How To Choose A Photography Business Name
In this post, I’m going to give you 3 facts you need to know about how to choose a photography business name. I’ll show you how to choose one and do it the right way, so that your customers can find you in search results and your business will thrive.
This post will brush over the 3 facts I outlined in my YouTube video “Starting A Photography Business 2020 – Photography Business Names.” To get the in-depth explanation of what I have written here, please watch the video:
Fact 1 – First Choose A Photography Niche
Hopefully you have already chosen your niche, as you have decided to start a photography business around it? But if you haven’t, we’ll talk a little about that now, because this is going to have a huge bearing on choosing your business name.
How do you find your niche in photography? Well, what do you love to photograph? What type of photography puts a smile on your face? That’s your niche!
I want to help you not just start a photography business, but start one that is based around your passion. A business that gets you excited to get out of bed every morning, grab your camera and get into it. A business that doesn’t even feel like work because you love it that much?!
This is why I want you to get a little bit more specific around your niche. For example, I don’t want you to say “I’m going to do pet photography.” I want you to say “I’m going to photograph Chihuahuas wearing Hawaiian shirts and sunglasses, sitting on kayaks, on a tropical beach”
Now obviously, that’s a little too niched down and there may not be a market for photos like that (if there is…..you’re welcome), but I’m just trying to get you thinking here. The more specific you can be at this stage, the more chance you will have of finding a niche that you can create a sustainable business around. This will also make it much easier to come up with a photography business name.
Fact 2 – Research Your Niche Before You Choose A Photography Business Name
You are wasting a whole lot of time and effort creating a photography business if there is just no market for what you photograph. That is why this step is so important. You must research your niche before you choose a photography business name.
The first place you want to go is of course Google. Now let’s assume that you live near the beach and you love to take photos of shells, and sand and other beach-related things. If I type “beach photography” into the search box, you can see in the image below there are 1300 searches per month for that term. (For this search I’m using a keywords tool called Keywords everywhere. Go to https://keywordseverywhere.com/ for more information).
This tells you there is definitely a market for this type of photography. It could be that people are looking for stock photos of the beach to use in their blogs, or on their websites etc, so that might be an area that you might want to look into.
Of course you want to dig deep on this and spend a fair amount of time researching your niche. The more research you do, the better chance you will have of knowing how to come up with a photography business name that fits and captures the attention of your niche market.
Fact 3 – You Must Research Your Competition
What on Earth does researching the competition have to do with choosing a photography business name? Well, first of all, it’s going to give you an idea of the names you can’t use! Secondly, it will inspire you with ideas of your own on how to name your photography business.
Still using Google; you want to now search for your competition. One way you can do this is using the same search term, except now click on the Shopping tab.
This will bring up people who are selling beach photography. You can go through these and look into the photographers behind the images. Check out their websites, see how they’re monetizing their photography.
When doing this the other day in preparation for this blog post, I found this awesome pair of photographers who have named their business Salty Wings. When you hear the name Salty Wings what springs to mind? The first thing that captured my attention was the word “salty”. This instantly tells me that they do beach photography. As soon as I checked out their website, I realized how incredibly appropriate the word “wings” was also. They do drone photography. Beach, drone photography – salty……..wings. Perfect!
This is what I am trying to get across to you here. I want you to think about your photography business name in a creative way and come up with a name that instantly tells customers what you do – what they can expect from you.
Your Photography Business Name Must Capture Google’s Attention
Even though Salty Wings is a really great name for people to identify with, it’s not so great from a search engine algorithm perspective. Google is not going to come across that name and serve it up to people looking for beach photography. Of course, this is where keywords and SEO comes into play, but having a name that also tells Google what you do can be beneficial.
So let’s look at a quick example of what I’m trying to get at here when I say “a name that also tells Google what you do.”
Staying with the example of beach photography, let’s see if there are any businesses that use the words “beach photography” in their name.
When I did my searching, I got to page 4 of Google and came up with only one business that even came close to having a name that might get it served up by Google in a “beach photography” search. The name was Summer Scenes; another beach drone photography business. This shows you the benefits that might await you if you name your business in a way that conveys what you do to both humans and Google/search engine algorithms.
What Does This Search Result Tell You?
So what I’m trying to get at here is that you want to come up with a business name that is keyword optimized but also creative and catchy from a human perspective. Now this might not always be possible, but if you get this right, search engines will find your website and serve it up to people who will instantly know what you do, connect with you, and become customers because they can see that you offer what they are searching for.
So that gives you a very basic idea of how to research your competition. As with researching your niche; you want to spend as much time on this as you can. Don’t rush this as you are trying to set yourself up for success here, and even “overnight” success takes time.
In My Next Photography Business Blog
In the next post, I am going to continue with tips on naming your photography business. We will work on finding your Avatar or ideal customer. This is such an important step in starting a photography business, or any business in fact! It will also help you come up with a photography business name, as you can choose one that your ideal customers will relate to and be inspired by.
If you don’t want to miss that post, sign up to my mailing list to have it sent straight to your inbox.
Suggested Reading
More of my blog posts you may find interesting:
- How To Start A Business In Photography – 10 steps on how to start a business in photography.
- 5 Ways To Improve Business – These things apply to any business and if you practice them daily you will produce considerable improvement in both your business and yourself.
- Make Money With Photography Online – in this post I introduce you to an inspiring way to make money with photography online.
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