Choosing a Brand Name for Your Product to Maximize Sales

This can be a very tricky area and marketing history is littered with expensive errors. Essentially the brand name should be easy to say, pronounce, be catchy, and fit onto the packaging.

Take a look at some well-known brands and companies - if I ask you to sum up what you think about them, you are summing up the brand or company personality.

- Guinness
- Ford
- Mercedes
- Waitrose
- Tesco
- Microsoft
- Kellogg's Cornflakes
- Virgin

What words do you associate with these brands or companies?

Get someone else in your company to do the same exercise and see if you both come up with the same, or similar brand images. If you do then these companies are successfully communicating their brand image and values.

Product Image

Building and maintaining a favourable image of your organisation in the minds and eyes of your customers is vital. The image of the company is an essential ingredient in the choice of services and often in the choice of products. But this image has to be managed. It doesn't just happen.

So what elements go into communicating an image and how can you manage this?

All visitors to your company carry away with them an impression. You need to make sure it is the right impression. Whether it is on the telephone or face-to-face first impressions count. Remember the saying - You never get a second chance to make a first impression.

People will judge not only you by first impressions but also your organisation. If the hotel used in our example earlier has dirty curtains and peeling paintwork, or the receptionist is unhelpful, then the first impressions of it won't be very good at all. I certainly wouldn't stay there and you may not either. Not only that but I would also tell others not to go there.

If a restaurant's toilets are dirty - then what are the kitchens like? I have walked out of a restaurant after seeing the state of the toilets. And I'm not the only one to do so.

How does your company treat visitors - any visitors and not just potential customers but the person who comes to clean the windows or service the photocopier, the delivery drivers and suppliers? Remember they all carry away with them an impression of your company. They could all be potential customers, or they could have relatives and friends who could be potential customers.

For a while, some years ago, I spent time cold calling on companies - an experience I will never forget. I can still remember, and name, the companies who treated me well, and the ones who didn't! They certainly formed a lasting impression in my mind.