Colorful influence

When you start a business, it will be an important task to create a visual profile where colors are central. A visual profile must contain guidelines for how the company uses various tools to train them in the company’s vision. 

The profile will contain logos, colors, graphics, fonts and image manners that are built on what the company will tell and how it will be perceived. This profile is the basis for what a website should look like and how you choose tools in marketing. 

Every single day we let ourselves be unconsciously influenced by colors around us. The right message, the right image and a clear call for action. Based on the message also comes the choice of the right colors. 

When do you have to choose colors? 

Logo

When you start a business, you like to create a logo that will potentially follow your business for a long, long time. This logo is what the target group and people associate you and your company with. Then color choice is important to create an understanding of the brand’s value and significance. 

Profile

The logo will be part of a profile that tells about how colors and other tools should be used for the logo, website and marketing of your company. Here you can be creative in choosing which colors should be central in making the brand visible. The main color reflects the logo so you choose shades of this. Finally, it is nice to have two or three contrasting colors that can be used with the main colors. 

Website color

Website , a good one, is in my opinion the alpha omega if you are going to run a business with growth. The site makes you easily accessible in today’s society of busy days. The company logo and colors chosen in the profile are an important part of the big puzzle to make things both look good and tell a good story together with text.

Colors are more important than ever now when we as humans skim through most of the text. You often read only parts of text and sometimes only headings. Good color choices will help the target group understand the message, read a larger part of the text or see more articles in the online store. The correct use of colors gives confidence that what the target group is conveyed is credible. 

Marketing

After going through the first choices that make up your business, the part that will make you visible out in the sea of ​​people comes.  Marketing. Here you will link your website, logo, products and profile with a specific message. The goal is to get people to interact with your vision, buy your products and read your articles. 

What color should you choose? 

Do you choose a color that you think looks nice? Or are you in favor of the color telling a story? 

Colors have an unconscious psychological impact on our brain, so it is also important that you make color choices in the same way as you choose what to write in a campaign or on a website. 

In a study called “Imapact of Color in Marketing” we can read:

– 90% of quick decisions made on behalf of products depend on color.
– 2 out of 3 consumers do not buy a larger product if it does not come in the desired color
– print ads in color are 26% more effective than ads in black and white.

Colors are so complex in the influence of the brain that one can experience great differences between dark, light, pale and harsh tones. Blue is a color that gives the target audience a sense of thinking for themselves. It gives peace and harmony, at the same time a dark blue color is authoritarian. It may cause you to give the customer a sense of having made their own choice, but you had enough authority for them to choose to believe your message and act in accordance with your desire. 

So what do you want to achieve when talking to your target audience?

Research

The use of color is linked to something called neuromarketing. The study of how marketing works on the nervous system. These studies are the reason why there are laws and regulations that deal with how to use influence. It is important to take care of the target group in the face of a sea of ​​marketing methods that are built to make you do as we want. 

Studies on colors and influence are important for understanding what we as a company do when we use different methods of influence. It is about us being responsible for ensuring that customers get what they want and apply for themselves to a greater extent than what they feel pressured to implement. 

Color choice is something that has been researched a lot and is still very much researched, both in marketing, creative professions and in psychology. People often love to feel the excitement and impulsivity, which is a good reason why the color red has become an international stop color used in connection with sales worldwide. 

Everyone reacts differently to colors, but the basic principles behind colors are repeated for the vast majority. We understand and feel the difference between warm and cold colors, in the same way we see and understand the difference between light and dark, clear and matte. A color can still have many and ambiguous meanings.

Read more about what neuromarketing is here . And how psychology can affect us  here.

 

The ambiguity of colors

Many colors have many meanings. This means that the choices you make should be well considered and often tested against the relevant target group. One should be so frugal that each color should be weighed against the importance, amount of color needed to give the right feeling and how it is used with other colors. This is also where our responsibility for the correct production of product comes into play. 

Spontaneous colors

If you want the quick decisions, you have two different colors at the center of the choice. Spontaneous colors such as red and dark blue give you an ultimatum. If you are going to market a product that connects a person to you for a long time, financially, you should consider what spontaneous color you use. Should you go for a spontaneous color that makes the customer make a quick choice or a spontaneous authoritarian color that makes you get fewer customers. Over time, the customers you get are more satisfied if you make a color choice that gives the customer a little more time to think, or at least a feeling that they have made their own choice. 

If, on the other hand, you want to connect with the same spontaneous customers without them becoming dependent on you over time, the choice is safer for you and the customer. The risk with the choice is less. This is also why red is a better choice for stores and other similar businesses. You are not bound to shop at this store several times, and if you encounter irritation, it is not as long-lasting as in an insurance relationship where the customer has been tied up for at least a year, but is dissatisfied long before the year is over. That irritation could create many negative ripple effects.

Superhuman colors

The colors purple and gold are colors that have an influence in the form of spirituality and success. If you are going to use the colors, you can easily give the target group a feeling that you are above the human. We as humans like to surround ourselves with people we feel on wavelength with. Feel free to give the target audience a touch of luxury, with moderate use of color, but make sure you lift them a little above yourself instead of rising above them. It is often the case that purple and gold are key colors in skin care products. Skin care is often aimed at a type of group that is concerned with beauty, then the colors will be a good choice.

Research is the key

To make a good choice for you and your business, research is the key. Spend time designing a clear profile with your message. Do research on the message and spend time with people in the target group you want to reach. By interacting to check out the market, you will gain invaluable knowledge about the people you are going to approach. This is how you will be left with a company profile created with your customer in focus.

Read more interesting info about colors here .