These are the Most Common Naming Mistakes New Entrepreneurs Make, & How You Can Avoid Them
Recently, I partnered with the team over at Squad Help to write a guest article for the blog. I’m excited for them to share their insight on brand naming, as it is not something I am super skilled at. Check out their insight below and let me know if you have any further questions about brand naming!
When setting up a firm, you should concentrate on getting vital business skills and insights. Gather insights about the industry you are entering, a workable business model, a suitable location, an appealing design, and, most importantly, a sense of which branding strategy would be the most effective for your business and core audience.
Customers want to know that they won't be wasting their time or funds purchasing inferior items or services from businesses. And selecting a catchy business name is one way to assure customers of your product’s standard and ignite their expectations and emotions for your services.
But unfortunately, we found that while different business owners might take various approaches to find a distinguishing name for their enterprise, their naming problems all share a similar pattern.
As a business owner, being aware of these naming pitfalls will aid you in discovering an exciting company name.
Common Mistakes You Must Avoid When Naming Your Business
1. Names That Are Offensive or Confusing
Businesses with a primary customer base with similar social, ethical, environmental, and health views will undoubtedly see better sales. Consumers are generally quite passionate about these ideas and are more likely to support an enterprise that honors and agrees with their opinions.
Know that the best way to communicate your company's brand personality is to choose a name that portrays it adequately and that people will enjoy and remember. And you can do that with a trustworthy business name generator.
While a bad name can lead to brand boycotts and unfavorable perceptions of your business, a good brand name will help you expand your customer base.
Countless customers wouldn’t step an inch inside Hitler’s Fried Chicken, a Thailand-based restaurant. And that’s obviously because the restaurant’s name is offensive and irritates potential clients.
2. Brands With Excessively Long Names
Because they’ll make it difficult for people to discover your business, you should avoid long and challenging business names that make it a chore to recall.
But if you come up with a simple, original, and memorable business name, many of your clients will be able to remember your firm's name and find it easier to tell their family and friends about it. However, if you must use a long name, consider condensing it as MAC and BMW did with theirs.
The names of companies like Hermès, Volkswagen, Chevrolet, and Huawei, which have the pronunciations "air-mez," "Vo-ks var-gun," "shev-ro-lay," and "wah-way," respectively, are indeed difficult for the great majority of people in the world to say or even comprehend. Always keep an eye out for simple one or two-word names that people will instantly recognize.
3. Names With Weird Foreign Translations
If your brand is well-known online, you’ll be able to interact with clients worldwide. Nevertheless, a multinational identity has its disadvantages.
One of them is showcasing the name of your business to people from all over the world who could find it offensive or unpleasant due to language and cultural differences.
Therefore a company must broaden its linguistic research to include more than one language to find the best brand name and premium domain name that people everywhere will accept.
Only after carefully analyzing the most popular languages, both internationally and in the sector you wish to target, should you pick a brand name for your company. If you do this successfully, folks from all over the world won’t hesitate to patronize your business when they come in contact with it.
Watch Your Brand
Social media has had a significant influence on the dynamics of any business. Open feedback from customers—both good and negative—helps businesses grow by improving customer-brand relationships and also determines whether companies succeed or fail.
And because branding is based on how your primary audience sees your enterprise, a poor brand name will harm your brand's image and trigger unfavorable responses in your market.
Don’t forget that branding mistakes, no matter how small, have the power to quickly define your entire business in the eyes of potential customers. And since the incorrect name might have grave consequences for your business, every entrepreneur should try to prevent it.
About the Author
Grant Polachek is the head of branding for Squadhelp.com, 3X Inc 5000 startup and disruptive naming agency. Squadhelp has reviewed more than 1 million names and curated a collection of the best available names on the web today. We are also the world's leading crowdsource naming platform, supporting clients from early-stage startups to Fortune 500 companies.