The name of your beauty brand is a big deal. It’s what’ll appear on social media, packaging, news and everything related to your brand. It’s what customers will see and connect with as a brand.
Why is a Beauty Brand’s Name Important?
Your brand name says a lot about your brand. It can impact on the type of customer that’s drawn to your product, it can support the longevity of the brand and it can help you stand out.
The beauty industry is a crowded one, and there are new brands popping up all the time. You want people to see your brand, want to know more about it and stay engaged.
While your brand name isn’t the only thing that makes up your brand, it’s a big, instantly-recognisable so it makes sense to take the time to get it right for the future.
How To Choose A Name For Your Beauty Brand
You really can choose your beauty brand however you want. There’s no handbook and there are no rules (aside from trademark ones of course).
You could flick through a dictionary for inspiration, use an online name generator, use a brand name that has meaning to you, ask your best mate to come up with an idea or choose something trendy and catchy. None of those approaches are wrong.
But your brand name does bear thinking about a little longer than you might think. It’s something that’s (hopefully) going to around for a long time and that you’re going to build on as part of your brand.
The main things you want your brand name to do is:
- Be recognisable and help you to stand out in a crowded market
- Resonate with your target audience
- Reflect what your brand’s about
- That is has longevity
How To Avoid The Wrong Name
Choosing a brand name is important for any business. It’s on everything, it’s how you’re known and it’s a key part of your brand. Getting it wrong can be expensive, time consuming and come with legal headaches.
Here are a few pitfalls to skip when it comes to choosing a name for your beauty brand:
Check If Any Competitors or Popular Brands Have The Same Name
Off the top of my head I’ve worked with at least three brands that have had to have a costly, time-consuming name change at a later date. That doesn’t include brands that have got a certain way down their launch and had to double back or brands that have ended up with a name that’s really similar to another brand.
It gets confusing and is extremely frustrating and can get messy legally too. That means the time you spend building up your brand recognition has really been a bit of a waste.
Check Your Beauty Brand Name Doesn’t Mean Something Else
Look out for unusual foreign translations, weird word combinations or words with two meanings. It might be a million miles away in the future but if you’re going to launch in another country, and your brand name in English translates to something quite different overseas…you might have some problems.
This goes for product launches, hashtags and marketing copy too. Make sure there isn’t a secret double meaning somewhere. You don’t want to discover it after you’ve got everything printed and you’re ready to launch your new venture.
Register Social Handles And Website
Social media and ecommerce are two of the biggest marketing tools in the beauty industry. If you have to compromise on a social handle or website address, and it gets too confusing, then you could be missing out on customers.
Check out and register your social handles and website address as you go (think about them being easy to remember, abbreviated and not necessarily complicated). This is a good way to check for other brands with the name too.
Make Sure It’s Going To Grow With Your Business
The plan with most brands is that they grow and develop over time. Make sure that your brand isn’t going to cause confusion (or a rebranding headache) at a later date by trying to future-proof it ahead of time.
While no-one can truly predict the future of a business, there are ways that you can avoid limiting your brand. For example, if you start out with a range of lipsticks and call your brand Lucy’s Lipsticks if in the future you branch out into other cosmetics, it could get confusing.
When you name your brand, think about where you want to be and what your goals are for the future success of your brand. There’s nothing wrong with having a plan and thinking big.
The Problem With Naming a Beauty Brand After Yourself
Thinking about naming your beauty brand after yourself? This can be a good shout if you have a significant profile, recognition or presence already – such as Kylie Cosmetics or Fenty Beauty – but the reality is: most names aren’t memorable.
There’s also the issue of if you ever want to expand, sell or do something different with the brand you can lose your own identity a bit. Take Jo Malone.
She founded a hugely popular fragrance brand and her name is instantly connected to the perfume industry. However, Jo Malone herself no longer owns the Jo Malone fragrance brand. It’s owned by Estee Lauder and Jo has since launched a new brand called Jo Loves.
While you can name your brand whatever you like, it’s definitely worth thinking about in a bit more detail before you put it out there.
Need someone to write your beauty brand content or help you come up with your tone of voice, product names or taglines? Get in touch to see how we can work together on your beauty brand.