Brand Name Testing How To Choose Your Brand Name (2023)

The brand name of a company plays an important role in defining its image and can create differentiation from competitors. A name that shows positive values and attracts the target audience will set your brand up for success.

The name of your business is important for brand recognition and awareness, it can be the driving factor behind word-of-mouth marketing. It has the power to make or break a company.

By usability testing for your brand name, the best and most appropriate name for a business can be found.

What is Brand Name Testing?

Brand name testing is a process where you present two or more versions of a brand name to real users to gain feedback and insights on the name that fits the best with the business’s goals and values.

If you’re starting a new business, adding a new brand offering to your company, or just introducing a new product you want the name to be recognizable and unique.

Your brand name can have a big impact on your marketing strategy, this means it’s important to choose a name that will connect with your target audience and fit with the brand image.

Here’s where brand name testing comes into play. Introducing your target audience to a few brand name possibilities and asking for feedback on each one is how brand name testing is done. Using qualitative and quantitative data, you can make a rational decision when selecting a brand name that is suitable for your company.

Why Is Brand Name Testing Important?

Choosing a bad name means you are helping your competitors – Naseem Javed, Autor of How to Name a Business or a New Product

Your brand name tells the story of your company, it represents what you stand for in the market and represents your products or services. A good name expresses your company’s ethics, values, and objectives.

When naming is done correctly, whether, for a company, a brand, a product, or anything else, it creates a positive first impression, gaining the attention and interest of the consumer. When done incorrectly, though, it can cause a lot of recognition problems and issues later down the road.

It’s amazing how many businesses still overlook the naming process even though they know how important it is. Brand name testing is a great tool for choosing the best name for your brand to use on your website, ads, content, and anywhere else the user might see your business.

What to Consider When Testing a Brand Name

1. Likability & Fit

It’s critical that your company name speaks to your customers and explains what you do. The name isn’t doing its job if you have to constantly remind people of your business. The name must fit your business’s values and be liked by most of the audience.

2. Pronunciation & Sound

Consider whether the brand name is easy to say or if it is easily mispronounced. The way the name sounds and how it is pronounced make a big impact on brand recognition and awareness.

A brand or product name should be simple to read and pronounce, as well as sound good when people say it.

3. Context

Choosing a name for your business is an important decision, it will set the tone for how your business is seen. The brand name should align with the products and services you offer, decide on the brand identity and what you want people to view your brand as.

4. Is The Name Available

Although you might have gone through the entire process of testing brand names you still need to check if the name is available. It’s not as hard as it sounds, you need to do a quick search for the name you landed on and see if it can be registered for a business.

Benefits of Brand Name Testing

1. Data Backed Decisions

You have all of the information you need to unite the business behind a brand name. It is hard to dispute the winning option when you have all of the feedback to support the decision. Testing reveals which brand name is most popular, allowing you to finalize a name and convince your team to roll with it.

2. Understanding the Target Audience

You can divide your audience into demographic groups to understand how they react to each option. You can look into how different groups (age, gender, location, etc.) think about each of the possible brand names by filtering the survey replies.

3. Iterate quickly

By frequently undergoing the brand name testing through agile processes, you can finally get the perfect brand name. Testing and retesting different options of the brand name will help you find the best one.

4. Time And Money Well Spent

Your brand name has such a significant impact on your brand image, the ability to find the best brand name for your business at a low cost and under an hour is always great.

Poll the People lets you do a brand name test in under 60 minutes with a panel of thousands that will give you great feedback on the options you show them.

How to do Brand Name Testing With Poll the People

Now that you know the value of testing brand names you’re ready to start testing yours. If you want to see how the test your brand or other resources head over to our examples page. In this blog we’ll cover Poll the people’s testing process, it follows these four simple steps:

1. Choose The Variations

The first stage in brand name testing is to create a list of potential choices or identify the name you think is best for your business. There are two options to testing brand names with Poll the People, the first is to run an A/B style test. Here you compare the two brand names to find the one that the target audience thinks is the best fit for your business.

The second option is to get your name validated with high-quality feedback from your audience. The open-ended testing template allows you to gather feedback on a single brand name to validate it before going live with free-form responses from the panel.

2. Ask The Right Questions

Depending on your test objectives, the questions you ask in the brand name test can be as generic or as detailed as you want. You might ask about appeal and uniqueness in particular if you want to know if a certain name will capture people’s attention or not.

