By Taylor Tuomie
One of the hardest things you might ever have to do for your lawn care business is actually coming up with a great name. You would think coming up with a lawn care business name would be easy. Until you start trying to come up with an orignal, catchy name. It can be maddening and you can spend hours, days, weeks even, throwing ideas around. You want something that will be catchy and you want a name that will stick in people’s minds, something lasting. Heck, there are agencies around who's sole purpose is to name other businesses.
Some folks might get lucky and they come across a name right off the bat. Other business owners will drive themselves crazy on coming up with a name, throwing anything at the wall and hoping that it sticks. And we can’t all be as lucky as this company, I wish I had thought of that! Here are 5 steps to coming up with a memorable name for your lawn care business.
Lawn Care Business Names
Ideate
No name is off limits in this stage. Throw out as many ideas as you can. Write them down, work on variations. List out a few that are more conservative, like using the business owner’s last name or the city that you operate in. And list out more obscure names, too. Chances are, you will wind up coming up with a few ideas that are already taken, that is ok for this exercise.
The hope for this stage is to come up with as many ideas as possible and eventually you will be able to whittle down the list and come up with a few ideas that you can work off of.
Look at competitors
Compare your list with some of the names in your competitive market. You don't want anything that could be confused with a competitor or a different company operating in a different industry.
Trademark law can be tricky. There are obvious rules that you need to abide by when picking a name for your lawn care business, but there is also a lot of gray area. What it really comes down to is whether or not the state that you’re operating in will allow you to use the name that you pick. As always, you’re better safe than sorry, so hire a lawyer to make sure your name is in the clear.
Set a time limit
There is a saying that “out of limitations comes creativity”. Set a time limit for yourself. Otherwise, you’re going to be beating yourself up for a name. If you don’t set a time limit for yourself to come up with a name, you’re going to just keep coming up more that you feel are better. It is a vicious cycle that seems to never end. Much like resetting the switch on The World's Most Useless Machine....It won't do you any good to keep going through the cycle.
Test them
Once you feel that you have one or two that you like, test them out. Not just with your close friends and family, but with other people in your network. If a name needs explaining or you need to apologize for it, it is going to weaken your overall brand.
Let it grow on you
People often pick names that they know have potential, but they weren’t initially “in love” with. I heard a great analogy about letting a name grow on you.
Love at first sight only exists in the movies. You don’t get married to someone because you we’re so infatuated with that person right away that you NEEDED to be with that person forever. You likely dated a while, got to know one another and then decided! In other words, it took time. Sometimes you just have to let the name grow on you.
