How to Choose the Right Colors for Your Brand

Did you know that the colors you choose to represent your brand can affect the way a consumer engages with you? For example, have you noticed over the last couple of years that McDonalds has began moving away from their known yellow and red colors to more of a classy brown both in stores and on their packaging?

If you haven’t noticed, that’s okay. As a company, this is a more subtle change to psychologically impacting their consumer perception and engagement. It’s shown that yellows and reds encourage speed. Those colors aligned with McDonald’s in their founding – to be a high speed restaurant that serves a good burger to get you in and out the door with good food and a happy tummy. As they launched their line of coffees – the McCafe – they noticed that they needed to shift their branding so the colors they chose adequately expressed their new goals.

Browns and greens are shown to slow down the consumer. It makes you want to hang out for a while, which is why you see all Starbuckses are branded with brown and green. Note, the longer you stay, the more you buy.

When designing your brand, it’s most important to first understand who your target market is and what other brands they frequently engage with, what’s important to them, and what problem you are solving for them. Once you can answer those questions, it will help you in choosing which color palette best expresses your brand goals.

I actually recently went through a rebrand myself. When I started out in the virtual working world last year , I had a light blue and white color scheme. What that said to my clients was that my brand encompasses purity and goodness, while I, as the brand head, am a loyal and trustworthy partner. Since rebranding with blue and pink, I’ve achieved communicating to my clientele that I am still a loyal and trustworthy partner, but also that my brand is centered around femininity and compassion. As a Social Greatness Strategist, this aligned much better with my brand goals. I was only able to effectively make this change by understanding who I really want to reach.

If you aren’t sure who you want to reach here are some steps to take to narrow down your target audience:

1. Focus your effort and services.
Figure out which service or product you offer that is your NUMBER ONE, the one product that
set your soul on fire and truly meets your mission. This will be your light post in reaching
your market.

2. Use data.
There is so much information and data at your fingertips these days. Don’t let that information slip buy. Utilize survey information generated by you, data already available, or even your network to figure out who would most benefit from your product or service.

3. Combine steps one and two to create your dream audience.
– Here is some information on a way to build your product persona: https://www.crazyegg.com/blog/find-your-target-market/

Once you have developed a focused product or service, it will be much easier to communicate to and reach your target audience. Once you have your target audience, it will be much easier to develop a brand message utilizing colors to communicate your benefits effectively.

How do you want your consumer to feel when they look at your brand?