How to Gain an Advantage for Your Small Business through Colour

You may think big businesses have all the competitive advantages in marketing?

What if I told you there was one thing that you as a small business could gain advantage over them? And that’s colour.

Surprisingly, colour is the single most under used marketing tool out there. This is because colour works on an unconscious level. And if you’re not consciously aware of the powerful role colour plays on your customer’s emotions, and their purchasing decisions, then it will remain just that – unconscious.

“Colour is registered by the brain before either images or typography. Colour increases brand recognition by up to 80%” – Source: University of Loyla, Maryland study

You’ve probably put a lot of effort put into choosing your brand’s visual identity (such as the right logo/word mark, font, strapline, images, content) and working on your after sales service. And of course all of these are vitally important; however your efforts are potentially wasted if on a subconscious level your business brand colours are giving out a completely different message.

For example, your customers might think you aren’t for them or that you don’t get them just because of the colour. In fact, colour is one of the quickest ways to repel your ideal customers. Is this something you want to do?

 “Shoppers place colour as a primary reason for when they buy a particular product” – Source: KISSmetrics

Colour Psychology in Marketing
If you are wondering why you haven’t heard this before it’s because somewhere along the line we lost our conscious awareness of how colour can affect our emotions, how we feel and behave.

The truth is colour psychology in marketing has been around as long as man has traded. Luckily we are now again becoming more and more conscious of its presence which is great because we all know people buy based on emotion.

What triggers those all-important emotions? … colour.

It’s a science
Colour psychology is a science.  I often refer to colour psychology in marketing as a brands “best kept secret”. You only need to look at companies like Dulux who hold global industry colour awards for which I am privileged to be taking part in the 2014 Dulux Let’s Colour Awards as a judge in the Colour Innovation in Technology & Design category.

Despite the worldwide awareness of the importance of colour in big business, it’s my aim to bring colour psychology to the small and medium size businesses to help them profit from this secret.

Choosing the right colours for your business brand
Every colour has positive and negative qualities, and whilst most people think industries have specific colours attributed to them the truth is while you may be in that industry, those colours may not correctly reflect your business brand authentic personality and values.

So when choosing the right colours for your business brand together we need to first identify your business brand personality and values. Without clarifying these you may never find the colour that truly reflects your brand and connects with your ideal customer. These combined will determine the right colour palette, the exact tones, saturation and proportions and placement. This is where the science of colour psychology in branding begins.

“Never underestimate the psychological impact of your business brand colours on your bottom line. By choosing the wrong colours you risk repelling your ideal customers and prospects.”

Your distinctive brand colours will:
* Grab attention – attracting your ideal customers
* Work directly on your prospective customer’s feelings and emotions
* Stand out from the crowd – differentiating your brand from your competitors and making your brand memorable (and this doesn’t mean bright, loud and garish).
* Build trust – using the same colour tones consistently in all your branding literature and   products increases brand recognition.

How sure are you?
How sure are you that your core brand colours, logo design, font, strapline, content etc reflects your business brand’s identity against its true authentic personality and values.

If you have ever had problems with:

• low response rates from a marketing campaign
• selling a product or service or
• converting from your website

Then it’s time to consider colour as a contributing factor.

If you’d like to know more, then download your free ebook 7 Mistakes most Business Owners make with their Branding Colours.

Resources:
Is your brand in need of an evolutionary or revolutionary change?
2014 Dulux Let’s Colour Awards