So you have finally decided that you are ready to get started with your career as a travel specialist, and now you are thinking about how you are going to promote yourself to get customers. Well, the first and foremost consideration should be your branding. What cool and catchy name you are going to give yourself to draw customer's attention, but still identifies what your business is about. A name can make or break a business so this is something that you should definitely give some thought and research to.
Erase That Idea
The easy thing for you to do is give your travel business a generic name like "Travel By Mary." I say erase that thought and kill it before it can catch a single breath. Not only will there be about 200 other travel specialist with that same name, but it does not explain anything interesting and unique about what you do. Yes, we get that your name is Mary and yes it's pretty obvious you sell travel, but so does one hundred thousand others. Do not be lazy about your brand. Give it thought, be creative and ask opinions.
Next Steps:
Identify What You Are Going To Sell
What type of travel products and services are you going to sell? Have you selected a niche market or destination that you plan to specialize in? If you have not yet identified your niche, you need to first find one. Pick a product type, destination or group of products you want to specialize in. This will not only be beneficial to the success of your business, but it will make it easier for you to come up with a cool and relevant name. Once you have identified your niche, you can start thinking of words that you or others use to describe your product or services that you plan to offer. Make a list of your initial ideas.
Conduct A Survey
Once you have a list of about 4-6 ideas, conduct a poll on social media or via an email list. It would be ideal if you could use some of your potential customers to conduct your survey, as this not only helps with selecting a name that will resonate with your target clients, but it's a creative way to introduce your new business venture to potential customers.
Business Name Search
Once you have come up with your top business name of names, you want to next conduct an NUANS name search to ensure that there is no one else using the trade names. Reserve your business name and register a legal entity to make you legally own the brand.
Domain Registration
You will definitely want to setup website for your travel business, and if so you will need to register a domain name. If you are going to register a domain name, you want to consider the availability of the words you chose to represent your brand. It will be very likely that the .com versions of your initial ideas are gone, so you will need to get creative and come up with unique ideas that have the same meaning until you find a domain name that's available. For the travel industry, tours, .co, .travel are also trending domain extensions that you can use as well. Try not to use a full sentence for your domain name as long website names are hard to remember and hard to type. You also want to spell out you domain name first and look at it on paper before you purchase. By just saying the words "Pen Island" it sounds fine until you combine the two to form "Penisland.com"
Hooray! Congrats you have successfully created your brand name. Now have fun getting a cool logo designed, setting up your website that represents your niche, printing business cards and now you are armed like a pro to start building your brand and selling travel.
