Why Exactly Are Charcuterie Business Names So Vital?
As anyone will tell you, the name you pick is what would-be customers will see first. It sets the tone for your brand, your style, the sort of products you sell and much more. And while each of those is important, none of them are THE most important. THE most important function of your business name is to help you be discovered by new customers. And not just any customers, the customers who are actively looking for what it is you sell. This is THE most important because in order for you to WOW people and have them lining up in droves, they must FIRST know you exist & what you do!The Unfortunate Problem With Current Naming Strategies:
When starting a charcuterie board business, many folks try to come up with the most unique name possible. While there is an allure to this because of how creative and interesting it can be, the downside is that it works against them when it comes to the #1 goal of all business: getting customers. Here's an example using a totally made up name & situation (any relation to people or businesses both living and dead is purely coincidental)Let's say you are pure awesome at creating SUNNING grazing tables and want your company to be THE premier provider for charcuterie at bridal & baby showers.
After a long process of trying TONS of different ideas, you finally settle on:
Olive & Fig
You are in luck! The domain is available as are all the social media handles so you scoop them all up.
You have a killer looking logo created and it perfectly blends your skill as well as your desire to cater showers. Everything about your company now sends a clear message: Olive & Fig is sophisticated, professional with breath-taking services for the most discerning customers.
Over the next few months you post tons amazing content to social while engaging with everyone. And as you expected, you see some decent businesses from it. But not nearly what you were expecting. Something must be off.
One day, while searching for local board-making wood workers, you realize your business isn't showing up when people in your area are searching for “charcuterie” related things. Because YOU are in your area! Because YOU are looking for these things!
To your horror, what you DO see is that other local companies ARE showing up instead of you and taking all the business!
Why did this happen? How do you fix it?
FYI: IF you have accidentally made this mistake, DO NOT stress! There are “band-aids” that can be deployed so you don't need to dive into an expensive and time consuming rebrand! We go over this topic in our on-demand charcuterie business masterclass.
Why Your Name Can Make Or Break You
You might not know it yet, but your business isn't ONLY catering to humans. (Yes, I admit this may sound super weird, but stick with me because it's both 100% true AND vitally important) Because there are BILLIONS of websites online online today* it's simply WAY too much for regular people to deal with. That's why powerful search engines like Google (with over 228 million searches per hour*) have created automated systems to help categorize and organize everything. These automated systems are called algorithms. Picture them as an army of librarian robots, marching through the internet reading, categorizing & organizing everything. When you go live they will check out your site, figure out what you are about, then associate you with what THEY believe your relevant keywords are. You will start showing up in search results when normal people Google those words. In our example above, the person didn't know about the algorithms and didn't think to include the right keywords based on what people were already looking for. So while they WILL show up under their brand name: “Olive & Fig”, they DO NOT show up under more general terms people are actually looking for. On the internet this is the equivalent of having a store on a high-traffic main street vs opening up 6 blocks down in a basement.Why Can This Be A Major Problem?
As you probably know, when your charcuterie business is getting started, not very many people will know about it. Because they don't know about you they won't be searching for you. Instead, they are searching for the things they want. Example: charcuterie, charcuterie boards, charcuterie near me, grazing table You can get a really good picture of just how massive the search volume is for this market in our article about starting your charcuterie business. By NOT strategically including words in your charcuterie business name and/or web address people are already looking for, you are making it MUCH harder to be discovered. If you want business coming to you rather than having to chase it down, the rule is simple: Be where your customers are! And your customers are on Google. They just aren't looking for you (yet) The BAD news is these robots aren't as smart as regular people and will probably not understand “hints”. The GOOD news is it's really easy to set them straight by being VERY clear.Can You Still Have A Unique Charcuterie Business Name?
The good news is YES you can! You can still be “Olive & Fig”! Provided you remember to include a bit of information for the robots as well as the humans! Keeping this super top level AND still effective, here are the top 4 places where keywords should be featured:- Your URL/Domain Name
- The title of your page
- In the description of your products and services
- On the pages of your products and services
PRO TIP: When it comes to including keywords on your site, make sure you don't over do it. It can be VERY simple to become slightly paranoid about confusing the robots. While they aren't the brightest bulbs on the tree, they have evolved quite a bit and as long as you include a few strategic words in the right spots, they will get it and you will be just fine.
If you over do it your site can be penalized for “keyword stuffing” and it'll work against you.
4 Vital Questions To Creating Your Perfect Business Name:
Question #1: WHO are your customers? If you are just getting started and don't yet have any customers, think about what sort of customers you might like.- Parents?
- Married people?
- Business owners?
- Celebrating birthdays?
- Love backyard BBQ?
- Charcuterie
- Grazing table
- Charcuterie board
- Catering
- Delivery
- Cheese board
- Social Media
- YouTube
- TikTok
- Search Engines
- Yahoo
- Bing
- Directories
- Yelp
- AboutUs
- BOTW
- Spoke.com
