Using Color Psychology in Marketing & Branding
It all starts with the colours you choose for your branding and marketing. You’ll use these to build your logo, website, advertisements, and much more, so you shouldn’t choose them carelessly. Instead, you should deliberate on the colours you’ll employ for branding and marketing. How? Understanding colour psychology and utilising the theory to your advantage are crucial.
Color Psychology
The idea behind colour psychology is that various hues may cause a physical or emotional response, affecting how people behave. This is about as straightforward as seeing red and becoming furious or seeing blue and feeling at ease. According to scientific research, the colours red and blue are correlated with distinct changes in blood pressure.
Colour has a significant influence on mood because of how it affects behaviour. According to Architectural Digest, this makes picking the appropriate paint colours essential for establishing the mood of your residence. Cool colours tend to relax while warm hues tend to energise. Your brand and your marketing efforts will be impacted similarly by the psychology of colours, which brings us to the accompanying segments.
Importance of Colour Psychology in Marketing
Colour may have a significant impact on marketing, whether you realise it or not. Whether they are aware of it or not, the colours you choose in your branding, including your logo and other marketing materials, elicit an emotional response in your audience. We make judgments based on emotion rather than rationality, as stated in the marketing psychology handbook.
The bottom line is that while developing your brand and designing your ads, you must take colour psychology into account.
Ways to Improve Your Marketing by Using Colour Psychology
Here are some tips on how to utilise colour psychology to increase the effectiveness of your marketing now that we have a better understanding of what colour psychology is and how utilising the correct or wrong colours may affect your marketing.1. Learn The Fundamentals Of Colour Psychology
Understanding the fundamentals can help you use colour psychology in your marketing efforts. Red can cause increased attention or anxiety, as we discussed previously, whereas blue might have an unfavourable soothing impact. Consider the following other basic colour correlations when creating emotional ads:- Red signifies elation, passion, rage, danger, action, worry, and strength.
- Orange is associated with creativity, friendliness, warmth, and enthusiasm.
- Yellow signifies joy, originality, optimism, happiness, and excitement.
- Green represents youth, vitality, nature, growth, and stability.
- Blue connotes steadiness, depth, peace, and trust.
- Purple symbolises royalty, elegance, love, reflection, and peace.
2. Commence With The Emotion
Starting with the emotion you want your audience to feel is essential whether choosing a colour palette for new advertisements or revising your brand’s existing shades. Should they be scared? Curious? Confident? For ideas, look at emotional ad copy examples. Once you’ve determined what you want, pick the appropriate colour.3. Take Inspiration From Other Brands
The easiest method to improve your use of colour psychology is to pay attention to brands, websites, and advertisements and how the colours affect you. Check out Bloomscape, an online store for plants that cater to Millennial and Gen-Z customers. The typeface and top bar are forest green, which straddles the line between rustic and fashionable. The pale peach, a warm, inventive reworking of Millennial pink, pairs beautifully with the cream, a cosy natural accent. Warm terracotta pots and the red and orange highlights on the plants balance out the variety of greens. The result makes me want to take care of my plants, and even purchase a few specimens.4. Have It Aligned With Your Brand
In a study on logo recognition conducted by the SEO firm Reboot, 78% of participants were able to identify the logo’s main colour whereas only 43% could recollect the business name. Make sure the colour is consistent and present everywhere if your target market associates your brand with a specific hue. The most successful brands understand how important it is to maintain colour consistency with their branding.
Do you recall when Dunkin Donuts changed its name to Dunkin a few years ago? All those visual modifications with the same, recognisable colour schemes. Dunkin’ is a fantastic example because it uses orange, pink, and brown, as well as variants on these hues, to trademark everything. In most circumstances, the variety of colours and shades prevents your branding from looking two-dimensional or flat. Giving yourself the ideal palette to work with brings us to our following piece of advice.
5. Make A Brand Colour Palette
You want to keep the colours in your marketing consistent, but you don’t want to be too one-note. Even worse, this can appear invasive. Having a colour scheme to work with that allows for some variability but establishes certain guidelines is the solution. It’s time to create a brand colour palette if you don’t already have one.
Here are a few examples of the typical colour palette:
- Analogous: Colors that are close to one another on the colour wheel.
- Complementary: Opposing hues that produce a striking contrast.
- Monochromatic: Consisting of many tints or shades of a single basic colour.
Check out the free design tool Coolors if you need some assistance or inspiration with your colour scheme. It has sample palettes and can create your own instantly out of a starting colour or even a picture.
6. Observe 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 going into particular colours, there is a wide difference in colour categories, with some communities having only three and others having up to twelve. It follows that not everyone shares the same perceptions of colour. Due to this, it’s critical to consider cultural context while developing your branding and marketing.7. Try Including Some Blue
Don’t panic if you’ve reached this point and believe that keeping note of cultural context, sticking to a palette, and relying on the fundamentals of colour psychology is overwhelming and unachievable. It will take some time and practice to get acquainted with colour psychology fundamentals and include them in your marketing approach.
But in the interim, here’s a simple maxim: Add some blue when in doubt.
It appears that blue is the most widely used and favoured hue around the globe. That could be one of the explanations for why the logos of some of the most popular firms in the world feature the colour blue. The list includes Meta, Twitter, Vimeo, American Express, IBM, and much more. Therefore, blue is a good choice if you’re seeking a shortcut or a sure thing.
8. Test Colours On Your Audience
This may seem to contradict everything we’ve said so far. However, in practice, it’s not always possible to anticipate how your audience will react to a certain hue, 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 likes by experimenting with two backgrounds for your website’s buttons or adverts. Then put that knowledge to use. The most effective technique to use colour psychology to boost your marketing is in this way. Test, and test some more.It’s critical to keep in mind that colour psychology will impact your marketing in general. The suitability of your brand colours for your company will be evaluated by your audience. A red, green, or blue button will elicit a quicker response. Regardless of whether you consider colour psychology while creating branding or marketing designs, this will still happen.
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