How to Choose a Business Name for a Local Business

A man in Sunset Park is about to open a small cleaning company. He has a van, a logo sketch on a napkin, and three names he likes. He asks his cousin which one sounds best, gets a vote, and orders the vinyl lettering. That is how most people try to choose a business name for a local business, and it is the wrong test.

A name does not have to sound good in a room full of friends. It has to survive a stranger typing it into Google Maps at 9 p.m. with a flooded basement, or hearing it once on the phone and finding you later. We have named and renamed enough businesses over twenty years to know that the names that cost owners money are rarely the ugly ones. They are the ones nobody can find.

Run three searches before you fall in love with a name

Before a name gets a sign, a domain, or a business card, it has to pass three searches. They take about twenty minutes and they are free.

First, search the exact name in Google with your city next to it, the way a customer would. If the first page is full of other businesses with the same or a near-identical name, you will spend years explaining that you are not them. Second, search it in Google Maps and look at the neighbors. Three "Brooklyn Bagel Co." listings within a few miles means customers will leave reviews on the wrong one. Third, search the kind of business you are plus the area, like "bakery Park Slope", and ask whether your name would look natural sitting in that list.

A name that fails the first search is a problem you inherit forever. A name that fails the third is fixable, because that one is a marketing problem and not a naming problem.

Say it out loud to someone who cannot see it

Phone and word of mouth still bring in a lot of local work. Call a friend, say the name once, and ask them to write down what they heard. Then ask them to type it into a search bar. If they come back with a different spelling, so will your customers.

A shop doing $40,000 a month in a neighborhood where half the new customers come by referral cannot afford a name that gets misspelled every second time. Every misspelling is a referral that ends at a dead search result. Names built on a clever spelling, a number in place of a word, or a made-up blend of two words fail this test most often.

The fix is not boring. It is a name with one obvious spelling. A short, plain name plus a clear descriptor, like a family name followed by "Plumbing & Heating", beats a clever coinage almost every time for a business that depends on being found by people who have never heard of it.

Choose a business name for a local business that says what you do and where

A name that carries a service word and a place helps with search and with trust. "Carroll Gardens Tailoring" tells a customer and Google the same two things before anyone reads a word of your site. "Mira's" tells them nothing, so you will have to spend marketing money teaching them what it is.

This does not mean you need a keyword-stuffed name. It means you should make the descriptor do real work. If the name itself is abstract, put the service in the tagline, the Google Business Profile category, and every page title, so the connection is made somewhere customers will see it. Our post on which Google Business Profile categories to pick and skip covers that second half.

Be careful about boxing yourself in. A name tied to one neighborhood is a gift while you serve that neighborhood and a nuisance the day you take a job across the river. If you expect to grow past one area, pick the service word and leave the place out.

Check the legal and domain side before you print anything

This is where owners lose real money, so do it in order. Search the New York business entity database and, for trademarks, the federal trademark database at USPTO, to see whether someone already owns a similar name in your line of work. A name that is free in New York can still belong to a company in another state that will send a letter once you grow.

Sole proprietors and partnerships using a name other than their own generally have to file an assumed name certificate. NYC Business explains the process for sole proprietorships and general partnerships, and an LLC or corporation using a name other than its legal one files a separate certificate. We are a marketing team and not your lawyer, so confirm the details with the county clerk or an attorney before you file.

Then check the domain. Aim for the exact name with .com. If it is taken, do not settle for a hyphen or an extra word that customers will drop. That is a signal to keep looking. Also check that the social handles are available, because matching handles make you easier to find and harder to impersonate.

What USBN does about it in practice

When a new owner or an owner thinking about a rebrand comes to the team behind USBN, we do not start with a brainstorm. We start with the three searches. We take the owner's shortlist, run each name through search, Maps, and a phone-spelling test, and check domain and handle availability the same day. Names that fail get cut before anyone has grown attached to them.

For the names that survive, we write the one-line descriptor, the Google Business Profile category choices, and the page-title pattern, so the name works in search from the first day the site goes live. If you already have a name and are unsure whether it is costing you, the brand audit you can finish by lunch is a good first look, and the branding work we do picks up from there.

A boutique owner we would advise might arrive with a name she loves and a phone-spelling test that fails three times out of five. Our advice would be to keep the name for the storefront sign and add a plain descriptor everywhere online. Plenty of good names survive that way, because the job of the name is to be remembered, and the job of the descriptor is to be found.

The one thing to do this week

Pick your shortlist, or your current name if you already have one, and run the three searches plus the phone test. Write down what you find in a note: how many near-identical names show up, how many people misspell it, and whether the .com is yours. If the results are clean, you are done. If they are not, you have a short, specific list of what to fix.

If you want a second set of eyes on the results, book a strategy call and bring the list.