Five Mistakes to Avoid When Naming (or Renaming) Your B2B Brand
When it comes to naming or renaming a business, many brands fail to think about the potential consequences of a name that does not accurately reflect the company’s vision, values, or goals, or that fails to connect with their target audience.
To choose the right name for your business, you need to understand the most common naming mistakes and how to avoid them. This would help you know the naming pitfalls to avoid, whether you create the names yourself or use a brand name generator.
Today we’ll guide you through the five most common mistakes and disasters to avoid when naming your business.
Five Common Mistakes Every Entrepreneur Should Avoid
1. Translation Errors
We commonly find words that have different meanings on different platforms as well as in different languages. One mistake that entrepreneurs make is not researching their brand name to figure out if they have other meanings in different dialects.
Also, at times, when choosing a business name, some entrepreneurs may be tempted to use a name from another language. However, this can lead to disaster if the word or phrase does not accurately reflect the company’s values or goals—or if the translation is incorrect.
2. Choosing a Name That is Way Too Common
Choosing a name that is too common takes away from the uniqueness and sense of innovation customers should feel when they see your name.
Setting your own trend can make you even more memorable, especially if it’s way better than the normal standard. You can achieve this by starting out with comprehensive market research to compare all the names in your space. This way you can understand what works and how you can disrupt the system.
And yes, using a generic name can lead to brand confusion and dilute the uniqueness of your company’s brand, so try as much as you can to avoid generic words.
3. Using Complex Words
When choosing a business name, it is important to ensure that the name is clear, concise, and easy to remember. To do this, it is important to remove any unnecessary words or phrases from your name that’d make it more complicated than necessary.
Using a name that is too long and difficult to pronounce (or spelled incorrectly) can be damaging to your business. Customers could either rename your business or give it an abbreviation that might not suit the brand you’re trying to build, hurting your brand positioning.
Perhaps using a clear and memorable name will help to ensure that the name is memorable and that it accurately reflects the company’s values, goals, and brand. Some excellent examples of clutter-free brand names include “Apple” and “Google.”
4. Neglecting Trademark Checks, a Matching Domain Name, and Audience Testing
When finding a name for your business, there are certain vital criteria you need to ensure your name meets before you start using it. Some of these vital criteria that can lead to naming disasters are neglecting trademark checks, a matching domain name, and audience testing.
Your chosen name has to pass these criteria. If you don’t check for existing trademarks before declaring a name as your brand name, you might eventually find that it encroaches on another business’s trademark, and this can cost you a lot of money.
A matching domain name helps improve your online accessibility and trustworthiness. Audience testing, on the other hand, is a way to ensure that the name you choose actually resonates with your target audience so that you don’t end up with a cringy and unappealing business name.
5. Not Establishing Your Tone
When choosing a business name, it’s important to ensure that the name reflects your company’s tone and values. So, ensure you consider how the name will make your company’s target audience feel. Also, ensure its tone accurately reflects your company’s brand identity.
Other Mistakes You Should Look Out for
There are quite a lot of things that can go wrong with naming, but fortunately, most of them happen when due diligence isn’t taken. In addition to the five common mistakes we listed above, here are three more to also keep in mind:
- Choosing a name that’s too long or complicated.
- Choosing a name that’s too similar to another business.
- Choosing a name that’s not trademarked.
Always Pick the Best Name
Choosing the perfect name for your business is essential to ensuring that your brand resonates with your target audience. To ensure that you choose the perfect name, it is important to understand and take to heart these common naming mistakes we listed here when you start your naming session.
This was a guest post from Grant Polachek, the head of branding at Squadhelp, a 3X Inc. 5000 brand. Squadhelp is the leading crowdsource naming agency trusted by startups and Fortune 500 companies worldwide. They’ve critically analyzed over one million name ideas and curated a solid collection of excellent business and domain names that are ready for use.