Your business is good as much as your brand name is. Think about all the famous businesses you deal with every day. Adidas, Nike, BMW, Google, IBM, Dell, etc.
All of these brands are from different industries, named in different ways and different forms, but what is common among all of them? They are easy to pronounce, unique, musical, and short.
Those are the criteria for picking a good brand name.
A question that may pop up in your mind right now is: Why should I care about the brand name anyway? I already have enough things to care about at that point in my business journey!
The Value Of A Brand Name
In fact, a company is as good as its brand name. As Jonas Sachs put it ”Your brand is a story unfolding across all customer touch points”. But why?
Because your brand is more than just a name, it’s a combination of a lot of things called “Brand Equity” as we will see below.
What Is Brand Equity?
Brand equity according to David Aaker, is a set of assets associated with your brand that could contribute to the value delivered to your company and the value your company delivers to your customers. The components of brand equity are:
- Brand Awareness
- Brand Associations
- Brand Perceived quality
- Brand Loyalty
- Other Proprietary Brand Assets
Brand Awareness
Brand awareness has many classifications and types but in the simplest form, it is the extent to which your customers remember your brand. And it’s considered an asset because your customers will only buy from you (or at least consider you for buying) when they remember your brand the moment when they are in the buying mode searching actively for a product/service to satisfy their needs.
And no doubt that your brand memorability and pronunciation are some factors that influence the level of awareness your brand has among your customers.
Brand Associations
Brand associations mean all the perceptions your customers have in their minds when they think about your brand. The information they know, the emotions they have towards the brand, the characteristics they think your brand has, the beliefs and values they know your brand stands for, and the qualities your brand would be famous for if it was a human.
Your brand meaning, sound, and the root your brand name is derived from are all among brand associations.
Brand Perceived Quality
Brand perceived quality refers to the quality of the company’s products and services in the eyes of the customers, not in the eyes of the company owners or employees. Do your customers treat the company products as Grade A or Grade-B? To what extent do they trust a new product release from your company before they try it themselves? To what extent does the quality from the point of view of the company match the quality from the point of view of the customers? Do your customers care about the features and benefits that you as a company think are important features to them? All these questions are determinators of the brand perceived quality.
Brand Loyalty
Brand loyalty is considered the most valuable asset among the brand equity assets and it is the hardest to achieve.
Loyal customers mean higher retention for the company users which is a multiplier for the profit of the company. Brand loyalty enables a company to cut its marketing costs without any effect on its sales or ROI. Loyalty is also considered a very impactful barrier to entry for new competitors who are thinking about joining the market.
Finally, achieving brand loyalty takes time and requires significant effort and requires unification and integration among all the other brand equity assets.
Other Proprietary Brand Assets
The proprietary assets include some components that don’t have a monetary value but still contribute to the trustworthiness of a brand. Things like patents, trademarks, copyrights, etc.
How to Choose A Brand Name
Choosing a brand name is not an easy decision because it sticks with your business as long as you are in business. Even a re-branding decision comes with its costs at any moment in time, and the later it happens, the worse.
If you are a well-established business with a certain brand name then you decide to re-brand, there is a high cost you have to pay and a value you have to sacrifice and the later you postpone that decision of re-branding the more expensive it gets, and the more value your business loss.
A re-branding process requires a huge investment in terms of financial cost in addition to the brand equity you have to let go with your old brand name along with the all costs you have spent on your marketing efforts before.
Do you know that the amount of organic traffic that Twitter (or X) receives today from the old brand name “Twitter” is more than 3 times the traffic it gets from the new name X?! (Notice that a lot of domain name investors consider X as the “best brand name in the world!” and maybe the most expensive too!)
Below is the search volume from the 2 keywords (Twitter vs X) according to Ahref.
And that’s why choosing a brand name should be set right from the very beginning to avoid any sacrificed costs later on. But how to choose a brand name?
10 Main Characteristics for an Ideal Brand Name
Below are 10 main characteristics and criteria to take into consideration when choosing a brand name for your business. Although your brand shouldn’t achieve a 100% score for all of them, considering them would help you come up with the perfect brand name that is made to live.
