You have carried out your market research and established your business plan. Do you imagine that the path to becoming an entrepreneur is now all mapped out? Don’t get carried away: you still have to find a business name.
This an important step that can contribute – or not if you make the wrong name choice. But you will obviously do the right one after reading this article – to the success of your entrepreneurial project.
In this article, discover our best advice for finding an original domain and business name.
Finding a Good Business Name: Why It Matters
Given the number of steps to be taken when setting up a business, one could say that brainstorming around the name is secondary.
Beyond finding an available business name, thinking about the name comes down to laying the foundations of your entrepreneurial project. By doing so, you not only determine the DNA of your business, but you also make sure that your customers are defined.
You may have the best idea in the world, but there is little chance that it will fly if it is not highlighted properly.
For people to buy your services or products, you have to find a business name that is remembered, that stays at the top, that goes up in Google, that indicates what you do or that inspires confidence… And here is where many criteria come into play.
Our 7 tips, or how to find an ideal business name
To the question “ How to find a good business name? ”, we answer you: by ensuring that these criteria are met. Here’s everything you need to think about when you start brainstorming:
1) Make sure the name is available
Many businesses are created each year. This is why the first thing you need to think about is name availability. If you’re telling anyone who wants to listen that you’re going to launch a great company called Uber, you haven’t thought of it yet. Or that you’ve just come out of the cave you’ve been living in for 20 years.
To find an available company name (this is when you are told that unfortunately, Uber is already taken), it is best to consult the business name database.
This will allow you to drastically reduce the number of names on your shortlist.
In addition, let us give you some advice for a little later: as soon as you have found the ideal name, remember to file and register it with the appropriate firms before shouting it from the rooftops.
2) Check its compatibility with an online presence
Let it be said: today, few companies manage to exist without a website.
Especially if your business requires an online presence (e-commerce platform, affiliation, online coaching, online media, comparator, etc.): you must ensure that the company name you have in mind coincides with an available domain name.
If geekstechlab.com had not been an available domain, we should have chosen another name. Moreover, we also chose it because we knew that we could go up in SEO with it, and this is another criterion to which you must pay attention.
For those who don’t know, SEO is the strategy put in place to bring up a website in search engines. The objective is to make it visible to Internet users.
They say the best place to hide information is on the second page of Google. Here’s how to find a business name that won’t stay there, but will instead have a chance to go up on the front page:
- The name is already taken, mean something else? Forget! If you really want to launch a brand called Rihanna, you can try… But you’re going to get stuck not on the second page but on the tenth page;
- Our first piece of advice calls for common sense. For the second, we prefer to advise you on the tool that works well, and in this case an SEO tool like Semrush or Ahrefs, which give a difficulty score when you offer them a keyword. The higher the score, the more difficult you will be ranked. Be careful, that does not mean that it is impossible… But you will work twice as much compared to if you had chosen a keyword that was easier.
3) Be on the lookout for trends
Beyond the availability of your business name and its SEO-friendly feature, there is also the impact the name will have on the audience.
If it doesn’t sound good, doesn’t stay in the head, doesn’t evoke anything… Nobody will remember it. This is why we advise you to do a small benchmark of the names given to companies that work.
However, avoid copying. Surfing on a trend is a very good idea… But modeling your brand strategy on that of another company, on the other hand, is a bad one.
4) Bet (or not) on transparency
This is not the strategy adopted by all companies, but some seek to find an original AND transparent business name, making it easy to guess the nature of the activity carried out.
It’s up to you to see if you want to give clues (when you read WebMD, you can suspect that it is a service related to the medical world)…
But when we read Alan, we don’t necessarily have an idea of what the company does, but we can be curious to know it or feel reassured by the friendly side of the first name.
5) Go for a short version
This is a rule you should keep in mind when brainstorming: the shorter the name you choose, the more likely it is to be impactful and resonate with people.
Forget the long names, and prefer a short version of them, if only for anything but for the visual aspect.
It’s something you don’t necessarily think about when you wonder how to find a business name, but sooner or later it will end up in a logo, on a website, or on the front of a shop. That is to say if the visual is important.
Ditto for email addresses – yours to begin with, but also those of your future collaborators –: if you choose an extended name, you will be obliged to communicate with an email address such as hello@longbizextensionbuycouponlong.com.
And you will see that we are taken much less seriously with this e-mail than with a shorter format, whether it is vis-à-vis our prospects and customers, or our partners and suppliers.
6) Look for originality
If this is part of your marketing strategy, you can also bet on originality. The problem is to find a business name that makes an impression, you can also position yourself against the current.
To inspire you, do not hesitate to look at divinities, geographical locations, and foreign words… You may find THE nugget with sounds that mark the spirits.
On the other hand, be careful with SEO for names gleaned around the globe or in mythology: before you decide, remember to check the difficulty score so as not to shoot yourself in the foot.
7) Consider how it sounds internationally
On this point, everything depends on your ambition. If you hope to deploy your services or sell your products internationally, you must take this criterion into account during your brainstorming.
Even if you are aiming for “only” Europe, your name must be pronounceable by an English speaker, a Spanish speaker, an Italian speaker, a Dutch speaker… That’s a lot of “ phonetics ” but you get the idea.
If the user can’t pronounce the name of your app after downloading it to their phone, they are unlikely to talk about it around them.
Our opinion on business name generators
You know it if you’ve been reading our articles for a while: we defend the idea that using the right tool for each use makes life easier. Nevertheless, we are a little mixed when it comes to business name generators.
More seriously, we are not entirely against… But not really for either. If it helps you find ideas, why not. On the other hand, we think that there is nothing better in the matter than good old brainstorming.
Admittedly, most of the tools on the market make it possible to check that the domain or business name is indeed available… However, they are not efficient enough to take into account all the criteria mentioned above, and even less the vision of your company.
If you still want to experiment with business name generators, here are a few:
Can I change my company name?
This is a question that can be asked when starting a business: “ And if I choose a name that ultimately does not suit me, could I change it? ”
In practice, the answer is yes. Nothing prevents you from working on a new name if the one you have chosen does not suit you… On the other hand, good luck to get your business up in Google searches and stay in the minds of your target customers.
For this reason, we advise you to think carefully before deciding on a name. And if your name really doesn’t fit anymore for one reason or another, you can always change it. However, you shouldn’t forget that changing your name involves risks.
If you are considering European expansion from the moment you create your business, make sure to adapt its name to your ambition… In short, don’t rush and take up a name when you should be thinking it over!
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