How to choose the right business name in Australia
You might think that when it comes to choosing your new business name in that it’s easy right? You just pick something that you like the sounds of.
It’s actually a little bit more complicated than that and when it come's to choosing your business name there are a few things you want to consider.
Over the past 15 years we’ve not only had a few of our own different businesses where we have had to think of a new name, we’ve also helped some of our clients find theirs as well.
Here is our process of how we choose our business names in Australia.
Step 1. Brainstorming
Start with listing words or phrases that you like, represent your brand and resonate with your target client. These can be a mix of nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs. Try to think of some unique or not so commonly used words along with some words or phrases that describe your business. Don't over think this & try to think of as many words as possible.
Step 2. Start creating
Now you have your list of words, start putting them together and mixing and matching them to create a list of potential business names. Once again, try to create as many as possible, you will see why later.
Here are some online resources that you can use to create business names using words from your brainstorming.
namelix.com (this is our favourite)
shopify.com/tools/business-name-generator
looka.com/business-name-generator
squadhelp.com/business-name-generator
Step 3. Create your shortlist
Out of the business names you created in the previous, choose 10-15 of your favourite business names and make a shortlist.
Step 4. Name availability
Now it's time to check the business names availability. There are quite a few places where you will need to check the availability, so this is why we create a shortlist of names incase your chosen name isn’t available everywhere.
Here are some of the important places to check the name availability:
ASIC Business Name Search
To have a legal business in Australian, you will need to register it with ASIC. So you need to make sure that it isn't already registered as a business in Australia and that they will accept the name.
You can use the ASIC Business Name Search to check, just make sure you chose Check Business Name Availability from the search dropdown. You can also find information on the ASIC website about undesirable business names and restricted words and expressions in business names.
Australian Trademark Search
There would be nothing worse than starting after launching you new business, finding out that you are infringing on someone else’s trademark and have to change your business name and all your branding.
Visit the IP Australia website and do a trademark search, in your search results you will notice class numbers next to each of the results. So you will also need to find what goods and services classes your business falls to check the availability within your class.
If you are planning on expanding internationally, you should also check international trademarks as well.
Social Media Handles
Make sure of the social media handles are available that you want to use. If your business name is already take on social media (as long as it's not by a similar business as this will cause confusion) you can add additions to the name such as official, real, HQ, AUS ect. To save time having to check each social media platform, use a site such as Brand Snag which will check them all for you for free.
Domain Availability
You will ideally want to be able to buy both the .com and .com.au domains, we would also suggest buying as many variations of the domain that you can. You can check the domain availability at any domain sellers website.
Google Search
Do yourself a favour and do a Google search to make sure it's not a common word or phase that lots of other websites or businesses are using as this will make your life harder to rank in SEO when people are searching for your business.