Catchy
A catchy brand name means it will stick to the minds of your customers, which means higher and better brand awareness. But how to make sure your brand name is catchy? The main point to remember is that some letters are more attractive and memorable than others and some combinations of letters or patterns of letters are more attractive and musical than others
And that’s why in the domaining industry some letters would increase the price and value of a brand name massively. Letters like P, C, V along with some other combinations of letters.
Musical
We as humans have 5 different senses. The more of these senses get involved in something, the more it stick with us.
And that’s why associating a brand name with a sound is one of the great determinators of the stickiness of a brand name. Think about the Phonology of your brand name. What patterns of sounds are involved in brand name and what emotions or meanings it evokes?
Memorable and Easy to Pronounce
The previous 2 factors contribute to the memorability of a brand name but still, they are not crucial, however, the Memorability and ease of prounounciation are deal breakers for a brand name.
Think about a good brand that you find a hard time reading its name or to memorize it, what level of effort so you put into this? And how many additional transactions would you have made with it if it was easy to remember? Think about “Ghirardelli “vs “Mars” which is more sticky with you?
Genuine
A genuine brand name means it’s original and authentic. Don’t try to make your brand name a copy of a competitive brand or very similar to it in terms of letters, pronunciation, or logo.
Not only does it decrease the brand value in the eyes of your customers but it also would bring you intellectual property issues. Copying and imitating is easy and popular, but creativity is hard and scarce. So don’t try to be but yourself, everyone else is taken!
Evergreen
A brand name is made to live, if you think otherwise then building a brand is not the ideal choice for you.
And that’s why having an evergreen brand name that will stay relevant for decades to come, is an important factor to consider when naming your brand. Don’t build your brand name around a current popular trend that will fade out sooner or later. Or around a current technology or invention that would be outdated a few years from now.
Expandable
As we said earlier, a brand is made to live. That’s why you have to think beyond your horizons when naming your brand.
Imagine you are a “car tires” company and you built your brand name and identity around “car tires” then 7 years later you achieved tremendous success in this vertical and decided to expand to other car accessories or to “motorcycle tiers”.
What an unenviable position is this!
You either will have to rebrand your business, start a new brand, or give up on your ambitions of expansion. That’s why it’s important to think about your current industry or vertical, the neighbor verticals in the industry, the neighbor industries, and the other possible markets for expansion. Remember that you are building a brand for the future so don’t restrict yourself to your present.
Short
Having a short brand name is not a deal breaker for a brand but still, short brands are memorable, easy to type, and easy to pronounce. On the other side, long brand names are hard to pronounce, hard to process for the human mind, and harder to remember. So even if you are considering a long brand name make sure it’s not too long.
Meaningful
Meaningful brand name doesn’t mean to convey the exact purpose of the brand, it means to be derived from the industry or represent a story of a brand or a vision the brand is willing to achieve or a quality the brand strongly believes in.
If your brand name for your “studio design” business can fit a “law firm” then maybe you need to think about it again.
Think about Facebook, and Reddit.. Although the names of these two brands don’t tell the exact purpose of the brand, each has a story behind it.
Facebook is derived from the face book directories, and Reddit is derived from “read it”. But still, this rule is not a deal breaker for a business, unless it’s your chosen brand name is not confusing to your customers it’s not problematic.
Impactful
One of the main criteria for choosing a brand name is to be impactful. An impactful brand name inspires you, moves you in some way, evokes some emotions in you, or triggers some action or belief within you. Mostly those are the brand names with verbs or that could be used as verbs. Think of Reddit, Idealab, and ThinkPad.
As you may think, this is not a critical factor for every brand but it would set your brand apart from the others in the market.
Final Word
Choosing a brand name is not an easy task and it shouldn’t be! Because you are building an asset for the future of your business. And as we have seen, there are many criteria involved in this process, some of them are crucial and some are nice to have.
If you are looking for a good brand name for your business or considering a rebrand, contact me today a let me do the heavy lifting for you and get you the ideal brand name that fits your needs. Contact Me Today!