Welcome to The Journey! Today we're going to talk about how to name your business to improve your online success. Let's
dive in! Hey I'm Emma, your GoDaddy guide, and I
head up our local outreach over at GoDaddy social, so very cool gig. But
today I'm excited to be joined with my friend over GoDaddy,
Justin Nealey. Hey what's up? Thanks for having me. Super excited to be on here.
Let's dive in. Yeah actually it's perfect timing because I was on the road
recently talking to local heroes and they're so passionate and I love what
they do. It brings me so much joy! But I can't but help to catch that bug. Like I wanna own a local business too and I have had this idea back in my barista days, because I love coffee, it's like okay coffee's cool. Let me open up a
coffee shop! But how am I gonna make this unique? Right there's a lot there's a lot of
coffee shops.
Yeah so I took another passion, which was skateboarding. It's like you
combine the two. Okay. A little caffeine kickflip. Which that's not the name, but
it could be. I don't know I'm lost. You're lost. Yeah, where do I go from here? And it's so common. It's something that prevents
those local heroes just from starting. We have this idea we have all these things, but getting hung up on a business name is pretty scary so we don't end up
starting. Hopefully at the end of this, you and the audience will figure out how
to name their business for success. So where do we go from here? So first off,
I think we should really identify what we want our name to convey. For you it's
probably gonna be like gnarliness and radness and everything related to
skateboarding, and that coffee experience. But for the audience at home, maybe its
trustworthiness or confidence or reliability.
Really, when you're thinking
about your name what do you want it to stand for, that first thought. So step two
is what I like to call it just a brain dump. This is where you're literally just
getting a piece of paper and a pen, we're gonna go old-school for you guys at home. But for us we got a tablet here. Are you up for an activity? Wait like right now? Right meow. Okay let's do it! All right, so stoked! So stoked!
So once you have whatever you're gonna write on, you basically just dive right
in. And what I like to do, to make sure I can… Stream-of-consciousness right?
Absolutely! Okay, set a time limit, maybe three or five minutes. That way you
really hone in on what you…. That's a limited amount of time though. You think that, but once you start going with the pen. It's just gonna go off.
Okay. So while you're doing
this some things to keep in mind with your business name. You
really don't want it to be too long of a domain name. What's too long? Does it pass the radio test. So if I gave you a 10-second ad spot on the radio, could you convey to
an audience to where they can remember it? Just right off the bat, short and sweet.
Short and sweet to the point, yes. That translates to talking to a friend
or talking to someone on the street. You tell them that that name and hopefully they'll remember it. Like caffeine and kickflips is potentially something that
that could be that catchy. You like that? I kind of like it! I'm just getting
started. So when figuring out this name, and going through that that brain dump,
you will, you want to make sure that that you don't limit your your business
name.
And what I mean by this is, say I do pool cleaning services right now,
maybe I don't always want to do that pool cleaning service. Maybe I want to
expand to landscaping or whatever that looks like. And if I name my business
"Neely's Pool Service" I'm stuck with just being a pool service guy, right? What you
don't want to do is make it a trendy name. Remember those fidgets spinners
that literally everybody had? I never touched it. You never touched a fidget spinner? I mean guilty. But those, it was a fad right? They will came and
went. I knew a couple of people that started business around fidgets spinners,
and now they're lucky to sell ten a month.
But coffee is here to stay, it's not going anywhere. So, absolutely. Another thing
to keep in mind, maybe this could be considered a cool acronym, right? Like you have kick flips and coffee here. That could be K and C. Yeah keep it clean. Keep it clean. I already picture the hats and the t-shirts. Right? Just super fresh! Oh,
now I'm thinking what font too. Baby steps. Right we're just on naming it, you're trying
to go out there. How much time you got? Stay away from either obscure words or
words that are hard to pronounce or hard to spell or just just terrible spelling.
Like coffee, you could probably do coffee with a K but it's gonna be hard to
remember, right? Especially you wanted to do Koffee and Kickflips it's pretty
tempting to have just K there.
Oh that's true. I could play off the kickflips. But I would avoid it. Really? Why? It's hard to spell. Justin that reminds me. I know we're talking about websites and names, but you know me and social media. Oh
it's your jam. Yeah it's my jam. So I'm already thinking about Facebook Twitter and Instagram. 100%! And I want this name to be available on all three right, so it's consistent? Absolutely. Oh my gosh there's so much to do! So much. But it's not too hard like once you have your name, you just go to Instagram
or go to Twitter go to Facebook, search it, see if anything pops up right? And see
if your competitors may already have that name cuz that's also a problem.
I
know you're gonna tell me to reel it in, but also starting to think about the
logo… you know. You see I'm saying? I can see where you made a comment earlier
like people have these dreams and ambitions but then they stick to their
nine-to-five because they get overwhelmed like "this too much"! That's
why we have to take baby steps, one step at a time. Like if we try to eat the eat
the entire cake at once we may not be able to do it.
But I can probably chow
down a slice at a time and by the end of it, the whole cake is gone. You should see me and pizza. This is your your first slice of cake you want to make sure you have your business name, then move on to the next slice. So avoid trends, keep it radio edit, so not over 10
seconds. Super catchy, super easy remember. And make sure it's available. Yep, make
sure it's on all those handles: social media, domain names, all that good stuff.
What are we missing? And then make sure it's something that you love, right? You
want to – this is your name so you want to make sure that you're invested into the
name itself, and you're passionate about it.
You know, I think that the other way I
want to look at this is not just all the points you're giving to me but just
making sure – it's not too close to my competition. Yes! I didn't even think
about that. This is so great! I love our brainstorm session. We got this.
And with your competition too, make sure the the name itself isn't trademarked
because I've seen a lot of business owners do that.
They'll invest a bunch of
marketing behind it and then get a random letter in the mail saying "hey
don't use that". And they've just wasted a ton of money. It's not good. So Google is
your friend, right? Yeah. Just do a quick trademark search. One of the first links
that pop up. And make sure that it can be yours. That's important, okay cool. Yeah
that makes sense all right. I feel better. Thank you all for joining. This is Emma
over at GoDaddy. Be sure to subscribe to our channel so you're not the last to
know and you'll see our future videos. My business name! I think that's it. It's a winner, right? You wanna tell the audience? No way.
Stay tuned! .