Color your business: develop a marketing color scheme

Welcome to the "Psychology of color marketing" demonstration.

Color attracts attention, provokes strong positive and negative reactions, and stimulates memory. And research shows you want that kind of power on your side:

• People are 55% more likely to pick up a color piece
• Use of color increases retention by an average of 65%
• Using color in printed material increases readership by up to 80%, and maybe most importantly,
• Color can increase the likelihood of a purchase by 80% or more

You're going to learn about using color in business collateral, the psychology of color choices and how to tie it all together with in-house printing solutions that will save you time and money.

Using color wisely in your marketing materials gives you a chance to present your company's brand before you even say a word about what you do.

These three brochures for a fictional accounting business represent three approaches to using color.

In the black and white brochure, there is little to catch and hold the eye, or capture the imagination.

However, sometimes the idea of color can go to a designer's head. This brochure tries to do too much at one time, with too many conflicting colors.

Sometimes, less is more. In this brochure, the colors suggest competency and trustworthiness, with a hint of imagination. Just what you want in your accountant!

In fact, color carries with it powerful psychological associations. Make sure when you add color to your marketing collateral that you're saying what you want to say about your business.

For example: In the west, red is an energetic color, conveying passion, love, leadership and strength.

Blue, on the other hand, connotes calm, peacefulness, dependability and technology.

Green, which we chose for our accounting business, symbolizes wealth, money and good luck.

Using complementary colors is as important as choosing the right colors to begin with. If we want to add a second color to our accounting brochure, we have to consider a few things:

One, we need to make sure the colors go together in a pleasing, logical way. We chose to expand the image at the top of the brochure, and use a color that is echoed in the woman's blouse as the complementary color in the brochure cover.

Two, we need to remember our psychology lesson. In choosing a shade of purple, we add the perception of luxury and sophistication to our accounting firm.

With the right tools at your disposal, designing and producing quality marketing materials in-house is simple. HP provides several free templates to get you on your way, and HP Logoworks can get you started with a professional logo. HP color printers produce consistently brilliant results for your self-designed pieces.

So all that's left is for you to answer a simple question: "What does your business have to say?"

This concludes the "Psychology of color marketing" demonstration. Close your browser to exit this screen.