Ep # 9: How to name a business.

Hello! and welcome back to yet another episode of my podcast. Our today's episode talks about the best practices for naming a business. I guarantee by the end of this episode, you'll become a pro at naming a business.  

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Transcript

 Hello, and welcome to yet another episode of my podcast. Our this week's topic is how to name a brand and how to name your business. Let's see, what are these steps that'll help us name our brand in the right fashion? But before we move ahead, you know the drill. It's time to have a word with me. Rajive Dhavan.

See on the other side of the intro music.

In this podcast, my goal is to help you understand what exactly are the steps or practices that one should keep in mind while naming a brand. You will also learn the pros and cons of various types of brand names. Sounds interesting. Let's jump in. So you've decided to start a. And the next thing that you need, apart from money and a lot of other stuff, is a good brand name.

Let's see. How do we name a brand? Are there any rules? Well, there aren't any rules as such, but are there best practices for naming a brand? Of course, there are. Let's take an example of a personal brand. You know where we are using our name as a brand name, so that's like a personal brand name. The big issue with a personal brand name is that everything depends on that one single person, so you become.

The entity, you become the brand. It's got its own positives, though, to use your own name as a brand name. But then it has its Starbucks too. So what are the positives? The positives are there is a personal connect. There is an emotional connect. There's a person on the other side, and it's not a lifeless sort of an affair.

What are the drawbacks? Well, if you falter somewhere or things go wrong with you, then the brand has the possibility of going down south in such a scenario. It's like there's a lot that's riding on one person's shoulders. Especially if you're a startup. It also is difficult for you to showcase yourself as a bigger brand when you're using your own personal name.

So it is recommended to avoid a personal name for a brand. Then there are. Those names, which are used or made out of twisted words, words with a rehashed sort of spelling, twisted words or rather words with twisted spellings, are not recommended in today's digital day and age specifically because of things like search engine optimization, URLs, et cetera, because the word will be used in various formats.

The brand name will be used in various formats, so you have to be mindful of the application of the brand. The next one is using complicated words. Words which are not heard of. Again, here, the problem is that if you use words which are slightly more common, it'll help you in creating a good brand recall.

We'll talk more about brand recall a little later. For now, let's move ahead with the next one. The next one is ho words. Now, these are words that have contradictory meanings, so it's important that whenever you are trying to shortlist a name for your brand, you go online and check for various meanings of that particular word because that's extremely important.

The last thing that anybody would want is for the name to have a negative connotation to it, or a negative meaning to it. Then there is something known as phonetics, which is more about how the name sounds, actually, that's extremely important because, ultimately, you would want your name to sound really well. So one of the tips here is to use some ball sounds in your name.

Now, these are a little different from the written ball sounds, so try to stick to the A, E, I, O & U. But more in the sound and not just in the written format. The next step is to remember the target audience. You know, actually, this can be the first step. Also, you can always keep an objective in mind a target audience in mind and then work backwards to create a good brand name for your business.

It's simple. You know, you need to understand whether your end consumer or customer is going to be Gen Z, gen Y, gen X, or the millennials, or what is the age group of these people, and then what they like, what they dislike, and based on all those things, their experiences, et cetera. You can make a small list and then focus on creating a brand name through that.

Remember that a great brand name that does not connect with the target audience is of no. While we are talking about the age group of the target audience, it's also important that we keep in mind the other demographics, like where they live, the geographical location, their awareness, how much they've travelled, what is their household income, like, what are the other brands that they connect with or use on a day-to-day basis.

These are some basics that will help you create a good brand name for your business. One of the big questions that most of us have is, should my brand name directly talk about the line of business, the line of work, or can it be something random, something completely away from what I'm doing? Well, there's no simple single answer to this.

But the bottom line is that if it sounds great if it has a good recall value, and if it fits the bill in a lot of other cases, then you can go ahead with a brand name that may or may not connect directly with your business line. The next thing to keep in mind is to. Think big from the start. A lot of startups come up with names, which they think, okay, you know, it's something that I'll use for some time and then we'll see later.

But you always have to keep in mind, what if you become a multi-billion dollar business tomorrow? Will this name justify that roadmap? And if you feel it won't, then just take a pause and think again while creating a brand. Thinking about the personality and the purpose of the brand is equally important, and you should have that handy with you.

Ideally, a brand name should be given by a professional, but again, that's not a rule either. If you can come up with something interesting to give it a shot, the next big question that a lot of us have got is what should be the length of a name? Should it be a long name, or should it be a short name? Are shorter names better? Let's address them.

In today's digital world, having a shorter name will always give you an edge over the other names around. Remember the application of your name. It's going to be used in hundreds of places, from directories to URL of your website to a visiting card, which will have a very small. Space for your name to be written and to the display picture of your social channels.

So the shorter the name, the better the application of the name In all these spaces, even search engines like Google give a little more value to domain names, which are shorter and CRISPR compared to the longer ones. The shorter names are also very easy to remember, to memorize with so many advantages.

Why would you go for a name which is extremely lengthy? But does that mean longer names don't make sense? Absolutely not even longer names. Make sense? But then they should check other boxes. We'll talk about that a little later. A lot of us are always thinking of names that should be creative, right? But then there's always this decision that one has to make.

Should I go with a name which is extremely creative, or should I go with a name which is simpler? That sounds better, that has good readability. In most cases, it's always better to choose a name, which is great in terms of readability and how it sounds compared to the one that is extremely. But doesn't check the other boxes.

The big exception, however, is a long name, which has a great history or historical connect, or it can create some sort of a recall value, something that's been derived from anything that the audience is already aware of. That brand recall is what we always need to aim for, and that should supersede all the other best practices.

In today's day and age, every customer is exposed to a million brand names on a regular basis, so your name has to stand out. The job of a good brand name is to own a little bit of real estate in the minds of the customer, and that can be done when you have a strong brand recall. When the recall is strong, the real estate in mind will always be there.

Ultimately, you want people to remember your name, isn't it? And that's how they will choose you over your competitors. Let me give you a good example of a brand name that we chose for our digital marketing and branding company. And while it checked some of these boxes, it didn't check all of them; we still aimed at getting a name which worked for us.

Our branding and digital marketing company is called Watsons in a Name. While it follows very few best practices that I mentioned in this podcast, it hits a home run In the brand recall aspect, most of our clients are decently aware, educated, and well-travelled, and they all know about the famous line by Shakespeare Watson in the name that, which we call a Rose by any other name would smell Chest as Sweet by William Shake.

Now that's a name that most people would never forget. It's been 13 years, and the name has done just great for us as a creative agency. We had to make sure that our name is creative and has a great brand recall. If I can't name my brand properly, there's a little possibility I'll be able to give a good brand name to your business.

With this, we come to the end of this episode. I hope you got enough insight into how you should come up with a great brand name for your business. If you liked this piece of content, please share. I am sure you will positively impact someone. Thank you.