Did you know there is psychology behind colors? We’ve all heard that red means angry and blue means sad, but did you know that the brand colors you implement in your web design could potentially impact how your customers subconsciously see you?
At Anchor Wave, we love working closely with our clients to develop individual, unique brand boards that truly capture their distinct values, missions, visions, and goals. We can help you explore different colors and hues to find ones that convey the right mood and associations to attract your target audience. Here are a few of our tips for choosing your branding colors.
Consider Basic Color Psychology
Having a basic understanding of color psychology will help you choose branding colors that impact how your target audience perceives your brand. Your audience will associate certain colors with certain feelings and impressions, which will influence their reaction to your marketing materials. Let’s take a look at how most consumers perceive a few basic colors:
- Blue – Blue is typically seen as a color that represents trust, loyalty, honesty, security, logic, dependability, and security.
- Purple – Purple is often associated with dignity, wisdom, imagination, spirituality, royalty, and sophistication.
- Orange – Many consumers associate orange with adventure, courage, confidence, warmth, friendliness, and energy. It can also be used to indicate caution in certain situations as well.
- Red – Red is typically associated with power, passion, excitement, fearlessness, and energy. With that in mind, red is also often used to indicate warning or danger.
- Green – Most consumers see green as representative of hope, growth, freshness, health, nature, prosperity, and eco-friendly or environmental endeavors.
- Yellow – Yellow is typically associated with optimism, innovation, intellect, happiness, and warmth.
- Black – Consumers often associate the color black with sophistication, security, power, elegance, and authority.
- White – The color white is associated with innocence, purity, cleanliness, and simplicity.
- Pink – Pink is seen as a color that represents passion, creativity, femininity, innovation, and playfulness.
However, you shouldn’t just think about one color at a time, and ask what a combination of your brand colors will make your customers feel too! For example, the contrast between red and orange is very little, while the stark difference between red and blue can be felt very clearly. Keeping these aspects in mind, you can use simple colors to say many things about your business, values, and vision!
Know Your Audience and Industry
In order to choose colors that have an emotional connection with your target audience, you must have a deep understanding of your audience and industry. Take the time to research your audience and create buyer personas so that you know exactly how to choose colors that resonate with their values, lifestyle, and personal alignments. You should also know your industry (blue for medical related fields, green for finance, etc.). Be aware of the colors that other national and international brands in your industry use and be mindful of well-established branding and logos when developing your own. An Anchor Wave, we do in-depth marketing research and use powerful data analytics to help you research your target audience, develop buyer personas, and understand your audience and competitors.
Decide How You Want Your Brand to be Perceived
Next, decide how you want your brand to be perceived. What are the key values that you want to convey, and how do you think your brand colors can be used to achieve that? Our team at Anchor Wave will help you use existing market research, color psychology, and color theory to align your brand’s mission and values with your color choices so that you can appeal to your target audience.
Develop a Consistent Color Palette
One of the most important things to consider when developing your brand board and branding materials is keeping everything consistent across the board. Your marketing materials, social media accounts, logos, graphics, and all other communications need to use the same branding to establish brand recognition and encourage brand loyalty. Once you have chosen a color palette, use it consistently across all marketing channels.
At Anchor Wave, we’ve designed brand boards and color palettes for many local Arizona businesses. We work closely with business owners to understand their unique identities, values, and missions to create consistent branding across their MarketingHubs, social media accounts, online listings, and more. Call us today or contact us online to learn more about leveraging the power of color psychology to build brand recognition in Tucson, AZ.
