Business Naming Basics

Quite often a business name will come to mind, and then adapted by the entrepreneur in charge even before the business plan has been written.

Bad idea.

A lot of information needs to be sifted and digested before a start-up is ready for a corporate name.

The very first thing that must be considered: Exactly what are you naming? Identify that first.

Is it a single business that has no aspirations for going global? Is it the company only that you are naming, or is it also a product line, a series of models or styles, or a single service?

I have a client and friend who had used the same name for his first product and for his company. He came to me when he was ready to introduce his second product. Already in his third month of business he had experienced the need for a standard naming hierarchy.

For companies who plan to introduce multiple product lines, and models and styles within them, you may need to establish a naming hierarchy early on just to make sure you won’t be confusing customers later on.

Perhaps you will be naming a product that is replaced by newer versions – like software – so you’ll want to establish that ground work early with a hierarchy, or as some prefer to call it, a brand architecture.

From the very beginning, set up a structure for your new and future names. By so doing you won’t have to backtrack later when re-naming can be costly and confusing to customers and prospects.

Related business naming posts:

1. Business Naming And Product Naming are Different Animals. A naming hierarchy is a function of name management – the positioning of products against other products in the product...
2. Product Naming Requires Future Planning Naming a new product, particularly if it’s the first product you introduce, will have far-reaching implications. That’s because the new...
3. Is One Business Name Enough? The answer to the dilemma of the domain vs business name is to treat the domain name as an association...
4. Make Business Name Evaluation Impartial Don’t let name evaluation become a personal thing. This is especially critical if you are wearing two hats – the...
5. Business Naming Should Start with a Naming Brief Matt, a self-proclaimed computer nerd, created a list of the steps required to create and register a name. I had...

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