Our environment affects us more than what we think. This is true for all the colors around us as well. Businesses have been particularly interested in the color psychology and how they affect our thinking, and have been using its findings in their marketing campaign for years. In case you’re new to the psychology of colors and its insights, in this article, we’ll dive deep into this subject and how you can use it for your business’s advantage.
How Colors Can Help In Your Marketing Campaign
Have you ever felt calm by being in a blue-colored room, gotten excited by seeing red ‘sale’ banners in your favorite fashion outlet, or became happy and cheerful by seeing yellow sunflowers around you? All of these reactions after seeing particular colors are governed by the psychology of colors. The psychology of color describes that colors evoke certain emotional reactions in humans. For example, the color red has a different psychological and emotional reaction than the color blue. Using this insight, marketers and advertisers use various colors for various purposes in order to get the reaction they want from their audience. Let’s discuss the color psychology behind majorly-used colors, and how it may affect your marketing campaign.
The Color Red
When Taylor Swift sang about her love for someone being ‘Red’, she wasn’t joking. Red is a color of passion, of alert, of urgency. It raises blood pressure, increases appetite (hence used by many fast-food chains), excites the senses, and stimulates the body. It urges people to act instinctively. Therefore, whenever you have a sale, or want your audience to make buying decisions quickly, consider using red in banners, advertisements, or CTA buttons.
Blue
Blue is associated with peace, reliability, security, and tranquility. It is known for curbing appetite and stimulating productivity. It is widely used in logos for brands because it exudes a sense of communication and stability. When you want to build trust among your audience, and want to communicate your values and services, consider using the color blue in your marketing campaign.
Green
The color green is associated with relaxation, health, nature, and tranquility. It is also associated with power. The color is thoroughly used in various stores to calm the visitors, as well as utilized in environmental causes. The color encourages decisiveness and harmony in the brain. When your marketing campaign is about your consumers’ decisiveness, using their power in a positive manner, or if it concerns nature or peace, consider using the color green!
Purple
This one is for the royals, the wise, and the sophisticated! The color purple is associated with royalty, wisdom, sophistication, and respect. It promotes creativity and problem-solving. Consider the Hallmark logo and the crown in its depiction. Moreover, consider Yahoo! the logo color shows the creativity of the brand along with its name. Think about your favorite beauty brands. How many can you recall having the color purple in them? If your marketing campaign is associated with creativity, sophistication, finesse, royalty, and wisdom, consider using the color purple in it.
Yellow And Orange
Both yellow and orange exude creativity, happiness, warmth, and excitement. They may also influence anxiety or impulsive behaviors. However, you may use these colors to draw in window shoppers and impulsive buyers. In case your campaign’s goal is to excite your audience and drag them in, you may use yellow and orange hues in your ads, banners, or posters.
Black
Even though black is not considered a color (it absorbs all light and is considered as the absence of color) it is still used as a hue almost everywhere. Black exudes class, elegance, sophistication, power, authority, stability, and confidence. It may be difficult to include black in marketing, however, brands such as Chanel and Nike have done it perfectly. When your marketing campaign is about confidence, elegance, power, and class.
White
The color white is associated with safety, purity, and cleanliness. It also projects neutrality—think, white space. White space offers a clean slate, a sort of unaltered space that brings balance to the entire space. Using white in marketing can show minimalism or balance. It is not for every business, but the color can be an effective marketing approach when done rightly.
Wrapping Up
Color psychology has been around in marketing since ages. Businesses incorporate color psychology in their marketing campaign to evoke the feelings of trust, stability, urgency, confidence, and tranquility. In this article, we discussed the commonly-used colors and their psychological effects in terms of marketing. We discussed what industries can use what colors based on the feelings they evoke. We hope that you found this article useful and would use it to your advantage in your next marketing campaign!