Naming Matters – Creating a Brand in a Global Economy

Sep 20, 2012OFFBEAT, Online Marketing1 comment

How to Create a Brand

What’s in a name? For a brand, it’s everything. If you want your small business’s success to skyrocket on a global scale (and of course you do), your brand must have a great name. If you make a mistake when naming your brand, you’ll be doing yourself a great disservice. There are many different types of mistakes that people commonly make, but they can easily be avoided. When naming your brand in this global economy, here are some things you need to consider.

Don’t Limit Yourself

Right now you might have a small business that services only your local area or town. When that’s the case, sometimes business owners give their brand a name that reflects the local nature of their business, such as Miami Plumbing Repair. By doing this, they are unintentionally limiting their business to one city. If that business becomes popular, they can’t just change their name to reflect their new territory. You only get once chance to choose your name, so do not include local references.

Don’t Use Cultural References

If you really want to think about growing your business on a global scale, you need to remember that there will be many, many different countries and people who will hear your name. It’s a bad idea to use any type of cultural references that would be lost – or worse, offensive – to any other parts of the world. For example, the name Yankee Doodle Website Design isn’t going to appeal to anyone outside of America. You’ll be limiting yourself again, and your business will sound like it isn’t fit to operate outside of the states.

Perform a Language Check

If your brand name has any made-up words in it, never make it official before you make sure none of those words you crafted are actually words in another language. Even for common, regular words, you should find out if they have different meanings in any other language. Words can mean different things in different places, so make sure nothing about your business name would have a negative connotation in another language. Even if it isn’t negative, just using a word that means something different in another language will make it confusing for people who speak that language.

Make Sure Your Name is Unique

You can do business name searches a few different ways in the United States, and that will help ensure that you don’t choose a business name that someone else is already using in another part of the country. That doesn’t include the whole world, however, so do some more digging and research to make sure your business name is unique across the entire globe. Doing business with the same name as another international company will almost ensure a lawsuit or failure.

The name of your brand is one of the most difficult and most important decisions you’ll make. Take your time, and make sure it’s a global-friendly name before you finalize anything. Your reputation and brand recognition are at stake.