Why Color Matters to Your Digital Marketing Strategy

by Frankie Wallace, Guest Contributor

​One of the most important parts of your digital marketing strategy could be something you never gave much thought to. Amid worries about key performance indicators, lead generation, and engagement rates, who has time to worry about something as seemingly insignificant as color?

Well, you should make time for it. Color matters to your digital marketing strategy in a big way. Color psychology has a huge impact on customers, so you will need to work to establish brand loyalty and identity through the colors you choose to represent your business.

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If you think of any iconic brand or logo, there’s likely that a color that comes to mind when you picture it. That is color psychology and smart branding at work. After learning how it works, you may want to implement it into your own digital marketing strategy to maximize your efforts.

Color Psychology
Humans are visual creatures. You are far more likely to be drawn to an image before a paragraph of text. You also likely have associations that connect color to emotion, whether consciously or unconsciously.

If you think of the color red, what comes to mind? Anger, passion, and fear are all common answers. What about yellow? If you think of friendliness, sunshine, or happiness, you’re not alone. And green, for example, often evokes thoughts of money, growth, or sustainability.

Nearly 85 percent of our purchasing decisions are based on the color of the product and its associated imagery. Colors seriously impact the way we perceive products and brands.

Choosing colors to align with your brand goes far beyond simply picking your favorites. You need to get inside your customers’ heads and define what it is you want them to think or feel when they see your logo or product on the shelf. Only then will you be able to choose appropriate colors to help you meet your goals.

The Impact of Color on Branding
Color psychology impacts branding — there is no denying that. If you want customers to be loyal to your brand and keep coming back for more, you need to make them identify with the goods or services you offer. One of the best ways to do that is through the use of color. In this case, color is a psychological tool.

“When consumers perceive a color to be incongruous with a brand, they may not respond to it as positively as they would to a color that they believed to be more appropriate to the brand’s message,” according to the University of California. “In fact, appropriateness might be the most important factor for consumers when evaluating a brand’s use of color.”

Think about it this way: How many brand logos can you picture the color of in your head? There are many brands we recognize by their signature color, like McDonald’s yellow or the sky blue of Twitter. If you think long enough about this question, you will likely come up with quite a list. Whole Foods and Starbucks use unforgettable green, while the red of Netflix is probably ingrained in your mind.

It’s clear that color is an effective tool for conveying a thought, feeling, or emotion to potential customers. It is a way to draw them in and make them choose your product over the competition. It is a worthwhile investment of time and money to pay attention to color, test out different options, and come to the best conclusion.

Ways to Utilize Color
Once you decide on the colors for your digital marketing strategy, there are millions of different ways you can utilize color in your branding. One of the most important things, though, is to remain consistent. Don’t have red be your color one month and switch to yellow for the next. Any rebranding should be done extremely thoughtfully and infrequently.

You want people to recognize your brand or product after just a quick glance. They should see the color and the basic shape of your logo and know what it is. Once you have your color scheme in place, you should display it loud and proud at any opportunity.

Your logo, website design, social media setup, employee uniforms, product packaging, signs, brochures, posters, and any and all other branding materials should use your color scheme. Consistency is key in developing brand loyalty and brand identity, so don’t skimp on this.

Color may seem unimportant in the grand scheme of digital marketing strategies, but it’s not. What seems insignificant could be the missing piece to your strategy and could elevate your marketing and business success to the next level. By putting in some time to understand color psychology, taking a look at the impact of color on branding, and developing your business’ color scheme, you will build greater brand awareness and loyalty than ever before.

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