Building trust is fundamental to business growth and sustainability. There are many ways a company builds trust. Examples are through quality and delivery of products and services. But your color palette also reinforces and inspires trustworthiness in the marketplace and with customers.
Today’s Color Concept focuses on how you can use color to build and strengthen trust. Color is a powerful way to do this. But it must be done right to be effective. That’s what we’ll dive into today.
The relevance of trust-building in business
Building trust is non-negotiable. It is one of the backbones of a solid, successful business. For your brand to build and sustain relationships with customers, clients, stakeholders, partners.
Through trust, you become an entity that can be relied upon. This is how your audience and collaborators continue to do business with you. They know they can trust what you promise, what you create, and what you stand for. Without building trust, a business will have a hard time growing, especially long-term.
But how does a business build trust in the marketplace and with their customers and clients?
Here are the most effective ways to build trust:
*Using consistent voice (If you need guidance with this, see the Brandview Framework)
*Staying true to your company mission and vision
*Creating dependable products, services, and customer relations
*Through customer loyalty programs
*By being consistent with your visual assets
Visual assets, of course, include color schemes and palettes. And that’s what we’ll dig into today.
What is the color of trust? And how can you use it?
Let’s start by going over the most obvious way to build color by using the color most associated with credence and reliability. Did you know that on the color spectrum, blue is most commonly regarded as the trust-building color? That’s because of the psychology of the color. When someone sees the color, it has a non-threatening effect. Blue has the implication of solid, confident, reliable.
Blue is a color that conveys trust and so is used extensively in branding, particularly in the corporate world. From banks to financial service providers, you can see blue’s preeminence as the leading marketplace color.
Examples of (trust-building) blue in branding
Time for us to get practical and see blue’s trust-building effect in action. Let’s look at two well-branded companies using the color in their branding:
Visa
Think of visa’s branding, and their strong blue letters in the word VISA come to mind. As one of the world’s leading financial platforms of exchange, trust is fundamental. Without it, they don’t have a business. Individuals and vendors need to trust the platform every day with their money. Blue is arguably the best choice for such a company built on trust.
United Airlines
There’s no greater trust needed than when you put your hands in the life of an airline. Their visual assets need to communicate reliability and trustworthiness, without any doubt. United’s solid blue text and blue and white logo convey clear trust to their passengers.
Bonus trust-building tips
Even though blue is the main color that conveys trust in branding and business, that doesn’t mean that other colors do not also build trust.
Let’s explore how other colors can have a similar effect. Companies and leaders build trust so that their audience can rely on them. Reliance is a key characteristic of trust. You can do that with other colors also. For example, if your dominant color is yellow, or say orange, it’s important that you consistently use this color so that your audience can is never guessing. Your dominant color scheme is just one (of the many) traits your company needs to consistently reflect.
Examples of consistent color use:
- Social media images
- Print marketing material
- Your Logo
- Product design and packaging
- Professional Platform
In the Brandview Framework, we emphasized the importance of consistency in branding. And consistent use of your color scheme.
Do you convey trust in your branding? Take a look at your color scheme and also the consistency of your visuals and messages. Building trust is something you do every day in business. It isn’t just a one-time act. Through repeated customer interactions, marketing messages, and consistent well-done branding, you solidify trust in the marketplace and in the minds of your ideal clients and customers.