Mind Over Matter: Using Brand Psychology to Connect with Customers

Say you’re in the market for a new car. Because you value sustainability, perhaps you start to browse Tesla. Suddenly, you begin to notice more ads for electric vehicles and subconsciously rule out more rugged, all-terrain cars. This is the power of branding, or the ability for an organization to influence consumer behavior.

Branding is the process of designing a campaign to increase popularity and brand loyalty. Marketers develop names, logos, taglines, and colors for a brand so that people can more easily assign reputations, attributes, and values in their mind about it.

To do this successfully, marketers must take a psychological look at their target audience. By tapping into their psychology, marketers can better understand consumers’ thoughts, needs, and desires while establishing a stronger mental and emotional connection with them through their marketing endeavors.

Brand psychology can elevate your company’s marketing strategy by tapping into more than what meets the customer’s eye. Dive into these elements of brand psychology to form a deeper connection with your target audience.

Buyer personas

Too often, products and campaigns are designed for nameless, faceless users. The real downside to this is that not only does a brand miss out on a sale and an opportunity to form brand loyalty, but the customer is left looking for other options that better meet their needs.

However, using buyer personas can reveal insights about a buyer’s decisions – insights that can (and should) reveal your audience’s values. For example, if you know that your ideal customer is a 45-year-old business executive named Ashley with two teenagers and primarily shops at big outlet retailers, you’re in a much better position to start forming a brand campaign that will resonate with her as opposed to creating one with just a “forty-something woman” in mind.

You know that Ashley is probably leading a busy life – juggling being a mom and a business leader – and values convenience while still wanting the best for her family. By establishing buyer personas, your brand has a north star to guide it toward greater customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Customer experience

According to Monetate’s 2019 Personalization Development Study, 93% of companies with an “advanced personalization strategy” saw revenue growth, as personalization often compels users to act. Likewise, your customers won’t be satisfied if they feel that the content they are presented with isn’t tailored to their specific needs. If a company fails to adapt their messaging to individual audience members, it risks alienating the consumer and driving them to a competitor.

Content personalization can help your brand better connect with your audience by providing a memorable experience, increasing customer engagement in the process. For example, each time someone launches Netflix, the streamer will provide users with content recommendations based on their interests and previous viewing habits. This content is presented neatly in a section dubbed “Recommended for…” and the user’s name. It’s a simple, albeit effective way to make each user feel seen, heard, and understood.

Color

Research suggests that consumers “make a subconscious judgment about a person, environment, or product within 90 seconds of initial viewing and that between 62% and 90% of that assessment is based on color alone.” Further research indicates that brand recognition can increase up to 80% by effective use of color throughout marketing, packaging, and logo design.

Think about it – when you’re driving down the freeway and see a red bullseye in the distance, you immediately know what brand it is. Many marketing elements are important to a brand’s voice, but individuality and memorability can truly shine within a brand’s color palette. When selecting a color scheme for marketing campaigns, keep color psychology in mind and use it to your brand’s advantage. Here are some examples of emotions evoked by certain colors:

• Red – often said to be the most appetizing color on the spectrum, which is why it is often found in fast food logos (McDonald’s, KFC, Wendy’s, etc.)
• Green – bright, warm yellow-greens are energizing, fresh, and healthy while deeper blue-greens are more relaxing, and earthy greens are natural or eco-friendly
• Purple – commonly associated with royalty and luxury

Social influence

How you present your brand and how it’s perceived on social media is incredibly influential. That’s because digital touchpoints and social channels prove invaluable when it comes to building online relationships with customers. Social media is a platform with incredibly high visibility, and while this does come with a lot of responsibility, you can also use it to your advantage. By associating with other brands and people that your target audience trusts, you can build credibility with your followers. Establishing this trust and level of comfortability will make more consumers feel compelled to buy from your brand.

Visual storytelling with creative assets

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so it’s no surprise that visual storytelling is a key component of brand psychology. According to Cision, people are likely to only remember 10% of information that they hear three days later. But if this information is paired with related imagery, that percentage increases to 65%. This is why you should make visual storytelling with creative assets part of your marketing strategy.

Creative assets can help enhance the story that your brand is telling by allowing you to create a more holistic campaign – utilizing everything from videos to GIFs to infographics in order to reach your customers. These visual assets can quickly grab the attention of busy and distracted consumers. Visuals also provoke an immediate visceral response in the brain, creating a greater chance that the audience will process and understand the meaning of the imagery. This is an effective way to get your marketing messages across to your clientele.

Build a Better Brand with Brand Psychology

To elevate your company’s marketing strategy, tap into brand psychology to discover your audience’s innermost wants and needs. Put mind over matter by acknowledging these elements of brand psychology:

• Buyer personas
• Customer experience
• Color
• Social influence
• Visual storytelling with creative assets

By incorporating these elements of brand psychology into your marketing strategy, you can foster lasting customer relationships across every touchpoint and build a better brand.