Tips You Need for an Effective Brand Name

A brand name is one of the most significant and poignant decisions that business leaders can make. Whether you're looking at the brand name for your website, your business, your products, or a particular new service you plan to offer, you want people to remember you for your brand name more than anything else.

You can imagine how Cadbury is renowned throughout the world. Or McDonald's. Everywhere you go, these two brand names are known to the point where you could probably picture the colors that they use in their colour schemes. When it comes to your personal brand name, of course, the conversation shifts. You need to have an effective brand name that makes you stand out and makes you become memorable so it's not too dissimilar to a business brand name. Whether it's for your business or for you personally, your brand name really changes. It's the focus for considerable marketing along with capital investments.

So you need to make sure that your brand name is something that's going to stand out for you from day one. Name development is not something that's actually very straightforward. However, it doesn't always get the investment that it needs or that it deserves. You need to plan, you need to focus and you need to persevere. And ideally you need the involvement of somebody who knows what they're talking about so that you can make sure that your brand name is a successful one. Let's take a look at the top tips that you need for an effective brand name.

• Know your brief. It's important that you have a clear brief so that you can be sure that your brand name will be a successful one. This is where brainstorming and research comes in. What do you want your brand name to convey? Are you looking to be very straightforward and put your name first? Or are you looking to talk about what you do as a company if this is for your personal brand name? What is it that you want people to think about you when they hear it? What do people think when they hear Jay-Z? Because it's certainly not going to be his actual name. Clarifying what you want from day one is important to make sure that you are brainstorming this from the beginning.
• Think big. You do not have to be too small for this. Imposter syndrome may be very real, but you can be as big or as bold as you want when it comes to your brand name. You have to make sure that your brand name is suitable and visionary, and you need to create a name that has the flexibility to encompass every plan that you might have for your brand, expanding one day.
• Make sure that you are building on your truth. A good place when it comes to start naming your personal brand or your business brand is to look back at what is going to make you famous. What are people going to know you for? Is it your baking skills? Your ability to expand into new business arenas? Your ability to knock down businesses and sell them off piece by piece? Whatever it is you need to make sure that you are building on your brand truth. So for example, if you know that your business is going to be in baking, then maybe think about what you're best at in the baking arena and base your brand name around that.
• Have a little play with the words. There are plenty of names of businesses and of people out there that come about from playing around with words. If you think about the name Adidas, what does that speak of to you? Does it tell you all about Adolph Dassler and his business in the early 1900s where he combined his pet name Adi with the first 3 letters of his surname and came up with Adidas? Probably not. You might not have even known that story, but the point is you'll remember the brand name. Think about the Swedish group ABBA. ABBA was created because of the first letters of the names of the four Swedish singers involved in the band. This alone created a personal brand that has stood the test of time. So consider what words you can play around with from your business or from your personality that could create a stunning brand name for you.
• Make sure that it has personality. You want your brand name to be distinctive and memorable, and it's part of the alchemy of brand naming to bring something to life. The more memorable you make it, the more ownable it becomes in trademark terms. The way that the name looks like Haagen Dazs, or misspelling such as Irn Bru, or even shorthand like eBay all stand out. All of these personality injections have made these brand names something that everybody's going to remember.
• Sometimes less is more. One of the best branding principles is how you can create something bigger but in the small form. Think about it: Do you say Kentucky Fried Chicken or do you say KFC? Do you say TE Stockwell and J Cohen or do you say Tesco? We won't even go into what BMW stands for, but the point is, all of these shorthand acronyms for longer names are memorable for a good reason.
• Protect it as soon as you can. If you come up with a fantastic brand name, well done you. You need to get as much input as possible from those around you to really solidify this, but once you have it solidly and you know exactly what you want to be called, you need to protect that name. Speak to a legal team and speak to somebody who can help you with pre registering your business name and making sure that you buy up the website so that nobody else can take it from you.