Choosing a name for your business is the hardest thing in the world. You’ve got to come up with a word or a phrase that sums up your product and your entire company in a way that captures the attention of customers. On top of all that, you’ve got to find something that hasn’t been taken yet. If you’re lucky, the name might come to you suddenly, but you’re more likely to spend days sat in the meeting room trying to come up with ideas, most of which will be terrible. If you’ve got everything else in place and you’re just waiting for that name before you can launch your great new product, try some of these things to help you along.

Know What Your Business Is

That seems like a bit of a silly thing to say, but it’s important. What this means is that you need to have a clear idea of what the core ideals of your company are and what you want to achieve with it, beyond making sales of course. Knowing what you want the message of your company is key if you’re going to find a name that reflects it. Get back to basics and think about why you started this business in the first place. Then think about what you hope to achieve in the future, and what the core ideals of the company are. For example, are environmental concerns important to you? If they are, incorporate that into your name.

Limited Company

You also need to decide whether you want to be a limited company or not. There are a lot of financial benefits to registering as a limited company but you should also consider how it affects people’s perception of the name. If you’re trying to paint yourself as a larger company that does business nationally and internationally, it’s a good idea to get a company formation service to register you as a limited company. Having that ‘ltd’ after your name will lend you a lot more credibility and give the impression that you’re a big time company. However, a lot of customers prefer to deal with a smaller, more wholesome business. If that’s the market that you’re trying to appeal to, you might be better off not including the limited in the name, even if you do register as a limited company.

Brainstorm

The best way to come up with a great name is throw plenty of ideas at the wall and see what sticks. Get everybody together for a brainstorming session and see what you come up with. It’s important that you include all of your staff in the brainstorming session, they’re all a part of the company and they’ve got good ideas to offer. Make sure that you let everybody know that there are no bad ideas and encourage anybody to voice any ideas that they might have. At the end of the session, you should have a good list of potential names to choose from.

The Logo

A good logo is vital for all companies and the name is often going to be a part of that logo. When you’re trying to whittle down your shortlist of potential names, you should bear that in mind. Get your design team to try out some of the names on the logo and see what works. You might find that some just look wrong on the logo so you can discount those right away.

Don’t Rush It

When you’re brainstorming and you come up with an idea you think works, it’s easy to get excited and get the ball rolling. But you might find that once you’ve had all of your business cards printed and updated your website, you don’t like the name that much after all. A good name has to be something timeless so it’s always a good idea to sleep on it for a couple of days and make sure that it’s still sounding good.

Check It’s Available

Once you’ve been through all of those steps and settled on a name that you love, it’s time to make it official, but you can’t register your business name if somebody is already using it. The patent office has a database of all of the currently registered business names so you can check whether it’s available or not. If you skip this step and you start trading with somebody else’s name, you’ll end up in a lot of trouble.

Nobody ever tells you how difficult it’s going to be to come up with the perfect name for your business but if you follow these simple steps, you’ll have it in no time.