How To Choose Names for Photography Business
When you are going to start your own photography business, there could be ample choices regarding naming it. However, the name you choose yourself for your company should be the most satisfying to you and your business. Ideally, your business should exist for a lifetime and be permanently connected to you. Therefore, it is very crucial that you balance factors such as discoverability, brand-ability, trust, and emotional response while naming the business. Below we are going to describe how you can choose names for your photography business and how you can perform background to avoid any kind of legal consequences or adverse situations.
Strategies For Naming Photography Business
1. Names Based on Location
If you are fixed on your location with your business, you may name your photography business based on the location. This will increase the local discoverability of your business. However, if you are likely to change your place or even open branches in different locations, this strategy may not work for you. For example, a portrait studio named “California Photo Studio” would face difficulties if they relocate to Texas.
2. Mention Your Specialty
If you specialize in a certain type of photography such as wedding photography, you may want to highlight this specialty in your photography business name. This will increase the discoverability and boost the credibility of your business by displaying a tight focus on a specialty.
For example, a renowned newborn baby photography company named their business “Bob Baby Photography”. They only capture newborn photographs at the hospital.
However, this might mitigate the growth of your business as you are focusing solely on one specialty.
3. Blend Words To Form Name
A completely unique brand name is desired by many businesses, especially in this dot com era. A unique name can be devised by combining two other words, such as “Lifetouch”, a prominent national photo studio. While names formed in this way can be completely unique and very much brandable, you may find it really difficult to market a business that is named after a completely new word.
4. Consider Your Style or Approach
You will find enough words that can describe your style or approach to photography. Powerful or clear-cut words may be easy to comprehend for the customers. But these types of words may become too much common to the customers. For example, “Portrait Innovation” is a popular national studio that is very generic and direct. It is quite clear from the name that their specialization is in portrait photography. However, as being the most common, you can find hundreds of businesses calling themselves either “Elite Photography” or some variations of it. For being so common, it is actually difficult to brand such names.
5. Think Over Silly Names
A lighthearted or silly name has the potential to be emotionally touching and highly creative. For example, Try Redcliff’s “ Stuck in Customs” Is a playful name that he uses for his famous travel photography brand. Also, there are brands like “Blame The Monkey” by Elia Locardi. On the first impression, no one would think that these are photography brands, but these are successful brands with strong emotional attachment of customers.
6. Use Your Own Name or Pseudonym
You can use your real name or surname for your photography business, and this will instill a level of trust among customers. This way you become solely responsible for the success of your business. However, you can also use a pseudonym if you are concerned about your privacy. For example, renowned stock photographer Yuri Arcur’s real name is Jacob Wackerhausen. Many popular photographers follow this for privacy or to bring in creativity.
Research Guidelines For Photography Business Names
1. Make a list of Photography Related Words
When naming a photography business, you can brainstorm your ideas to find a list of related words that might be appealing to the customers. First, you should try for more generic words, later you can focus on more specific terms. For example, you may first come up with words such as “image,” “light,” “flash,” “frame,” “angle,” “shutter,” and “focus.” You can then create a list of more specific words. If you are a wedding photographer, you may think of words like “flowers,” “lace,” “party,” and “pearls.”On the other hand, if you are a make-up photographer, you may find words like “blush,” “shadow,” “sparkle,” and “glitter.”
You should experiment with words from different lists and combine them to create names. Then check out whether these names appear to be great business names. You may find a combination that you love and think that it would be a good fit for your business.
2. Use a business name generator
If you are really stumped finding a name, you can use a business name generator online to get some business name ideas. Provide the details of your photography to generate ideas or focus on reducing the results.
You may be highly surprised by the result of the business name generator and end up with a business name that you might not have found on your own. You can also make adjustments to the suggestions provided by the generator to find more appropriate names.
4. Do a Social Media Poll
If your business already has an active social media presence with a significant number of followers, you can run a poll on social media in order for the audience to vote for several different business names. You can also ask them for suggestions on the photography business names or take input on possible names from them. This is a fun way to engage with your followers and take ideas from them that you might not have thought of your own.
5. Check For Local Availability
Once you find a name for your business, you may want to register your business. To register your business as a sole proprietor, it is important that you check with the county or state to know whether the business is already registered to someone else. If it is, slight variations might be enough to register your name. Check with a clerk in your jurisdictions.
6. Domain Name Availability
You should also search for a strong domain to see if it is available. You will need this when you want to build a website to showcase your portfolio, market your business to clients, take orders or sell photos. In general, a dot com domain name is more preferred than any other type of domain name. Consider variations such as “studio”, “studios”, “photography”, “portraits” etc. in your business name. If you find a suitable domain name, you should buy it immediately, even if you plan to develop it at a later time.
7. Trademark Registration
If you are operating your business in the USA, you should run a quick online registered trademark search to see if you are violating anyone’s trademark with your business name. Even if you do not find any match immediately, do not forget to make a google search. Trademarks are valid as soon as they are used by a business, even if they are not registered. If you find something similar, you should make variations to make your business name completely unique.
8. Prior History
Before finalizing your business or domain name, you should make research about your top competitors. If you have a strong competitor with similar domain names, you would better avoid that name as it would be difficult to rank in search results. Sometimes there even could be a past history associated with a domain name. Someone might have done prior business with that name, so there could be positive or negative reviews associated with it. So you need to take careful consideration of these things before finalizing a business or domain name.
Conclusion
These guidelines can help you immensely in deciding on a perfect name for your photography business. After narrowing down your choices to a few good ones, you can then decide the final name based on your own gut feelings. If everything else is equal, you can choose a name that makes you feel better about your own band. Photographers by default are one of the most emotional persons available out there. So you can follow your instincts to decide photography business names.
