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Article #1
Tips for using this article: If you have an audience that's interested in home-based travel agencies, you can run this article as is. If you address an audience interested in home-based businesses in general, you can edit it slightly. For example, you could delete the word "travel" in the first sentence. Then, between the first and second paragraphs you could insert something like: "By the way, my expertise is in the home-based travel area, so the examples I use refer to home travel agencies. But the principles apply to any home-based business." The key is the "About the Author" paragraph at the very end. Be sure to link the phrase Home-Based Travel Agent Resource Center using your unique affiliate URL.
There
are three main areas to consider when choosing a name for your business:
Don’t
let the word "legal" scare you, but some commonsense precautions
need to be taken when choosing a name. Your first concern is at the
local level. Once you’ve picked a name, you’ll have to register
it at the county court house so you can get a business checking account.
If you live in Cleveland and decide to call your business "Tammy’s
Travel" the fact that there’s a Tammy’s Travel in Phoenix
is most likely not a problem. But if there’s one in Cleveland,
you probably won’t be able to register your chosen name at the
county court house, where the clerks will check to make sure there
is no duplication of business names. So you should check the "availability"
of a name at the courthouse before you get too attached to it. Another
precaution you should take is making sure your name doesn’t infringe
on someone else’s trademark. Let’s say you decide that your
travel business will specialize in American vacations only and you
figure "American Express Travel" would be a great name.
Wrong! This is a fairly obvious example, but you could accidentally
infringe on a trademark without knowing it. A nationwide Yellow Pages
search on the Internet should turn up companies with the name you’re
interested in (if any exist). If you have come up with what you think
is a pretty nifty name, you may want to consider trademarking it.
Consult a lawyer who specializes in trademarks and be prepared to
pay well for your vanity. While
it’s possible to have legal problems with your business name,
the odds are that you will have no troubles whatsoever regardless
of the name you pick. Marketing considerations, therefore, are far
more important and deserve the lion’s share of your attention. Those
of you who have taken my home study course know how I feel about specializing.
Ideally, your business name should reflect your specialty. If you’ve
decided to specialize in trips to Tunisia, "Tammy’s Tunisian
Tours and Travel" is a better choice than "Tammy’s
Travel." (By the way, I am making up all the names I use in this
article, so any similarity to actual businesses is purely coincidental.) In
the best of all possible worlds, your business name will tell your
best prospects, "This is the place to call." Names like
"Italian Villa Holidays," "Ski Trips Unlimited,"
and "Japan With Jane" immediately tell people what you do.
Even a name like "Hole In One Travel" hints at a golf specialty. That
brings us to the last major consideration in selecting a name –
personal preference. My guess is that this is the overriding consideration
for most home-based agents when picking a name. Some of them are very
creative, clever, or amusing. Certainly a memorable name like "I’m
Outta Here!" (a real one, this time) has marketing value, but
what exactly does the business do? Hopefully, they use a good descriptive
subhead or tagline on their business card. Of course, ultimately the name you choose, like your business itself, is an expression of your own personality. So if a name "speaks" to you, go for it, but keep your target customer in mind. If you’ve decided to call your travel business "Like Totally Travel, Dude" I won’t say you nay. Just be sure that your prospective customers are on the same wavelength. *****
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