Coming up with a name for your inbound marketing agency can be a challenge.
Several inbound marketing agencies have shared their stories with us on how they decided their names.
Some agency names are creative, have a special meaning or just state what their expertise is. But one thing that holds true for all of them is that they are all unique.
Beyond Backlinks is a social media and content marketing agecny located in Lancashire, United Kingdom.
Alex Chaidaroglou shared the story behind Beyond Backlinks, "I was brainstorming for a few days and I wanted the name to imply that we are doing digital marketing, but we are thinking and acting beyond SEO. So, after some thinking, I landed on the name Beyond Backlinks :)"
Brand Builder Solutions is a full service online marketing company that specializes in generating revenue for companies online.
Joseph Jerome, CEO for Brand Builder Solutions said that he had a list of 10 different company names in 2005.
"Brand Builder Solutions was one of 10 that I could get a domain name for at the time," said Jerome.
Camp Creative is a full service marketing agency located in Berkely, CA.
Camp creative took a similar apporach as The DSM Group with their name. Richard Camp (spoiler alert!), founder of Camp Creative, said it best on how they got their name, "Simple, my name."
Cave Social is a digital marketing agency with offices in Ft. Lauderdale, FL and Toronto, Canada.
"We started as an online magazine for men and it was called CAVE Mag. We started as four people at our university library. We would skip class weekly to meet and think of how we could market ourselves and make something that was (i) fun and (ii) others would enjoy," said Jordan Scheltgen, Founder of Cave Social.
"We ended up launching a website, which eventually received over 1 million views. As CAVE mag grew, we thought, "heck we can do this for other people." And we just extended the cave brand into this new sphere and we're loving it!" later explained Scheltgen.
ClearPivot is an inbound marketing and web design agency located in Denver, Colorado.
ClearPivot has a long, but interesting story behind their name. Chris Strom, Principal at Clear Pivot said, "A software exec that I know named Greg came up with the name and naming concept behind ClearPivot, and planned to build out ClearPivot as a marketing analytics software company. I was freelancing at the time and he hired me to design the logo and build out the initial ClearPivot website."
Strom later explained how he left the company to start his own business, Chris Strom, LLC. "A couple years passed by and my agency started scaling up with contractors and even some employees, but the "Chris Strom, LLC" name was really holding us back -- everyone thought it was just a one-person shop, for obvious reasons," said Strom.
Strom said he contacted Greg to buy the ClearPivot brand and as he said, the rest was history!
Denamico Inc. is a marketing agency located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Brendon Dennewill told us the story of how they got their name. "We started as an Online Marketing agency in Spain, after careers in business process consulting, retail, seafood production and distribution. The Internet had not only changed everything, but was exponentially increasing the rate of that change. The one word we easily boiled it down to therefore was "dynamic."
"We wanted the name to be short and unique and because we were operating in a multi-lingual business environment in Spain, it had to be localized to "dinamico", the Spanish for dynamic. The domain for "dinamico" was taken however, so by changing one letter we landed on our name Denamico," explained Dennewill.
Doz is an online marketing agency with offices in San Francisco and Lyon, France.
Their story is simple behind their name, but it has a great meaning. "Ours means "mission" or "goal" in Kurdish!" explained Cecile Rainon, Community Manager for Doz.
Fishhook is a full-service agency located in Indianapolis, Indiana. Fishhook primarily works with churches and non-profit faith-based organizations.
Evan McBroom, creative director for Fishhook, says that he tells his clients, "[We] Help them improve the way they 'fish' by helping them improve the way they communicate. This is based on the story of Jesus telling his earliest and closest followers, a scruffy bunch of fisherman, that if they followed him, he would teach them fish for men, instead of fish. It was a simple metaphor his audience would understand."
"The same is true for us. Our clients, and prospective clients, totally resonate with the name, the metaphor and the heart behind it," McBroom further explained.
