Category: Articles

How do I choose a name for my business? Part 4

If you haven’t read the previous instalments… part 1, part 2, part 3

The three questions you should definitely ask yourself before deciding on a business name.

It’s all well and good choosing a name, but you also have to think about how many times a day you’re going to be writing, saying and hearing the name too. So, the final part in our name choosing process was to ask ourselves the following questions: 

1 – Does it look good written down?

Seems like a silly question, but if you’re going to be spending a significant amount time looking at this word, it’d be useful for it to be something that you like the look of. You also need to consider how the name will look as a logo. Play around with the word, doodle designs to see how it might look. When we designed the logo for skoobaroob we loved how it looked old school, like letter magnets on a fridge, familiar, bright and easy on the eye.

2 – Is it easy to say?

We all know one business whose name’s difficult to pronounce, like Nike or Porsche, right? (you think you’re saying them right, you’re probably not!) So choose something easy to pronounce, for your sake as well as your customers. Using words from other languages can be fun and quirky, like Patisserie Valerie or Moda Bella and can work if you use commonly known words, like chateau or couture. However, you will have to accept that, if you choose to do this, you will possibly be explaining what you do, correcting how people say it and quote likely having to spell it out over and over. And they don’t have to be from distant shores to cause a bother, some home grown words are frequently mispronounced too, like epitome, prescription and February. But, that’s not the only thing to consider when you’re saying a word. How does it feel when you’re saying it? Say it a few times to yourself to see if you like saying it. We love how the word skoobaroob sounds when you say it – it kind of rolls off your tongue in fun, childlike way.

3 – Does it sound good when you hear it?

Same goes for how it sounds when you hear your company name said out loud. If the name makes you jar, it will probably make your customers feel the same way. Imagine having a company called Slaughter and Sons, for example. Now, I know this is a legitimate family name, but really, it does not conjure up a positive image at all. Unless you intend to be a weapons manufacturer or something equally blood spilling. 

And that, my fellow business owning friends, is it. I really hope that by now you’ve got yourself a great company name that will see you through the years to come.

How do I choose a name for my business? Part 3

If you haven’t read the previous instalments… part 1, part 2

What things should I think about when choosing a business name?

As you’re choosing a name, it’s not just about finding something you like. That is, of course, very important, but there are some other things you need to consider as well. When we found a name we thought we might like, we made sure we asked the following questions:

Does anyone else have the same name?

Probably the most important thing you need to find out is, does another company have the same name. If they do, you may want to reconsider using it. For example, you wouldn’t really want the name MacDonalds for an online shop selling handmade burgers – I’m sure I don’t really have to explain why? It’s obvious that it’s just too much like the original. You’ll have to compete with the SEO might of McDonalds. It’s not impossible, it just makes life harder. And they may well come after you for trying to trade off their name.

The same goes for a name that is exactly like another name, but is an entirely different business. You won’t be making your life easy if you choose to use a name like Amazon, even if your business is nothing like what Amazon do. However, if you find that a small business overseas is using the same name, you may decide you want to take a chance and use it anyway. 

Of course, if you really want to use a certain name, just be a little different. If you really want a name, because it’s your family name, for example, you can. But, you should consider adding something to it to make it unique, or at least significantly different to your rivals, if only to stop any confusion. Say your family name is McDonald, and you really do want to sell handmade burgers, you could use McDonalds Artisan Burgers. This should give you enough of a difference to be successful competing online with Maccie Dee.

How is my business name going to be viewed in other countries?

How words are used in other places is something you may need to think about. But only if you want international customers. Think fannypack, the endlessly comical US name for a bumbag, it’s unintentionally amusing for us in the UK for obvious reasons. Our business is remote, we could pick up jobs from the US, New Zealand or Australia, so it helps if we have a name that works in all those countries. Two minutes of your time making sure the name you choose isn’t hilariously funny or some crude, rude or highly offensive word in your target country’s language is well worth it.

Unless, (there’s that pesky unless again!) you believe there is no bad publicity. A really comical name might make it viral and send a load of people to your website. If you’ve got a great product, service or whatever, to give them when they get there, you’re probably onto a winner. 

Does the name have any weird/bad connections?

It’s easier to give examples of what I mean here. You’d really want to think twice about using any name that could be connected to controversial groups, like the KKK or ISIS. Likewise, using the word aryan in any form would most likely conjure up an entirely different picture to the one you were hoping for. Some other examples might be anything that could be related to the adult industry. I’d advise the use of the slang dictionary here, as you may think you know all the rude slang, believe me, you don’t. Unless (it’s here again) the adult business is your business. I’m not sure I’d be that tempted to dine at The Golden Shower Chinese Restaurant. And, after appearing in hundreds of articles showing funny business names, I bet they’re wishing they’d checked that out before using it.      

Can I protect my business name?

Be careful to choose a name that can be protected if you intend on taking over the world. If your company grows, you may find that you don’t want other people trading off the good name you’ve built up. Trademarking is a way you can stop other people using your name for themselves. But, for you to be able to trademark a name it has to meet certain rules. So, it mustn’t be too common or non-distinctive, like ‘we are the best’, it also cannot describe the service it relates to, so you can’t trademark a name with word ‘wool’ in it, if you produce wool jumpers. There are some other things to consider, too much to go through here, so I’ll hand you over to the experts on trademarking on the Government’s website.

