How should companies brand
Why is a companies brand important? Branding a company or product is a very important step that many companies skip. What is “branding”?
The definition of a “Brand” from Donna Antonucci:
A Brand is a known identity of a company in terms of what products and services they offer but also the essence of what the company stands for in terms of service and other emotional, non-tangible consumer concerns. To brand something is when a company or person makes descriptive and evocative communications, subtle and overt statements that describe what the company stands for. For example, is the brand the most economical, does it stands for superior service, is it an environmental responsible provider of x,y,z service or product. Each communication is deliberate in evoking emotion in the receiver to leave him/her with an essence of what the company or person stands for.
You will need to establish your brand early for your company and products.
Naming Your Company
Having a name for your company is an important part of your brand. Benefits to putting a name to your company even if you haven’t created it yet are as follows:
Internally
A name will catalyze for you (if you are a one-person company) or for your team, the idea and gives your idea identity. The name makes it real, it provides you focus. You’re no longer brainstorming random ideas. You are executing on building your now named company.
Externally
Putting a name to something gives it tangibility and permanence. The name will help ensure that you can quickly get the idea across to others. You no longer have to use the phrase that you came up with to explain the idea like “engraving photos and other memorable events into marble and stone using high powered lasers”. You can just say “Stone Memories”.
Basic Rules
You should follow a few basic rules for naming your company:
- It must be easy to say
- Shorter is better
- People must be able to easily spell it
This rule is broken by too many companies these days. It is an easy pit to fall into as you try to find an available domain name. For example, if WorldsBestLaserCompany.com was taken, you might be tempted to name your company WorldzBestLazerrCompany.com. Do you really want to spell out your company name every time you tell people about it or share your email?
- The .com domain doesn’t have to be available (whether freely available or available for purchase). It used to be that having a domain other than .com would diminish the perception of the company. LaserStudio.com had more impact than LaserStudio.org. These days though there are many top level domains (TLD) beyond the .com, .net, and .org for businesses, .laser is unfortunately not an option at the time of writing this eBook.
- If the name is going to be descriptive, it must speak to your value proposition or differentiation.
Local Rules
You will also need to factor in any government regulations pertaining to company’s names that are in place to ensure a new company does not infringe upon the right of an existing business. You’ll be able to find these rules at your local government’s website.
We will continue the discussion about how companies should brand in this series of posts.
Read the next post in this series – Making Money – Creating your companies brand – Part II
