The best home inspection business name guide for 2023 can be found on this blog. It will give you all the information you need to make an educated decision about what your business’s name should be and how it should sound. You’ll find some great tips and tricks as well as some alternatives if the first one doesn’t work for you!
Your home inspection business name itself is important! But your “home inspection business name” and your “branded username” are two different things.
Before we dig into the Branded Username we’re going to get into your Home Inspector business name.
“Your company name plays a monumental role in a brand’s growth and perception, meaning it can completely make or break a company.” ~ INC.com
Your Home Inspection Business Name
As we discussed when we talked about knowing your exit, you may want to stay away from using your name as the main name of your home inspection business.
There are a lot of different resources for finding the best home inspector business name for your business.
Of course, with this being a blog post, I’m not going to go super deep into this.
You can do a Google search for “Home Inspection Business Names” and for the first few pages, the majority of the content is based around “Premade Brands”. While that can work sometimes, I believe it is best for your Brand to have a “Story” or at least a reason why you picked the home inspection business name.
While it may be easy to just use something like “Trusted Home Inspections”, something like that is likely to be used by another home inspector
Your actual home inspection business name should be unique and you shouldn’t have to worry about multiple companies competing to rank for your business name.
While there are a lot of home inspectors out there, it doesn’t mean you can’t be original & unique.
4 Tips For Coming Up With A Great Home Inspection Business Name
- Make Sure People Can Say It – This may sound elementary, but in my opinion, it may be the most overlooked thing when creating your home inspection business name. The best way to test this is to repeat it out loud to yourself 20-30 times. Use it in a sentence, say it slow, say it fast, play with the pronunciation and make sure you don’t get easily tongue tied.
- Say What You Do – When it comes to your home inspection business name, don’t be afraid to include what you do in your business name
- Check For Multiple Meanings – If you are going to use a word in your home inspection business name, you need to do a search and see if there are more than one meaning of the word. It is best to know that the word you want to use has a negative meaning now rather than later.
- Check What Shows On Search – You want to do a basic Google & YouTube search for the full home inspection business name you want to use. The reasons you want to do this are because you want to see if there are other home inspectors using the same name and you want to make sure if someone searches your business they’re not looking for something out of left field. When I first started Inspector Branding, this is a step I skipped without realizing it until it was too late. That is why it’s difficult for me to rank for my own name. The majority of the Google Results are for people who are looking for a “Branding Inspector”, like you, but they inspect cattle. So don’t skip this one.
You can use many different things in your home inspection business name but there are a few things you may want to consider.
- Your “OFFICIAL” business name does not have to be what you build your “Brand” around.
- Your Brand Needs To Be Your First Focus.
Introduction To Your Branded Username
Once you find a name that you’d like to use for your business, the next step is your Branded Username.
Let’s think about a national brand for a minute, InterNACHI or “NACHI”. While their business name is “International Association of Certified Home Inspectors”, their “Branded Username” is simply, “InterNACHI”.
Well, almost! This is one of the parts of your “Branded Username” that most people overlook. If you look for InterNACHI on Instagram, their handle is @internachihq. If you look them up on Facebook, it’s @internachi … this is where you can find yourself with potentially a large issue.
Without doing a check for availability with each of these platforms, along with a trademark search and domain search, you are destined to fail at branding your business. These are important when coming up with your home inspection business name
I have been referring to this as your “Branded Username” for a while now because it’s not necessarily your “Home Inspection Business Name” but it IS how people find you online. So you want to make sure it is uniform across all available platforms.
Of course, everything starts with your domain. A domain name is like the street address of your website. It is your brand and how you’re going to tell people to find you online.
Many mistakenly believe having a bad domain name is better than not having one at all, which couldn’t be further from the truth.
Having a bad domain name can backfire and even cause you to lose potential clients. Having a bad domain name makes you look unprofessional while a good domain name leaves a positive impression and fosters a feeling of trust within your visitors.
A well-chosen domain name will also allow your website to rank higher in search engine results (Google, Bing, Yahoo), which in turn allows your site to be seen by even more people.
Since your domain name will be on your social media accounts, other web properties, promotional print, and more if you choose to do more, you’ll want to choose a name that is easy to remember and somewhat reflective of what your business is about.
Coming Up With Your Home Inspection Business Name “BRANDED USERNAME”
Now that you understand the importance of a domain name, I’ll say it transfers to your usernames on social media.
You want to make sure it meets the main criteria.
What makes a successful “branded username”?
- The shorter the better | 15 Character Limit
- Do not use numbers for letters
- Be careful using numbers it can cause you to have to explain more than talking about your business. For Example, if your username is Inspections4you, you may lose traffic if you don’t say “Inspections the number four you”. That’s too much for people who aren’t 100% invested in you yet.
It’s time to make a list of potential names. Remember, it doesn’t have to be your full business name, we’re working on your “Branded Username”.
Make a List of Your Ideal Names
At this point, you should put together a list of 5-10 different names you would like to use. Do not get attached to any of these because in a few minutes we are going to likely eliminate a few of them.
Try to stay at or under fifteen characters. This keeps your name easier to remember. Think about how easy it would be for someone to remember it. This will also help with availability with social media handles. Some platforms will limit the username’s character length and the safe number (for now) is fifteen, which is Twitter’s limit.
Cross out anything that might have negative connotations. If you’re using several words, write them without spaces to be sure that your domain name wouldn’t be potentially offensive.
How to Find Available Names for Domain/Social/Trademark?
This is where you may lose out on that “perfect home inspector business name” so brace yourself!
There is an awesome tool that I use to check if a name is available as a domain. (This looks something like this: brandedusername.com)
The cool thing about this tool is it also checks for trademarks and checks social media username availability for almost EVERY SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM.
