Welcome to The Journey! Today we're going to talk about how to name your business
to improve your online success. Let's dive in!
Hey I'm Emma, your GoDaddy guide, and I head up our local outreach over at
GoDaddy social, so very cool gig. But today I'm excited to be joined with my
friend over GoDaddy, Justin Nealey. Hey what's up? Thanks for
having me. Super excited to be on here. Let's dive in. Yeah actually it's perfect
timing because I was on the road recently talking to local heroes and
they're so passionate and I love what they do. It brings me so much joy!
But I can't but help to catch that bug. Like I wanna own a local business too and
I have had this idea back in my barista days, because I love coffee, it's like
okay coffee's cool. Let me open up a coffee shop! But how am I gonna make this unique?
Right there's a lot there's a lot of coffee shops. Yeah so I took another passion,
which was skateboarding. It's like you combine the two. Okay. A little caffeine
kickflip. Which that's not the name, but it could be. I don't know I'm lost.
You're lost. Yeah, where do I go from here? And it's so common.
It's something that prevents those local heroes just from starting.
We have this idea we have all these things, but getting hung up on a business name
is pretty scary so we don't end up starting. Hopefully at the end of this,
you and the audience will figure out how to name their business for success.
So where do we go from here? So first off, I think we should really identify what
we want our name to convey. For you it's probably gonna be like gnarliness and
radness and everything related to skateboarding, and that coffee experience.
But for the audience at home, maybe its trustworthiness or confidence or
reliability. Really, when you're thinking about your name what do you want it to
stand for, that first thought. So step two is what I like to call it just a brain
dump. This is where you're literally just getting a piece of paper and a pen,
we're gonna go old-school for you guys at home. But for us we got a tablet here.
Are you up for an activity? Wait like right now? Right meow. Okay let's do it!
All right, so stoked! So stoked! So once you have whatever you're gonna
write on, you basically just dive right in. And what I like to do, to make sure I
can... Stream-of-consciousness right? Absolutely! Okay, set a time limit, maybe
three or five minutes. That way you really hone in on what you.... That's a limited amount
of time though. You think that, but once you start going with the pen. It's just
gonna go off. Okay. So while you're doing this some things to keep in
mind with your business name. You really don't want it to be too long of a
domain name. What's too long? Does it pass the radio test. So if I gave you a 10-second
ad spot on the radio, could you convey to an audience to where they can remember it?
Just right off the bat, short and sweet. Short and sweet to the point, yes.
That translates to talking to a friend or talking to someone on the street.
You tell them that that name and hopefully they'll remember it. Like caffeine and
kickflips is potentially something that that could be that catchy. You like that?
I kind of like it! I'm just getting started. So when figuring out this name,
and going through that that brain dump, you will, you want to make sure that
that you don't limit your your business name. And what I mean by this is, say I
do pool cleaning services right now, maybe I don't always want to do that
pool cleaning service. Maybe I want to expand to landscaping or whatever that
looks like. And if I name my business "Neely's Pool Service" I'm stuck with just
being a pool service guy, right? What you don't want to do is make it a trendy
name. Remember those fidgets spinners that literally everybody had? I never
touched it. You never touched a fidget spinner? I mean guilty. But those,
it was a fad right? They will came and went. I knew a couple of people that
started business around fidgets spinners, and now they're lucky to sell ten a month.
But coffee is here to stay, it's not going anywhere.
So, absolutely. Another thing to keep in mind, maybe this could be
considered a cool acronym, right? Like you have kick flips and coffee here.
That could be K and C. Yeah keep it clean. Keep it clean. I already picture the hats and
the t-shirts. Right? Just super fresh! Oh, now I'm thinking what font too. Baby steps.
Right we're just on naming it, you're trying to go out there. How much time you got?
Stay away from either obscure words or words that are hard to pronounce or hard
to spell or just just terrible spelling. Like coffee, you could probably do coffee
with a K but it's gonna be hard to remember, right? Especially you wanted to
do Koffee and Kickflips it's pretty tempting to have just K there. Oh that's true.
I could play off the kickflips. But I would avoid it. Really? Why? It's hard to spell.
Justin that reminds me. I know we're talking about websites and names,
but you know me and social media. Oh it's your jam. Yeah it's my jam. So I'm
already thinking about Facebook Twitter and Instagram. 100%!
And I want this name to be available on all three right, so it's consistent? Absolutely.
Oh my gosh there's so much to do! So much. But it's not too hard like once you
have your name, you just go to Instagram or go to Twitter go to Facebook, search it,
see if anything pops up right? And see if your competitors may already have
that name cuz that's also a problem. I know you're gonna tell me to reel it in,
but also starting to think about the logo... you know. You see I'm saying? I can
see where you made a comment earlier like people have these dreams and
ambitions but then they stick to their nine-to-five because they get
overwhelmed like "this too much"! That's why we have to take baby steps, one step
at a time. Like if we try to eat the eat the entire cake at once we may not be
able to do it. But I can probably chow down a slice at a time and by the end of it,
the whole cake is gone. You should see me and pizza. This is your your first slice of cake you want
to make sure you have your business name, then move on to the next slice. So avoid trends,
keep it radio edit, so not over 10 seconds. Super catchy, super easy remember.
And make sure it's available. Yep, make sure it's on all those handles: social
media, domain names, all that good stuff. What are we missing? And then make sure
it's something that you love, right? You want to - this is your name so you want to
make sure that you're invested into the name itself, and you're passionate about it.
You know, I think that the other way I want to look at this is not just all the
points you're giving to me but just making sure - it's not too close to my
competition. Yes! I didn't even think about that. This is so great! I love our
brainstorm session. We got this. And with your competition too, make sure
the the name itself isn't trademarked because I've seen a lot of business
owners do that. They'll invest a bunch of marketing behind it and then get a
random letter in the mail saying "hey don't use that". And they've just wasted a
ton of money. It's not good. So Google is your friend, right? Yeah. Just do a quick
trademark search. One of the first links that pop up. And make sure that it can be
yours. That's important, okay cool. Yeah that makes sense all right. I feel better.
Thank you all for joining. This is Emma over at GoDaddy. Be sure to subscribe to
our channel so you're not the last to know and you'll see our future videos.
My business name! I think that's it. It's a winner, right?
You wanna tell the audience? No way.
Stay tuned!