5 tips for the perfect company name

Finding the right name for a company is no easy task. After all, the company name, together with font and logo, is the figurehead of your company. The following are 5 tips on what to look for when choosing your company name.

1. Simple company names stay in mind

Short names are memorable. This is especially true if they are easy to write and pronounce. Another advantage of short company names is that they're easy to incorporate into your marketing. This allows you to print advertising or product signs with larger font and logos, business cards and merchandise become more legible. Carglass is therefore a more successful name than “Jacobs & Dandor's synthetic resin rockfall repair service”, even though this rather describes the company's work. Sure, you can abbreviate a long name, but be careful. For the viewer without context, abbreviations are just incoherent letters. Our example company would now be called “JDKS”, which does not provide any information about which services or products are offered. Although it is now known far beyond Germany who BMW is, the name in its entirety was “Bayerische Motoren Werke”, more insightful for consumers for a long time. A simple, short name is therefore more memorable than one that is too long. Still, a long name is better than a meaningless one.

2. The company name should say it all

What values does your company represent? What sets you apart from your competitors? What does your unique selling point look like? These questions need to be answered before choosing a company name. Because your target group will only engage with your company if they can identify with your brand and products. A good company name provides information about what They do and like They do it. According to studies, people perceive company names and other technical terms differently. Brain scans therefore show that we process them more rationally, as usual, but surprisingly also on an emotional level. This means that we associate a company name with a feeling. So ask yourself the following: What do you want to convey to your target group? The feeling of stability and consistency? Or maybe luxury and prestige? Are you the type of “Konzerthaus Vivaldi” or would you rather “Dolye's Garage”? The options are numerous. If your company name reveals something about your brand's identity, your target group will easily find you.

3. Great company names sound good

Looking at the sound of company names is “Coca-Cola” an excellent positive example. The two words start with the same initial sound, in this case “Co”. Companies, for example, have similar letters that follow one after the other in a short period of time Dunkin Donuts and PayPal exploited. This stylistic device is called alliteration and is extremely memorable. In addition, the final sound of the two syllables is also similar, here “ca” and “la.” It follows that the two parts of the name are “Coca-Cola” Rhyme, which makes the name even more memorable. The sound of company names is responsible for brand success in another way. As early as 2003, a study revealed that initial plosives (stop consonants such as k, p, t, b, d, g) are very effective for brand recognition and recognition. It is thought that harder sounds may be useful to signal harder or more durable properties of a product. Conversely, they can be rated negatively for a product that should ideally be soft. “Knuspa” would therefore be an appropriate name for a cereal, but less suitable for a pudding.

4. Good company names give room for improvement

Your business name should always leave room for your business to grow. Take the name “Bibi's Bookstore” for example. It provides crystal-clear information about the products available. Should Bibi want to expand or even change her product line one day, this exact aspect becomes a problem. The online shop Amazon also originally began with online bookstores and today benefits from the fact that its company name offered space to expand its product range, similar when you refer to your location by name. The opening of a second branch of the “Gasthof am See” in the middle of the city could lead to disappointed guests. Remember: A name is a promise! If you aim for international business, you should always consider the native language of your customers so that there are no embarrassing misunderstandings during the translation. In Germany, for example, a curling iron with the English name “Mist-Stick” (fog wand) was advertised — quite unsuccessfully, to the surprise of the provider.

5. The perfect company name takes time

Did you know that the search engine Yahoo originally had the name “Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web” wore? Sounds a bit bumpy, doesn't it? Yahoo is the perfect example of why the first idea isn't automatically the best. If a company name comes to mind at the start, write it down and then continue your research. If you spend a long time working on a specific name idea right from the start, there is a risk that you will commit yourself too early. Because the more we hear a name, the more we usually like it. It can also be useful to get feedback. Just keep in mind that you can't argue about taste. Instead, ask what feelings your name makes your sparring partners feel, or ask them to spell the name. Important insights can be gained from this, as we can see with the example of Amazon. Founder Jeff Bezos originally gave the company the name “Cadabra” until he received feedback that the name sounded like the negative term “cadaver” on the phone. The company name was then changed.

Exceptions confirm the rule

There are numerous approaches, tips and tricks for finding the perfect company name. It is good to know and apply some of them. The more you learn about the various aspects of a company name, the more often you'll find that very few companies take all tips into account. And yet some have become very successful. Let's look at the tech giant Google. The name comes from “Googol”, a term in mathematics that describes a number, more precisely a 1 with 100 zeros. The idea behind the name was Google's effort to catalog all the information in the world, an unimaginably huge amount. Pretty clever at first glance. However, the connection is barely discernible for users without this knowledge. Google's name in no way describes the company's core competency in the area of search. In addition, the name was not particularly easy to remember, pronounce or spell at first. Despite all this, Google is now one of the most successful companies on the planet and “googling” something is used synonymously for searching on the Internet.

conclusion

Deciding on a company name is a creative challenge. It should provide information about the nature of your company and the type and quality of your products and at the same time set yourself apart from the market. If you know what makes your company special and understand what your customers want, you can start finding the perfect company name right away with our five tips! With our WLAN marketing package, your customers/patients/guests advertise for you, are happy and recommend you to others.