Color Psychology in Marketing

By Dhruti Gandhi

14 min Read

November 18, 2022

Your marketing and branding are fundamentally based on the colors you employ. Choose them carefully because you’ll be using them to create your logo, website, marketing, and much more. Instead, you should make a deliberate decision on the colors you’ll employ for branding and marketing. Understanding color psychology and utilizing the theory to your advantage is crucial.

What is color psychology?

The study of colors and how they affect human behavior is known as color psychology. Its goal is to ascertain how color influences the daily choices we make, such as what to buy. Are we more likely to pick one brand over another based on the colors of a package? Do we click on icons more often based on their color? Yes is the quick response. However, the why is a little trickier to understand. Why we like certain colors over others may be influenced by their significance. Additionally, multiple connotations for the same color might vary depending on our upbringing, gender, surroundings, values, and a host of other things. According to scientific research, the colors red and blue are correlated with different changes in blood pressure.

Why is color psychology important in marketing?

Whether you pay attention to color in marketing or not, it may have a significant impact. Whether they are aware of it or not, your audience is affected emotionally by the colors you choose in your branding, including your logo and other marketing materials.

We also make judgments based on emotion rather than rationality, as mentioned in our marketing psychology.

In conclusion, you must take color psychology into account while developing your brand and your marketing strategies.

Color Psychology

How may color psychology be used to boost your marketing?

Here are some tips on how to utilize color psychology to increase the effectiveness of your marketing now that we have a better understanding of what color psychology is and how utilizing the correct or wrong colors may affect your marketing.

Understanding the fundamentals of color psychology

Understanding the fundamentals is important if you want to use color psychology in your marketing. Red may cause increased vigilance or anxiety, whilst blue may have a counterproductive relaxing effect. Here are some other basic color connections to take into account while creating emotive ads:

Red represents energy, fervor, rage, danger, movement, worry, and strength.

Orange is associated with liveliness, amiability, inventiveness, warmth, and excitement.

Yellow signifies contentment, optimism, caution, delight, and innovation.

Green represents youth, vitality, nature, growth, and stability.

Blue symbolizes trust, tranquility, stability, depth, and calm.

Purple symbolizes opulence, passion, royalty, reflection, and peace.

There are several overlaps, as you can see. No one color—or shade of that color—can represent a single feeling.

Beginning with feelings

The feeling you want your viewers to feel should be your starting point when choosing a color scheme for new advertisements or when revising your brand’s existing colors. Should they tremble in response? Curiosity? Confidence? Make use of these feelings as motivation. Make careful to pick the appropriate hue after you are aware of the intended result.

Get ideas from competing brands

Paying attention to brands, websites, and advertisements and how the colors make you feel is the greatest approach to improv at using color psychology.

Consistently follow your branding

78% of participants in research on logo identification were able to identify the logo’s primary color, while just 43% could recollect the business name. Make sure the color is consistent and used across your brand if you want your audience to remember it. Because of this, it’s crucial to maintain color coherence with your branding.

Make a brand color scheme.

You want to avoid becoming one-note in your marketing, but you also want to keep the colors constant. Even worse, it can appear spammy. The answer is to choose a color scheme that establishes certain guidelines while allowing for some variance. It is thus time to create a brand color palette if you don’t already have one.

Considering the cultural context

Not everyone perceives color the same way. In actuality, each language has its vocabulary that is used to discuss color. There is a huge range in color categories before even getting into specific hues, with some communities having only three and others having up to twelve.

Therefore, color psychology is not a universal concept. For your branding and marketing, it is crucial to keep the cultural context in mind.

Add some blue if you can

Don’t panic if you’ve reached this point and believe that keeping note of cultural context, sticking to a palette, and depending on the fundamentals of color psychology is overwhelming and unachievable. It will take some time and practice to get knowledgeable about color psychology fundamentals and include it in your marketing approach.

But in the meanwhile, here’s a short guideline: Add some blue if you’re unsure.

The most widely used and favored hue in the world is blue, it turns out. That might be one of the explanations why some of the most well-known businesses in the world include blue as part of their logos. Ford, Visa, Skype, HP—the list is endless.

Blue Logo

Therefore, blue is a good choice if you’re seeking a shortcut or a sure thing.

Test colors on your audience

Even certain hues, shades, tones, or tints from your color pallet might be unpredictable in terms of how your audience will react to them. A/B testing can help with that. Test two alternative color backgrounds for your website’s buttons or advertising to discover which one your audience likes. Then put that knowledge to use. That is the most effective technique to use color psychology to boost your marketing. Check, then check again.

Conclusion

It’s critical to keep in mind that color psychology will impact your marketing in general. How effectively your brand colors complement your company will be evaluated by your audience. A red, green, or blue button will elicit a quicker response from them. This will occur regardless of whether you consider color psychology when creating branding or marketing designs.

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