How to Come Up With a Brand Name
A unique brand name is more than just a label for your business – it's the foundation of your brand. A solid and memorable brand name sets the tone for your business, helps you stand out in a crowded market, and creates an emotional connection with your target audience. In today's highly competitive business landscape, it's more important than ever to have a distinctive brand name that effectively communicates what your business is about and why it's different from the rest. Whether you're just starting a business or rebranding an existing one, investing in a unique brand name is essential in building a successful brand. Here are steps for how to come up with a brand name for your business.
Step 1: Gather Information About Your Company
You should lay the groundwork when you come up with a brand name. You are the driving force behind your brand, so don’t think of a name and then build a brand around it. The best way to develop a new brand name is by taking an objective view at the company.
Things to consider;
What are you trying to achieve?
What do you want to be known for?
Could you define your mission statement, vision statement and goals?
What are your business core values?
Step 2: Identify Your Target Audience
You can't expect everyone to love your brand. You'll need to know who you want to attract because their interests will help you figure out what kind of name is right for you. Consider your audience's age, gender and interests when brainstorming potential names.
Be specific about who these individuals are and what sort of language they speak. Use buyer personas to create a record of your target audience and work around them. Try to get inside their head as much as possible and develop a brand around them. This will help develop a name that makes sense to them and builds loyalty with your future and potential customers.
Step 3: Consider Your Brand's Personality
Once you’ve nailed down your target audience and buyer personas, utilize this information to determine your brand's personality. Your brand persona should reflect your company values and be relatable to your ideal customer. Put your audience first, determine how you want them to perceive your brand, and build a personality around that. It may be helpful to determine the tone and voice of your company to understand the language needed to communicate with your audience. Is it serious or playful? Do you want it to be aspirational? What do you want people to think when they hear it? Maybe your brand takes on a more analogue identity, then envision your brand as a city, animal, car, or plant.
Try to identify an archetype for your brand and decide what sort of human feelings it would communicate as if your brand was alive. This thinking process will help you and others better understand the emotion you’re trying to evoke with your brand. Is your brand an Explorer in search for freedom, a Ruler driven by control or a Sage looking for answers and understanding? This is the first step in carving out a distinct and unique personality.
Step 4: Conduct Competitive Research
You can learn a lot from the names that other brands have chosen and how they’ve built their brands. You need to find out what brands are already in the market doing what you want to do and how they're doing it.
After researching your competition, think about how you can stand out from them by being different from what they're offering and offering something that no one else has been able to provide.
Step 5: Brainstorm
Start by brainstorming a list of words that describe your business and its products or services. Keep it simple; jot down as many ideas as possible. Don't censor yourself; write everything down, and don't worry about picking the perfect name or whether it's good or bad just yet.
Consider these categories for possible names:
* Functional and descriptive: General Motors, Whole Foods, WordPress
* Experiential: Hungry-Man, Land Rover, Band-Aid
* Evocative: Yahoo, Apple, London Fog
* Acronym and initials: BMW, IBM, 3M
* Invented: Google, Motorola, Tic-Tac
* Hybrid: Travelocity, Pinterest, Facebook
* Referential: Adidas, Disney, Amazon
* Personification: Betty Crocker, Uncle Ben, Wendy’s
Don’t just stop at one or two names; create a long list before narrowing down the list to your top 3-5. This is the best part of the process! Have fun with it!
Step 6: Brand Name Check
Once you’ve created your list of possible brand names, you must do your due diligence and check if other businesses have taken the words and names that you’ve chosen. The easiest way to do this is by simply searching to check if your preferred domain is available. And if the name has already been registered as a business based on your location by another existing business. Since not all businesses will have websites or an online presence, they may not appear in your online searches.
If the domain is unavailable and you've exhausted all your options with variations on your initial concept (not including misspellings), try using a different web extension instead of a .com extension try .ai or .net.
It’s important to keep an open mind at this step and not get too disappointed if your preferred name is unavailable.
Step 7: Conduct a Test and Finalize Your Brand Name
Once you’ve brainstormed a list of possible names and narrowed down the list, conduct a response test and ask for feedback on your top ones. Be sure to ask for reactions and not just opinions. Reactions are more personal and emotional; it forces your audience to go deeper and analyze the names authentically. And not just a general surface response. We like to ask "What three words come to mind upon hearing XX?". It can be any associations - thoughts, emotions, objects, colours, other brands, etc.
Review and analyze this information. Perhaps there is a way to adjust what you have come up with or some names should be disregarded. This step is crucial to determining if you’re close to finding the perfect name for your brand.
Coming up with a brand name is no easy feat.
It may take weeks or even months to develop a unique brand name that is representative of your brand. Coming up with a unique brand name is a crucial step in establishing a solid and memorable brand identity. It also allows you to establish your intellectual property and protects you from legal issues that may arise from using a similar or identical name to another company.
Furthermore, a unique brand name can help you build a brand image, which is essential for creating emotional connections with your target audience. In short, a unique brand name is an investment in your business’s future success and is worth taking the time to get right.
Take a look at our blog post on 7 Qualities and Characteristics of a Brand that Make Your Business Stand Out as you develop your brand name and identity!
