Color Psychology in Marketing and Branding

Color Psychology in Marketing and Branding Your Small Business.

 The truth is, colors may not be the best choice for using your favorite colors when it comes to designing your logo and branding. This is because the assumptions you make with your favorite color may not be the same as your audience.

This is why color psychology is such a complex subject.

Color psychology is not really as easy as people might think it is. There are a lot of caveats and elements to take into consideration in determining the color scheme of your brand.

Good News? When you understand them, your strategy will be even more effective.

There is no denying that we are affected by our environment. Human beings are very visible creatures. Some statistics say that we remember 80% of what we see compared to what we hear.

Given this, one can imagine the power of colors for your brand and the impact colors can have on your branding.

For that reason, before starting any visual project it is incredibly important to have an understanding of color psychology and the various meanings we have.

the only problem? There are no definitive answers to what colors do, just general analysis.

Most of the articles are there that you can simply read what other articles have repeated without presenting much evidence. All others cite very thin slices of literature, ignoring contradictory evidence.

The reason for this is that colors do not affect all 7.8 billion people on the planet in exactly the same way. Instead, personal and color preferences, color associations, cultural differences, and upbringing influence how different people view different colors. This is the basis of color psychology.

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For this reason, there are two things that should keep you away from any paper about color psychology:

Take it with a grain of salt. Whatever you read, none of them are going to apply to every single person on earth. So, if you read something that seems plausible, then go ahead and test it first. This may be different for your audience.

Color psychology works best on a homogeneous audience. Gender, location, age, and heritage will pollute the water. If you have a diverse audience, you may need to test different color schemes in different groups.

Understood? Well, with that cavity behind us, pay attention to what we know.

Using color psychology to provoke emotions

Good news first. According to a recent study, it was found that 90% of snap decisions about a product are made based on color.

And the bad news? What this decision will entail is dependent on personal experience that it is possible to say with certainty whether blue does this or red does this.

Personal experience affects the way everyone feels, especially the colors.

This is why there is really only a vague general feeling that each color can make you feel. This means, some colors usually present some representations, but this is not always the case.

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Even with that, knowing what emotion colors usually emerge and color perception is a business as a whole is a huge benefit to humanizing your brand and engaging with your audience.

Color psychology has been a favorite subject in many studies over the years. But still, there is much to this argument. And really, why do people have so many interpretations about the psychology of color? This is probably because we understand colors differently.

Your personal preferences, past experiences, culture, gender, beliefs - all of these can affect how you see a specific color.

However, there is some more good news. What really matters to people in the fit of color. People take color and try to fit what the brand is trying to provoke. If it matches, the brand gets brownie points.

The important thing to remember with choosing the right color choice is that color has some effect on human behavior. What we mean to say is that color has the ability to affect human emotions, which can later affect our behavior.

As we said, it is not a fixed factor in all cases when it comes to color, but it has been observed that color helps to affect us.

This type of psychological effect helps to encourage your audience's decision-making in most cases because they will be more receptive to feeling a certain emotion by looking at certain colors, which sometimes leads them to act differently. Does.

Knowing the colors that typically affect certain behaviors in different industries will give your business the benefit of connecting with your audience and giving you brand character. It is quite useful to know and we will get more information about it later.

It is also useful to know that color patterns are used to enhance brand recognition and make brands more recognizable. This is because more recognizable brands are more liked by consumers - this is a point in favor of going with a bold color combination.

Easily recognizable brands allow your brand to appeal more to your audience as there is a sense of trust that can be established by a recognizable brand.

And we know that any successful brand will always trust its audience.

Now that we have covered the basics of color psychology, let's take a closer look at the use of color in our branding and what features can emerge in different colors.

Different colors affect the color

A. Cool colors

If you look at a colored wheel, you will see that the colors on the left side of the wheel are more towards the blue color. These colors are known as cool colors.

Anything with shades of blue, green, or purple would be considered a cool color.

Calm colors have a more calming effect on people and are great to use if you want to leave a relaxing, calming, or "reliable" effect.

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Now, let's look at some popular colors in the cool category and what their color means.

1. Color Blue

The color blue is a primary color and can be seen in many forms for many institutions around the world. This is why primary colors like red, yellow, and blue are used in almost every country in the world.

But apart from this, the color blue is used as a symbol of trust, dependability, and connection.

Companies such as Facebook and Twitter use the color blue in their logos to indicate unity and connection to people around the world.

You can also take a look at our logo in LYFE. The use of the color blue helps us to indicate that we are a reliable and trustworthy brand. That, with great work.

2. The Color Green

Another good color that is used in branding is the color green. It can be used to represent peace, quality, and tranquility to your audience, depending on which industry your business is in.

Most of the time when you consider the color green, you can think about nature. However, when you think of green then other times you can think about money.

As we said earlier, the way you experience colors is based on your experience. But it also has a lot to do with the real business industry.

