Every business spends months, even years, perfecting each product. Businesses innovate new products with the hope of breaking through the market. Creating a blockbuster product is the key to success. However, experts say that more than the product, it is the branding and marketing that makes the business grow. A foundational part of this aspect is product naming. For an efficient product, look for a product naming agency to help you.
A well-chosen product name is vital for a successful launch, enhancing sales, and boosting brand recognition. The core purpose of your product’s name is to captivate your ideal customers and persuade them by highlighting why your product is the perfect choice for them.
Product naming starts from a process of researching, brainstorming, and evaluating, followed by understanding the brand positioning and brand communication. A brand naming agency can help you with this, especially in the entire process of creating a brand positioning.
Choosing the Perfect Product Names
Understanding the Product
Understand your products in terms of their characteristics, target audience, usage, future potential, competition, and more. These parameters that define your product will help fine-tune your product naming.
Based on the product characteristics, you can define the length, language, meaning, spelling, pronunciation, difficulty level, uniqueness, and emotion associated with the product.
Consistency & Familiarity in Product Naming
Since the motive of a product name is also to build trust in your brand, it is better if your product name is a reflection of your brand and is consistent with the other products and services of your brand. Consequently, the purpose of maintaining consistency in product naming is to evoke recognition and a sense of familiarity, along with excitement and trust of course. A very fine example of this is how Apple created the iPhone, iPad, iTunes, etc., and established an ecosystem with their products.
9 Techniques of Creating Catchy Product Names
Hire a professional product naming agency and try out different techniques and approaches to brand naming before you finalize anything.
1. Descriptive names: A Brand Naming Agency can help you conduct multiple research to make unique brand names that reflect your products or services. The descriptive approach describes the brand or its product in terms of its use, USP, or characteristics. Xerox followed the same approach to sell photocopiers.
2. Inventive words: Neologism is the art of inventing names. You can make up combinations of words, alterations, play with different sounds, and so on to invent a name that best resonates with your audience.
3. Acronyms: One of the most professional and effective ways of generating brand names or product names is to create acronyms.
4. Alphanumeric: Another professional and descriptive way of naming your product is to combine alphabets and numbers. This technique is especially used in naming pharmaceutical products.
5. Combination: You can also combine two or more words wholesomely to make a new but easily recognizable name. For example, “HerBelle” combines ‘her’ and ‘belle’ to create a feminine name that can be used for beauty, jewelry, or fashion products.
6. Translations: You can also use the charm of foreign languages to give your brand an international touch. For instance, “Miroku” comes from the word ‘Miryoku’ which means ‘charm’ in Japanese.
7. Playful Names: Depending on the target audience and their consumer behavior, you can also go for playful product naming. This playfulness can be shown in spelling, pronunciation, or meaning.
8. Sound Words: Another way of mastering product naming while keeping an element of familiarity and relevance is to use the sounds of the corresponding words. You can look for already existing brands or words that describe your product/ brand to understand the phonetics.
9. Alterations: Altering a pre-existing word is a good method to make a self-explanatory product name. Alteration can also be done to make the name more playful, professional, or sophisticated.
Elimination Round
Before finalizing any brand name, entrepreneurs should also create sample names along with their visual representation to test in the market. Founders can do this market research in both offline and online mode.
You should go through a process of elimination of names. A good Product naming agency will test the list of selected names by using techniques of market research.
Parameters of Choosing a Product/ Brand
There are some essential parameters that you can use to eliminate and finalize the perfect product name.
· Meaning: the brand name should embody the brand’s essence and encourage positive associations among customers
· Protectable: a great brand name will amount to nothing but dust if it is not legally protected by trademark and domain availability.
· Visually appealing: Among all the innovative product names, only those that can be translated into design elements like logos, taglines, and color palettes, will be considered.
· Accessible: the right product names should be easily understood, pronounced, spelled, recalled, and searchable regardless of their language and familiarity
· Timelessness: Avoid names that depend on trendy or buzzwords which will fade away with time. You should select a timeless name that will stay relevant in the market for many years to come.
· Global Appeal: Consider how your product name will be perceived in international markets and which meaning it reflects in other languages. Even if your current target audience is geographically limited, you should consider the global appeal factor for your product names for prospects.
· Uniqueness: Making a unique name is very important for a distinctive identity and legal feasibility. Using only common words for your product name can make your brand look similar to the already existing brands/products in the market.
· Associated Emotions: You shall cross-check that the product names evoke only the desired emotions in the customer which makes a positive association between the audience and your brand.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Q. How can I make new words without making them too complicated?
A. Making combination names and alterations are some of the simplest approaches for creating brand names or product names.
Q. Is it okay to take a brand name without a trademark?
A. Without legal protection, the effort and resources that have been used to curate a product name will go in vain. The trademark will secure your brand identity and the use of your product name from unwanted and unauthenticated use.