How to Choose a Business Name

Will Swayne is a sales lead generation specialist and principal of Australian Internet consulting firm Marketing Results. I actually hopped on over to his website from Yaro’s Entrepreneur’s Journey after finally finding time to catch up on several of missed posts.

In Will’s article, I loved how he kept things short and simple. He explained one of the major differences of having a quirky or functional name for a business. I can’t agree more with him.

If you’re in a non mass-market industry, I recommend that you avoid quirky names and go for a name that is descriptive and functional instead – something that a prospect can understand immediately.

Quirky names like Odeos and Google are dubbed quirky because they just sound quirky. Even if you tried to pronounce Del.icio.uses, it’s a mouth full of tongue twisters. That’s why Will advised of not using quirky names unless you’re planning to enter the area of business and branch out to several different markets.

After all, Google was offering search and then later maps, instant messaging and a lot more things on their very wide whiteboard in their Google office. For all that we know, Google might have plans of world domination.

Showing that Will doesn’t lack the knowledge of the Internet today, he even suggested the importance of bundling the right keywords with your business name. After all, with the Internet already filled with domain names bought for a return on investment purposes, you’d never know if it’s even still available.

Will has even listed the few common mistakes that most entrepreneur’s should avoid when choosing their business name:

• Unfocused or irrelevant names
• Hackneyed (Overused) names
• Obscure acronyms
• Over-long names

The best functional yet descriptive business names as recommended by Will are the ones that roll off your tongue when spoken. Come to think of it, I’m now repeating Websites Made Simple 10 times just to see if it’s a viable name because my tongue gets a little twisted by the 5th time.

If you’d like to learn further details of how to choose a great business name, visit the Marketing Results Blog.

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