For example, if you were a company specializing in outdoor accessories such as gardening tools and equipment, the color green can help give a calming effect that makes your brand responsible and stable.

Companies like John Deere and Whole Foods use the color green in their logos to help illustrate some of those characteristics about their brands.

3. Color Purple

The color purple can be seen as pleasing, but it is also regal, luxurious, and creative.

If your brand wants to portray an imaginative culture, then purple is a great color to use in your branding. This is because the color purple is usually seen to be mysterious and associated with new ideas.

Companies like Yahoo and Syfy use purple as it portrays an imaginative, creative, mysterious, and ambitious culture for their brand.

Purple is also a mixture of red and blue. This means that it has qualities that help to create excitement, imagination, peace, and trust as it is a good balance of both colors.

B. Warm color

Okay, let's look at the same color wheel but now on the right. You will see warm colors there.

Those colors are red and yellow. Usually, bright colors evoke feelings of warmth, excitement, and energy.

Warm colors help stimulate the minds of individuals and achieve them. In fact, a study shows that the content of 1 million Pinterest images was often shared when they were warmer colors than cool ones.

This is a huge factor to note if you are trying to figure out which colors to use in your brand's content as it will ultimately help you gain more share and reach your more audience. Will give a leg up in the competition.

1. Color Red

The color red is usually seen as a powerful and bold color option.

It helps to notice how well it stands. How it helps in quick action by stimulating. Not to mention, it is often seen as a powerful color that represents leadership.

Coca-Cola and Target are two companies that use red in their logos and branding. The use of the color red helps portray a culture of enthusiasm, leadership, and innovation in both brands.

If you want to make your brand bold and exciting, the color red is one of the best colors to do so.

2. Color Yellow

The color yellow is usually associated with being bright. And when you think of bright colors you probably think of yellow first.

The color yellow can create feelings of happiness, optimism, intelligence, and positivity for your brand.

Usually, when you see anything in yellow color it stands out the most. This is beneficial for your content because it will help to attract more individuals to view your content information.

The color yellow really attracts attention and can be a very useful color choice for your branding when used properly.

For example, if you make the text yellow on your content, it will certainly draw more eyes, but it is also important to note that yellow is still legible, so readers can still understand the information.

3. Color Orange

Another color in the warm color category is orange.

Now the feelings that can turn the color orange are the same as red and yellow because it is a mixture of both.

In some cases, orange is sometimes seen as a "friendly" version of red. Often, this helps to create a sense of haste or movement, which is great for content where you want to encourage your audience to take action.

With orange, you can portray optimism, confidence, sociality, and independence. But orange can usually represent spontaneity.

Brands like Nickelodeon and Fanta use colored orange to help portray the vibrant and youthful culture for their brands.

With the color orange, you can have a good balance between red and yellow, which is not overpowering but also helps your branding to remain energetic.

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4. The Color Pink

The color pink is also a warm color because it is a type of red. Since pink is in the same family as red, it leaves some symptoms of red.

For example, red can give love as well as respect and the color can also be pink.

The color pink, however, is more commonly presented as a feminine color. It is used in many feminine logos and is associated with branding and traditionally femininity.

Victoria Secret and Barbie are the two major brands that use pink in their branding. This works well for them as their brands move towards girls and women.

That being said, if your brand's audience is more feminine or you want your brand to portray a feminine image, then the color pink would be a good color to use.

5. The Color Brown

You can think of chocolate when you think of brownies (and we don't blame you) or you can think of something else based on your experience.

However, in many instances, the color represents a brown, bumpy, earthy, or out-of-place image.

The color brown can be seen to have the same characteristics as green because it is due to natural effects in the representation.

But outside is just a perception whose color is brown. It is also portrayed as trustworthy, reliable, and friendly. You can combine all the features with a company that uses big gray trucks.

That's right - UPS.

This is why UPS is so recognizable. Their big brown trucks help identify their logistics company and are associated with dependency. In turn, this helps to influence and strengthen its overall brand image.

6. Color Black

Now black and white are not usually considered colors, but there are more shades. Nevertheless, they still do not reveal some feelings when used in branding.

The color black in particular can also represent elegance, sophistication, formality, and mystery.

Depending on whether your business determines whether black is a good color to use in your branding. However, since black is one such commonly used color, it becomes much easier to use black as an accent color or text because it is easier to read.

In addition, the color black may sometimes represent class and timelessness. It is therefore no surprise that some of the largest companies in the world have black logos.

Nike, Adidas, Disney, and even Apple have black logos and these companies have stood the test of time.

Black can be a great color option to use if you want your branding to spark elegance and classic style. For example, if your business is in luxury items, then using black in your branding can help your brand portray your audience as being of high quality.

7. Color White

The color white is as beautiful as the color black in the sense that it represents simplicity and elegance but in a more subtle way.

