Branding Basics - The Top Five Warning Signs It's Time to Hire a Company Naming Consultant

Now you've opened the naming equivalent of Pandora's box. Everyone in the organization feels they now have input. Even if this strategy were to work, you would have one happy employee and the rest who feel snubbed. It also assumes that your employees understand your brand message, your future brand architecture, and how the whole identity piece will come together. In addition, as in warning sign number one, you've turned productive employees into part time linguists. You wonder if maybe there just isn't a good name out there and that they are truly all taken. It's at this stage that some companies decide to cut their losses and just slap on a label and move forward. Unfortunately, they often come back to revisit the decision again and again, in the form of spelling out their names each time on the phone, trying to explain a name with no meaning, or spending marketing dollars on a forgettable name in order to make it stick. The long-term cost of promoting a poor company name is far greater than the initial investment in a good brand name, with a matching .com, and a solid marketing message behind it. But now, as more and more businesses enter the market, and as the internet increases in importance, it's vital to have a unique and compelling company name with a matching .com domain name. It's no longer advisable to label your business with common descriptor words such as "Superior" or "General" or "Advanced" etc. These adjectives not only get lost in a sea of sound-alike names, but they are harder to get ranked in a Google search, competing with every other company using similar language.