We are in the process of rebranding AJ Singer Studios and it has been quite something to figure out how to do this.  I really loved this HubSpot blog post  on naming your inbound marketing agency and did in fact laugh out loud while reading it.  I also got a lot from the appendix in Dharmesh Shah's (@dharmesh) aticle at the end of the 2014 Inbound Marketing book.  Dharmesh gives 17 tips for choosing a brand name, and I thought they were outstanding.  I asked for his permission to reprint here and he told me that his publisher would not allow it.  So, go buy the book!

If you are impatient, cheap, or curious, please read on for some tips that Dharmesh did not share that were crucial to our process of changing our brand name.

How to Choose a Brand Name When All of the Good Ones are Already Taken

A few words about what "taken" means:  if you can't get the ".com" of your brand name, DON'T DO IT.  Avoid this at your own peril.  Many are the companies who have lost time and even money because clients are just not used to e-mailng  yourawesomebusiness.NET or .BIZ.  Sometime in the future the ".com" moniker may not matter as much, but in 2015 as I right this, people still think .com by default.

Expensive Domain Names are for Suckers

  Think of the most successful brand on the Internet: Zappos, Google, Apple, Amazon.com.  What do they have in common?  NOTHING.  They took a name and built a brand behind it.  Please don't get me wrong.  A name is important.  Each of these names does make sense (Zappos is short for zappotas Spanish for shoes, in case you were wondering).  But the point is a domain name should not cost you a ton of cash, unless you have really, really, really good data that says you will recoup your investment in 18 months or less.  Domain names should cost between $10.50 and $15, tops!  

That being said, I have seen cases where including keywords in a domain name have boosted a client's rank for those terms (see http://divorcelawyersinsavannahga.com/).  But there is almost always a way to buy or include the keyword in your domain name without breaking the bank.  Incidentally, http://divorcelawyersinsavannahga.com/  cost about $11.   

Final word over here: Jason Keath (@jasonkeath) gave me an unbelievably great resource for finding the right domain name, but he told me not to be too public about it.  So if you want to know you're going to have to comment on this post or reach out to me or him directly.