Some of the platforms they check are:
- And MANY MORE!
The tool is KNOWEM.COM and I’ve personally used them for years BUT WE DO NOT USE THEM FOR REGISTERING DOMAINS OR ANYTHING BUT TO CHECK AVAILABILITY.
Understanding KnowEm.com’s Free Username Search Tool
Using this tool to find the best home inspection business name is at the core, a MASSIVE time saver! And it will help keep you from headaches down the road.
The first thing to know is that KnowEm.com’s search tool for username availability is NOT ALWAYS RIGHT. Sometimes there are issues where a platform changes something and it shows unavailable no matter what you search. But that does not mean it isn’t one of the best tools available to us.
The tool itself is 100% FREE! So please take advantage of it.
Once you are on the KnowEm.com website, all you need to do is put your desired “Branded Username” in the search bar and then click on “Check It”.
This will bring up a page similar to the image below.
Don’t get overwhelmed!
We have three categories to check when coming up with our home inspection business name. The biggest problem is the level of importance is backward on Knowem.
Check Trademark Availability
The most important thing that you should check, in our opinion, is the “Trademark Availability”. This section is towards the bottom of the page. Trust me, it is worth the extra scroll to check this first. Even if the domain and social media sites are available if someone has the trademark then you need to completely move onto another option on your list.
You need to not only check your “Branded Username” but also your home inspection business name. The entire thing. You want to be sure that the full name isn’t trademarked as much as your branded username.
After you check the trademark and it shows it is available, now it’s time to check for available domains.
Check for Domain Availability
It is highly recommended that you look at the (.com) domain the same way that you do a trademark. If someone else is using the .com, move to the next option on your list.
I say this because, after years and years of social programming, most people will automatically type in a .com.
NOTE: While you may want to use different extensions I highly recommend that you ONLY MOVE FORWARD WHEN YOU FIND A .COM. If you want to use a .net, .org or one of the fun extensions such as .yeah, you can. But, you would be better getting the .com and building your website there. Then you can forward the other domains to your main website. (Don’t worry there is a tutorial on how to do this coming soon!)
***DO NOT REGISTER THE DOMAIN YET!*** We still have more to do! (When you’re ready, here’s the link.)
Check Social Media Username Availability
Before you freak out, you don’t need to be on every social media platform. If you click on the “Social Networks” tab on Knowem.com to search other platforms besides what it checks on the home page, you may find it easy to be overwhelmed. Don’t Be!
There are a lot of different social media platforms, but you just need to focus on the main platforms.
That being said, I’d currently consider these:
Once you have found a home inspection business name that you really like or “Branded Username”, that’s available on social media, for your domain (.com) & isn’t trademarked, make sure that no one else is using a similar name for something dishonest, spammy or offensive.
While this might seem like a very boring task, you don’t want your website confused with a similar website that’s not ethical. Even if you aren’t associated with them, it doesn’t mean that people won’t automatically think about them when they visit your site.
DISCLAIMER: Sometimes, the different platforms (ie: Twitter, Instagram, etc.) will update their process on the backend and cause Knowem.com not to work properly. So for the most accurate way to check the individual platforms you plan on using, it can only be done one platform at a time. But we can come back and do the official check AFTER everything else checks out.
The best way to check username availability for right now to get as close to 100% sure you can is to check the url for your desired “Branded Username”.
Example: Let’s say your business name is “ACME Home Inspection Services”, you may want to use the BrandedUsername “acmehis” so your domain would be www.acmehis.com, and social would be @acmehis
So to check the platforms you would type into the address bar:
https://facebook.com/acmehis
https://instagram.com/acmehis
https://twitter.com/acmehis
SIDE NOTE: If you are searching availability on platforms not listed here, you need to see how their platforms link to the profile. For example, if you want a “MEDIUM” account, their links look like this https://medium.com/@cjhallock.
If you land on a profile then move on, that means it’s taken. But if you land on a page that says “This account doesn’t exist” or “There Isn’t A Profile Here” or anything like that, you should be good to move forward and check the next platform.
It takes some extra time but it’s better to do it right the first time (or the second) than continue to have to explain your different names on different platforms.
Not all platforms will let you have a unique URL until you pass certain milestones. For example, sometimes Facebook will not let you have a unique handle/URL until you pass 50 likes. YouTube, on the other hand, sets its requirement to 100 Subscribers.
Facebook – https://facebook.com/yourbrandsname
Upon checking for an available “Facebook Page” you will get a page like this:
Instagram – https://instagram.com/yourbrandsname
Upon checking for an available “Instagram Account” you will get a page like this:
Twitter – https://twitter.com/yourbrandsname
Upon checking for an available “Twitter Account” you will get a page like this:
If you have followed the steps and have your home inspection business name let us know what you landed on. We’d love to hear what you came up with. Join our Facebook group “Home Inspector Marketing“.
If you are considering opening a home inspection business in the near future, it’s important to get your name figured out early. You’ll want to make sure that when people hear or see your home inspection business name they think quality and professionalism. The best way to do this is by using some of these tips!
This has been the Home Inspection Business Name Guide.
I hope this has been helpful for you–if you have any questions about coming up with your home inspection business name, please reach out today. We would love to help you build an awesome brand identity that will set your business apart from the competition and generate more sales!
Now is the time to register the domain for your home inspection business. Follow along with the tutorial and buy your domain now.
PS. You can follow along as I build out a home inspection brand. Click-for-click from naming the brand to building a website and so much more on the Inspector Branding YouTube Channel. If you have not yet, GO SUBSCRIBE TO THE INSPECTOR BRANDING YOUTUBE CHANNEL.
