Franziska: Hi and welcome back to Basic Bananas TV. Today, I would love to discuss with you a few thoughts around picking a business name, and we get asked this question quite a lot. How do I even pick a name? For most people it’s maybe not very easy to pick a name that they really like, so I wanted to share 5 little tips with you that you might be able to implement and I use these tips all the time too because I still come up with a lot of ideas and names all time and I actually go through the tips myself. The first one is really, is the name reflecting your vision for the business and the values? Is it reflective of that? For example, at Basic Bananas, some of our values include fun and lifestyle and doing things differently. The name Basic Bananas is way more reflective of that if we had chosen a name such as Marketing Institute or something like that.

Even when we first started, this is a very interesting point too, when we first started Basic Bananas about 9 or so years ago, one of my very first mentors actually said, you can’t use a name like that. Luckily we didn’t listen. The first one is reflective of your vision and your values. The second tip is, try and make your name timeless, if possible. Rather than following a trend and trying to make it super trendy, what’s trendy right now. Try and use something that you think would maybe also last and stand the test of time. The third tip is memorable. Try to pick something that people would remember. How do you know? I always use this test, I pick a name and then when I have dinner with friends I would tell them, “Hey I’ve come up with this name.” I usually buy the URL too, straight away, because I want to have it when I decide to do something with it.

I go for dinner and I ask my friends, “Hey, I came up with this name, what do you think?” Then I get their feedback and it doesn’t really mean that much just yet, but then maybe the next time I see them again or a few days later I go, “Hey, do you remember that name that I mentioned?” If they don’t remember the name then maybe it’s not a memorable name. I ask a few people and if they still remember it after a few days, it’s a memorable name. The fourth tip is, don’t go too tricky with your name. I see this mistake a lot. Where people are trying to be too tricky or too funny or trying to use words and letters in the name. Words and letters. Letters and numbers in the name, and it can be really tricky to remember, first of all, but also spelling it.

If you have to constantly spell your name to people when you say, “Hey, our business name is called Blah.” They don’t know how to spell it, you have to constantly say, “Well, add a number 4 and a Y and then a whatever.” It’s usually not a good name. Don’t go too tricky with it, make it something that people can remember and can spell. The last one is, there are descriptive names versus non descriptive names. Descriptive names will be something like I mentioned like Marketing Institute or anything that is describing for example, Sydney Sailing School or something like that and then there are names that are just words, that are non descriptive like Basic Bananas or Trillo or Kleenex. You choose whichever works better for you. I have seen that sometimes when you pick a descriptive name you could potentially, especially if it’s something like Sydney Tennis School or something like that, you could sometimes gain momentum a little faster.

However, I personally really like the non descriptive names because you can really own them and once you gain that momentum you create raving fans and you will own a space like Kleenex did for example. You choose whichever, there’s no right or wrong whether you go descriptive or you just pick a funky sort of word. I personally prefer to pick a word and make it quite short and memorable and timeless. Here are 5 tips for you that you can consider when you pick your next business name. Let me know how you go with it.