Choosing your cleaning business name

Your birth name and your cleaning business name share one common trait. They both last forever.

While it’s impossible to name yourself at birth, you do get to name your cleaning business. Taking the time to think it through is recommended.

Now why is that? Because your cleaning business name becomes your BRAND. Years ago branding meant stamping cattle with a hot iron to identify who owned the cattle. Today the same premise holds true as your business name separates you from the competition.

In essence your cleaning business name BECOMES your IDENTITY.

So this means you want to make use of it to the best of your ability. To do so you’ll want to follow along with this brief tutorial on how to do just that. Without further ado, let’s get started.

 Tips on how to name your cleaning business

1 – The first part of this process is simply choosing the words that best identify who you are and what service you provide. When I started my cleaning business I named it after myself to keep it simple. My company, “TC Watson Cleaning Services, LLC” is nothing fancy, but it served me well.

How you go about naming your cleaning business depends a lot on what market you are aiming for. I was a blend of both the residential and commercial markets in the beginning so I kept my name extremely generic for that very reason.

If you are courting ONLY the house cleaning market you could go with a name ending in “cleaning services” or “cleaning company” but you would definitely skip anything “janitorial” related. Of course adding “maid service” or “house cleaning service” or “house cleaning company” would fit you just fine too.

If on the other hand you know the commercial market is where you want to be then picking a cleaning business a name that ends in “cleaning services”, “cleaning company”, “janitorial services” or “janitorial company” would be appropriate.

Before moving on to the next tip I’ve read online where people say it’s best to avoid naming your cleaning business after yourself because if you ever sell it down the road that would be an obstacle. I call that TOTAL NONSENSE.

Anyone who would have the money to buy your business down the road is NOT BUYING the “cleaning business name”, they are BUYING THE CUSTOMERS. Not to mention odds are they ALREADY have a cleaning business and would have no interest in altering their name.

For instance I bought out one of my competitors a few years back and their “company name” meant nothing to me. I was after their customers and nothing else. After I purchased the company those customers simply sent a check to my company name, not the former company.

2 – Another factor to consider when naming your cleaning business is possibly picking a name that has an emotional pull to it of some kind. For instance I used “HealthyKleen Carpet Cleaning” for my carpet cleaning division.

To top it off we used a “Sunflower” in the logo to help drive home the “clean and fresh” concept. Between the name HealthyKleen and the flower we created an IMAGE of what we were all about.

That image was pleasant and helped “connect the dots” for the customer that we were the company that could get their carpets HEALTHY, CLEAN AND FRESH again. This approach is identical to what large institutional companies do.

These large firms seek any advantage possible to sway customers to their company, their BRAND. This concept works for them, and it works on the smaller playing field we occupy as well. After all, buying decisions are EMOTIONAL DECISIONS.

3 – Keeping your cleaning business name simple and easy to understand is key. Ideally the name shouldn’t be a tongue twister, as the goal is to make your business name as easy to remember as possible.

In other words, this means if your average customer can’t pronounce your name easily, it will be hard for them to both remember you or refer you if they liked your company in the first place.

4 – Avoid using a clever “pun” that only YOU would understand when naming your cleaning business. Business is not a joke, but using one as your name could prove costly as sometimes it can be hard to judge what is funny or clever.

For that matter you also don’t always know what some people would consider “offensive”. For this reason it’s best to carefully review any name with friends, family or possibly a mentor before getting too clever with your business name.

5 – Check to make sure the name of your potential company is available online. For instance if you picked “Marys Ultimate Cleaning Service” you would want to check if some semblance of that domain is available.

Using that example you would hope to secure marysultimatecleaning.com or perhaps marys-ultimate-cleaning.com. Getting the EXACT domain would be best, but it would not be the end of the world if you have to shorten it a bit.

Now you have two more steps…

A – Once you determine what your cleaning business name will be you should register it before anyone else has the same idea. You could do that through your local county clerks office or through an online provider such as Rocket Lawyer.

B – You will also want to secure the online domain as well. It would be quite sad to register the name of your cleaning business but not be able to build a website around it. I happen to use company called Blue Host. I’ve been with them for over 3 years without a problem and they are highly recommended.

If you are in need of some other choices you may want to check out either GoDaddy.com or HostGator. I don’t think you could go wrong with either one as they both have been around for a while and are industry leaders.

If you liked this post, you can subscribe to our RSS feed. If you are looking for a blueprint that will show you how to start a cleaning business, then check out my Cleaning Business Start Up Guides.