Category: Online Presence

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Brand Colors – How To Pick Your Color Scheme

Picking Your Brand Colors
So you are at the stage of picking your brand’s colors or you have decided to rebrand your business. How do you go about picking the colors for your new brand?

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Regardless of whether you’ve decided to branch out from a company or are launching a game-changing new startup, understanding the impact of color on consumer behaviour will help solidify your brand become a success.

Remember, we buy emotionally and research shows that up to 85% of consumers believe color is the biggest motivator to choose a particular product, while 92% acknowledge visual appearance as the most persuasive marketing factor overall.

How Do People Respond to Brand Colors?

Every color elicits a different response from humans. Having a clear idea about what your brand’s goals are and how you want your target audience to feel will help you hone in on the most impressive colors to choose for your brand.

Colors can be divided into two main categories: warm and cool. Warm colors tend to be associated with energy, while cool colors are linked with calmness and security.

But how do each of the following colors affect us and what does that mean for your brand? Here’s an overview — courtesy of Marketo — of what differentiates each color and how your brand can pick the right mix of them.

Red

Red evokes a passionate and visceral response. It is a color that increases your heart rate, makes your breath faster, and is generally associated with energy, excitement, and passion. It’s one of the colors that is attention-grabbing, while it can also be provocative and excitable.

Color code: aggressive, energetic, provocative, attention-grabbing, passionate

Purple

Purple is a sophisticated yet mysterious color. It tends to be used with higher-end products due to its association with royalty and elegance. Purple’s mysterious element is also linked with spirituality, and it can bring a magical element to your branding.

Color code: royalty, sophistication, nostalgia, mystery, spirituality

Blue

Blue is the most popular color choice for the top brands. It is thought to put people at ease, as it reminds them of the sky and the ocean. Blue is also associated with trust, security, and confidence which make a great combination for the brands that want these elements in their message.

Color code: trustworthy, dependable, secure, responsible, confident

Green

Green is a color that is synonymous with calmness, safety, and freshness. Its various shades can create a unique brand identity for your company. Green tends to be associated with health along with the feelings of peace and serenity.

Color code: Wealth, health, prestige, serenity, generosity, safety

Yellow

Yellow is a popular color choice for brands that want to evoke a feeling of positivity in their identity. Its association with the sun on its different shadows brings out hope and optimism. Yellow also stands out among other colors, which makes a yellow brand identity creative and appealing.

Color code: positivity, light, warmth, motivation, creativity, happiness

Orange

Orange makes an ideal color choice for brands that want to blend the optimism and the brightness of yellow and the passion and the energy of red. It is a creative and cheerful color that evokes a friendly and adventurous feeling.

Color code: vitality, fun, playful, exuberant, outgoing

Brown

Brown represents the earthly simplicity and it is usually preferred to reflect stability and strength. It’s comforting in its simplicity and is preferred by brands that want to be classical and trustworthy, without proceeding to bold moves. Brown is associated with the earth and can also remind people of dirt, so there needs to be a careful use of it, especially if it stands out as the main color for a brand.

Color code: earth-like, natural, simplistic, durable, comforting

Black

Black is another popular color option for brands and it tends to be one of the most classic options. It’s both classic and sophisticated and it can make a brand identity stand out. It seems to work perfectly with luxury products, blending the classic and powerful elements. Black is one of the colors that can be combined with others to add a stronger emotion, without losing the classical appeal.

Color code: Prestige, value, timelessness, sophistication, power

White

White represents simplicity, purity, and also cleanliness. These three make it extremely popular in the healthcare sector, in the cleaning business, but also in the child-related businesses. White can also bring out a feeling of trust by tapping in to purity and simplicity.

Color code: pure, noble, clean, soft

So what is your choice? Need some additional guidance? I love chatting about this kinda stuff, so, for a 20-minute, at no cost chat, visit here!!

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Accelerate Your Social Media – 5-Key Things That You Should Be Doing

Social media has confused many businesses and organizations over the past few years. Most get that they have to provide meaty, relevant content, but too many are not using proven engagement strategies that could significantly raise the success level of organically hitting a wider audience.

Social Media Marketing

Discover the 5-key things you should be doing within your social media posts:

1) ENGAGEMENT AT EVERY OPPORTUNITY

Engagement (not numbers/views) is the #1 goal on Social Media.

