Let’s say you’ve got a “million-dollar” idea, assembled a team, and built a product. And after all, was said and done, you were finally ready to hit the market with your amazing product. But there was a challenge: finding a perfect name that’d play an active role in helping your business bloom.
Understand that creating a great product is essential, but it doesn’t necessarily guarantee success. The market is flooded with countless products that no one really cares about.
And one reason these products failed was that their founders failed to build an exciting brand that’ll attract customers to experience their products or services.
Getting the perfect name is a critical step to building a successful business. But before we get into how these names can help you build a powerful brand, let’s take a moment to understand what great brand names are and what they mean for your business.
What Great Brand Names Mean to Businesses
Everyone knows that names are identifiers, but for businesses, brand names don’t just identify; they legalize, protect, differentiate, communicate, and create a community for your team, investors, and loyal customers.
One look at the most valuable brands in the world, and it’s easy to feel an emotional attachment to each and every one of them. And the interesting thing is that even when they’re not interested, the brand names have managed to linger in the minds of their audience simply because it communicates their position, vision, attitude, and creativity.
The Amazon Example
In the mid-90s, when Jeff Bezos started Amazon from the garage of his rented home in Bellevue, Washington, with money borrowed from his parents, there was no telling how profitable his brilliant idea of selling books online could become.
Amazon was initially called ‘Cadabra,’ a fitting name for a fantasy book shop, but it sounded very similar to ‘cadaver.’ Luckily for Bezos, the name ‘Amazon,’ which referred to the longest river and the largest forest in the world, was still available.
Bezos took the name and quickly used it to paint his brand as the largest eCommerce store on earth.
Customers respond to names with strong meanings, and that’s why brands with abstract names spend a lot of money to give their names a whole new meaning.
Today, the word Amazon is synonymous with fast delivery, convenience, great value, and the biggest retailer in the world. A great name mirrors the future your business is aspiring to attain.
How The Perfect Name Affects Your Branding
Supports Effective Branding
Branding is the process of defining your business to your market. The most important role of a solid name to your business is its ability to shape the branding of your business. Mediocre names harm your brand and undermine the impact of your brand’s identity.
Consider brands like Amazon, Facebook, Google, Skype, Intel, and Coca-Cola. These brands have little need for a logo or influencers to give their brands credibility. Their names are sufficient to carry their brand image around the world.
The ultimate goal of finding the perfect brand name idea is to clearly communicate your brand’s vision, mission, and goals. This is why most businesses trying to escape a negative reputation usually opt for a name change because their brand’s name embodies their brand’s identity.
Boosts Brand Recognition
Brand recognition is a vital asset that you must consciously build. And the easiest way for customers to recognize your brand is through its name. Forbes research suggests that it takes only seven seconds for your brand to make an impression on your audience. But, it takes even less to be recognized by your audience.
Recognition is the first step to earning goodwill and a positive reputation with customers. This goodwill and reputation often make it easier for customers to trust your brand in the future. And trust, they say, is always earned, not given.
It’s vital you understand that brand recognition is a major factor in attracting VC funding. And even in the stock market, businesses with excellent brands are recognized by investors, and they attract 33% more investments than those without the perfect name.
Another aspect of recognition is reputation. When you think of Google, you think of vast information and instant answers to almost every question. When you think of Nike, you think of victory, champions. When you think of Coca-cola, you think of happiness. A great name ties your brand to its achievements in the market and makes them part of your corporate identity.
Sets the Tone for Businesses
The sound of your name has an emotional influence on how customers respond to your business. We mentioned how ‘Cadabra’ sounds a lot like ‘Cadaver’ and how it would have affected Bezos’s business.
Your business name helps create an expectation in customers, and that’s mostly because it’s the first thing your customers learn about your business.
And this is why businesses hoping to create a fun, relaxed, and happy mood around their brand usually choose names with tones like Dollar Shave Club and Disney. While businesses that need to reassure and foster trust use traditional names like Bank of America and JP Morgan.
It Enhances Communication
Language is power, and words influence people’s behaviors. Ordinarily, the name of your business is what people will use when discussing their experience with friends and family.
And strong names that sound nice and are packed with rich meaning always stand to gain a lot, especially when your brand name can effortlessly convey the essence of your brand.
But by far, the greatest contribution of names to businesses and the gold standard that every brand name must strive to achieve is to become the best word that defines what you do. And few names in the industry have achieved this.
For example, we say things like ‘Google it,’ ‘I have a Powerpoint,’ ‘Ping-Pong,’ and ‘Realtor.’ These brand names have transcended regular brand names to become the benchmarks in their niche.
They’re Easy to Trademark
Trademark protection is primarily given to names and a few other elements from your brand. Successfully registering a trademark is a big hassle, and it’s easy to fail if you rely on generic names.
The perfect name will be easier to trademark and will offer you the protection that comes with it. But, ordinary names will put your business at risk of a ‘cease and desist order and other legal problems that can arise from the use of the wrong name.
Besides trademark issues, They’ve been cases when brands have been accused of serious issues like racism, cultural appropriation, and negative stereotypes, all because of the type of name they chose for their business.
It Becomes a Priceless Asset
We probably have the internet to thank for brand names now being seen as assets. Brand names now can be trademarked and their domains secured, giving the owner a real asset they can monetize if the need arises.
Over the years, we’ve seen several brand names exchange hands in this fashion. Voice.com was acquired for $30 million, the Bugatti name was also sold to Volkswagen for $50 million. And the best part is that there’s no limit to how much they can be valued, as the most expensive name buyout Car.com was valued at $872 million – almost a billion.
Your Brand Name is the Master Key
A great brand name adds a ton of value to your business and would help your brand reach the pinnacle of its potential. So ensure you get a powerful brand name because it won’t only make your business memorable like Apple, reduce the cost of ads like Tesla, and attract quality employees like Google, but it’d also boost customer loyalty and your brand’s revenue.
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