Various essential processes come with starting a new business. You have to find the perfect space for your office or retail store, furnish your premises, hire your first employees, and take on other tasks that will take you a step closer to finally launching your venture.
All these tasks, though, may appear to be a breeze compared to doing one particular thing: naming your business. If you haven’t thought about what you want to call your company yet, expect to spend a lot of time on this specific step of setting up your firm.
If you are opening your first business, you have to know that successful brand naming in Dubai is not an easy thing to do. Why? It’s because choosing the wrong name for your company can have several repercussions.
One of the most devastating consequences of going about the process haphazardly is that your selected name could cause of your firm to fail to attract customers and get any sales. Another possible negative impact is getting slapped with trademark infringement if you chose an appellation that is already being used and has been registered by another company.
If you don’t want to go through problems before you open or as you start to operate your business, you have to put in sufficient time to choose the perfect brand name.
Selecting a Brand Name That Fits to a T
Below are five tips for choosing a brand name that’s right for your new business:
1. Define your target market
When thinking up a name for your new business, you will either come up with too many possible options or with none at all. You can narrow down your choices or start thinking of the most appropriate one by identifying the people whom you want to know about your business.
List down the characteristics of your ideal customer: their age, gender, and location. Next, look at your competitors’ social media accounts to get some ideas about their customer base and online following. These details can help you construct a clearer picture of the kind of customer you want to target.
By knowing who you are creating your brand for, you will have a higher chance of coming up with a name that resonates with these particular consumers.
2. Create your brand persona
The next step calls for building your customer persona. This part requires you to think about your brand’s personality.
Take the time to understand what you want your brand to mean or represent. By doing so, you will be able to zero in on the best names that will attract potential customers.
During this process, think about how you want your brand to create an emotional connection with your target market as well. Do you want to be seen as a professional company or one that is more casual and down to earth? Additionally, think of the values you want to communicate.
When you have listed all these down, you can find a brand name that indicates something about who you are or what you do.
3. Come up with your potential brand name
After generating your customer and company personas, you now have to come up with brand name ideas that represent these two.
Start by using word association. List down words related to or representative of your brand. Go online to find keywords or synonyms that you can use as well.
When you have enough relevant words, play with them to see if you can come up with something catchy and representative of your brand.
You can also try using an online brand name generator. Although these tools won’t give you exactly what you’re looking for quickly, you will be given several interesting options to choose from. At the very least, you can get some inspiration from the results they produce.
Once you have found or created a few potential ideas, hone in on the perfect brand name by choosing one that is:
- Short and simple
- Descriptive but not too general or vague
- Scalable
4. Check the availability of your shortlisted brand names
To avoid encountering problems in the future, make sure your possible brand names are free to use.
Begin by doing a domain name search. Use Google and the most popular providers to check if your shortlisted ones are already taken or still available.
You can also check Facebook and LinkedIn pages and Twitter and Instagram accounts to see if another business is using the same or a similar brand name.
Check for existing trademarks and registered companies. A simple Google search or a visit to trademark or patent registration websites can help you with this.
5. Test your best brand name ideas
Finally, to be sure you will choose a brand name that resonates, test your shortlisted ideas first. By doing so, you will find the one that your target market considers the best for your business and is easy to remember.
Conduct a simple market research or survey. Print out your best brand name ideas and have your family, friends, and acquaintances choose the one that they think is catchy and captures your company’s personality and goal at the same time.
If you will hand out the survey form individually, try to ask the respondents what made them go with their option. Their feedback can help you make a smarter decision.
Once you have reviewed the results, if you like the winning brand name, you can proceed to register your domain name, work on your website design and development, build your online presence, and move on to the next stages of setting up your business.
There is no going around it: Choosing the best brand name for your new company requires thoughtful consideration. However, it is crucial that you do this correctly since your brand name can make or break your business in the short or long run.
If you need help with naming your business, get in touch with us via our Contact Us page.
