How to name a brand? There are several common methods

The name should tell potential customers what the main benefit of the product is.

There are many brands on the market now. A good name can help the brand quickly establish recognition in the minds of users and reduce marketing costs. A pale and meaningless name will hardly enter the minds of users.

Quoting a sentence from "Positioning":

A name is like a hook, use it to hang the brand on the product ladder in the minds of potential customers. In the age of positioning, the single most important marketing decision you can make is what you name your product.

1. Several common methods of brand naming

Make use of animal and plant names, reduplication, idioms, compound words, English combinations, numbers, common word classes, poems and quotations, homophones, product meanings, etc.

2. Several requirements for brand naming

1. Good to listen to, read and remember

The brand name should be easy to pronounce and remember so that it can have a wide range of popularity. Most well-known brands are easy to pronounce, recognize and remember.

Since the cognition of users and the market needs to be educated, the more pleasant and memorable the name is, the lower the cost of brand building and memory, and the faster it spreads. Two-character names are easier to pronounce and remember, but it is currently difficult to register a two-character brand name.

2. Unique

The brand name should be unique and distinctive. Don’t blindly imitate other brands. This way you can distinguish yourself directly from your competitors. If you want to build a big brand with a national or even global presence, then you have to choose a unique name.

Quoting a sentence from "Positioning":

Choosing a name is like driving a race car. If you want to win, you have to take risks. You have to choose names that are almost common but not common.

For example: When Xiaomi was first registered, others thought it was an agricultural company. When people first heard of OPPO, no one knew it was a company that sells mobile phones.

Although this type of name sounds nice and is easy to remember, it does not seem to have a direct relationship with the product. It is undoubtedly risky at the beginning, but the company has great ambitions and has a lot of money for publicity in the early stages. Once the product enters the minds of users, the effect will be very significant.

Choosing a name that is catchy, generic, and descriptive can discourage competitors from entering your space.

3. Consider industry attributes and user attributes

The naming should take the industry style into consideration and cater to the aesthetic preferences of the consumer group. It is generally safer to adopt the mainstream style of the industry in which the brand is located, for example:

• Toy brand names have distinct characteristics, are user-oriented, and are gentle, friendly, and easy to read.
• Financial brands tend to be conservative and steady, most of them have four characters, and the words they use are conservative and steady;
• Most social media brands have two characters, and a large part of them are double characters (QQ, Momo), which are easy to read and remember.
• Most news reading categories have four characters in their names, such as Toutiao, Tencent News, Qidian Reading, Yidian Zixun, and Himalaya.

4. Indicate product functions and features

Words containing product functions or attributes in brand names are more likely to establish awareness among new users. For example, Nongfu Spring, as soon as you hear it, it is related to water, and Liepin is definitely related to recruitment.

Especially for new brands, the name directly contains product-related information, telling potential customers what the product is used for, and it is easier to promote it in the early stages.

5. Easy to search and spread

This is also very important. If a name is too complicated, difficult to type on the keyboard, or ranks very low in the search results, it will be difficult to spread.

For example, a brand name is created using homophones, but when it is input and searched, the original word is found and the brand name is difficult to search. Although the name is very distinctive, the effect is not good, and a lot of time and money need to be spent on maintenance in the early stages.

Inspection criteria: whether it is necessary to switch the input method when inputting, and go to Baidu to search to see if there are any strong competitive words.

6. Can be registered and protected

As brands get bigger, the chances of a two-word brand name being approved get smaller and smaller. Before registering a brand name, it is best to go to the "Trademark Office of the State Intellectual Property Office" to see if it can be registered.

3. Common Misunderstandings in Naming

1. Ignoring industry background and product positioning, over-pursuing form and choosing nice names, but the names have nothing to do with the products, especially for small brands. When users hear the name and cannot associate it with the product, it is very difficult to promote it.
2. Use some obscure or uncommon words and ignore consumer acceptance.
3. Blindly following trends and abusing popular words, such as using whatever words are popular, in fact these words have become vulgar.
4. Blindly imitating, copying, and clashing with big brands will involve legal risks.
5. Blindly using homophones is not user-friendly for input and search, such as using the homophones of a famous person or thing.
6. The translation is bad or too bold.

4. Grasp your own positioning

When choosing a brand name, you must accurately grasp your own positioning, as the brand name will form a deep impression on customers. You can directly name it according to what consumers care about, for example, the food can be fresh, delicious, and tasty.

If it is a small brand, the more the name highlights the performance of your product, the better, and the easier it will be to promote it in the early stages.

The most important point: your name should express your brand and establish user awareness. That is, what brand concept do you want your name to convey and what kind of publicity effect do you want your name to achieve.

• Taobao: It allows buyers and sellers to shop online.
• Tmall: Cats have nine lives. If they lose, they can try again and still survive.
• Ant Financial: Ants, unity is strength, and ants themselves are responsible for thousands of ant-like enterprises;
• OPPO and VIVO chose an international name from the beginning. In the domestic environment at that time, foreign letters sounded fashionable, high-end and in line with the world. In the past few years, some Chinese local clothing and cosmetics brands have used similar naming methods;
• Xiaomi mobile phone: "Xiaomi" is approachable, low-key and simple, but it can provide the public with a better user experience. The Xiaomi logo is the combination of the first letters of Mobile Internet, MI, which is also the pinyin of "mi". When turned upside down, it looks like the Chinese character "heart" with a little less, meaning that users can worry less.

Of course, names will also become outdated. For example, XX Bao was very popular in the past. Now if there is a new brand called XX Bao, it will not bring obvious results, and others may even be disgusted.

What worked in the past may not work now or in the future. In the past few years, using English letters to name products to make them look high-end may not necessarily have such a good effect now.

There is no perfect name. When naming, you must accurately grasp your own positioning and make it suitable for your brand.

Author: Le Wei

Source: Lewei