Without engagement, you are yelling into a vacuum. Features do not create engagement, so be sure that you are using “relevant benefits” and focused on the perspective/viewpoint of the audience.

This life-changing video — regarding how you operate in your marketing world — takes 17-minutes out of your day to view “How Great Leaders Inspire Action” by New York Times® Best Selling Author of ‘The Power of Why’, Simon Sinek

Social Media Posting2) KEEP POSTING, POSTING, POSTING ON SOCIAL MEDIA

This is a key component in your overall strategy. The frequency makes people always see something new, and that means it is “fresh” in the eyes of a like-minded spirit.

“When it comes to posting on Facebook and LinkedIn, remember that you may only have between two and five posts per week that will get distribution by the networks’ news feeds. With that in mind, focus on the quality of each post (and the content preferences of your audience), and aim to get more likes, comments, and shares as your metrics of success to build up your audience and to make the news feed algorithms work for you. And when it comes to Twitter, post freely — the timeline updates so frequently that you’re at an advantage posting more often to reach more people.” ~ Daria Marmer at Hubspot 

3) PROVOKE, RESPOND, AND THEN RESPOND AGAIN

Research shows that to boost your engagement and response rate, keep your posts between 50 and 125 words. Response rates declined slowly, from 50% for 125-word messages, to about 44% for 500-word messages. After that, it stayed flat until about 2,000 words. This applies to email marketing too.

Social Media Pool Party4) SOCIAL MEDIA IS NOT ABOUT THE PITCH

Stay away from the pitches of ideology. Use your content-real-estate to connect with the audience, rather than just sharing what you find interesting.

With the advent of the influencer and the often paid promotion of “lifestyles” via social media, one would think that people would be accepting of sales pitches infiltrating their social media feed, however, that’s just not the case.

Your social media strategy should be about influencing and speaking to the people that already believe what you believe — your CTA should be about them sharing for themselves, not for you. It is this type of social media strategy that is what gets the most shares and engagement, grows your audience and potentially goes viral.

5) MEASURE, ANALYZE, AND ADJUST

All social media platforms have analytics. You should be watching those numbers and using the data to fine-tune your approach as defined in your strategy.

Adjustments along the way are common, if not crucial. We have a distinct advantage — more than any other time in history — to see exactly how our organic and paid marketing is doing. Incremental changes over time can make a big difference!

Don’t get too caught up in the numbers. I say this as there is so much data, that it is easy to get hung up in the marshlands of analytics. 80% action; 20% analytics is how I operate!

LASTLY, DISCOVER HOW CORTEX MARKETING  CAN HELP

Did you know that there are several facets of social media management? Get a free assessment of your social media strategy and which management plan may be right for you!

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Your Best Asset Is Your Ability To Sell Yourself

“Sell yourself” is such a ubiquitous term. Even as I say it, at least one of you is saying: “I don’t get it.”.

That is because I believe that the ‘end goal’ is selling, not selling yourself.

The approach on how to sell yourself should be more marketing methodology than in the sales methodology in the development. To successfully sell yourself, you’ll need to do these Top-4 things:

  1. Know your “brand”;
  2. Be a storyteller;
  3. Know your audience; and
  4. Show don’t tell.

power of why circleAs I covered in my “The Power Of Why” blog post, a huge part of inspiring others to take action, is to clearly state ‘why’ you do what you do. Within that, you must first know yourself i.e. what drives you, what gets you up in the morning.

Someone who exemplifies this is Alan L. Sklover. He writes a weekly blog about employer and employee legal issues — and this quote was offered to Alan by one of his followers and he shared it.:

“Want a new client or customer? First, you must “sell” the value of your product or service to them. Want a raise or promotion? First, you must “sell” your value to your employer. Want a new job? First, you must “sell” yourself to the new employer. An effort is the “horse” that pulls the “cart” of opportunity. Always been that way; always will be. It’s a challenge if you accept it; a continual disappointment if you don’t.” ~ Patrice of Santa Rosa, New Mexico

So how do YOU start the process of how to “sell yourself”?

Schedule 30-minutes with me and I will buy you coffee and walk you through the process. —Yes, I just said I will buy you coffee!! Ask me how.

 

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