Once hearing about the name, people very often ask, “Why ‘Untouchable’?” To be fair, this typically comes from non-business owners. The general populace seems to think that company monikers are something like boat names: they should be clever and personal to the owner.

Professionalism First

The first “company” I started (when I was 13) was called Bell Enterprises. One of the first things I learned when I got into the real world of business is that almost any company that ends in ‘Enterprises’ is a joke.

Playboy Enterprises and Cox Enterprises are the two exceptions I can think of. If you need proof, just recall that Cosmo Kramer’s company was named “Kramerica Enterprises.”

Professional companies have one or two word names, and end in LLC or Inc. or they stand on their own because they’re publicly traded (like Google, Microsoft, and Apple).

SEO Value

The modern equivalent of naming your company ‘ACME Dentistry’ or ‘Aardvark Used Cars’ is choosing a business name with search keywords baked in. Of course, SEO and PPC Consultants, LLC is a bit obvious (and probably, sadly, registered), but getting the word ‘Marketing’ in the name is important.

Domain Games

Here are two domain-name tips for budding business owners:

1. Try to get your exact business name with a .com extension. There is nothing more frustrating than typing in what I think should be your address and not finding you (I’m looking at you, Sunflower Markets).

2. If you are open to suggestions on your business name, go check out auction sites like DomainsWithBenefits.com to see if someone may have previously registered a name you like and then failed to renew it. Getting a domain with history, links and maybe even PageRank gives you a big headstart on search rankings.

The Untouchable Choice

Taking the above into account, I narrowed the choice down to two names. Despite the other domain having history to it, I eventually chose ‘Untouchable’ for a couple reasons:

1. ‘Untouchable’ pretty well describes the kind of marketing we do. Traditional marketing has a tactile element: postcards, coupons, mailers, flyers, phone directories, etc. The internet is somewhat “untouchable” by nature.
2. In Feudal Japan the ‘untouchables’ were a caste typically associated with “dirty jobs”. Although most people would view this as a negative connotation, I prefer to concentrate on the noble work ethic associated with those people.
3. In modern parlance, ‘untouchable’ is often viewed as a positive quality, as in:
   • Out of reach; unobtainable;
   • beyond criticism, control, or suspicion;
   • a person who is beyond reproach as to honesty, diligence, etc.;
   • a person or thing considered inviolable;

So wouldn’t you want your internet marketing to be UntouchableMarketing?

Tags for This Post: naming your company, word marketing, playboy enterprises, choosing a business name, cox enterprises, cosmo kramer, exact business, domain games

Tags: choosing a business name, cosmo kramer, cox enterprises, domain games, exact business, naming your company, playboy enterprises, word marketing, word names

This entry was posted on Monday, October 12th, 2009 at 2:57 pm and is filed under Business, Laying the Groundwork. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.