The Biggest Difference Between Branding + Color Psychology

Welcome to Season 5 of The Visible Entrepeneur!

Welcome back :)

This season, we'll be focusing on COLOR PSYCHOLOGY because it's been the biggest impact I could have ever had on my business.

My goal with this season of the podcast is to break down what I know, so you can feel really confident about moving forward with your visual presence. It’s so much more than just your website. It's your brand photos. It's what you're wearing on camera every time you're interviewed. It's your press page. It's your funnels. It’s everything. 

As business owners, we should have a firm grip on our colors and why we chose them.  We should be able to explain this in one sentence, just like we do with our pitches or our mission statements.

In this episode, we discuss:

•  the definition of branding vs color psychology
• changing brand colors 
• visual presence strategy

P.S. Join us inside the FREE Converting With Color Masterclass right here!

Transcript

Welcome to the visible entrepreneur podcast season five. I'm your host, Michelle Lewis, founder of visibility vixen. I've spent years studying color psychology, branding, visibility, and publicity, all geared to help you hit your goals faster than anyone else. I'm a TEDx speaker, Amazon Best Selling Author and have helped 1000s of entrepreneurs worldwide with their visual presence. This season, we're diving deep into color, why it's needed, how to use it in your branding, and how audiences subconsciously and physically react to it. My goal is to help you blow up your brand in the best way to attract your ideal audience, subconsciously, I run two programs, the color course and the visibility lounge. So if you're ready for growth, go to visibility vixen.com To get started today, in the meantime, let's dive into today's episode. And if you think this is a topic that a business bestie, or a friend of yours, or even a relative would love, do me a favor, forward it to them. And let's dive in to this episode. Hey, welcome back to the visible entrepreneur, I am so excited to be back for season five, can you believe it? Sometimes I look back and see all of the episodes that we have been in together and it just blows my mind. So thinking about how I could make this season a little bit more different, a little bit more entertaining, and different than anything else that you're hearing, whether you're watching or listening to this as a podcast or a video. And I thought, you know, I really need to dive deeper into color psychology in branding, because not a lot of people know about it in the first place. And secondly aren't able to really teach it. And I think that the biggest problem with that is that it's one of the biggest reasons that the big brands sell. So we're having all this information thrown at us, be it on Pinterest, or YouTube or business coaches. And we're not really sure what to do. So we might even look up on Pinterest and say like, Okay, what is pink mean, but we get 500 different variations of what it could mean. And it really doesn't put us further ahead with our branding. So my goal with this season is to break down what I know. So you can feel really confident about moving forward with your visual presence. Because it's so much more than just your website, right? It's your brand photos. It's what you're wearing on camera every time you're interviewed. It's your press page. It's your funnels, it's everything. So if we don't have a really firm grip on color, and why we chose it, you should be able to say it in one sentence in an elevator just like you would your pitch or your mission statement or whatever. If we can't do that, then that's a big problem, right? So that's we're gonna be diving into this season, I cannot wait to dive into this. It's one of my favorite concepts. And just so you all know the backstory. This is something that I've studied in a variety of ways, film and television. That degree as well as being on set for 10 years was something that I picked up on degree in interior design that taught me a lot about color, studying natural medicine and how certain like light frequencies are absorbed by certain healing plants for the body, as well as studies on my own I've done specifically with color medicine and light theory, as well as color wheels and Native American culture. I have just immersed myself into this world, especially while building the color course. And it has taught me so so much. If you're watching this on video, you're gonna see I'm in a new office. And this is one that I've strategically put together with this knowledge that I have on color. So you're gonna notice a lot of blues, you're gonna notice me wearing my primary brand color, but you're also going to see green tones. And you can just stay tuned for future episodes while we dig into what all of that means. Okay, so today's episode, let's talk about the difference between branding and color psychology. Okay, if you want to dive into this further, I highly highly recommend taking the completely free color masterclass. You can find that at visibility vixen.com forward slash color masterclass. I will also link that below. Whether you are watching or reading this, that's going to give you an even more in depth perspective on this and help you start strategizing your brand colors or adjusting them depending on where you are in the color wheel.
Okay, so let's look at the definition of branding. According to entrepreneur.com, the marketing practice of creating a name, symbol or design that identifies and differentiates a product from other products, that's according to entrepreneur.com. Very clear, is something that you put together visually, that differentiates yourself from other businesses, right. Specifically, usually when you look up branding, they say logo so we can keep that in our minds. But what I started coming against back in the day was okay, here are the questions that still need answering. Number one, how do I know for sure that my branding is going to attract my ideal Client, there's not really a way of knowing, right? Maybe you have brands that are more youthful. So they could say, oh, well, then I'm going to attract a youthful audience. Or maybe they're very luxury. So I'm going to attract a luxurious, more wealthy audience. But how do we know for sure? That was a big problem that I was coming up against with branding? The second question was, does it have our branding? A primary emotional driver? We all know that people buy based on their emotions, most of the time, they're trying to get rid of the pain point, how can I prove with my brand, that it would be addressing that issue? And the answer was, I couldn't obviously, number three, does it physically hit the body? We want to make sure that we're evoking a physical response. How do we know that that's happening? Right? And the last one would be, does it accurately reflect the businesses persona or personality that they are trying to put out into the world? Those are the questions that kept coming up for me and ones that I couldn't answer. And before all this was together, I even had students that would struggle with this. And it was hard for me to really tell them. And even when I started with the color theory and injecting that, with my clients and students, there was still sometimes some pushback, because they felt like okay, well, if I'm making it more, so about my ideal client, how do I fit in, etc. So it took me a