A few things you should consider in your brand name test:

• Is the brand name unique enough to stand out among competitors, or is it easily confused with other brands?
• Will people be able to easily pronounce the name or do they frequently mispronounce it?
• Is your target audience attracted to the brand name?
• Does the brand name entice customers to buy the company’s goods or services?

3. Gain a Statistically Significant Number of Respondents

Statistical significance lets you know if the results are accurate and supported or if it is simply by chance.

When testing a brand name, you need to ask enough users what name they prefer or for their feedback on your name to understand if it will work for the target audience. Typically, about 100 users can give you statistical significance, Poll the People gives you access to hundreds of dedicated users that answer your questions in about an hour.

The only way to know if a potential brand name is truly liked is to have your target audience vote on it.

4. Analyze The Results and Select a Brand Name

The final stage is to evaluate each brand name by analyzing the feedback received. This might just be the most important part of brand name testing, it’s where you make your final decision based on all of the feedback you got.

If your survey contained open-ended questions, make sure to look at the answers to those as well. Poll the People gives you an easy-to-understand results dashboard to help understand the winning name and use the feedback to choose your perfect brand name.

Why Choose Poll the People For Brand Name Testing

Here are a few reasons why you should do your Brand Name Testing with Poll The People.

1. Easy to Use Templates

Poll the People offers many templates, which have been approved by experts and might help you in identifying the layout of the test and questions you want to ask. They are simple but extremely effective in helping you run a brand name test fast and at a low cost.

2. A Dedicated Panel of Users

We have specialized panels of genuine market users who participate in surveys and provide real feedback over time. Poll the People utilizes thousands of people that are not behind a paywall and are dedicated to giving you real feedback. Unlike many other concept testing platforms, these users are required to provide high-quality feedback and follow test instructions. The platform gives you exactly the number of responses you ask for and will automatically eliminate “poor” responses without reducing the number of responses you get.

3. Fast Run Times

Poll the People concept tests, including brand name tests complete much faster than traditional research platforms. The test can be created, run, and analyzed in less than an hour. All you have to do is set up the test, launch with your desired number of users, then you can get a cup of coffee, complete other tasks, or go about your day and in no time you will have the actionable feedback you need to make a decision.

4. Easy-to-Digest Results

Your responses will begin to pour in within minutes, rather than days, as with traditional name testing. Our simple and easy-to-digest reports will assist you in analyzing the data. You will receive a pie and bar chart that let you easily understand the winner and can filter explanations to dive deeper into the results.

Best Practices in Brand Name Testing

You may increase the quality of your input and analysis by following best practices for brand name testing. As you test your brand name, keep the following four points in mind:

1. Ask the Same Question About Each Version

Only by asking the same question for each brand name, you compare your options honestly and accurately. With their simple testing layout, Poll The Peoplemakes this effortless and straightforward.

2. Make Sure the Audience is Statistically Significant

Make sure you’re getting enough responses to be confident in the results, with access to thousands of respondents just choose the number that works best for your business.

3. Keep it Short and To The Point

In your brand name test keep the questions simple and to the point, don’t ask the audience anything too in-depth. You only want to understand what name works best for your brand.

Types of Brand Names

How do you come up with a brand name? Most brand names fall into five different categories. Understanding these brand naming methods can help you find the best name for your business.

1. Named After the Founder

Many businesses bear the names of their founders. The advantages of using your own name are that you don’t have to waste time thinking of a name, you’ll most likely be getting a URL easily, and it can be simple and easy to remember.

2. Descriptive Names

Descriptive names operate by describing the company’s services in detail. The concept of the business is represented through these names. They convey the brand’s message in a straightforward and concise manner.

3. Made-Up Names

Made-up names are appealing and may be easier to copyright. Because it’s so difficult to come up with fresh names, some businesses invent them by modifying, adding, or removing letters, or by combining two or more words.

4. Metaphors

Metaphor names are fun to imagine and may frequently tell a fantastic narrative. They work by reflecting the brand’s imagery and meaning back to it.

5. Acronyms

Acronyms are simply the abbreviated form of a descriptive name. Some abbreviations are more strategic than others. These are names that are tough to remember as well as copyright.

Conclusion

When evaluating names, it’s important to get real results to find the best option for your business. To do so successfully, it is not enough to conduct a “beauty contest” style test and select a winner by polling consumers. You must understand what the name means to them, and the advantages and disadvantages.

Poll the People is a user-friendly platform that allows you to quickly test brand names. The platform provides accurate responses in minutes instead of days, and at a lower cost than most platforms. Poll the People also has a number of other tests for your company’s success.

Sign up for Poll the People to get started with optimizing every aspect of your business!