What to think about when creating a brand name

Have you ever tried to come up with a name for your new business or product? How did you feel? Many people will answer that it was confusion, lack of inspiration, misunderstanding how to start and how to make the name convey the right meaning and emotions. We have prepared some tips for you to help you break the deadlock and start moving in the right direction with your naming.

1. Create a brand name not only for yourself.

Many newcomers make a really big mistake when coming up with a brand or product name - they do it on personal preferences forgetting about the target audience. 

You may be a polyglot, know a bunch of special terms, be able to accurately combine them into neologisms (newly formed words), but all your efforts will be in vain if your target audience does not think like you, or you do not have huge marketing budgets to that convey the idea of the name to them through advertising and PR channels.

2. Study competitors.

It may seem strange that we still have to explain such trivial things to business owners or top managers, but before creating a brand, it is vital to gather information about key market players and determine which of them are your direct and indirect competitors. 

After that, it is necessary to analyze the names of competing brands and their positioning. Pay special attention to market leaders and find logic in their names and try to understand what makes their customers remember and perceive it exactly as the competitor planned.

Do not forget about outsiders. The names of their brands can also explain a lot about the company's position in the market.

3. Work out the idea of positioning first.

Before you start creating a brand name, you need to decide on the basic idea of your positioning. After designing the brand concept, it will be much easier for you to understand what exactly should be in the name and how the name will convey your positioning. This is especially important when you are offering an unusual brand or product. In this case, the name will be an additional reminder of the specifics of the product and will help your customers better remember your brand and your offer. 

After determining the positioning, decide what the main advantage or feature of the brand you would like to emphasize in the name, and then create a list of everything that may be associated with this feature in the minds of people. This will help you a lot in the further development of the name.

4. No need to want a name like Apple.

If your wish to have a name like Apple is just the realization that Apple is a world-famous company with an army of fans and a strong reputation, it is a road to nowhere. 

The Apple company acquired its status not thanks to its name, but thanks to hard work on innovative products with sophisticated design and leading solutions, multimillion budgets for marketing, history of several decades, and personal charisma, perseverance, and luck of its founder.

However, if your wish to have a name like Apple means that you realize that this name is simple, short, easy to remember, and describes the brand positioning as a forbidden fruit which is all you want in your life, we can perceive this point of view. But you also have to realize that at the beginning Apple has not had any such positioning. It came much later when the company had to build communication with consumers and had to explain why they were called Apple.

Now, given the market situation, this approach may not work, and all the previous steps must be carried out in advance to come up with a really smart name that will suit your brand or product. And most importantly, it may be completely different from Apple.

5. Don’t let your CEO create a brand name.

If your CEO or business owner does not have marketing education or a natural flair for naming, do not let them participate in the process. 

The problem with many brands is that they are named by people who don't know anything about this process but have some power in the company.

Of course, this does not mean that you should ignore the point of view of the first persons in the company. You, as professionals, can prepare a clear argument with the analysis and all the points described above, to present the name options that you or the agency came up with. Only in this case, the CEO or investor will be able to assess the work done and make the right decision.

But when the CEO or owner just decides that the brand should be called the way they came up with, you can only hope that they really know what they are doing and just don't have time to explain it to you.

6. Work with professionals.

To start developing brand names, you need not only to know a lot about marketing, branding, linguistics, psychology, and sociology but also to have a lot of experience.

Save your time and get a professional and thoughtful name for your brand in 3 to 7 days. Details in our Quix.