Question

Topic: Taglines/Names

Think-tank For Creativity

Posted by Anonymous on 7/1/2005 at 4:25 AM ET 250 Points
Hi,
We are in the midst of starting up a small Accounting Practice.

Currently we are in a jam trying to come up with a smart company name as well as a tagline.

Our initial thought was to use "profitcentric", but somehow felt it's not catchy or powerful enough. Need to compete with other current practice.

Descriptive names include "yield", "strategic", "profit","frontier"," Maximise", "prosper", "focus", "future" etc...or any other suggestions.

It's all about improving your bottom-line"

eg * NetWorth - NW

tagline: "improving your wealth capability"

It gotta be attractive, something that will get people's attention and would want to give us a go.

All help would be much appreciated.
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by adammjw on 7/1/2005 at 5:00 AM Accepted
    Teoaimee,
    As I understand you are planning to start up an accounting practice.
    So you have to pose following questions first:

    1. What is precisely that your are going to offer to your customers and will it be of interest to them and will they really need your services?
    2.Who is your target group of customers?
    3.How are you going to sell your services( on-line, one2one)?

    As soon as you have addressed these questions you have to decide how to enhance your Unique Selling Proposition to your prospects( question no.1) and then get the message out to your customers.That's where your company name and tagline comes in.

    Hope it helps

    Adam
  • Posted by ReadCopy on 7/1/2005 at 5:28 AM Accepted
    Well done for recognising that you have to compete with your others to get your name know :-) Its a good first step for you.

    How exactly are your competitors positioning themseves? What types of names are common amongst the businesses that are your closest competitors? Does your product differ from others?

    Try to understand what tone and strength your competitors use ... thats useful too. Are there names Functional (say exactly what they do) or Invented or Emotional/Evocative (use words like Home instead of House, or evoking memories or good feelings etc).

    As a general rule, Functional names work best when they are linked to brand (i.e. Coka Cola, Mc Donalds) and work less when when they are a company name, because they simply tell the market what business they are in, which can be frankly dull (i.e. The Car Hire Company, the Fizzy Drink business etc)

    Invented names can be fun to use, difficult to make up sometimes. Domain name acquisition is easier, usually people like the names, they can he highly memorable and give great marketing opportunities.

    Emotional names are great, because they tend to position the company or brand well in peoples minds (Yahoo = Evocative, so is Virgin). They are powerful differentators, memorable, helps create better brand images.

    Once the name is choosen, look to the tagline.

    The best way is to brainstorm then, write then down next to the chosen name and just see which works best.

    I know I have gone on a little here, but I hope this has been useful!

    Good Luck
  • Posted on 7/1/2005 at 11:05 PM Accepted
    Step One: Identify your target audience.

    Step Two: Interview 12-15 people who are in your target audience to see how they think, what they look for when making decisions, what they like/dislike about the process, what unmet needs they have, etc., etc. Don't sell them anything; just ask good questions and take good notes on what they say. (Don't tape record. Take notes.)

    Step Three: Analyze your detailed notes, looking for common threads, anomalies, interesting opportunities, insights that can help you succeed and stand out from the crowd.

    Step Four: Articulate a unique, competitive, meaningful, benefit-oriented positioning. Make sure it addresses the issue of why someone should choose you instead of your competition.

    Step Five: Lay out your overall marketing strategy.

    THEN it's time to deal with the name and the tagline.

    If you start with the name and tagline, the chances you'll get it right are 1 in 1,000, if that. After all, if you don't know what you're trying to communicate, it's a real crapshoot.

    Think of it this way: How are you going to select the winning name if we come up with 25 or 30 possible candidates? What criteria will you use? If you can't tell us that, how are we supposed to know where to look for the name?

    You need to start by addressing your fundamental reason for being -- your positioning, what makes you different from, and better than, others in your field, and why someone should hire you.

    If you start with a name, you're missing the whole idea of marketing.
  • Posted on 7/3/2005 at 9:53 PM Author
    Hi everyone,

    thank you so much for helping in brainstorming. Most of your suggestions are pretty great and let me do further research on this as you have suggested and I will get back to you again.
    In the meantime, keep those comments coming. As u know, this is pretty new to us, and it is very important that we get our footings right. Once the initial set up is establish, we can start doing the real thing.

    thank you again.
    Aimee
  • Posted on 7/5/2005 at 10:27 PM Author
    anadisah,
    pretty interesting suggestions....very innovative. keep them coming.

    One of my targets as an Accountant is to serve our customers by providing professional accounting services to
    accurately classify, summarize and report
    timely information and much more.
    Either working as a team or an individual, we are guided by our core values of excellence, integrity,
    respect and openness.

    As I have learnt,every Business Must Do Accounting

    Not only is it to a business' advantage to do accounting, it is required by law. Every business must account for profit and loss, expenses, payroll, and many other accounting activities. What's more, most small businesses want to focus on growing their business, not on bookkeeping processes and accounting reports. When you take over their books at a very profitable rate for yourself, you are freeing business owners to do what they really want, to grow their business and focus on making sales. Paying us to do their books makes small businesses

    My intention of starting a company was to accomplish something that did not exist in the marketplace, or to do a better job than existing accounting companies.

    By keeping management focused on preserving or strengthening the company's unique competitive niche, it can also prevent panic and unwise marketing or spending responses to meet an indirect thrust by competitors into our market.

    When you work for yourself, you are free to contribute your creative solutions and to implement them right away. What's more, if those ideas make the company more profitable, they make YOU more profitable.

    Hopefully my Accounting clients will come to rely upon our data and will gladly take suggestions on how to improve their bottom line. Outside contractors often enjoy a status of being the "expert" when it comes to the company's financial matters. That is why they hired us in the first place, and why they continue to enjoy our unique insights into the business' profitability

    Therefore I strongly believe that the commitment to formulating a company mission /vision /name can be critical to my company's success. It can be a powerful force to clearly define the company's purpose for existence.


    The most successful company missions are measurable, definable, and actionable project statements with emotional appeal that everyone knows and can act upon.

    One of my hope is to live up to that name and integrity.
  • Posted on 7/10/2005 at 9:09 PM Author
    Thank you everyone who helped in giving pratical advice. appreciate your expertise and time.

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