And that’s almost it. There are just three more things you need to do before you decide on that company name, we’ll get to them next time. Remember, rebranding is a nightmare, so take your time, it’s not a race.

The importance of a full stop

A newstory that caught my eye this week was about Shropshire Council fining people for parking when the sign actually said that no parking restriction was in place. Why did those people park there? Because the sign actually said ‘No parking enforcement in operation’, instead of ‘No parking. Enforcement in operation.’ Now four people will have to spend time claiming their money back, which seems a tad unfair seeing as they were just following what the signs says.

When the person responsible for the signs was asked how the error had happened, the answer was the speed at which the signs were created. It seems that having to create the signs quickly meant that they threw out the usual checks (I’m assuming there are usual checks) and no one bothered to proofread the text for the signs before they went off to be created. The result? A sign that said the exact opposite of what they meant to say, extra time and cost having those signs reprinted, and even more time and cost in getting the old ones taken down and the new ones put up. And to top that off, there will be a few red faces in that council office, I’m sure.

Schoolboy error? Yep, pretty much. But that’s what you have proofreaders for. Everything, literally every single thing you write must be read by someone else before you post it to your blog, push it out on social media or upload it to your website.

I always put my writing to one side for at least a day before I proofread it, then I get someone else, usually Mark, to proofread it too. This is essential because your brain is really good at inserting things it thinks should be there when they’re not. So, if I’ve been writing something, I kind of know what I want it to say and my brain puts in any missing words. Leaving it for a day allows my brain to forget that I know it and see it with fresh eyes. Getting Mark to read it means someone who has no idea, apart from assumption, what I wanted to write is checking that all the required words are present and correct. 

I’ve been writing for years and yet I can still miss out a ‘the’ or ‘be’ from a sentence and not even notice. It’s not about how much you know or how experienced you are, it’s simply about how the brain works.

Moral of the story? If you want to avoid unnecessary time, cost and embarrassment, proofread, proofread and probably proofread again.

How do I choose a name for my business? Part 2

Ways to get creative with your company name.

First off, if you’ve not read part 1, I’d advise you go back and read that. If you have, great, let’s crack on.

As we were coming up with potential names, we applied the techniques below to see if we could make something more original. We also played around with names we liked that had already been used to see if we could make something similar, but different enough to be unique. I’m not going to go into any great depth as to what each of these are, I’ll just give a brief description an an example.

Alliteration

These are words that all start with the same sound or letter, so ruby red riders, Tom’s tailors, Foxy’s fine flowers   

Rhyming words

Fairly obvious how this one works, jeepers creepers, helter skelter, smooch pooch

Homophones

Words that sound the same, but are spelt different and have different meanings, like steak and stake, break and brake, hi and high.

Anagrams

This one is easy too, just take the name you like and mix up the letters to see if you can come up with a new word.

Misspellings

This is useful if you find a name you like that’s a common word, it helps you make a little different, so dolphin could become dolfin

If you’re at this stage of reading and you’ve still not actually started to look, or you’ve not found anything you’d like to use as a name yet, here’s an idea.

When we started looking for our name, we wanted the word blue in it, or for it to be related to the word blue, so we just simply used blue flowers, blue beetles, blue plants, blue butterflies and so on to see if anything popped up that caught our eye.

We also looked at alternative names for shades of blue, like cyan, teal and duck egg. We looked at what the names for blue were in other languages and old English or old fashioned names.

We came up with our name pretty quickly, so didn’t need to use any other techniques. But, here are some other ways you could generate a name, depending on how much time and effort you want to put into it, cos I’m nice like that.

If you want the whole process to be quick and easy, I’d go for an online name generator. We wanted our name to be something of us, have meaning, not just be a random word. We wanted to take our time and find something we really loved. But, I get that it may not be that important to you to have all that, so there’s nothing wrong with getting this bit done using a name generator, like BNG Business Name Generator.

If you want to make the choosing of your business name a more involved process, you could do the following to give you a starting point:

• use a slang dictionary, all kinds of fun stuff in these. Peevish a good one, don’t go if you’re easily offended though, it’s a little bit rude in places. For a more gentile version, try Greens Dictionary of Slang.
• use the letters in the names of your family members to make a new word either in an anagram or the start of one name and the end of another.
• you could do this other words that describe what you do too, like Groupon did (group and coupon).
• think about the things that make your service or product different, benefits and features, things like that. Or what you want your product to do for the people who use it, make them feel comfortable, happy, content, loved.
• use a few words. There’s a company I know that make pickles called Rubies in the Rubble, not at all what you’d expect for a company that does food.

That’s your lot. Part three will look at the more practical things you need to consider when choosing business name.

Snippets

Google snippets are top dog when it comes to SEO. They rank #0 at the very top of the SERPs, and are chosen because they offer the most effective answer to the question being asked.

I’ve gathered together some of my Google Snippet articles. I typed the questions to see how my articles ranked on 11th May 2020. Below are the results. Take a look at the number of results being returned by Google and remember, some of these articles were written a number of years ago, but still make snippet status.