Naming Your Business: The Importance of Choosing the Right Name

Businesses grow and change but even though refreshing your logo and branding is relatively easy, changing your business name can be much more challenging. So choosing the right name for business is an important first step in starting your business.

Relevance

Your business name should be relevant to what your company does and what it stands for while also being adaptable to future growth and expansion.

For example, when first starting a business, thinking about selling the company or bringing on a partner later down the road is the last thing you are thinking about. If your business is centered around you as the individual then integrating your first or last name into your business name is often a natural choice, but can make acquisition of the company more challenging later down the road.

Concrete & Palm gave us a name that left all options open. It also isn't tied to our founder in any way which allows for easy acquisition later down the road.

Our name implies a coastal location - we are based in Florida and as we grow will stay headquartered in Florida but it could be a limitation.

Brandability

The name of your business should be easily recognizable and memorable. A brandable name can help your company build a strong brand image and establish itself as a leader in your industry. Complex acronyms, unique spellings, obscure words and challenging pronunciations should be carefully considered. Don’t forget research for hidden meanings of words and common uses of words to avoid being blind sided later down the road.

We choose the name Concrete & Palm because we are based in Florida and as we grow will stay headquartered in Florida.

Our tagline: "Where strategy meets design." reflects an important side of how we work. We are constantly balancing between our clients needs for organization/structure (concrete) while staying flexible/creative (palm).

Something that blind sided us? Using the word "concrete" in our business name has resulted in spam calls/emails thinking we are a construction company.

Availability

Before you settle on a name, make sure it's not already in use by another company. Check for trademarks, domain name availability, and social media handles to ensure that the name you choose is not already taken. Often a great name will be available on some platforms but not others. If this is the case, a good option is to add a descriptor word to the name or an alternative domain ending (.co instead of .com).

Here are some examples we could have used for Concrete & Palm if the domain and social handles had not been available:

concreteandpalmmarketing.com or concreteandpalm.co

@concreteandpalmagency or @concreteandpalm.co

Choosing a name is an important step in starting your business - sometimes it is a quick choice and other times it is a long process. We find working the naming process into the mission statement and brand value writing and discovery process works well for our clients.

Still struggling to find the perfect name? We’d be happy to help!