The Problem With Acronyms As Brand Names

People decide to pick acronyms as brand names for a number of reasons. It's usually out of laziness. Some new companies find a 3 word phrase that describes them well, but doesn't have the right pop and opt for the acronym. Some established companies realize that a brand like The Career Training Company isn't unique enough to become a powerful brand and switch to something like CTC. It's easy to fall into this trap. If it's good enough for IBM and GE it must be OK for you, right? If you are a billion dollar multinational corporation that dominates your vertical than a acronym may be OK. However, if you don't have the power and corporate momentum of IBM, for the reasons I give below, you need to consider other options.

Acronyms Are Bad For SEO

The biggest problem here arises because of the importance of search as a marketing tool and the heavy competition in search results for 3 letter terms. Pick any 3 letter brand name and type it into Google. It will bring up 50 other companies that tried the same thing. Many will be in different industries, but this doesn’t matter in the search results. Ranking for a acronym brand name is very difficult, and especially for new brands.

If your company has any recognition at all your analytics package will show that your brand name is by far your top keyword. For most companies the top 10 keywords bringing traffic to their site are all brand related. In SEO, ranking for your brand name is mandatory. Not only does it bring in traffic, but not doing so is a bad user experience. Will your users enjoy sifting through pages of search results to find you? It also reduces the value of your other media. If you run print, TV or radio, many of those people are going to go to Google your brand name to do more research.These are going to be some of the highest converting leads/sales resulting from your offline marketing efforts and when they can't find the site you're missing out on some easy conversions.

Good Luck With a Domain Name

Another reason acronyms suck is that your going to have to spend ungodly amounts of money to buy the domain. Don't think you can just buy the longer, spelled out version. You'll only make your problem worse by confusing people. Your ad says "CTC," but your domain is "careertrainingcompany.com." If the acronym is on your media, that's your brand. If people have to think about what the name of your company is, your doing it wrong.

Legal Issues

I'll assume you either are, or hope to be a highly successful company with a powerful brand. Let's say that somehow happens with the brand CTC. Now how are you going to protect that brand? I've talked to several attorneys about this and they all say that unless you're mark is virtually ubiquitous, enforcing a mark like CTC is very difficult. It can be done, but is a lot more difficult.

Patience

When thinking of a brand name take your time. Do some research about branding. Don’t rush it and wait until a powerful, descriptive, and unique name begins to percolate. I would reserve several weeks or longer for brainstorming and checking domain names. Check the name in the search results to make sure the competition isn't too heavy. Then buy the URL (before telling ANYONE about the name), jump to the top of the search results and watch that brand name traffic roll in from your offline ads.