“How do I choose a name for my business?” It’s an important question.

Run your ideas for a business name through some of these filters and see what you get:

1. Is the url available?

If not, look for something else. The synergy of having your company name match yourcompanyname.com is too important to ignore.

2. Is it naturally optimized for search?

If the name of your company contains what someone would look for on Google, Bing or Yahoo, you’ve just scored major search engine optimization (SEO) points. For example, you are a PR pro in Santa Monica. People looking for PR assistance in Santa Monica will more than likely type “PR Santa Monica” into Google. If the name of your company is santamonicapr.com, Google elevates your ranking.

3. How short is it?

People don’t want to type or thumb something with a lot of letters in it. It sounds petty, but this is the world in which we live.

4. Is the name easy to spell?

You want your target market to find you easily. If misspelling the name of your company will lead your target customer to a blank web page or worse, to one of your competitors’ pages, you’ve got a problem. If, however,  you’re married to the difficult name you’ve chosen, consider scooping up the .coms for the misspelled version of your name and have those redirect to your main website.

5. What does the name look like as a url?

(PG-13) Your perfect name may spell something entirely different when pushed together as a url. In the mid-90’s there was a national insurance company named Titan who was working on their new marketing program called Titan Us. They bought the domain name, created billboards, tv and radio commercials. Literally two weeks before the launch, an employee saw the previews and noticed what Titan Us spelled as one word… Titan immediately changed the campaign to Titan Up.

6. Is the trademark available?

Just because you are small now doesn’t mean you’ll be small forever. Imagine this: The brand recognition you’ve worked so hard to develop finally gains regional or even national attention. Your sales are up, your profits are up, you are strategically planning to expand and… you’re served with a lawsuit for trademark violation. The few hundred you spend now to have an attorney do a trademark search will mitigate the thousands you will spend later in a lawsuit. And if you lose, you will spend thousands more on re-branding with a new logo, tag line, website, marketing materials, business cards, etc.

7. Does it transcend time?

This one is a little controversial so we’ll look at both sides of it.

Is the name of your business so specific that if you change directions or expand in the future, the name no longer applies? For example, you might run a small tutoring business called Math Wiz For Kids. If you ever decide to tutor college age students (or even adult students completing their degrees), your name could be detrimental.

On the other hand, if you’ve carefully selected your target market, having that target market in your name can be a useful marketing tool.

Whichever way you choose to go, consider this carefully as there are significant hard costs associated with re-branding (see #3). And the soft costs of re-branding can be even more devastating: people become confused about who you are and what you do and/or you can lose your following.

8. Does it transcend trends?

A great example is using “consultant” or “consulting” in your name. In the 90’s having a business consultant was the thing to do. (Kind of like high-waist jeans.) Companies that had consultants were taken more seriously and anyone who wanted to be someone had one or more consultants. Today, on an emotional level, the word “consultant” is immediately associated with expensive, unpractical advice. That and conducting kum-ba-yah retreats where employees burn their feet. (Consulting is part of what we do at Sanera, but it’s not a part of my company’s name. And we don’t do fire-walking by the way.)

As another example, let’s take a look at “coaching.” Today, having a coach to help you with your business, sales, or health & fitness goals is popular. But what will be associated with the words “coach” or “coaching” in 10 years? Will they conjur up the same negative feeling that consultant carries now?

9. Does it transcend technology?

We all need to be conscious of this. The technology we took for granted 10 years ago barely exists today. Linking your name to a technology could make your business name obsolete. For example, in 10 years, will “social media” be what email is to us today – outdated and a communication platform that is rarely used?


How did you select your business name? What advice can you share?

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