Small Business Marketing Guide - DIY (do-it-yourself) BRAND MARKETING STRATEGIES to HELP YOU GROW YOUR BUSINESS

All companies and products have names.
But not all names are good. And few are great.

Well-chosen names benefit the customer.
They stand out, are easy to remember,
and differentiate from the competitors.

Bad names blend in, are forgettable,
and create ambiguity about the benefit
of your company or product.

How do you find a good name?
Here’s a process to get you started:

0. A taxonomy of names

Before starting the naming process,
consider the possible kinds of names.
Design planner, Hugh Dubberly, proposes
this taxonomy:

Existing words

Things or ideas

• Apple
• Paramount
• Palm

People (often founders)

• Dell
• Ben & Jerry’s
• McDonald’s

Places (often origin)

• New York Times
• British Airways
• Calistoga

Coined Words

Analogous

• Compaq
• Navistar
• Ampex

Arbitrary

• Zume
• Kodak
• Unix

Abbreviations

Contractions

• FedEx
• Wal-Mart
• Intel

Acronyms

• ACORN
• PINE
• DARE

Initials

• IBM
• KFC
• UPS

Hybrids

• Bell Atlantic
• Union Pacific
• MSNBC

1. Generate and Explore

Begin your naming process by writing
a list of all names that come to mind.
Even if the name seems silly, stupid, or irrelevant—
write it down.

This exploration step goes by many names:

• discovery
• exploration
• brainstorming
• brain dumping
• rapid prototyping
• thinking up stuff

Next, generate even more names
by using other methods and techniques:

Thesauri and Dictionaries
Use a thesaurus and dictionary
to look for roots from Latin, Greek, German,
and other languages.
This will help spawn new ideas for names.
Some dictionaries will even suggest
rhymes and antonyms.

Conversations
Say potential names out loud to yourself.
Even better, share them with someone else.
Hearing names out loud will help trigger more ideas.
Your friend might even suggest new names too.

Sound devices
Used often in poetry,
sound devices are different from everyday speak.
This makes them more memorable and distinct:

Assonance
Repetition of vowels (rhyming)

• YouTube
• Reese’s Pieces
• The Mamas & The Papas
• Blues Clues

Alliteration
Repetition of beginning consonants:

• Best Buy
• Fast and Furious
• Coca Cola
• Lindsay Lohan

Consonance
Repetition of consonants within words:

• Google
• Barbie
• Kodak
• BlackBerry

Onomatopoeia
Imitation of a sound

• Swiffer
• Flickr
• Twitter
• Yelp

2. Edit and Refine

Once you’ve generated a large list of potential names,
weed out the bad ones and keep the good ones.
This editing step might even spark new name ideas.

Eliminate names that are:

Generic

• Shoe Store
• Designer Fashions
• Computer Makers

Hard to pronounce or spell

• Reykjavik Accommodations
• Daiquiri Bar and Lounge
• Live Ventures

Similar to existing brand names

• MiPhone
• MacDonnald’s
• Jon Bovi

Too long

• International Organization of Coffee Tasting Aficionados
• Super Panini and Toaster Oven
• Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Productions

How do you choose the good names to keep?
Branding expert, Marty Neumeier,
suggests the following 7 criteria:

1. Distinctiveness
It must stand out.

2. Brevity
It must be short.

3. Appropriateness
It must fit with your business purpose.

4. Easy spelling and pronunciation
It must be easy to say and spell.

5. Likability
It must feel good when you say it.

6. Extendibility
It must lend itself to great storytelling—both written and visual.

7. Protectability
It must not already trademarked or registered.

Great names, not only have the above characteristics,
they also answer “yes” to these questions:

Is it surprising?

A great name is a bit unusual and unexpected.

Consider Infoseek.
a search engine company
with a descriptive but very predictable name.
The name eventually changed to Go.com,
a worse name because it was less descriptive
and hardly unexpected.

What if they had a name like Yahoo! instead?

Does it evoke an image?

A great name places a positive picture
in the minds of the customers.

Consider Apple.
Jean-Louis Gassée, a former Apple executive,
points out that the name
evokes the image of an apple—
a symbol of learning and desire.

What image does Microsoft evoke?
A tech name for techies.

Is it delightful?

Consider Pinkberry.
a frozen yogurt restaurant.
It could have been named
Froyo Stop or Yogurt Island.

But Pinkberry just sounds
like something you’d want to eat.
It sounds delicious and fun.
It sounds delightful.

3. Test and Implement

Once you’ve narrowed down the number of choices,
pick your favorites and test them.
Place a candidate name on a business card, sign, or website.
How does it look?

Say it out loud again.
How does it sound?

Show it to others and ask them to say it aloud also.
How do they react?
Do they smile, laugh, or chuckle?
Do they frown, hesitate, or groan?

Consider how your name looks and sounds
to potential customers,
then narrow your choices even more.

Before choosing a final name,
make sure the name is not trademarked
and that it’s distinct enough to be trademarked.

Also, check to see if a domain name is available.
Ideally, no one else will already own it.
If the domain name is already registered,
offer to buy it from the owner,
or find alternative domains that contain your chosen name.

For example:

• basecamphq.com (Basecamp)
• tickspot.com (Tick)

Resources

Books

• Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind
• The Brand Gap

Naming companies

• A Hundred Monkeys
• Lexicon
• Master-McNeil