7 tips for creating an unforgettable company brand

EVERYONE HAS HEARD of Woodies, Spar, Apple, Microsoft and IBM. Why? Because they’re easy-to-remember brand names.

Whether you are an entrepreneur launching your first startup or you are an experienced business owner opening a new store, the creation of an effective brand that instills confidence in consumers is always a critical component to your success.

But how do you accomplish this? Here are seven simple tips for creating a killer company brand:

1. Focus on one brand at a time

Many aspiring business owners are fearful of overspending, especially in the early stages. They often try to do more with less money to ‘play it safe’. While this may be a good overall strategy, being overly frugal when creating a company brand can be counterproductive.

Rather than attempting to brand individual products and services, your money will be better spent by focusing only on the company brand – starting with the name itself.

Take Dunnes Stores. They are perhaps best known for selling groceries, but they also offer clothes, bedding and even home décor. Do they waste time and money creating different branding for each item? No.

The iPad is another terrific example. Apple doesn’t waste valuable resources re-branding new upgrades like the iPad Pro or iPad Mini – they stick to consistently promoting the one brand.

2. Grab the domain name quick

This is important – even if you are considering more than one option, why not buy all the domain names just in case? They are very inexpensive and all your bases will be covered.

Checking the availability of your preferred name is easy – simply go to a hosting service, like Register.ie or GoDaddy, and you can find out if your choice is available instantly. These sites will even offer you other similarly worded options.

3. Keep it simple

In a perfect world, your company name needs to be short and sweet. For example, a possible website name for a new market-gardening company might be ‘GardenHeaven’, rather than ‘John Kelly’s Horticultural and Garden Design Centre’.

Make the company name memorable, easy to say and impossible to misspell. This will help your customers find you using search engines. A shorter name will also prove invaluable when it comes to creating a company logo.

Unfortunately, in 2016, there are fewer short or easily found names still available online – this is where descriptive URLs, or site addresses, come in.

Measure your target market: its size, how far you are willing to travel to serve it and how far are they willing to travel to visit you. It may be that you’ve a 20-mile radius to serve, which corresponds with the majority of small businesses in Ireland.

In these instances, does a short, snappy brand matter as much as one that tells your target market what you do and where you are?

Take John Kelly above. If GardenHeaven isn’t available, then perhaps he is best served using a domain name that tells customers what he does and where he is located. How about ‘KellysGardenDesignCentreNenagh’?

4. Choose descriptive, abstract, or funny… but only one

Your company brand name can fall under one of three categories:

• A descriptive name is one like Homebase that directly relates to what your company does best
• An abstract name is one that is evocative and thought-provoking but doesn’t directly relate to your products or services. Think Topaz, or even Big Red Cloud
• A funny name is whimsical, like MailChimp or Survey Monkey

5. Too many cooks

You should enlist the input of as many people as you can in the early stages of branding, whether they are staff members or others in your business circle. But for the final decision-making process, keep it to as few people as possible.

Branding is an emotive subject, and the bigger the group the more challenging the process will be. In fact, too many people will probably result in a brand name that is compromised by trying to serve too many masters.

6. Be consistent

Even if you incorporate all the other tips and advice perfectly, you can still create a complete branding disaster if you do not consistently apply the same strategies.

Every time you include the brand in any of your advertising or promotions, use consistent language that gives the same look and feel as your original vision.

For example, Coca-Cola always uses the phrase ‘Coke: The Real Thing’. They don’t change it up every now and then to say ‘Coke: It’s the Best’.

7. Protect your brand at all costs

When your brand name begins to take off, you don’t want anyone stealing it! Protect your brand name, your company logo and your tagline through trademarks and patents. File for trademark status with the European Union Intellectual Property Office.

And always display copyright symbols next to all displays of the company name, logo and tagline in all correspondences and ad campaigns.

Michael O’Brien is the marketing manager at Big Red Cloud.

If you want to share your opinion, advice or story, email opinion@fora.ie.