Whether you want to revamp your established brand or are launching a brand-new company, it’s a must to have a solid marketing strategy in place. Making your brand recognizable is one thing but finding ways to set yourself apart can be challenging.
So, how can this be done?
Following popular trends can cause your brand to get lost in the sea of content, and creative slogans can only take you so far. One of the simplest yet most effective ways to make yourself stand out and reach consumers is to utilize color psychology. Understanding how colors can influence consumer behavior will go a long way in allowing you to reach your target audience.
The Power of Color
The first step to building a color strategy for your brand or website is to understand how important color is to consumer behavior. Studies show that most people subconsciously decide if they will buy a product within 90 seconds, and up to 90% of that decision is based on color alone.
Beyond grabbing your consumers' attention for specific products, there is plenty of importance on color for branding purposes. In fact, 80% of consumers believe color is one of the most important factors of brand recognition. Brands that establish strong associations with certain colors, such as blue for Facebook or red for Coca-Cola, achieve much higher levels of brand recognition. Wisely chosen and consistent colors for your brand will go a long way in improving your company’s presence.
Certain colors have proven to outperform others in conversions. In a well-known study conducted by HubSpot, a red call to action button saw 21% more clicks than a green call to action button on a page where all other components remained the same. Clearly, some colors are more successful at drawing people into your company or product than others. Each color influences consumer behavior to different extents and in unique ways. But which colors have what effect, and which should you use for your brand?
How to Use Color
Color psychology plays a very important role in determining which colors you should be using for your brand. Different colors have different meanings and can influence consumer behavior on both a mental and physiological level. For example, red represents desire, passion, love, and power while also increasing respiration. Yellow on the other hand represents joy, caution, warmth, and happiness and is the first color to reach the retina. In general, warm colors appeal to impulse buyers due to a perceived sense of urgency. Cool colors fall in line with budget consciousness. Each color has it straits and meanings, but much more goes into picking your brand’s colors than just the meanings and effects of colors.
Choosing a set of colors that are compatible can be equally as important as the meaning behind color. There are three ways in which colors can be compatible:
Complementary – opposite ends of color wheel
Analog – next to each other on color wheel
Triadic – three colors equidistant on color wheel
Finding a color palette that fits one of these color schemes can make your brand much more aesthetically pleasing to the human eye.
Influencing Consumer Behavior
Another vital component of using color in marketing is determining what color would best resonate with your target consumer. Who you are trying to reach with your product can, and should, play a large role in determining your brand’s color palette.
Blue is the most liked color of both males and females (perhaps because it represented clear skies and clean water to our ancestors). Females tend to enjoy purple and green the most, while males like green and black. Beyond that, females dislike gray, and males have ill will towards purple. Overall, brown, orange, and yellow are the least popular and have the most negatively associated feelings between both genders.
Age plays a key factor in color psychology as well. While all age groups love blue, younger people tend to like brighter colors, such as light green and orange, whereas older people find comfort in purple. Gender, age, and any other preferences of your target audience that you know of are all big things to keep in mind while using color in branding. Knowing the audience you want to buy your product is of the utmost importance when choosing your brand’s color palette.
Zignature® Example:
One last tip to best utilize color in marketing is to keep your web pages bright and consistent. Websites that follow these guidelines are considered more memorable than pages with dark or inconsistent tones. Consider leaning towards brighter colors when putting together your brand’s image. For example, when designing the Zignature homepage, the primary color of the page is a vibrant purple, and it uses accents of bright gold and yellow to make certain things stand out: keywords, CTA buttons, and the brand logo.
The entire page and website are consistent while using bright colors, making it memorable and pleasant to look at/use. Beyond that, the brand’s primary color is purple, recognized as the color of wealth and royalty. Every dog owner loves treating their dogs like royalty and giving them the best food possible, so this was a great choice for a color scheme. This is a fantastic example of how you can make your website memorable by using bright, consistent, and meaningful colors.
Color Psychology Application
Color psychology is an extraordinarily useful tool when putting together a marketing plan for your brand. Purchasing a product is almost completely visual/color-based, so figuring out the right colors for your brand is extremely important. Now you’ve learned the basics of color psychology, but there may still be work to do.
Running A/B tests with different colors may be very useful in helping you see which colors/combinations are the most effective. Let your customers tell you what works! The meaning of colors, demographics, and the color wheel can all be a lot to think about. With the right research, you will find the perfect color strategy for your brand.
Here at ReelPaws, we strive to integrate color psychology into the work we do for our clients. Whether combining the right colors for a re-branding effort or building up a new website, we always look for the most effective and creative ways to use color. Many people do not realize the effectiveness of color psychology, but our team knows the best ways to uniquely deploy color strategies. We hope this article will help you to do the same!
Happy branding!