What’s in a name?

Posted on February 28, 2008 - Filed Under Marketing |

Progress is being made.

The free newsletter is finished. And the product has sailed past the 50% completion point.

The only thing that really is outstanding: What in the world do I call this beast?

My foray into the world of small business before didn’t seem to matter much with the name. Usually the others in the group worried about it while I was busy working on actually producing something.

The names of the businesses, in retrospect, were pretty stupid. CCC, TFR Incorporated, CPI, Seascape . . .

Now with all this talk about marketing, the realization hit that any name off the the public bathroom wall won’t suffice. Something memorable, something easy, something “brandable” . . . which I still don’t know what that means.

When looking at names, I’m wondering what to make of them.

Acura - sounds of precision, excellence
FourHourWorkWeek - A goal of objective to strive for, taking control of one’s life
Microsoft - something soft to blow my nose with

In my former life as an engineer, I learned companies exist which do nothing but come up with names for businesses and products. Sometimes costing upwards to $100,000. For a name! And this science involves people, infinitely smarter than I, to search for latin definitions of words and stitching something together the general populace can understand. And pronounce.

OK. $100,000 seems to not be in the budget. So, I asked Lord Google. Many articles exist, “How to name your business”. Their advice: don’t make it too generic, not too specific. Don’t make it hard to pronounce or too exotic or too simple.

Thanks for wasting my time. I could have written that article myself. DUH!!

The site shall be a resource for people, I can’t name it after a product. If the soul function were to sell Twinkies online, then possible names could be “TwinkiesOnline.com” or “TwinkieNinja.com”. This is simply not my case.

But this isn’t something which can be put off much longer. And it’s not something I want to launch with until I have it squared away. Launching with some kind of filler name won’t be good. Our marketing depends on people know where to go online. Changing mid-stream will not be an option.

If you liked that post, then try these...

Marketing Path: The First Steps on February 22nd, 2008
Part 2 of 2 From yesterday, the customer goes through different stages before they finally purchase a product.

Smart, Sexy and Sophisticated on April 23rd, 2008
Relax.

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