With white color, you can portray a fresh, clean, and pure quality to your branding. Companies such as The North Face and Cotton use the color white in their logo to represent the easy, fresh, and clean quality of their brand.

The color white also has some characteristics as cool colors. This means, sometimes it can portray a calm, relaxed, or neutral tone depending on the content.

White is also a good choice to use for text because this color stands out like yellow but makes more sense. That means, you don't worry about it being too hard to read but it also draws attention to your content.

Importance of a color palette

So we have looked at the general notion of the most commonly used colors and what they mean individually.

But what if you want a whole color scheme instead of just one brand color?

Frankly, having a color palette is the best option if you want your brand to stand out and portray different elements. Because in truth, most brands today have deep stories behind them and the right color palette can bring that story to life in all your content.

When it comes to determining what colors you want to use to represent your brand, it goes back to the basics of what you want your brand image to be. The colors you choose will help reflect that.

Pairing some colors together can in itself give a different meaning than colors.

The bottom line is, when deciding which color to choose, you have to keep your brand identity in mind, only then will you be able to identify which color plays the most important role in connecting your brand personality with your audience is.

This brings us to our next point - brand personality.

Five dimensions of brand personality

In a detailed study, Stanford professor Jennifer Acker determined that there are five distinct core dimensions that matter to the personality we associate with a brand, with one brand sometimes embracing two. Are capable but it is usually best to focus on one.

Here are:

1-Honesty

2-Enthusiasm

3-capacity

4-sophistication

5-Ruggedness

The trick is to know which category your company belongs to and then choose the colors that make up that specialty.

The first step to do this is not to go with conservative associations in color psychology (ie brown is rugged and red excitement), but to take colors that dimension in terms of your brand that matters.

Doing this successfully means what that color psychology means within your industry. As we have mentioned before, the color green can mean completely different for an environmental company than a financial company.

The most important factor in choosing colors is to think about your industry and choose colors that are always related, rather than always going with stereotypes.

Contrast

Now that we have rubbed the whole idea that one color will always signal an idea, let's take a look at what you can use.

It turns out that contrast is always a useful go-to concept. As we have mentioned before, something that comes out clearly is something more noticeable than plain.

This is known as the isolation effect. There are several ways to make something more noticeable from its surroundings, including the use of negative energy and movement.

And yes these are also important elements for branding, but color naturally creates a more effective way to attract people's attention.

And when it draws attention in this way, it is more likely to be remembered.

It is also appreciated by viewers, who use contrast to navigate through your web page, for example, it tells them where to pay attention and whether they can safely ignore.

This, as anyone will tell you, is the reason we write the stories we put into headlines and images.

They provide contrast and pronunciation to various aspects of the story.

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The most effective way to select colors is to use contrast but not color theory and have a look at the color wheel. This will make it much easier for you to find colors that accent rather than argue.

Using complementary colors can also serve as a good starting point if you cannot decide whether you choose colors.

Finding complementary colors is easy to do on the color wheel. Complementary colors will fill each other on the wheel.

So, if you find that you like the color blue, you can look at the color wheel and see its complementary color, orange, and use that color.

Let's test

When you have selected some color schemes that work best based on their color psychology, they should not be afraid to test.

Testing color schemes is very important because your audience will always experience somewhat different colors based on industry and past experiences.

And before you make a big roll-out of content, you want to make sure that your branding and content will be well received by your audience because, at the end of the day, they will be the ones who work with your business.

To help you figure out which tasks you do, which not only do you want to log in, but which colors are better, but also that they do.

The best way to do this is to design a study where you log in which of your designs attracted the most types of customers.

If you go down this road, you want to pay attention to the age, gender, country (and perhaps state) of origin, and other factors that differentiate your different audiences from one another.

If you find that you can divide your audience into different groups with different preferences, you may be better off designing multiple landing pages based on region or keyword searches.

It is normal to run different brand designs and will ultimately help you find the best designs for your audience. Global companies often use this testing technology because it allows them to identify what branding works for different demographics around the world.

But even though you are a small business, designing a study to test your branding will provide you with much higher quality information.

Whatever you do, don't just assume that a page converts more 'because the button is red and here it is green'. This is rarely simple. Very rarely can we treat things in isolation in this way?

Instead, the red button may convert better mainly because it creates more contrast with the rest of the page, or because the red color is better played with other elements.

If you can avoid taking these kinds of easy answers, although it may take you a little longer to execute a color scheme that will work best for your site and your audience, you will eventually find combinations that will actually help you Work based on the work the audience wants and set you apart from your competition.

And would pay for that initial increased uncertainty a thousand times.

Want to know more about color psychology? Or maybe you need help deciding the right colors to choose your brand. Or maybe you just want to discuss more branding, website design, or advertising design for your business.

Whatever you need, contact our team today to see how our digital marketing company can help you create a winning marketing strategy!