A marketer’s ultimate goal is to persuade consumers to buy. The most successful marketers know that enticing images and persuasive words alone will not be enough to achieve their objectives.
They rely on psychological tools to communicate with customers, convey brand messages, and drive conversions. Color is one tool at their disposal that can enhance messages, inspire consumers to act, or help them stand out from the competition.
Marketing campaigns and persuasive brands require an understanding of the psychology of color in advertising. In this article, you will learn why the psychology of color in advertising is important to attract more customers.
Now let’s get started.
This is the study of how colors are perceived and how they affect moods, emotions, and behaviors. Different colors can evoke different feelings and can be used to influence people’s moods and actions.
Customers may take action based on these feelings, such as signing up for a newsletter, subscribing, or purchasing. What is the impact of the color on our decision to buy a pair of shoes? Is the color of website buttons related to our behavior and makes us more likely to click on one over another? In a nutshell, yes.
Color psychology is a complex subject. Academics have studied how different colors affect individuals based on demographic and social factors, including.
Thus, psychology of color in advertising is crucial to marketing.
Marketing is all about creating a connection with an audience and building brand loyalty from the first interaction. Knowing audience behavior and the psychographics for marketing always remained an essential part in advertisement.
A large part of this can be attributed to color psychology. Strong logos and carefully chosen company names can help a company connect with customers. Also, the colors used to convey subtle yet powerful messages in advertisements and websites reinforce the logo.
A brand’s colors already indicate its style and tone to customers without them even realizing it. This is an opportunity for brands to use strategic placement and groupings of colors to inspire action.
Brands can convey their attributes through one or more primary colors. As well as evoking emotion, secondary colors can inspire action. You can use them, for instance, to highlight a button that encourages new customers to subscribe to a mailing list. Building your audience and generating sales starts with understanding the psychology of colors.
To understand the psychology of color in advertising, let us explore types of color psychology.
Different colors can evoke different emotions in people. This is because colors are associated with certain meanings and messages. The color you prefer always depends on the situation. You may think you have only one favorite, but there are probably several.
Women who love hot pink nails don’t necessarily want to decorate their homes in the same vivid hue. Most homeowners select a color scheme according to the room’s decor.
Although many people adore seaside blues and decorate their bathrooms accordingly. Their favorite color for the living area is now a neutral, calming beige.
Outfits follow some unwritten rules as well. Navy suits formal meetings and wintertime, while pastels and whites are hot favorites in summer. A brand development or advertising campaign begins with color selection. Advertising agencies take color seriously before choosing what colors to use.
The right color selection can send out a powerful message to the viewer. Even before the advert has been read and understood. The following are some examples of color psychology in marketing.
Marketing brands use red frequently, and for a good reason. As a result, brands utilize this powerful tone to convey characteristics such as:
Traditionally, the color red signifies love and joy, as well as luck in Chinese culture. Several brands use red in their logos to demonstrate these characteristics, such as:
Studies show that seeing red speeds up our blood flow, causing our metabolism to speed up and making us feel hungry. As a result, brands like McDonald’s, KFC, and Coke use this tone. Brands that use red convey a sense of passion and courage.
The color pink has been associated with femininity for more than a century, even though it wasn’t always the case. Currently, brands use tone to communicate characteristics such as:
Pink is a choice of color for brands looking to appeal to female audiences and evoke youthful playfulness. Both Victoria’s Secret and their sub-brand Pink, as well as Barbie, use pink.
To transcend gender roles, other brands like Lyft, Dunkin Donuts, and Instagram are also incorporating different shades of pink. This is an attempt to relate to a wide range of characteristics beyond femininity. Brands that use pink convey a feeling of gentleness and care.
Instead of painting your storefront orange, you should paint it blue if you want to inspire loyalty. Cool hues are more likely to draw customers back to a store than harsher warm hues, according to research. The color blue can also be used to express other characteristics besides loyalty, such as:
Brands like Ford, Facebook, and American Express use blue to express these emotions. Brands that use blue convey a sense of trust, peace, and calm.
