SOURCE: Expert from https://thebookonsoftware.com/ written by Joe Berti
Often, product naming is heavily tied to company naming. If your company has a strong brand already, then you do not need to establish yet another brand. In this circumstance, it is best to just name product modules in a way that describes exactly what they do. I have named a lot of products and this is always a stressful exercise for the organization. Everybody in the company has an opinion. Here are the guidelines I have established:
▪ If your company already has a strong brand, do not waste time or money creating a new one with your product naming (for example, Adobe has a strong brand so the products leverage the brand name).
▪ If your company is new and does not have a brand, simplify as much as possible and follow similar rules for product naming, like the one-word rule. You most likely will not be able to name the company in a descriptive way as most domain names are already owned by someone else and purchasing one could be expensive. Company naming is complex. Therefore, you then have to spend time establishing the brand. Examples: Apple, Chase. Who wants to Chase their bank or would associate a computer with food such as an Apple? Over time they worked but it takes a lot of money to build the brand. Salesforce was brilliant in terms of simplicity as it named both the company and the product.
▪ Call the product exactly what it is and does. Your marketing and SEO team will thank you for that. For example, IBM Maximo is a suite of products and we named one of the modules Mobile and another Predict. Maximo manages assets and is a solution for maintenance technicians, so everyone knows who the mobile was for (technicians) and that Predict is doing predictive failures for assets. Note that we already had strong brands in IBM and Maximo, which allowed us to focus on describing what the product did.
▪ Try to name your product with one word that is short, simple, and easy to remember. For example, SAP’s next-generation ERP is called S4 or sometimes S4/Hana as they try to promote their database.
▪ If you cannot name your product with one word, then do so with two words, but focus on the easy-to-remember concept. Try to have the second word further explain the product. Examples are the Adobe Creative Suite, and the Microsoft Office Suite.
▪ Consider it extreme to name a product with three words. Many people, including me, will not be able to remember the name of it. I have made exceptions for products that can be abbreviated. For example, at IBM we named a product Environmental Intelligence Suite but everyone calls it EIS which is still one simple “word.”
▪ Pick a product name
▪ Do a trademark search, if there is an actual conflict, go to step 1
▪ Perform SEO analysis, if an issue, go to step 1.
▪ Put the name out there and deal with lots of input (good luck!)
▪ Rest – well done. Quit second guessing yourself.
With any company or product naming you will have to make sure you are not in violation of any trademarks. Avoid costly errors and do a trademark search. You can go to https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks
and search quickly, but I recommend leveraging a trademark attorney. Your product name may be taken, but a brand qualifier can remove a trademark conflict. A trademark attorney can advise you if there is a conflict. Getting a letter asking you to quit using someone else’s trademark is not fun. Luckily, I have not yet had to deal with that for a product I have named, but I have had to deal with it for products named prior to my joining a company. Additionally, I am always surprised when companies do not bother to do a simple keyword search to see how competitive their product name will be in major search engines such as Google, Bing, Quora, or DuckDuckGo. Even worse, sometimes, unexpected results appear in search results. You do not want to compete with the latest porn site or pop star in your SEO competition. Naming your product in a way that describes what it does will drastically help with SEO. If you can afford it, it is worth fi ling trademarks for major geographies where you plan to do business. Now, it is rare to have an issue, but you should also consider what your product name means when it i translated into other languages. When it is an issue, it is REALLY an issue. I would typically check the top 9 languages spoken globally. If your company only plans to do business in the US, then don’t bother, but most software companies want to scale globally at some point. Siri, Apple’s assistant, when translated into
Georgian is something vulgar. Yikes!
Enjoyed this blog and want more? The above and more can be found in http://thebookonsoftware.com/ written by Joe Berti.