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What's missing in this article is some basic marketing strategy. For me, a name/tagline is the last thing a company needs. The first is a clear strategy. In the case of this article, the name needs to first appeal to the target audience. B2B names tend to be less cute/more corporate. Where is the audience located? What price point are you targeting? Men or women? What age range?

The basic naming choice is: obvious or not. An obvious name makes it easy to understand what your business is about (for example: My Thai Restaurant). A non-obvious name ("Typhoon") doesn't say anything, so a tagline is needed to help clarify. When someone is hungry, they're not likely to look at the taglines - they're scanning lists/signage for restaurant names.

Research is certainly key -- if you have the ability to know how your market thinks and who they are -- a name that appeals to this generalization can go a long way to helping your company succeed with this customer.

A successful name should ideally be evocative of an implicit benefit or end result. OpenTable, FaceBook and YouTube are good examples.

Also, an "of course" feeling to it, like, "I never new what it should be called but somehow {insert name} really hits the nail on the spot.

Google's GrandCentral comes to mind.

I think that article is a great tool. Many small businesses do not hire marketing firms to help with all of this and do not have the resources to do so. This article seems to offer many great suggestions of how to come up with a name. It seems like Scott has covered it pretty well.

I agree with Jay that a name is not the end all, but when someone needs one this resources would be helpful. The article does end with saying not to make to big a deal out of naming. If you think about it many of the well known companies names are pretty meaningless. They are well known because of the quality of what they offer, not because of the name.

To tie in with what Jay said, I would go a step further in saying that marketing is not the important things(GASP!) but the quality of the the service or product. If you have something people need and desire you should do pretty well.

Mike

Agreeing with Jay and others, while Scott touched on researching the competitor names, I think this is such a key strategic element that it deserves a little deeper development. It's not just the competitors name ... it is the market positioning strategy behind the name. Does your competitor(s) name reflect a positioning strategy? What is the strategy? What do the collection of strategies say about your industry? Can you reposition your product by developing a new strategy. For example, before NyQuil™ there were no specific night time cold medicines. Their strategy was to launch a night time product and name it appropriately, thereby re-positioning all competitors as day time products.

Positioning names are much stronger product names.

see article:
https://www.marketingprofs.com/ea/res_detail.asp?resID=349