- There are estimated 30000000 companies in the world today.
That's roughly one company for every 26 people.
With so many brands in the world, ranging from huge brands
like Coca-Cola and Apple, to small brands
like Mom and Pop shops.
It's becoming harder and harder to stand out.
So how can you create a brand name
that can help position your company
in this increasing more competitive scenario
and stand out from a huge crowd?
Hi, everyone.
I'm Neil Patel and today I'm going to teach you
how to choose a great business name
that will help you grow your brand.
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There's so many businesses nowadays,
it can be hard to find a good business name.
Over 627000 businesses open each year,
according to the Small Business Administration.
That is 627000 less names to choose from every year.
Well, if you're worried, don't worry,
I'm here to help, so don't worry.
First off, let's start off by going over
what makes a good brand name.
There was a study done by the University of Alberta in 2010,
that concluded that customer responded very well
to repeatedly structured brand names
such as Coca-Cola, Kit Kat, Jelly Belly.
Repetitive brand names affect consumers'
branding elevations, reactions to cross selling
and product choices.
A good brand name can be any number of things.
Meaningful, right?
That cultivates a positive emotion and connection.
Visual, brand name that's communicated
through design or logo.
Distinctive, stands out from your competitors.
And Accessible, easy to interpret.
These are just a few ways
in which a brand can provide value.
However, the most important question
that you need to ask yourself is,
especially when you're creating a brand,
does it resonate with your audience?
The first thing is, consider the audience you're targeting.
If you're targeting a hedge fund investors,
do you think a name like Jelly Belly or Coca-Cola
would work?
Especially for creating some hedge fund type of product?
Of course not.
So the first thing you want to do is consider the audience
that your brand is targeting.
What is their age group?
What is their cultural values?
What is the brand?
And how will it help them accomplish things in their lives?
Solve their needs, their wants and their desires.
If you have a poor understanding
of the audience you're targeting, the next steps will fail.
So it's important that you really put your audience
in the center of everything.
The second thing you need to do,
is select what type of name you want.
Some people can successfully get away with using their name
as their business.
These are typically embodied
in their vision of the founders.
Example of this is the Michael Jordan Brand himself, right?
The Jordan shoes.
He's using his last name.
It's almost $1000000000 brand,
if not over $1000000000 brand.
Elon Musk, he uses Tesla named after Nikola Tesla.
The next one is acronyms.
These are shortened versions of descriptive names.
Kentucky Fried Chicken label themselves as KFC
because they thought fried chicken sounded unhealthy
and it's name.
Now did you know Geico is actually
not named Geico at first standard for government employees
insurance companies.
Later on they decided to rebrand as Geico
and then they put that famous Gecko as part of it,
and that put a fun spin on it.
The third one is descriptive.
The name of your company can legitimately describe
what your business is.
American Airlines, Home Depot.
These are examples of names that tell people
exactly what the company does.
This avoids any confusion.
It can be boring at sometimes, but it works well.
The fourth one, suggested names and there are three types.
Real, these are terms that are taken
straight from the dictionary, right?
EX Uber, means outstanding
or supreme example of a particular kind of person or thing.
That represents a company with big goals and ambitions.
Composite, mixing to dictionary words together into one.
Facebook is a prime example of this.
The third one is invented.
Sometimes they're just not enough words
in a dictionary to come up with your own brand,
so you have to invent one.
A good example of this is Pinterest.
Yeah, sure there's words like pin and interest,
but they just merge them and created their own word
and it worked well for them.
The fifth one is associative.
A reflective meeting back to the brand,
a name that has a metaphorical meaning,
such as Sirius XM, right?
The satellite company radio station named their brand
after Sirius, the brightest star in the sky.
It's a station where you can come and listen
to the biggest and brightest stars.
The fifth one is names that derive
from another language, right?
See, sometimes a la--, name won't make sense
in your language but it will make sense in others.
Good example of this is Hulu.
It's actually derived from a Chinese term
that is used to represent a bowl
that stores precious things.
The next one abstract name.
This is where the power of phonetics comes into play.
A good example of this is Rolex.
Rolls right off the tongue and also represents
a luxurious connotation.
Now pro tip for you, make sure it's a name
that can be trademarked or copyrighted.
For example, the NBU Universal channel, right?
Sci-fi had to change his name to S-Y-F-Y.
Not only did it visually look more appealing,
but they can now copyright it.
Now the third thing, you want to decide
what your name should say.
Ask yourself, what is your brand vision?
What is your company's mission statement?
The best brand names don't describe, instead they translate
into some sort of emotional appeal.
You want your brand to articulate your brand heart.
Nike's emotional appeal is about winning,
overcoming adversity, being a champion.
When you think Nike, you think professional athletes,
Olympians, champions, right?
Just do it.
Coca-Cola gives you this sense of nostalgia,
happiness, spending time with family and friends.
You need to figure out what your big idea is
and how you can translate that into your brand name.
You can even try testing with different brand names
to see where you find the most success.
Try running targeted ad campaigns, to landing pages
and even conduct surveys with friends
and other focus groups.
The fourth thing, trim down the complexity.
The stickiest brand names out there are simple.
If you have a brand name that's hard to pronounce
are too long, or it's not easy to memorize,
well, it's going to have a negative effect.
Did you know when Jeff Bezos was incorporating Amazon,
he wanted to name his business to be Cadabra, right?
After the magic word Abracadabra.
But when he got a call from his lawyer
who was helping him incorporate, his lawyer thought
the name of the company was Cadaver.
He didn't know it was Cadabra.
Right then Basos knew and he realized that,
that name wouldn't work, hence you see
the name now of Amazon.
Luckily we're not all going to Cadaver or Cadabra.
Amazon is much a easier to understand name.
Last but certainly not least,
make sure your name isn't already taken.
There's a ton of ways you can do this.
Make sure you do trademark searches.
Each country has their own trademark engines,
do searches, make sure there's nothing that pops up
so that way you can take that name.
And of course, make sure that your name
doesn't mean anything negative in other languages.
As long as you do that, you'll be off to the races
and you'll have an amazing brand name.
Now if you need help with your company,
growing it once you got your brand name,
check out my ad agency, NP Digital.
Thank you for watching.
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Have a wonderful day.