Tips for Naming Your Brand

12th Nov 2019

Tips for Naming Your Brand

A brand name is important - it's the first thing your target audience will see. It determines not only the tone of your new brand, rebrand or service, but its staying power and how you will stand amongst your competitors. But it's not an easy thing to come up with. First, you have to determine what sort of name you want - will it be descriptive? An acronym? What about experiential? Or are you just going to come up with a made-up word for your brand?

It always helps to remember these tips when naming your brand:

 

  • How do you want your customers to feel? Use these emotions to help form your name. I don't mean looking up synonyms for 'happy' and naming your brand after one of them. Positive reinforcement can help spread your brand across your target audience, making it more likely to be remembered.

  • Remember your old English lessons from school - use assonance and alliteration to your advantage. Anything that sounds nice to say and rolls off the tongue will generally stick in the mind.

  • Add word association to the mix - brainstorm all the words that you (and others) identify with your new company or the services you are branding, and what makes you different from your competitors. Mix them up, pair them together and see what happens.

  • When in doubt, invent. Can't find a word that fits? Make up your own. Look at Kodak - means absolutely nothing, yet has become synonymous with photography. Just make sure it's easy to pronounce.

  • Be wary, chances are your chosen name may already be gone. Conduct a domain name search with all your potential brand names, and think about how you can adapt them to suit you, if the unfortunate event of the domain being already taken occurs.

  • Once you've passed the domain name check, secure it. Getting a trade mark for your new brand name could be a wise choice - you can relax and rest assured that no one's going to nick your name any time soon (for 10 years actually).

 

The most important thing to remember, however, is to keep it simple. Don't overcomplicate it - just look at all the big brands of today. Whether it's Apple (which doesn't relate at all to the company or its products) or Amazon, each brand name has to resonate with its audience and mean something.

 

Coming up with a name for your new company or brand in house can be hard, and I recommend using an agency to help you - they will not only provide you with a more in depth insight, but will have a wider pool to test out your name.



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