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Business planning: What is the best way of coming up with business name ideas?
SB
SB
Shakira Brown, Award-Winning Small Business PR & Marketing Expert answered:

The most important piece of advice I can give you is to have something in your brand name that means something to your audience. Inside jokes between you and your business partner are not the best choices for names. Steer clear of names that mean something different based on spelling and only are used within your own firm. An example is I once had a client that wanted to use a name for a subsidiary similar to "Acme"4 Recovery. "Acme" was the parent company (the name has been changed to protect the guilty in this case), but they wanted to distinguish themselves in the recycling space with the number 4. Why that number? Well this company internally had the saying of the 4 R's: reduce, reuse, recycle and recover. Unfortunately the rest of the world (including school age kids) are only familiar with the first 3 of those R's. So not only had they come up with a name that sounded like a drug rehab center (when verbalized it sounded like "Acme" For Recovery) but they were referring to something that only the bozos at their company knew about. When playing on words or numbers in this case make sure it makes sense whether it is read or said. And always use messaging anyone can understand without reading your company's mission statement. Just give me a ring if you need more.

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