The color green evokes many emotions associated with our relationship with nature. According to psychology of color in advertising Green in marketing can evoke similar feelings to a walk outdoors, such as:
Green symbolizes a connection to nature for both John Deere and Animal Planet. Several brands use it to evoke different emotions, including Starbucks, Spotify, and Whole Foods. The color green evokes a sense of growth, health, and loyalty for brands using it.
In studies, yellow has been shown to evoke feelings of frustration or even anger. But in branding, yellow is often seen as cheerful. Yellow can be used by companies when they want to convey:
McDonald’s, Ikea, and Snapchat are just a few brands that use yellow as a primary color in their marketing. For brands that use yellow, it evokes a feeling of happiness and warmth.
Recently, gray has become a popular color in marketing and home décor. In fact, Pantone’s 2021 Color of the Year is Ultimate Gray. Gray can take on many meanings and has many shades. Some common characteristics that brands use gray to express are:
Major brands still rarely use gray. Some major companies use the tone on other versions of their logos or in a secondary capacity. These include Toyota, Apple, and WordPress. The color gray conveys a feeling of calmness, neutrality, and focus in brands that use it.
In contrast to gray, black is a popular choice among brands across multiple industries. Black evokes a wide range of emotions depending on an individual’s personal preferences. There are several characteristics of black that brands play up, including:
Nike’s signature swoosh is black. Other brands that utilize the tone in their logos include Coach, BMW, Prada, and many more.
Although it is not usually included on the color wheel, white is capable of evoking plenty of emotions. As a contrast to darker colors like black or blue, white has a unique power because of its lack of color. Feelings evoked by white include:
Apple, Chanel, and Adidas are a few brands that use white in their logos and branding to add drama. Brands that use white convey a sense of purity, cleanliness, and humility.
Similarly to green, brown evokes stability because of its natural tone. In addition to these characteristics, brown can also be used to express:
One of the most well-known brands that uses brown to evoke feelings of dependability and resilience is UPS. The color brown is associated with reliability, strength, and earthiness for brands that use it.
Modern marketing continues to reinforce purple’s royal image as a color that conveys regal vibes. Brands can use purple to highlight the following characteristics:
Roku, Yahoo, and FedEx use this energetic color to convey a feeling of power and luxury. A brand that uses purple invokes a feeling of royalty, richness, and imagination.
The color orange is commonly associated with characteristics such as:
Orange is a color that captures our attention. That is why we see it a lot on road signs, especially in construction zones or on signs warning of hazardous situations. Some brands use orange to inspire creativity and adventure in customers, including:
For brands that use orange, it evokes an air of creativity and adventure.
To accentuate the value of psychology of color in advertising let us look at the importance of color in advertising.
Color is often reduced to a few perceptions or properties by marketers. However, psychology can help companies understand how color affects their business. You should know, for instance, that green does not always represent growth, and red does not always indicate excitement.
Color is still crucial to branding, even if one color cannot always convey a specific message. According to a published study, color is essential in conveying information.
Approximately 90 percent of the information people use to form a decision is derived from color alone. People make decisions within 90 seconds of first impressions of products. Marketers should therefore understand how colors affect consumers’ ability to identify brands and distinguish products.
The brand’s message may not resonate with consumers when a color is perceived as being incongruous with it. When evaluating a brand’s use of color, consumers may place the most importance on appropriateness.
Therefore, marketers should determine whether their colors align with their desired brand perception. Marketing success depends on a strong brand identity that generates positive reactions among consumers. But conversions and sales also are essential to success.
Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science study suggests that color psychology might also be important to achieving this goal. A brand’s identity and use of color may influence consumers’ affinity for a brand, according to the study.
Color psychology can influence brand loyalty and purchasing habits for marketers who correctly use it. There is no one color that drives more sales than another, but color psychology does seem to affect a brand’s ability to stand out. Several brands use the Isolation Effect. It proposes that a unique color will stand out more in a field of uniform hues.
