This is the second of a 2 part series article by Fatih Bulut around creating a brand on the internet. In this article, Fatih describes how to choose a name for your internet brand.

To Your Success!

Creating A Brand on the Internet – 2 – Name Your Brand

Author: fatih bulut

In this section what I am going to tell about choosing a name for our brand, may contradict the ideas that have been already settled in your minds. Unfortunately, today exists a lot of clichés and wrong stereotypes that have been settled down in minds related to the names chosen for internet projects. First of all, we need to overcome them.

The most important decision that we have to make, when creating our brand, is to name. Name has become a critical issue on the internet as well as in real life’s classical marketing environment. There are many reasons of this. However that’s out of my point here, let me just remind; visual elements were the factors that identify the brands in classical marketing environment (packaging, logo, stores, branches and other complementary elements). On the internet these are not a matter of fact. To connect a website all you have to do is to type the address which consists of words.

Although name is so important, i can say that many brand names on the internet dont attract people’s interest today ( albeit very large organizations). Does not that make sense? Ok, so let me state a few brands: Advertising.com, Buy.com, Desktop.com, Flower.com, Gifts.com, Mail.com, Office.com, Postcard.com, Sales.com, Women.com. Do they look familiar? No? However they are all good domain names, right? Domain names that you would not miss if they were to be unregistered. But unfortunately, just as we have also tested, they are bad brands although million dollars of investments are behind them. What are their common points do you think? Wait, I guess: all genus or generic names.

Genus or generic names, are names pointing to any group of entities live or dead. For example, furniture is a genus name. All right then can we say that furniture.com is a good brand name? These are the standard false patterns and my objection starts here. Contrary to the popular belief generic name for a brand is not good at all. This is similar to naming your child “human”. Just like people, brands too are called with names. So why on earth should you name your brand with genus and generic names?

Well although the above examples show how the genus names failed then why is there an insistence on this issue? Even though you agree with me after bringing on logical explanation, why do your appetites surge when you look up at the list above? I am asking those who say “But this is internet…of course, different…”; is it really different when the subject is internet brands?

In the early years of the Internet the fact that many companies have entered this environment with genus names, afterwards created a large audience behind themselves that maintain the same habits. Formerly, the internet was like shop itself. You were writing to the address line what you want to find. After all, the easiest way of forwarding what the site is about, was that its name was a genus name. Unfortunately, this only lasted two weeks. You are wrong if you still want to take those advantages of the first two weeks. It is hard to believe I know but let us take a look at the table below:

* Search engine leader is Search.com or Google.com?

* The name of the leading auction site is Auction.com or eBay.com?

* the name of the book sales site leader is Books.com or Amazon.com?

We can add many other examples to this list. Insisting has no meaning while it is still wrong. “Well why?” Many answers are available for this question but in essence it is based on the above reason: considering internet as a grocery store like in the old days. Companies slog on leaving the mindsets of old days because the internet is in use for just a few years. According to many of them using genus name is still the most appropriate approach. And newbies are trying to go the same way just like herd psychology. Let’s face it: the fact that many companies use genus names doesn’t mean it is the most appropriate strategy for you too. I have given examples in three categories but you can replicate them with many examples.

The biggest burden of genus names, is that for customers, it is hard to keep in mind. Well, none of these names will succeed? Of course some will. In the very essence of word “brand” lies the thought “getting a place in people’s minds”. And genus names represent only categories in people’s minds, not a stand-alone site.

When you have such a name you will face another problem such as having many competitors who think as you do. Let us suppose eBook.com is a great bookstore on the internet, check out the works of its competitors on similar names that flocks on to market: e-book.com, ibook.com, ibooks.com, ebooks.com, book.com, books.com, bookstore.com, ebookstore.com, ibookstore.com… Naturally you will need to register all similar domain names or to deal with these competitors.

Finally I ask you: Can you show me a genus brand name that has been successful during the last century? To succeed, you must locate your brand names into the minds of people and give it a positive quality. For that you must choose special names rather than genus or generic names. Choosing a genus name, unfortunately, will take you from failure to failure in these two main points. Reason is very simple: First, your customer will not be able to distinguish the site name and the category name, second, you wont be able to give a specific reason to the name, because the name you use is a general name.

In this article we learnt that we better not use genus names but special names for our brands.

Make Money Online can be considered as a useful resource for those who are engaged in related issues.

To your success,

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/online-business-articles/creating-a-brand-on-the-internet-2-name-your-brand-2544846.html

About the Author

Fatih Bulut is a student at the University of Istanbul, taking up Computer Engineering and Business Administration. He has been into Online Marketing since the very beginning of his high school years, for almost ten years.