Every entrepreneur, business owner, and marketer has to name something — at least once.
It’s part of the job. You need a name to start a business, create a product, launch a campaign, or share an idea. Everything, literally everything, has a name.
Naming is one of the building blocks of branding, but the topic flies under the radar. Naming isn’t an everyday thing. You name a company or a product once (hopefully). Afterwards, the job of marketing is to breathe life into the name.
You may not name things often, but getting it right is essential.
Choosing a brand name is one of the most important business decisions you will make. A brilliant name defines your brand, and it can shape the future of your business.
The Demand for New Names Is Shocking!
A large organization can generate over 1,000 new names per year: Every product, every system, every campaign, in every market gets a name. Some consumer companies can name over 5,000 products per year!
Every small business needs a name. In the United States alone, there are over 543,000 new businesses started every single month. That’s equivalent to 2% of the population becoming entrepreneurs daily. That trend is happening in every developing country, and we can see it in search data.
Here’s a graphic from Google Trends looking at search traffic for “brand naming” (blue), “company naming” (red), and “product naming” (yellow) over the past 5 years.
The demand (and interest) for names is constant and it’s high. People are struggling to name their brands.
We Are Running Out of Names
The demand for new names is high, but it is creating a problem. For the first time in human history, we’re experiencing a naming drought.
We can see this in the scarcity of available domain names. In December 2013, the last available four-letter .com domain name was registered. From AAAA.com to ZZZZ.com, all 456,976 combinations had been consumed. It won’t be long until all the five-character names have been registered too.
The demand for domain names is only increasing year over year, and the same thing is happening with trademarks.
To Overcome the Naming Drought You Need Process
There’s a classic meme on the internet called, “How to Draw An Owl.” It’s positioned as a fun and creative guide for beginners.
Step 1: Draw 2 circles. One for the head and one for the body.
Step 2: Draw the rest of the damn owl!
Aghhh! This sums up the experience many of us have with naming. We don’t do it very often, and it is getting progressively harder and harder to find available names for your brands. But all the guides and how-to manuals simply give us the “why” and the “what.”
They tell us why we need great names, and what it means to have a great name. But they don’t show us how! They just say, “Draw the rest of the damn owl.” It drives me nuts!
Brand New Name (my new book) is working to solve the “how” and the “do.” The book includes a proven, step-by-step process to create an unforgettable brand name in two to four weeks.
At some point, you are going to name something. Chances are, it’s sooner than you think: Every product, service, system, campaign and process in your company needs a name. If you haven’t picked up your copy yet, get it on Amazon.
