7 Surefire Strategies to Protect Any Brand

Your business’s brand may not be as well-known as Coca-Cola or Google or Netflix, but it is still important.

After all, your brand is WHO you are, WHAT you do, and WHY you do it. If you plan on being in business for any amount of time, you’ll be building a brand.               

And remember, people don’t have relationships with products; they are loyal to brands. That’s why protecting your brand is so important.

But, with the rise of the Internet, brand names are increasingly at risk of being infringed upon, whether purposely or inadvertently, or even stolen.

You DO NOT have to sit idle and hope for the best. There are definitely things you can do right now to protect your brand!

Seven Ways to Protect Any Brand

1. 1. Pick compelling names and logos you can protect
   2. Register your name and logo with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
   3. Secure the domain name for your brand
   4. Use your brand the right way
   5. Claim your brand identity on social media
   6. Monitor your brand’s reputation
   7. Deal with infringement immediately
   8. Maintain your trademark registration(s)

1. Pick compelling names and logos you can protect

There’s no one-size-fits-all formula for picking great names and logos. The best ones balance a host of considerations — some as evident as the kind of business you do, others as unique as your personal taste and style. There are, however, a few guidelines that will steer you in the right direction. The best business names are:

• memorable
• distinctive
• easily spelled and pronounced
• web-friendly.

Perhaps most importantly, however, be sure to pick names and logos that can be strong trademarks.

How? Here are some suggestions:

a. Do an Internet search and a trademark search to see if someone else uses your new name or logo. If there is already a competitor in your space using a name or logo that is the same or similar to yours, you would be wise to pick new ones. In addition to investing in a brand that you probably won’t be able to protect, you may expose your new business to a claim of trademark infringement. Besides, if the name and logo are popular, it will be next to impossible to stand out from the competition.

b. Pick a name and logo that compliment each other. Complimentary names and logos cooperate to form the foundation of brands.

c. Pick a name or logo that can qualify for trademark protection
Trademarks represent brands. The three most common trademarks of a business brand are:

• • Names: usually, your company name or the name of your product.
  • Logos: your company logo or other graphic used to brand your products
  • Phrases (slogans): the catchphrase used to sell your products.
    In most cases, names and logos are the cornerstones of a brand.

Trademarks protect brands by stopping competitors from using the same (or similar) name or logo for their products or services. When you protect your trademark, you protect the brand behind it.

But beware! All trademarks are not created equal. Some offer far more protection than others and are much easier to register with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (more about that below)

Tip: Try to be distinctive by picking names and logos that are unrelated to your products and services.  Think APPLE for computers or GOOGLE for Internet search engines.  These are the strongest trademarks and are the easiest to register. 

 Tip: Stay away from names and graphics that describe your product or service (e.g., “Bob’s lawn care” or “The Seafood Shoppe”).

Learn more about picking strong trademarks.

2. Register your name and logo with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

If you rely on a trademark to sell products or services, you should register that trademark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (the USPTO). It is a critical step to confirm your ownership of your brand. It stops competitors from registering your brand for their business and makes enforcing your rights easier.

In short, Federal trademark registration is the single best way to protect the trademarks that reflect your brand. There is no higher level of protection. So, it is the best insurance against having to rebrand.

Why?

Because only one company can own a brand for an industry, typically, it’s the one that gets the Federal trademark(s) for it first.

Plus, rebranding is painful and expensive. At some point, you might face a challenge from a competitor over your brand. If you haven’t registered your trademarks, you could find yourself in a battle over your brand.

Also, the USPTO will immediately begin rejecting applications for “similar” marks. So, registration will prevent competitors from registering other marks that are even similar to yours.

Plus, your trademark will show up in everyone’s clearance searches, which will deter competitors from starting to use similar marks.

In the end, Federal registration makes enforcement easier and less expensive because it comes with important and exclusive legal rights and options.

Tip: Working with an experienced trademark attorney and increase your chances of success at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office by 50%. (The Wall Street Journal, When It Helps to Have a Lawyer, April 10, 2013). Plus, you’ll avoid overpaying the Government fees (they’re non-refundable).

Tip: Federal registration adds your mark to the Federal trademark database, which is the primary resource for trademark searches. This means your mark will appear in everyone else’s searches, which reduces the chances that someone will pick a name that is close to yours and unwittingly infringe on your brand.

Learn more about why trademark registration is so important for your brand.

3. Secure the domain name for your brand.

If you want to spread brand awareness, keep customers up-to-date with the latest company news, or simply have potential customers learn about your brand, then you need a website.

