Finding the perfect name for your footwear business can be a daunting task. The key to getting the best name for your shoe brand lies in finding a memorable word that expresses your brand’s personality and stirs positive emotions from potential customers. 

And so, to make your brand naming journey easier, here are five steps you should take to find the right name for your footwear business.

Five Easy Steps to Finding the Perfect Footwear Business Name

1. Align Your Name With Your Brand Positioning

Aligning your name with your brand positioning means establishing a specific identity by actively creating a connection between your company and its shoes to the values, ideas, and messages.

This includes using consistent messaging across all marketing channels, building relationships with customers and influencers who fit into the defined target market for the brand position, as well as creating an authentic story about why your shoe brand exists.

Think about how you want customers to see your business and what emotions you want to evoke when someone hears or sees your brand’s name, logos, or slogans. Doing this would make it easier to know if your brand’s tone should communicate luxury, fun, quirkiness, or practicality.

2. Consider Metaphors, Visual Imagery, and Emotions

Brainstorm names that evoke metaphors and visual imagery. Nike does an excellent job of communicating its brand identity with a captivating metaphor that denotes victory and strength. So ensure you brainstorm words with unique, clever, and catchy phrases that resonate with your shoe brand’s identity.

3. Brainstorm as Many Ideas as Possible

Brainstorming as many ideas as possible when naming your company means generating an extensive list of potential names. You should think outside the box and come up with creative, unique options that capture the mission and values of your business. 

The more ideas you can brainstorm, the better your chances of finding a name that resonates with customers and works for your brand.

Consider the context surrounding your shoes; think about their purpose, style, and price. Also, consider using foreign languages like Zappos or witty puns that could help your shoe brand stand out from other businesses in the same niche. 

Finally, don’t forget to consider alternate spellings as well as different combinations of letters when narrowing down your list of options until you find one that perfectly captures what you’re looking for. 

As founders, if brainstorming proves too time-consuming, then don’t hesitate to visit a naming agency and buy brand names that embody the kind of shoe brand you want to build.

4. Perform Audience Testing Before Making Your Final Decision

Before selecting the final name for your business, check out whether or not it resonates with your target audience. However, be careful what questions you ask—your questions should focus on which names draw attention and inspire action and which best align with your brand ideas. 

Ask people if certain names create curiosity or make them think of specific visuals and emotions related to your product. 

Now, for the final step in finding the perfect footwear business name…

5. Validate Your Names With Trademark Research

After finding the best exciting shoe brand name ideas that fit the kind of business you want to build, the next step you must take is to visit the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and verify the names you’ve found to ascertain that they haven’t been trademarked by another business.

Several companies have received cease and desist letters due to infringing on existing trademarks, so make sure your chosen name satisfies this step. 

Conclusion

Finding the perfect name for your shoe business doesn’t have to be overwhelming if you take a few key steps beforehand. By aligning your brand positioning with the proper names, using metaphors, emotions, and visual imagery, as well as conducting research on trademarks and audience testing, you should be able to come up with an amazing name that accurately reflects your footwear business.

This article is an exclusive guest post shared by Grant Polacheck.

Grant Polachek is the head of branding at Squadhelp, a 3X Inc. 5000 naming agency that specializes in creating catchy and evocative brand names for Fortune 500 companies and emerging startups. As the world’s leading crowdsource naming platform, we’ve combed through over a million words and compiled a list of the greatest, most distinctive names that are currently available online.