In the real estate business, color is key when creating customer communications across all platforms. Consistent color branding imparts a professional and memorable brand impression that resonates with your prospects. Xerox research reveals that color improves brand recognition by up to 80% and increases comprehension by as much as 73 percent.
Are you taking full advantage of color in your business branding? Whether you’re just starting out or revitalizing your current marketing, here are some tactics to help you choose colors that will net your business a little more green.
If you’re establishing a color palette for your real estate business from scratch, ask yourself these three questions:
• What color represents your brand’s personality?
Different colors have different connotations in the minds of consumers. For example, purple signifies luxury, red implies passion and orange stimulates enthusiasm. Pick a signature color that references your brand’s personality. For more consumer reactions to colors, take a look at this infographic about color branding across a variety of industries.
• What color suits the characteristics of your services and/or products?
In addition to the personality of your brand, you should consider which other brand characteristics your color palette will speak to. If you selected a vibrant color to represent your personality, you might want to pair it with a more sober color that references security, reliability and/or integrity.
• What colors do your closest competitors use?
Study the colors used by your competitors. How do they work for or against their brand? Make sure you don’t select similar colors, lest your audience confuses your business as an offshoot of theirs and contacts the wrong company. On the other hand, it’s advantageous to know what colors have worked for other successful businesses. BrandColors.net is a great place to see a collection of colors used by some of the world’s most well-known brands.
If you’re working on rebranding your existing company materials, consider these questions:
• How have you used color in the past?
Did you use a single color or multiple colors? Was your usage consistent or sporadic? If you’ve used multiple colors sporadically in the past, seize this opportunity to streamline your color usage. You should choose a limited palette of colors to represent your brand; between 2-5 colors is ideal. Plan on redoing your logo using your new colors to reflect your refreshed brand identity.
• Can any color you’ve used before be repurposed? Or is it time for a complete makeover?
If you’ve used one color consistently throughout your business, you probably shouldn’t phase it out entirely – unless you’re trying to distance your brand from past associations. In most cases, it’s preferable to reinvigorate a tried-and-true color by pairing it with another color or colors that will add dimension to your brand. For inspiration, try the color pairing tools at ColorSchemeDesigner.com; simply select your main color then click to see examples of monochromatic, complementary and other color palettes.
• How much collateral needs to be updated?
After you have selected new colors to represent your company, ensure universal rebranding by making a list of everything that needs to be updated. For real estate, the list of considerations includes (but is not limited to) your website, business cards, listing brochures, print ads and signage. You might even consider getting a car in a color that reflects your new branding!
Once you’ve decided which colors best suit your business, be sure to record the technical details of each one, be it the hexadecimal color code, Pantone number or just the name. This will make it much easier to maintain your brand down the road – especially as you grow and begin collaborating with other companies and design teams.
Geneva Ives is the marketing writer for Point2.
To learn more about online marketing tools for real estate, visit www.Point2.com.
