How To Pick The Perfect Name For Your Startup

Names are powerful, they’re the headlines of your business.

Say you have a small decent hotel and you name it “The Melbourne Motel”. Don’t be too surprise if your business only attracts budget travelers. The word “motel” is perceived by most customers as cheaper and lower in quality than the word “hotel”. A better name choice here would be “The Melbourne – Boutique Hotel”.

Here are some things to consider when naming your startup:

Choose a descriptive name. List the keywords that can best describe your products or services and then come up with a business name that contains that word. Example, if you have a business consultation service for startups, you can have keywords like “startup” “income” “revenue” “business”, etc.

With your initial keywords you could come up with business names like “StartupInc” “StartupLabs” or “StartupBiz”. You can also pick adjective that would go nicely with your keywords  so that you can come up with names like “SmartBiz”. The more keywords you have, the more combinations you can generate.

The name should sound good when said aloud. People should be able to say the name clearly –whether on radio, television or normal conversation – without buckling up. 

Avoid Web 2.0 names. Flickr, Tumblr and some other name Web-2.0-y businesses got away with it. But this fad was so yesterday. Customers should be able to remember, spell or lookup the name with ease. 

You don’t want to confuse even a single customer when it comes to your business name.  If you name your business “Startup4U”, you’ll soon get “Is that spelled FOR or just the number 4?” “Is it YOU or U?” 

Never forget to test. 

Now that you’ve got a name that you feel would click, it’s time to give it a test. You can start by telling your family, friends and colleagues about it and start taking note of their reaction. And if you want a more solid result, you can do A/B testing through Google adwords.

Say you have two name options StartupInc and StartupBiz. If you want to know which one will work best, create an identical landing for each of them. The landing page should be the same except for the name of the business. Run a Google adwords campaign for each to see which of the two names attract the most traffic. 

Final Thoughts

Remember that you’re not just naming your startup; you’re naming your brand. Spend time brainstorming because if you pick the right name, it can become a major sales multiplier for your business.