Choosing a name for a new business

During the last few months I have noticed a dramatic increase in the number of people who are starting new business ventures.  This is fantastic and I hope indicates an upturn in confidence which should help us all to grow.

In all the excitement of starting a business, I am fascinated about how people go about choosing a name for a new business.  I know how much thought and heartache was put into the name of my business over 5 years ago and the process is so much harder now.  If you are in the position now of choosing a name for a new business in 2014, you might want to think about:

1. Your Brand

What is the brand of your business? What values or feelings do you want the name to convey?  In my case I deliver ‘Training’ and I intend the training to be immediate, relevant or ‘Concise’.  The name doesn’t work so well for my new social media content management service – but we are working on that!

2. Keywords

Can you use a name that includes relevant keywords?  It may be harder to identify a unique name to include your keywords – but if possible, it could make your search engine ranking easier to achieve.  Training in my business name certainly doesn’t do any harm.

3. Memorable

Is the name easy to remember?  Try to avoid names that are difficult to spell.  I still have problems with people incorrectly spelling ‘Concise’.

4. Available Domain

Is the business name available as a domain name?  Use 123reg or GoDaddy to find out whether the domain name is available.  I wouldn’t recommend using hyphens in the domain name as it can make it harder for your visitors to remember.  I use .net rather than .co.uk for reasons I can’t remember but I do actually have the .co.uk as well. Consider buying a number of different versions and using redirects.

5. Available Social Media

This is the one that many people still forget.  You can have the best business name in the world with an available domain but if the social media equivalents (Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, etc.) are not available you could be in danger of diluting your brand and harming your brand awareness.  I was lucky – I started out early on the social media tools.

What do you think?  Do you have any other tips for choosing the name for your business? Please add them to the comments below.

Good luck to anybody starting out on the exciting journey of running a new business!