Switch your brain on!

Business branding isn’t just a one-time thing. It takes effort, consistency and lots of work. Effective branding depends on many factors – surprisingly, this also includes psychology.

In this blog, we’ll go over how using psychology can help your brand be the best it can possibly be. Additionally, you will understand how existing brands use psychology to their advantage.

Fonts

We’ve already covered fonts in detail, including some of the best sans serif fonts, but we can’t stress enough how important they are! Depending on the tone your you’re looking to set, fonts can help your business be seen as respectable, luxurious, affordable – just about anything!

Colour and Shape

Speaking of colours, did you know that every colour has its own associated emotions that can influence a consumer to act in a specific way? For example, the colour orange has connotations of excitement and symbolises autumn. However, it’s also strongly associated with the construction industry, due to its high visibility. Many companies will make orange their dominant colour, to show the vibrancy and energy of their brand.

Shapes also do their bit towards building up your business’ image. Geometric shapes, like squares, triangles or circles are often used to symbolise simplicity, education and modernity. Organic shapes are more fluid, and can be used to show loyalty, authenticity and balance. Lastly, abstract shapes such as outlines or interpretations of real things are used to show creativity, originality and self-expression.

Consistency

Something else we always harp on about is brand consistency – and it really can make or break your business! Presenting a unified image and tone of voice across all platforms can reinforce your business values to an audience. This will also form a person’s image of your brand, so if your communications are disjointed, this will likely alter the way they view your business. Positive emotions lead to positive thoughts – and authenticity leads to a sense of belonging between your audience and your brand – which is pretty self-explanatory, but extremely vital!

Consistent branding helps when it comes to marketing. The more an audience member comes into contact with your branding materials, they will automatically begin to associate brand elements with you without even knowing. This is pattern recognition, a key tool for any business wanting to be successful.

Communication

It really is key, because it also conveys your business as honest and open – so make your information easy to find and don’t make the audience guess! Ways to improve your communication include having very visible contact information, an about page so they can learn more about your business, or a self-explanatory logo. Use eye-catching pictures and write out things in simple terms to make yourself approachable, understandable and friendly. As we said before, it’s important that brand communication is consistent and clear.

We’re almost done, but before we wrap things up, we have to let you know how important brand voice is. This is the language, phrasing and terminology you’ll be using in your client communications; emails, social media posts, website pages and anything else an audience member will come across.

Brain powering down!

That wasn’t so bad after all! We’ve given you information on colours, shapes, fonts, consistency and communication, with a psychological basis on how it works. Branding is all about how customers perceive your brand, and since psychology is how the brain works, this is an effective way of appealing to them.