Garrison Everest is an inbound marketing, design and branding agency for start-ups and small businesses located in Broomfield, Colorado.
Joshua Claflin explained how "Garrison" is a military term meaning "team" or where a group of soldiers are stationed.
"Everest" by its reputation is the highest—awe-inspiring—mountain in in the world. It stands for the mountain of marketing communications every company must climb. As a team, we help you get to the next level by climbing to the top of marketing and brand communications," Claflin said.
Inconsive is an inbound marketing agency located in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom.
William Steward, the Managing Director for Inconsive, shared the story behind the name, "We decided we wanted to create a word to describe our agency. Something that irritates me when trying to find companies with more generic names are the list of companies you get when you make a search (and having to click several to find the one you meant!). A unique word means you can dominate the search results."
"We thought hard about inbound marketing, and what it meant for companies, and identified that companies that excel at it become icons within their industry. From that, we simply coined "iconsive" as an adjective -- we help companies to stand out, and become industry icons," said Steward.
Inbound Emotion is an inbound and web design agency located in Spain.
Jordi Navarrete, founder and President of Inbound Emotion said, "As we started as an Inbound Marketing agency from the start we wanted Inbound to be on our brand name. So we thought that it had to come together with something relevant not only to us as a company but also to our prospects."
"We decided that one of the keys of inbound experience is the emotion that we deliver to our users. This also talks about our aim at business and our mind-heart-set always focused on Inbound," further explained Navarrette.
The IT Marketing Agency is a full-service marketing agency located in Bedfordshire, United Kingdom.
Gemma Telford, principal at The IT Marketing Agency said that keeping their name simple helped them in the long run.
"I read a post on LinkedIn about deciding on a company name, and I thought it was great advice. [The article said] Don't name it something difficult to spell as people won't find your website and don't name your company something that you have to explain or that only has meaning to you," said Telford.
"However, it DID say, pick words that your customers will be searching for when they are looking for your services on the Internet. We regularly get contacted by people saying 'I just googled IT Marketing and you came up!' Bingo. :))"
Kinetix Media Communications is an inbound marketing agency serving manufacturing, financial services and tourism/entertainment businesses throughout North America since 2000.
"Our name came about because names that begin with a 'guttural' sound are easier to remember than those that begin with a softer sound; particularly 'g', 'K'. So I went through a dictionary and looked for words beginning with those sounds that were aligned with my approach to Internet marketing," explained Paula Skaper, President of Kinetix Media.
"The end result was 'Kinetix' and our original tagline was 'marketing in motion' because marketing on the internet requires constant motion and adaptation. Done well it creates a kind of kinetic energy for your business," further explained Skaper. Even though times have changed since Kinetix Media was founded, their message still remains the same today.
Kula Partners is an inbound marketing and web design & development agency located in Nova Scotia, Canada. Jeff White explained the name behind the company, "In Papua, New Guinea there are a number of tribal trading groups that stretch over a hundred islands or so. In order to foster social capital amongst the various tribes, they meet for elaborate trading ceremonies."
"In these ceremonies, tribe members of a higher stature pass on trinkets called Kula (generally necklaces and bracelets made from seashells) to tribe members of a lower stature."
"The only point of receiving a piece of Kula is to, at some point, pass it on to someone else. This ceremony is called the Kula Ring and the people participating in it are called Kula Partners. We see a lot of parallels between these 'valueless' pieces of Kula and the things we share on social media. Generally, they don't have a real tangible value, but the act of sharing helps connect us as humans and to us, that matters," White further explained.
White also said how the Kula Ring is incorporated into the logo for Kula Partners.
Kuno Creative is an inbound marketing agency located in Avon, Ohio.
John McTigue, EVP of Kuno Creative shed light on how they got their name. "Kuno was my partner's (Chris Knipper) nickname in college."
"Your website... on like 50 cups of coffee"
Link Caffeine is an inbound marketing agency located in Dallas, Texas. Besides having an awesome tagline, they have a pretty cool story behind their company name.