long time and a lot of study to come up with the right formulas, where we're attracting a ideal client, but we're also reflecting our own business personality. And all of that comes through Color Psychology. No one used to talk about this, can I just say that no one in the entrepreneur industry did. I started talking about it about five years ago. So that would make it 2017. And I've seen now more people are talking about it, but their answers for specific colors aren't broad enough in terms of they say, oh, green means wealth. Well, green can mean wealth in a certain context. But depending on your shade, it can also mean split personality, evil, rot and decay. So we have to be really careful with trying to associate just one emotion with one color. Right? So that leads us to what exactly is the definition of color psychology? And that, according to Wikipedia, would be the study of hues as a determinant of human behavior. Okay, the study of hues as a determinant of human behavior, are you getting what that means? Color determining behavior. So wouldn't that mean, especially if you look at the stats, 92% of shoppers usually buy a product based on color, right, it impacts their choice. When that mean that you choosing a brand color, specifically with your ideal client in mind, would encourage them to buy. That's as simple as it is encouraging someone to go from traffic to subscriber to customer, converting them based on the colors you choose in your brand. I know this can seem like a simple concept, but the more and more I speak on this, the more people are blown away because they have not been taught this right. We're taught know your brand is all about you. And don't worry about the branding, just be you bla bla bla bla. But the more I studied specific brands, McDonald's and Starbucks and T Mobile and Facebook, the more I saw that they completely blew their competitors out of the water, because they were so strategic in their branding, especially T Mobile, there was no other wireless carrier. That was magenta, right? People didn't even really know what magenta means. But just this year, starting in 2022. If you start watching T Mobile commercials, now they say magenta join the magenta movement. It's interesting, isn't it? They just moved down the street. We, by the way, so I think they've watched my masterclass and they're coming to get me. I'll keep you informed.
So now that we know that what color psychology is, let's move on to see if it can answer those four questions we had based on branding alone. Okay, so the first question was, does it attract your ideal client? Well, since the definition of color psychology is determining human behavior based on specific hues. In the world of color. You choose that hue specifically to attract your ideal client? Yes, we would know it would attract them. Question two, does it have one primary emotional driver? Well, color equals emotion. You can choose a specific color based on how you want someone to act and feel so yeah, Number three, does it hit the body? Well, if we know how that color impacts the body, yes, right. For example, if someone was, let's say, a trauma therapist, I would not recommend red in their branding. Because I know based on scientific studies, that read increases the heart rate dilates the pupils increases the blood pressure. So that would not be a great color, right? So stuff like that we know that it hits the body. And last but not least, does it reflect the business's personality? Well, if we can specifically adjust your tone of color to reflect your personality in your branding, then yes. So do you see how before with just the plain definition of branding, differentiate your differentiating yourself in the marketplace? did not answer these questions, these questions that are vital for people to make purchases. Now bringing In color psychology, we're able to answer those questions. That's the empowerment. That's what's so exciting if you can understand this concept. And if you say I hear this a lot, Michelle, already branded, I don't want to spend spend money rebranding, I totally get it. And my question I would challenge you with is, is your current branding, costing you. So would it actually be a better financial decision to analyze your brand, make some tweaks or seeing you know, your brand might be fine, but paying attention to make sure you can support your color choices with this color psychology concept, to then attract more sales. This concept works I've had so many clients come in didn't have a really strong color direction, they rebranded they did the photoshoot, they launched, they sold out their programs, their offers their one on one coaching, one person filled up their one on one coaching for the year. This works, if your messaging is on point, and you support that messaging with that brand color, that's the primary emotional driver of your ideal client. It works. Otherwise, the big brands would not be spending millions, if not billions of dollars, pushing their branding with that primary brand color. They know what they're doing. They've known for years. And my job is to delineate that information and give it to you so that you feel crazy empowered to take on the challenge and to grow your brand based on that visual presence strategy. So I hope that made sense to you. This isn't going to be a super long episode, because I just want you to percolate on this. Like I said, I'd love for you to take the color masterclass. If you're ready for the in depth explanation of what every color means how to strategically choose your primary and secondary colors, how to integrate that into a brand palette, for your web design for your brand photography, for your stock photography for your social media, that I would love to invite you to the color course, I'm going to put that link below, it'll take you not that long to get through the longest part is just integrating it into your brand. But I will walk you through that step by step. So I will leave that link below as well. If you want a cheat sheet, just go to visibility vixen.com. And you'll find all the links there too. In the meantime, next episode is going to be just as juicy as this one, if not more. If you have not stopped by yet to leave us a review, please do so. Like Subscribe. Stay tuned on this journey, because we're going to be going so deep into color and how to use it to convert into customers. If you have a business bestie a friend, a relative, someone you know your partner who you think would really benefit from this information, please forward this to them. Or if you're going you know what this is so complimentary to what I teach Michelle, I'd love to have you on my podcast or teaching in my group or to my mastermind or at this event, please reach out to me. I do that all the time. I'd be happy to come and connect with your audience. Just send me an email at Michelle at visibility vixen.com. I will see you next episode. Thanks for being here for this season five kickoff.
I'm thrilled that you're here. And I will see you soon. I hope you love this episode as much as I did. Now we're all about building a tribe here is the visible entrepreneur, so be sure to subscribe, leave a five star review and then head on over to the Facebook group. It's a great place where you can practice your video, live stream and really enjoy the community that we have built. In the meantime, I'll see you in the next episode. Now get out there and get more visible