How To Come Up With A GREAT Brand Name For Your Business

If you've been struggling to come up with a brand name for your business, I'm here to help you.

Your brand is your reputation. It communicates who you are and what you stand for. More importantly, it tells your customers what your business promises to deliver.

Did you know that 77% of customers make purchasing decisions based exclusively on the name of a company? This proves that the name you choose for your brand is critical to the success of your business.

In the words of Jeff Bezos, “Your brand is what other people say about you when you're not in the room.” In short, your brand name is everything, so let's make it something that people won't forget.

If you want to know eight criteria for choosing a great brand name, keep reading!

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A brand name can make or break your business.

This is why I recommend that you do your due diligence and take the necessary steps to establish a great name. The last thing that you want to do is invest time, money, and energy into building a business around a name that someone else is already using.

Moreover, ineffective branding can turn people off, so much so that they forget what your brand represents altogether. Research shows that 51 percent of consumers will automatically unfollow a brand that does something they dislike, and 27 percent will block or report them as spam. This is why building and maintaining a positive brand reputation from the onset is so important. Let's talk about eight criteria for choosing a great brand name.

1. Be Memorable

You want people to remember your brand name, in such a way that they associate meaning to it. This is why it's important to do research to understand who your target audience is. Think of your brand as a representation of what you have to offer them. Also, you want your name to be easy to understand, spell, and pronounce. These factors will give you a huge competitive advantage from the get-go.

2. Define Your Brand Identity

When people hear your brand name, you instantly want them to know what your brand represents. Using keywords that are relevant to your target audience will spark curiosity, making people interested in learning more about what you have to offer.

Here are some examples of great brand names – App Empire, Strength Camp, and Campfire Guitar Star. The moment you hear these names, you immediately get a sense of what these companies are about. What do you want your brand to say and how do you want people to feel when they experience it? People become emotionally connected to a brand when it stands for something that is important to them.

3. Decide To Self-Brand or Establish A Company Brand

A question that I get asked a lot is whether or not people should build a brand around their personal name or a company brand name. Those of you who follow me know that I chose the alternative route. Instead of using my name, Stefan James, I chose to build a brand called Project Life Mastery.

The reason why I decided to go with a company brand is that I didn't want to build a business that was only dependent on me. If I decide to bring in other influencers, coaches, or speakers to educate my audience, under my brand, I can do so. Also, if I want to sell my business one day, there is an option for me to do that.

People are more likely to buy a brand name versus one that is purely dependent on someone's personal name. The decision that you make will depend on the long-term vision that you have for your business. If you decide to use a personal brand name, I suggest that you change your name slightly, if it's one that will be difficult for people to remember, pronounce or spell.

4. Create An Emotional Connection

A brand is a name that people recognize and associate emotions with. Your brand identity is comprised of what your brand represents, what your values are, and how you want people to feel. I encourage you to take out a journal and write down whatever words come up for you that you associate with your brand.

Those words will help determine what your brand name will be. When I was brainstorming ideas for my brand, Project Life Mastery, these words spoke to me – inspirational, motivation, success, mastery, transparency, and freedom. As I've built my brand and created content with my audience, people have come to associate these feelings and emotions to my brand.

5. Research Your Competition

Make a list and analyze your competitors' brand names. These brands will be operating in the same target market as yours. Type in keywords that are related to your business and make a list of those company names as well. I recommend taking the words that your competitors are using and adding them to your list.

I would also make a list of whatever words resonate with you. Go to Thesaurus.com and explore other variations of a word that you could use as part of your brand name. When I originally thought about Project Life Mastery, I loved the concept of mastery.

Since 2012, I have made it my mission to continually improve every area of my life. That's what I call Life Mastery. Years ago, I read the book, The Game by Neil Strauss. Inside his book, he talked about a self-development house he created called Project Hollywood. This is where a bunch of guys lived together for the purpose of improving their dating and social skills.

In my early 20's I started my own self-development house called Project Vancouver. The concept of life mastery can feel intimidating for people. However, the word, project depicts life mastery as a journey that one embarks upon, which is both tangible and possible. This is why I decided to integrate that word into my brand name.

6. Get the dot com version of your brand name

When people think of a brand name, they usually google the dot-com version. If someone owns the dot-com version of the brand name you are considering, you could encounter problems down the road.

Let's say that you decide to settle on a dot-net version. As you grow your brand, a lot of your audience members will automatically go to the dot-com version of your brand name. In turn, you will probably end up losing some of your audience members and customers.

Ideally, you want to own the dot-com version of your brand name, as well as the dot-net, the dot-org, and the dot-ca so that others can't take them.

7. Do A Trademark Availability Search

I encourage you to research the availability of your brand name ideas to ensure that nobody else has already trademarked them. We all have the ability to trademark our brand name in any country. If you choose a brand name and later find out that someone else owns the rights to it, you will be violating a trademark.

This becomes a huge pain. Someone can file a cease and desist letter and force you to stop using the name. Even worse, they could sue you. On top of that, you will be forced to re-brand which will confuse your customers and audience. If you live in the U.S., you can do a trademark search or file for a brand name trademark on The United States Patent and Trademark Office website. Other countries will have their own trademark website.

Keep in mind that you don't need to own a trademark right away. If you're just starting out and don't have any followers or customers yet, there's not much to protect. Filing a trademark costs money. I recommend trademarking once you've built up your brand to the point that it needs protection.

8. Create a Brand Logo

You can create a logo inexpensively at Fiverr. Alternatively, you can go to 99Designs where you can get logos, graphics, images, or artwork done for your business.

Also, I suggest that you set up social media pages for your brand name on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, etc. Reserve the name and get your accounts set up, even if you don't use the pages. Doing so gives your brand name an added level of protection.

This is how to come up with a great brand name for your business.

Your brand name is the face of your business. It represents who you are and what your business stands for. Instead of choosing a brand name based on what you like, consider the eight criteria that I spoke about above. If you do, I trust that you will be able to build a successful brand and business.