Darren Davis, Founder of Link Caffeine, wanted a genuine, memorable company name. "So when trying to come up with our name I really wanted it to give off some personality, be something memorable, creative, fun with an energetic feeling. Also something that connected with our core focuses of SEO & PPC."
"Also I have to say that I'm a total coffee snob, love caffeine and I'm an extroverted type all about 'go go go, results results results!" in marketing,' further explained Davis.
"When we finally arrived at PageLadder it was stronger than everything else on the whiteboard by far and even better it cost us almost nothing to claim the brand across the web." The logo was designed by Raleigh himself and they've since trademarked the brand name.
PR 20/20 is a full-service agency, doing inbound marketing, PR and web design in Cleveland, Ohio.
Paul Roetzer, CEO and founder of PR 20/20 shared an article on how his company formed.
"I stopped what I was working on, and typed “PR 20/20” into a Word doc. I started writing about how there needed to be a “different vision” for the industry in general, and agencies in particular," explained Roetzer.
"But I soon realized the idea, and the name, was something more. I began thinking about what the industry would look like in the coming years," Roetzer said.
You can find the rest of the article here: What's Your Story? Origins of an Agency Brand (PR 20/20)
Quintain Marketing is an inbound marketing agency located in Annapolis, Maryland.
John Booth, Co-Founder of Quintain Marketing said that "Quintain" was a target used to train knights wth jousting. "It consisted of a swinging pole with a target on one end and a weighted ballast on the other. When the target was hit by a charging knight, the whole apparatus would rotate. The knight’s challenge was to hit the target, but not get hit in the back and knocked off the saddle by the rotating arm," explained Booth.
"Successful business marketing also requires a targeted approach and alignment with the organization's mission and values. After all there's little value in delivering a message if you get knocked on your ass..."
Screwpile Communications is an inbound marketing agency based out of Annapolis, Maryland. They specialize in helping medical device companies, medtech companies and healthcare oranizations.
Chuck Malcomson, founder of Screwpile Communications, explained how they drew the name from a type of lighthouse located around the Chesepeake Bay area: the Screw-pile lighthouse.
"Are we a beacon of light? One thing has proven true, nobody forgets the name after learning about us," said Malcomson.
Struto is an inbound marekting and web-design agency located that was founded in 2010.
Craig Wiltshire, founder and managing director said how "struto" is Esperanto for "Ostrich".
"At the time of naming the business I was discussing the state of marketing in B2B with my wife (about 2011) - she commented that it was as if marketers had their heads in the ground like ostriches do when they're scared," explained Wiltshire.
Tornado Marketing was started in 2005 and is a marketing agency located in Middleton, Wisconsin.
Adrianne Machina, owner of Tornado Marketing, said that she got the idea of the name "Tornado Marketing" while at a Microsoft conference.
"Steve Ballmer was giving his football coach rah-rah motivational sales speech about how we as a partner channel needed to achieve VELOCITY. I thought.... 'Hmmmm....what would a sales funnel look like at velocity... a TORNADO.' Powerful. Systematic. Focused. ...just like my marketing. :)"
Vizion Interactive is an Internet marketing agency wth locations in Dallas, Kansas CIty and Clearwater.
Mark Jackson, CEO of Vizion Interactive, said how they got their company name. "Had a falling out with my business partner (very long story) and he fired me. He told everyone that the reason that I was let go was that we didn't share the same "vision". Well. when I decided to bootstrap my new venture, 'VisionInteractive.com' was not available, but VizionInteractive.com was. And, it happens to go along with my spirituality."
Our own agency!
The DSM Group is a full-service marketing, advertising and public relations agency located in northern New Jersey. We were founded in 2007 by Darren Maggaro.
The name "The DSM Group", comes from Darren Sebastian Maggaro, his initials. It's simple - but it's easy to remember and unique in our own way.