Marketing guru Seth Godin suggests brands and product messages today must be as outrageous and attention getting as, say, a Purple Cow.

Meanwhile blogger Brad Williamson of Small Business Branding says quality of a product must be the first consideration before branding and marketing come into play.

I believe the truth must lie somewhere between these two extremes.

The issue of branding has been on my mind a lot these days as we move towards the launch of a new venture here on BootStrapMe.com.

Branding can be particularly important in the early days of bootstrapping a business when money for advertising will be limited and the brand itself may be one of the early entrepreneurs best marketing tools.

A brand should probably both grab your attention and be descriptive of or be able to be associated with the product on some level.

Think Google, originally "Googol", (a one followed by 100 zeros and supposedly the number of files Google's operating system, PageRank, was going to be able to sift through).

Or Xerox, from the Greek root "xer" meaning dry, describing the copying process being used. More examples are available on a site compiled by Prabhakaran Theertharaman.

Some brands are so descriptive they become inseparably associated with a product replacing the generic description. (When's the last time you heard someone say they were going to the drug store to buy a box of adhesive bandages?)

This kind of descriptive branding may be especially important when selecting a URL for an ecommerce business as explained by web marketer Tom Pick in this "Bootstrapper Tips" article.

Some resources for selecting a brand name are available online including name generators at Wordlab and tools like NameRazor, a resource from the Naming Tool Box.

To double check your new creations, run them through both the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's electronic search system and for URL availability through Register.com or a comparable site.