Colors are one of those elements that generate emotions and affect our moods. For example, if a person is ecstatic, they would love to wear bright colors. Similarly, if they are depressed about their life, they would like to wear dull clothes.
Similarly, the colors we use in our gifts or messages also show what we feel about them. For example, if we give someone a present on their birthday and wrap it up in black and white packaging, it may make them feel that you are not excited to share that gift and are perhaps giving it out of pressure. However, they will feel special if we create an attractive gift card with mixed colors. They would think you have made an extraordinary effort to prepare their gift.
In today's day and age, marketing color psychology has reached the business world. As a result, many businesses and entrepreneurs are learning color psychology charts to create an online presence and improve their reputation.
When you build a brand, you must keep the color psychology chart in your mind. The color you use in your marketing strategy explains your mood toward the target audience and influences your results.
What is Color Psychology?
Color psychology is a concept in which colors influence individuals' perceptions, interpretations, and mindsets. Marketing color psychology monitors how colors used in branding impact consumers' perceptions and impressions of your brand. The integration of color psychology in marketing allows you to determine whether your visual branding elements increase your online sales.
Image taken from Strikingly User’s Website
The more you follow the principles of color psychology in marketing, the more you will understand how it works. Most importantly, you will learn how much it impacts your audience and online sales. For example, the colors in your emails or newsletters may make potential customers decide whether to purchase a product from your online store or not.
Color psychology has become a massive topic in today's digital world. Numerous entrepreneurs and marketing people use it to create digital assets, promote their business, build a website, or change an existing product line. According to a study shared by Emerald Insights, around 90% of the brand and products' assessment is based on the assessment of color.
Guide to Color Psychology in Marketing
1) Learn Color Psychology Essentials
If you familiarize yourself with the basics, you can go a long way toward implementing color psychology in marketing. For example, red color triggers alertness and anxiety, whereas blue color has a calming effect. Here are some colors you can use as part of your emotional ads:
- Red: Brings anxiety, excitement, power, and action.
- Orange: Brings friendliness, creativity, and warmth.
- Yellow: Brings joy, optimism, originality, and enthusiasm.
- Green: Brings youth, nature, and stability.
- Blue: Brings calmness, trust, and relaxation
- Purple: Brings royalty, luxury, and romance
2) Start With Emotion
Image taken from Strikingly User’s Website
When thinking about your brand colors or the palette for your advertisement campaigns, you must start with the emotion you expect your target audience to have. For example, you can expect them to respond with curiosity, fear, or confidence. Once you understand the right emotions, you can start identifying the right color for your brand.
3) Maintain Consistency With Your Branding Strategies
Reboot, a search engine optimization (SEO) company, recently researched logo recognition. According to the study, 78% of the participants recalled the logo's primary color, whereas 43% remembered the company name.
If your audience remembers your brand because of its color, you must ensure it is the same everywhere. Therefore, keeping up with your marketing color psychology is important, and many successful brands understand it. For example, you can look at the Dunkin Donuts brand that was recently redesigned. Although the image has changed, the brand color has remained the same.
4) Create a Brand Color Palette
Since you are the business owner, you want to maintain consistency within your color psychology charts. However, you must ensure that you don't have a one-dimensional approach with your color scheme, or it may look spammy. The best thing to do is opt for colors that promote variety while maintaining some standards.
If you are yet to make a color palette for your brand, you can make one now. Here are some common color palettes in the digital industry:
- Analogous: Colors alongside each other on the wheel.
- Complementary: Opposite colors create a heavy contrast
- Monochromatic: Different shades or varieties of a particular primary color
Coolers are a fantastic free design tool if you struggle with a color palette or are looking for inspiration. It has palette examples and can create customized palettes based on the choice of your starting color.
6) Remember Your Brand Personality
The intention of the customer to purchase products and services from your online store is greatly influenced by your marketing color psychology. The colors used in packaging material, marketing messages, and eCommerce products determine how the customers visualize the brand personality.
Certain colors influence your brand personality traits. Therefore, use the colors that correspond with the brand personality you are trying to build. If you use one-dimensional color associations, you will end up building a deviated brand personality.
7) Appeal to the Target Audience
Good marketing people conduct hefty research on customer demographics and preferences. For example, if you know what colors look appealing to your target audience, you can use marketing color psychology effectively.
For example, men prefer bold colors when we talk about sunglasses, whereas women prefer softer tones. In other words, if your target audience is full of men, it would be sensible to use a bolder range of colors.
8) Make Your Brand Unique
If you are making your brand for the first time, remember that you shouldn't copy a color scheme from your competitors. Your color scheme will play a role in your brand identity. Color psychology in marketing is about making people believe they can create unique colors to represent their respective brands.
If your brand grows in popularity, your audience will begin associating themselves with your products, services, and brand. Hence, if someone tries to copy your color scheme, they will be considered a pirate or the second-grade version of your brand.
Let's assume that a new pizza place has opened and has the same brand colors as Pizza Hut. The brand will destroy its reputation and be considered a cheaper version of Pizza Hut.
Examples of Marketing Color Psychology
1) Coca Cola
Coca-Cola uses red color to complement its logo and other branding visuals. Red is a bold color choice because it is used by many companies selling apparel and is usually used in the food and drinks industry. In addition, the color psychology of the red color makes the audience feel that they need to consume the product it promotes.
Coca-Cola is not the kind of drink prescribed by doctors or medical specialists. However, people drink because they have the urge for it. The color psychology of the bright red color has a huge role to play in this urgency.
2) Facebook
Facebook is one of the most popular social media platforms on the Internet, and the color psychology of blue color is a massive part of it. Blue is an inoffensive color and sends feelings of safety and optimism to the target audience.
Image taken from Wikipedia
Many companies prioritize security and use blue as their primary color, such as health, tech, and insurance sectors. Facebook representatives have done a remarkable job using blue as the primary color in their logo, layout, and application. It makes the audience feel that sharing their personal information on this platform is safe.
Use Color Psychology in Your Strikingly Website
Image taken from Strikingly
Strikingly is a top-class website builder which allows you to build a professional website without any complexities. If you intend to develop a website on our platform, our website editor will provide you with different colors to choose for your web pages. Strikingly allows you to change the following aspects regarding color schemes:
- Font color
- Background color
- Call to action (CTA) buttons
- Website theme colors
When developing your Strikingly website, click the 'Styles' button on the left panel. The 'Styles' button will provide you with different options to change the color scheme of your website.
Image taken from Strikingly
Including these color options in the Strikingly website editor offers a handful of color options to work on your web pages. Our provided website templates have ready-to-use layouts and color schemes, but you can customize them according to your branding goals.
Conclusion
Being a business owner, it is essential to remember that color psychology will affect your marketing strategies. First, your audience will have the authority over how your brand colors suit your business. There are some common colors, such as red and blue, on which they tend to react quickly. You will understand more about these technicalities after paying attention to color psychology in marketing design and branding.
The best thing to do is to use color psychology charts to your advantage. You can do that by creating a wonderful brand website on Strikingly. If you are building a website for the first time, you can check out some of the best brand websites established on our platform to get an idea. If you need help building a professional website for your brand, you can submit your queries to our Happiness Officers. Then, implement all the relevant tactics to make color psychology work for you and your marketing goals.
