When it comes to marketing your business, your name means everything. Usually the first contact your potential customers have with your business it is by hearing the name of your business venture. We all know first impressions are everything, so you need to do some research into your target market and come up with about five names that will coincide with what product or service you are selling.
There are two ways of coming up with a good name, you can either do the work yourself and research your target market or you can pay a high dollar Naming firm to do the work for you.
Naming firms charge anywhere from $50 to $80,000 to develop a name for your venture, this includes trademark research, logo design, and target market research. If the name of your business venture is directly related to your business’s success, then I would advise hiring a naming firm to do the grunt work.
If the name of your business is not directly related to its success, you should do the research and develop a name on your own, this will allow you to allocate those funds to other aspects of your business.
Like I said before, you need to have at least 5 names to choose from. After you have these five names, you are ready to conduct your trademark research to make sure that your name(s) aren’t infringing on any other businesses trade name. I would advise hiring a trademark attorney or search firm to do this step for you if you aren’t experienced in this type of research, as trademark infringement can bankrupt your business in a heartbeat if you make an error and choose a name that another business already has the rights to.
Once you have 3 to 5 names that meet your criteria and aren’t infringing on trademark rights, you need to sit down and figure out which name best suits the mission statement and purpose of your company while still being catchy and memorable. You can come to this conclusion by either conducting consumer research, getting people to fill out surveys, or going with your gut feeling. I personally would do all three and leave no stone unturned. This decision is not going to happen overnight, choosing a good name usually takes a couple of weeks.
Once you make your final decision and pick your venture’s name, you need to start building up excitement and defining your companies’ identity via social media, radio broadcasts, ads, etc. Do everything in your power to get your name out there and building interest in it, this way when you launch you will already have a group of followers and at least a substantial customer base to start with.
