{"id":43434,"date":"2023-10-20T15:28:34","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:28:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/can-i-change-my-stupid-business-name-after-ive-spent-a-mint-on-marketing-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:28:34","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:28:34","slug":"can-i-change-my-stupid-business-name-after-ive-spent-a-mint-on-marketing-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/can-i-change-my-stupid-business-name-after-ive-spent-a-mint-on-marketing-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Can I change my stupid business name after I\u2019ve spent a mint on marketing? &#8211; StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"td-post-featured-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"445\" height=\"253\" itemprop=\"image\" class=\"entry-thumb\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/l_poor-doggy-445.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"l_poor-doggy-445\"><\/div>\n<p><b>I chose a name for my business and did all my marketing material, advertising, etc. I now hate it and have had it pointed out to me that it sounds slightly seedy. What do I do? Plough on regardless or start from scratch again?<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>As someone who has started a number of businesses I can empathise with the difficult task of naming \u2013 it&#8217;s extremely difficult.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>However, and this is not an exaggeration, it is the single most important decision for your&nbsp;business that you&#8217;ll ever make.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>No other thing you ever do will ever communicate as much about your business as your name will.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>A good name will inspire people, creating energy and opportunity. A bad name will confuse, or limit your businesses potential.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So, in a word, change it. If you&#8217;re not completely happy with it then change it, the cost of doing so will soon be forgotten.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Two friends and I owned a music business for several years. None of us liked the name, and the business never flourished \u2013 I think the bad name was one of the reasons why.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So here are some rules to choosing a good name:<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ol start=\"1\">\n<li>You need to like it<\/li>\n<li>Ensure it communicates something about your brand (e.g. Naked says transparency, Google comes from a word for a very, very big number, Boost says energy), but try not to make this too obvious (keep it interesting).<\/li>\n<li>Ensure your name is not limiting your business by talking about a product or place if you have plans to stretch into other businesses or locations. The Virgin empire was going to be called Slipped Disk Records when it started as a record shop. How different their fortunes would have been.<\/li>\n<li>Ensure it has good search engine optimisation. A made up word, or an unusual word is often good \u2013 Guzman y Gomez Mexican food anyone?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Take the time to get this right. To generate and consider thousands of names before settling on the right one is not unusual.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I chose a name for my business and did all my marketing material, advertising, etc. I now hate it and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":59802,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43434"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43434\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}