A domain name is the web address that identifies a website. For example, the domain name for Google’s search engine is google.com.

Tip: Always consider purchasing your domain name with alternate extensions, such as .net, .biz and .org, in addition to .com. This will prevent anyone else from riding on your coattails.

Domain names are an essential part of a modern business brand. As soon as you come up with your business name, it’s important to stake your claim to the domain for it.

Even if you’re not planning to build a website right away, you need to lock up the domain. If you don’t, your customers will always have difficulty finding you online. Worse, the domain name that you want – the one that goes perfectly with your brand – could be held hostage by a cybersquatter. It takes time and money to free a domain held hostage.

A common misconception about domains is that they come with trademark rights. They do not.

Here’s why.

In contrast to trademarks, domain names do not identify the source of goods and services. Also, domain names are registered through a domain registrar (like GoDaddy), while trademarks are registered through the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

You can bridge the gap between the two, however, by securing a domain name that includes your trademark. So, if you sell BIG MAC sandwiches, then a domain bigmacsandwiches.com should be a priority.

Tip: Set up automatic renewal on your registrations so that you don’t inadvertently lose them due to non-renewal.

4. Use your brand (the right way).

The more you use your trademarks – brand names, logos, and slogans – the stronger and more distinctive they become and the more your likely customers are to remember your brand.

Tip: If your trademark is a name or catchphrase/slogan, be sure to set the words off from other text with a distinctive font, ALL CAPS, bold, italics, or underlining.

Plus, the more you use your trademarks, the more proof you will have that they belong to you.

For example, an e-commerce business can put its logo on shipping boxes, packaging, and packing slips. A retailer can have employees wear shirts with the store’s logo on them. An online store can include its name and logo in the website header. All businesses can use their trademarks on social media, too.

Tip: Use the right trademark symbol. There are three: TM, SM, and the letter R in a circle — ®. The TM and SM symbols are used with unregistered marks. The Federal registration symbol, or ®, is reserved only for marks registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

But be careful! It is critically important to use the exact trademark that you registered. If you use different versions of a logo, for example, it will be much harder to prove that it is your trademark.

Read our guide about trademark symbols.

5. Claim Your Identity on Social Media

Social media is an important marketing tool, and that won’t change any time soon. So, it is important to own all of the social media handles associated with your company and its brands. If you don’t, they may be at risk. Ironically, a company can own the business name (e.g., via LLC formation in your specific state) but may not have much recourse against a competitor that has secured the same business name on social media. The saying “the early bird gets the worm” was never more true!

The easiest way to protect social media handles is to trademark your company or brand name. This is because social media services like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter have policies to protect brands against abuse and infringement – so long as you can establish ownership and valid rights. Federal trademark registration makes establishing ownership and validity mere formalities.

Trademark registration also expands protections in third-party online marketplaces like Amazon. The Amazon Brand Registry, for example, is an important and powerful brand protection tool. When you enroll, Amazon will look for and stop trademark violations. But Amazon restricts enrollment to Federal trademarks.

Tip: Set up a vanity URL for your Facebook page. Facebook will award a vanity URL once you reach 25 fans or “likes.”

6. Monitor your brand’s reputation

It is always a good idea to listen to your customers and stay aware of your reputation – especially online. Conversations about your company, products, and industry, whether on the web or social media, can be invaluable to building/improving the customer experience (and more sales).

Also, be proactive about testimonials – positive or not. Your responses can still frame the narrative about your brand.

Tip: An easy and free way to track what people are saying about your brand is to set up a Google alert. This will help alert you when someone else is using your business name, a similar name, or a similar trademark illegally, so you can take action quickly. See www.google.com/alerts.

7. Deal with infringement immediately

Every business has at least one common law trademark. As a trademark owner, it’s up to you to monitor and protect your trademarks – or risk losing them. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, for example, does not get involved with enforcement, and multiple users of an unregistered trademark can render it unprotectable by anyone.

Tip: When you find that a competitor is using your trademark or one that is really close, talk with an experienced trademark attorney. You may need to send a “cease and desist” letter.

8. Final thoughts

Building a brand takes hard work, and a trademark ensures that you’re the only one who can profit from all that effort. Plus, it makes all of the other important brand protection steps on social media and the web much easier. Remember – the very same tools and strategies that Google, Apple, Nike, and Coca-Cola use to protect their brands are available to you – if you know what they are and how to use them.

Ready to take the next step toward LEGALLY owning your Brand?

We have a simple, 5 step process we use to help our clients secure their trademarks. If you’re interested in protecting your YouTube Channel Brand, we invite you to book a FREE brand protection strategy session with us here.