’s that?” Once they’ve asked that question, they’ve leaned in, and you have a chance to hook them with your story.
How do you decide whether to go with a descriptive name, a lean-in name, or a mix of the two? Take these three things into consideration when deciding which route to take:
1. Your mission.
Your mission should be a leading factor in naming your company. While it doesn’t have to be blatantly obvious in the name itself, it should serve as inspiration.
For us, our mission was to improve the process of purchasing flowers online, from bait-and-switch pricing to cheesy upsells (how much more for off-brand chocolates?) to hidden fees. We wanted to simplify the process and provide an all-around better experience and product. “Bouqs” is an elegant and simplified form of the word bouquet, and that’s exactly what we wanted to achieve as a business.
2. Your competition.
Just as you considered the competition in your market when coming up with the idea for your business, it’s equally important to take the competition into consideration when coming up with a name. When it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), you want a name that won’t get lost in the crowd.
We could have gone with a name that included the words “flower” or “bloom” — as so many others do. But that was the problem — many others do. It would have been difficult to move the SEO needle in our direction due to big name brands with deep-rooted histories and a TON of businesses with those terms in their names.
Having a similar name to the competition stunts your growth from the get-go. Instead, we went with the term ‘Bouqs’ (and trademarked it). If you search for “bouqs,” we’re all that shows up — not just the first or second link, but pages and pages deep in any major search engine — and that’s how it should be. While choosing a one-of-a-kind brand name can put you on a longer journey toward building a name for your business (pun intended), it’s key to setting your brand apart from the competition.
3. Your gut.
When it comes to naming your business, the ultimate deciding factor should really be your gut instinct. After all, it’s your business, and you have to be happy using that name in your email address, social media accounts, company gear and more. You absolutely have to love it.
Not everyone will like the name you choose, but don’t let that dissuade you. I could have changed my company’s name after “Shark” investor Barbara Corcoran dissed it on national television, but I chose to stick to my guns (and gut). What she thinks is complicated and hard to spell, I feel is fun and key to setting the company apart. To each, his or her own, of course. But make sure you love that name when you start, and you love it the entire way. After all, it’s yours!
What tips do you have for naming a business? Let us know in the comments below!
John Tabis is the founder and CEO of The Bouqs Company, a cut-to-order online flower delivery service. Connect with John and @TheBouqs on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
