Tips for coming up with the perfect business name

One of the services we navigate at Anchored Creative Studio is naming businesses. We love being able to dig into a company’s why and come up with a unique name that both attracts their audience and represents who they are. If you’re looking to come up with a name for your business yourself, here are our

• Avoid anything too common.
  The last thing you want in business is to be confused for someone else. Do your market research, and ensure your name is unique. If you’re using a location or family name in your business name, does that already exist? Are there other, similarly named businesses that may show up in web searches?

• Steer clear of anything hard to spell or unintuitive. 
  In the same vein, don’t go so unique that you’re impossible to find. Dropping letters off an easy-to-spell word (I’m looking at you, Flickr), or adding unusual spacing or punctuation can make you tough to find if an individual only hears your name, and is unsure how to write it out.

• Check out URLs, social media handles, and legal names. 
  Going back to our first point - make sure your name isn’t so popular that there’s no Instagram handles or URLs left for you. If this is a brand new company, and not a DBA, take a look through your state database to ensure you’ll be able to register as a legal entity under your desired name. Consistency is key here, too - try for URLs and social media handle that are the same, or at least compliment, one another.

• Make it obvious what you do, without limiting yourself.
  The key here is to pique interest of your audience, while allowing room for your company to grow. Using our studio as an example “Anchored Creative Studio” was originally named “Anchored Design Studio,” but shifted to be more general as we began to take on more holistic projects that included more than just design. And if we were only named “Anchored,” it wouldn’t be very clue what we did. If you know you’ll be remaining under one umbrella, get as specific as you want, but give yourself space if you need it.

• Choose something that appeals to your audience and will encourage them to learn more. 

  This goes in tandem with my point above. You’re making this business to serve your audience - make sure it’s something that will attract them from the standalone name.