Brightly colored call-to-action buttons on monochromatic landing pages can take advantage of this psychological principle. This concept can also apply to packaging that stands out on store shelves.
According to the psychology of color in advertising, different hues and shades have different effects on consumer behavior. Color perception and reaction can also be affected by a number of factors. Marketers should consider how these factors may affect consumers’ responses.
Research has shown that gender has a measurable impact on color psychology. Males, for example, prefer blue over all other colors, but females are slightly less fond of it. In the same vein, both men and women tend to favor cool colors, but women are much more inclined to do so.
There may be some scientific grounds for these subtleties. Women perceive more colors and are more aware of color differences than men. Marketers should use color psychology to take advantage of these differences in perception and preference.
Oftentimes, marketers are interested in incorporating color psychology theories into global campaigns. However, the way consumers experience color and react to it varies from nation to nation. Thus, you need to understand psychology of color in advertising better.
In different regions, consumers may perceive yellow and purple differently. Consumers in North America may see yellow as optimistic, whereas shoppers in Europe may see purple as soothing. Global marketers may conduct local studies to ensure their campaigns have the desired effect. In this way, they may better understand how color affects their target audience’s psychology.
You can reach your target audience by using vibrant colors in your advertisement. This way, you will be sure to catch customers’ attention and get your message across. Moods and feelings are closely tied to color. So your ad can affect customers’ feelings as well.
You are running several campaigns in a single account and would like to optimize them. Managing multiple campaigns in your Google Ads account can be challenging. In this case, PPC Signal can be useful. It allows you to manage all of your campaign metrics in a single account.
Suppose you are running a PPC campaign for your online business and it is not working well.
You want to see if everything is going fine with your all campaigns. PPC Signal dashboard comes with unique and amazing alerts and signals which you can notice in below screen shot. You can identify them with different colors either green or red. E.g. Cost per conversion is moving upward is a dangerous thing which may drain your budget, so highlighting this signal with red demands your attention on priority.
On the other hand Clicks are increasing fast is shown with green color which is a good sign but conversions are decreasing are mentioned in red which is showing an anomaly.
Now if you would want to optimize your cost per conversion. This is because you know this is one of the most important factors in PPC campaigns.
In the dashboard of the PPC Signal, select the cost per conversion as the metric. You will get automated signals based on real-time data of your campaign highlighted in red. With these signals, you can get insights into the cost per conversion of your campaign and identify:
If you want to know more details about the signal, you can explore it further. To explore the signal further, click on the Explore button.
You can see the graphical data of your campaign when you click the explore button. The graphical representation allows you to see how long your cost per conversion has been changing.
You can simultaneously put multiple metrics on this analysis which will be shown with different colors.
Moreover, you can view the data in tabular form. This format allows you to see how other campaign metrics affect your campaign cost per conversion.
In the table, the red color indicates that your cost per conversion is rising. Using this automated generated signal report, you can decide fast that will reduce your cost per conversion.
Branding and marketing strategies rely heavily on color psychology. In addition to helping businesses improve their brand image, it also helps them to increase their sales. You would be blown away by statistical data. Approximately 90% of people make an impetuous decision based on the color of a product.
The color red symbolizes power. Hence, it is the most popular color for marketing because it attracts and holds people’s attention.
According to the psychology of color in advertising in clothing stores, traditional buyers typically purchase pink, rose, and sky-blue items. Generally, women prefer soft colors and are more likely to select tints. Men prefer bold colors and are more likely to choose shades.
That is it for the psychology of color in advertising!
We all recognize the beauty and power of colors: they illuminate our lives, bring joy, and enliven us; they can also excite us, soothe us or comfort us. Color psychology can be a very powerful tool in advertising. When an advertisement is correctly colored to match the services or products on offer, it appeals to the correct target market at the same time. It forms the basis of a successful marketing campaign.
Marketing revolves around color. Your marketing efforts can be maximized by utilizing color psychology to create brand awareness, loyalty, and action, from choosing the right tone to using the right hue.
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