It doesn’t matter how fantastic your product or service is; if you can’t get clients to connect with your brand, you’ll never get the opportunity to sell to them. Marketing and branding your business appropriately is your business’s greatest weapon when it comes to customer engagement, as it helps quickly and clearly communicate who you are, what you do, and the value you can provide to them as an individual or organization.
Ask any marketing expert and they’ll tell you that one major facet of branding that many businesses fail to properly address is color. Think of the logo of any major brand or corporation and the first thing that will likely come to mind is the color. That’s because large companies have marketing experts that help them carefully select colors that are appropriate for what they do.
Choosing an Appropriate Color
For smaller companies, color-appropriateness is key. The internet abounds with articles and color charts suggesting that this color will make clients feel a sense of warmth, while this other color will increase their anxiety levels. Experts disagree with this approach, saying that reactions to different colors depends on each individual’s past experiences that have caused them to form an emotional response to specific tones. What matters more, they say, is whether the color is appropriate to your brand.
How do you go about choosing an appropriate color for your brand? Consider what personality you’d like your brand to convey. Would you like your branding to project sincerity, competence, sophistication, excitement, or ruggedness? These five dimensions are at the heart of the research done by professor Jennifer Aaker and published in her report, Dimensions of Brand Personality. After you’ve decided which dimensions are at the heart of your brand, decide whether your current color choices reflect that choice. There are no hard answers as to which colors convey which specific dimensions, but it’s obvious that glittery pink tones won’t convey ruggedness, while neon orange may not be the optimal choice to bring to mind sincerity.
Consistency is Key
Once you’ve chosen a color, keep it the same across all of your marketing platforms. This is important for building a brand identity that your clients will quickly recognize and connect with. It’s confusing when a brand’s styling or colors change from their website to their printed marketing materials and email campaigns. Although colors will vary from the digital screen to the printed page, strive for consistency.
Speaking of digital colors, know that your website colors are given something called Hexadecimal values (also known as Hex colors). These are numbers consisting of a hashtag and three or six digits. It’s important to designate a specific Hex color to be used throughout your website, making sure to choose one that matches your branding as closely as possible.
This color designation should carry over to all of your email marketing campaigns. It’s disorienting when a client clicks from an email featuring one set of colors to your website and finds that the colors there are close, but not quite the same. Not only that – it also makes your organization appear unprofessional. If you’re using a template from an email service provider, be sure to choose email colors that match the Hex values from your website.
With a thoughtfully-chosen color palette and an eye for consistency throughout the body of your organization’s marketing, your advertising efforts will receive a real boost, helping you stand out in the minds of potential clients, drive traffic, and boost your bottom line.
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