Picking a great name for a business can be a challenging part of being an entrepreneur. If you don’t already have a unique name in mind, it’s hard to come up with something catchy.
Because naming your business is so important, making the decision itself can often become a frustrating or overwhelming experience.
But, before you start to lower your standards and settle with a name you’re not 100% happy with, here’s how you can pick the perfect name for your business:
Step 1 – Understand what makes a name good or bad
The great news is, you don’t need a lot of money to acquire an awesome business name. You just need to understand how to recognize strong and weak names.
A strong business name should be highly brandable. Can you imagine someone using it in a conversation? Does it evoke the right emotions? Try saying the name out loud to find out.
One option is to go for someone fun, like a pun. Or, you can choose a clear and professional word combination that’s relevant to the product or service you’re providing.
Step 2 – Brainstorm some ideas
Once you become more confident in recognizing great names, it’s time to start brainstorming some ideas and thinking about which keywords to include.
You probably have a couple in mind already. However, if you don’t, you can start by looking at successful competitors to get some inspiration.
After making a list of potential keywords for your business name, you can start to expand on them by writing down some synonyms and other keywords that could be helpful.
You can also use Thesaurus if you’re a bit stuck, as it can provide you with a decent number of words that could be used in different combinations.
Step 3 – Use a business name generator
Next, you can start to put your favorite keywords into online generators to find some suitable word combinations, abbreviations, or deviations.
There are plenty of choices available for this. For example, Wordoid.com can provide different words for business names.
The main purpose of using a generator is to show you how different keywords and phrases could be used in a company name and branded to suit your business objectives.
After carefully considering all the possibilities available, you can start to research them further and check if the domains are available.
Step 4 – Make sure it looks right visually
Now that you’ve got some ideas for a fantastic company name, the next important step is to test it out to make sure it’s visually suitable and fits in with your company branding.
It’s essential that the name itself works well on your company logo, too. If you already have a logo in mind, make sure you test out some of the possibilities to see if it looks right.
If you don’t have a logo, you will need to make one, as this is central to your branding efforts and gives your customers something recognizable that they can associate with your brand. You can create a logo for free online using a tool like LogoCreator.
Step 5 – Narrow down your options and pick the best one!
The fifth and final step is to go through the list of names that you’ve highlighted and narrow down the list to just one – this will be the name you use for your business!
This can be a time-consuming task, but it’s one of the most important. All the names will have pros and cons, but you can narrow them down over time.
If you’re unsure, you can always ask your family, friends, or colleagues. Or you can even ask your target audience by using market research like surveys.
