You’re an entrepreneur; you have an awesome new business idea … now for the tricky part: naming your business. How do you come up with a great company name?
In a nutshell, the name of your company is an important part of your business’s marketing and branding, so you’ll want to make sure you name your company something that:
- Is easy to say. The last thing you want is for someone to struggle to pronounce your company name.
- Has a relatively short URL available. You want to have a URL for your company name that is ideally 8 to 10 characters long.
- Is memorable and different. Your target market will remember your company name if it’s different from other competitors in your space.
- Has a positive association attached to it. It’s always helpful when your company has something catchy or positive associated with it.
Here are the steps we took to name our company Stryve.
Step 1: Come up with a lot of names
The key at first is to come up with a lot of names for your company; start making a list and don’t filter out any ideas until you have about 25 company names written down in a Word document or a whiteboard. When you’re doing a name brainstorm try to get into the mind of your target customer: think about what words and brands’ names are meaningful to them and write them down.
Step 2: Think about what you’re trying to accomplish
What is your company name supposed to portray about your business? For example, we wanted to name our company something hip, easy to say, and have a relatively short domain name so that it could easily be typed into Google or put on a business card. When we came up with our company name, I was literally was looking at products around our office, saw a pack of Stride Gum and started writing down words on a whiteboard that was closely related to the word “Stride”. We came up with “Strive Group” however the domain name was already taken by a cyber squatter.
We thought it would be cool and different if we just spelled the word “strive” with a “y” instead of an “i”.
Step 3: Ask yourself these two questions
Can you picture yourself saying your company name to other people? Can you picture other people saying your company name?
We could see ourselves saying to people “our company is Stryve… that’s strive with a “y” and saying “Stryve with a “y” would help make our company memorable and different. Before we finalized our company name we asked other people what they thought of the company name and when we got positive feedback we felt like it was the right choice. We also felt like “Stryve” would be meaningful to our target market (and to us) because it has the connotation of achievement or “striving” for higher goals.
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