The colours you choose for your branding and marketing are fundamental. You should not take these decisions lightly because you will use them to create your logo, website, ads, and so much more. Instead, you should strategically select the colours you intend to use for your branding and marketing. How? Understanding colour psychology and making use of the theory is crucial.
What is the study of colours?
The idea behind colour psychology is that certain hues can cause a physical or emotional response, which can then affect how people behave. This is nearly as straightforward as seeing red and becoming angry or seeing blue and feeling at ease. According to scientific research, the colours red and blue are correlated with different changes in blood pressure.
Your brand and your marketing strategies will be similarly impacted by the psychology of colours, which brings us to the next section.
Why is colour psychology important in marketing?
Whether you pay attention to colour in marketing or not, it can have a significant impact. Whether they are aware of it or not, the colours you use in your branding, including your logo and other marketing materials, elicit an emotional response in your audience. Additionally, we make decisions based on emotion rather than logic, as mentioned in our marketing psychology guide.
The bottom line is that when developing your brand and designing your campaigns, you must take colour psychology into account.
Learn the fundamentals of colour psychology.
1. Understanding the fundamentals
It will help you use colour psychology in your marketing efforts. Red can cause increased alertness or anxiety, as we discussed earlier, while blue can have an unfavourable calming effect. Consider the following additional basic colour associations when creating emotional ads:
Red: excitement, passion, anger, danger, action, anxiety, power.
Orange: playfulness, friendliness, creativity, warmth, enthusiasm
Yellow: happiness, optimism, warning, joy, originality, enthusiasm
Green: youth, vibrancy, vigour, nature, growth, stability
Blue: calm, stability, depth, peacefulness, trust
Purple: Royalty, luxury, romance, introspection, calm.
2. Commence with the feeling
Starting with the emotion you want your audience to feel is essential when choosing a colour scheme for new advertisements or revising your brand's existing colours. Should they react with dread? Curiosity? Confidence? Take some ideas from these examples of moving advertising copy.
Make sure to pick the appropriate colour once you are aware of the desired result.
3. Study other brands for inspiration
The best way to improve your use of colour psychology is to pay attention to branding, websites, and advertisements and how the colours affect you.
4. Continue to adhere to your branding
In a study on logo recognition conducted by the SEO firm Reboot, 78% of participants were able to recall the logo's main colour, while only 43% could recall the business name.
Make sure the colour is consistent and present everywhere if your target market associates your brand with a specific colour. Because of this, maintaining colour harmony with your branding is crucial, and the most successful brands understand this.
5. Construct a brand colour scheme
You want to avoid being one-note in your marketing, but you also want to keep the colours consistent. Even worse, this might appear spammy. Having a colour scheme to work with that allows for some variety but establishes some standards is the solution.
If you don't already have one, it's time to create one.
Here are a few examples of typical colour schemes:
Analogous: colours situated next to one another on the colour wheel
Complementary: Contrasting colours that work well together are complementary.
Monochromatic: Consisting of various tints or shades of a single primary colour
6. Consider the cultural context
Not everyone perceives colour the same way. In fact, according to MIT researchers, the words we have and employ to describe colour differ depending on the language. Before even getting into individual colours, there is a significant range in colour categories, with some communities having only three and others having up to twelve.
It follows that not everyone shares the same perception of colour. Because of this, it's critical to consider cultural context when developing your branding and marketing.
7. Try incorporating blue
Don't worry if you've reached this point and think it's overwhelming and impossible to keep track of cultural context, stick to a colour scheme, and rely on the fundamentals of colour psychology. It will take some time and practise to become knowledgeable about colour psychology fundamentals and incorporate them into your marketing workflow. But in the interim, here's a quick guideline: Add a little blue if you're unsure.
It appears that blue is the most widely used and preferred colour in the world. That could be one of the explanations for why the logos of some of the most popular brands in the world feature the colour blue. It goes on and on: Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo, American Express, IBM, etc.
8. Test colours on your audience
This may seem to contradict everything I've said so far. However, in practice, it's not always possible to anticipate how your audience will react to a specific colour, let alone specific shades, tones, or tints in your colour scheme. A/B testing can be used in this situation. See which colour your audience prefers by experimenting with two backgrounds for your website's buttons or ads.
Example of colour psychology
1) Red
Red is a strong colour that inspires a range of emotions, including elation, passion, love, safety, and power. The majority of the sale announcements, advertisements, and call-to-action buttons are red because it fosters a sense of urgency.
This colour is used in the branding of Pizza Hut, KFC, Coca-Cola, Netflix, YouTube, and CNN.
2) Blue
It is the most widely used colour worldwide. It exudes confidence, calm, and security. If you paint your store blue, potential customers are more likely to choose you over your rivals because it fosters a sense of loyalty and trust.
These brands include Facebook, Dell, IBM, Intel, and Nivea, to name a few.
3) Yellow
It stirs up a range of feelings, including joy, optimism, clarity, and warmth. Newborn babies first respond to this colour. Because of this, a lot of toys and baby products are yellow.
It piques the interest of your audience and stimulates thought. Due to its strong emotional appeal, this colour can also evoke unfavourable emotions like fear and anxiety. Make sure to use it in the appropriate ratio if you're using it for branding.
This colour is used by McDonald's, Lay's, Subway, and Snapchat for branding and marketing.
4) Green
Green is a vibrant colour that frequently symbolises nature. It inspires emotions like radiance, serenity, and relaxation. This colour is used by many well-known food brands to denote the freshness and healthfulness of their products. This colour is also used by brands that want to appeal to environmentally conscious consumers.
This vibrant hue is used in the logos and products of Animal Planet, Spotify, 7 Up, and Sprite.
5) Purple
According to colour psychology, purple fosters feelings of wisdom, success, and superiority. Brands primarily use it for their high-end goods and services. It is the most popular colour in the creative sector because it also stands for creativity and mystery.
For their branding, FedEx, Cadbury, Hallmark, and Urban Decay all use the colour purple.
6) Orange
This vibrant colour evokes a variety of uplifting emotions, including enthusiasm, cosiness, bravery, and passion. If there is too much orange in a product or a logo, it can, however, cause annoyance. Given that orange has an aggressive vibe, marketers often use it to draw in impulsive shoppers or instil a sense of urgency during sales.
Orange is used as a marketing tool by companies like Fanta, Gulf Oil, Harley Davidson, and Amazon.
The Colour Wheel: The Marketer's Key
The secret to mastering colour psychology in marketing is to use colour to enhance your already-existing brand personality rather than creating your brand persona based solely on the colour associations you want to use. Even if you are marketing for insurance, using vivid yellows all over your branding won't suddenly make people feel upbeat about your company. You can't make a candy company look green and convince people that their sugary treats are healthy, and you can't make your company's logo lipstick red and expect people to get excited about your effective but unattractive accounting software.
The brands that select the appropriate colours to further communicate who they already are are those that benefit from the psychological effects of colour. Dell computers are trustworthy. Lowe's caters to customers who value independence. It works in blue. Luxurious chocolate from Cadbury is well known. As a gift for royalty, Crown Royal Canadian Whisky was developed. It works in purple.
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