The psychology of colours in marketing is about the meaning of each colour in your marketing and advertising materials and how it affects your consumers.
Colour is one of the most critical factors that affects consumer behaviour during shopping. It is an essential element that you should consider in your design, branding and marketing strategies. How you perceive a particular colour may have a lot to do with your preference, experiences in the past, cultural differences, gender differences, and so on. Your choice of colour is essential right from your logo down to the shade of paint in your office.
We primarily based colour psychology in marketing on our personal preference, i.e. how people feel about it. It comes from how we experienced it as children and during the transition into adulthood.
While we have proven no particular colour to boost conversions or drive sales more successfully than others, the use of colour psychology appears to affect a brand’s ability to make itself stand out.
Table of Contents
Why Is Colour Psychology Important in Marketing?
Do you feel calm when surrounded by green fields and blue skies? What comes to your mind when you see the colour red at a stop sign?
Picking the right colours in your marketing strategy and advertising is a strategy to help you communicate different messages to buyers. Learn how the psychology of colour can influence your ideal customers.
According to this article, a colour is an essential tool because it affects how we think and behave. It directs our eye where to look, what to do, and how to interpret something. It puts content into context. It helps us decide what’s essential and what’s not. That’s precisely why, as a content marketer, you need to understand what it means to people and how to use it in your marketing strategies to yield a positive response from your audience.
The psychology of colours in marketing is about the meaning of each colour in your marketing and advertising materials and how it affects your consumers. Click To TweetDifferent colours have different psychological effects on consumers. Specific colours encourage appetite, provide a sense of security, stimulates harmony, promote enthusiasm, royalty, and so on. And the culture of the people in your target demographics also affects all these. For example, people from western societies may view colours different from someone from Africa or Asia. Using it in marketing, decoration, communication, and symbolism is an integral part of human culture.
Colour psychology marketing aims to create brand relevance and motivate customers to make purchases by provoking certain emotions. Marketers and advertisers need to understand it. See in this article how it can be a valuable tool for attracting consumers.
What Do Colours Mean in Marketing?
In this article, you will discover what colour psychology is and the role it plays in marketing. I do a thorough analysis of the meanings of red, green, blue, yellow, pink, black, purple, and orange. You will learn which top brands have used the psychology of colours in their branding. Colour theory and colour psychology in marketing are something content marketers must understand. It can hurt or hinder content marketing efforts. That’s why you need to be mindful of its meaning in marketing when creating your visual marketing strategy and branding.
What Is the Psychology of Colour?
It is the study of how colours affect perceptions and behaviours. In marketing and branding, we focus colour psychology on how colouring impact consumers’ impressions of a brand and whether they persuade consumers to consider specific brands or make a purchase.
The psychology of colour is critical for marketers and advertisers to understand. See how colour can be a valuable tool for attracting consumers. Excerpt: Leveraging the psychology of colour is crucial in developing winning marketing campaigns and creating unique brands.
When buying a product, 93% of buyers focus on their visual appearance. 84.7% of buyers claim it is the primary drawcard. Colour psychology and its role in buyer decision-making are fascinating elements of marketing. But how can such nuance be quantified?
Why Colour Psychology Plays an Important Role in Marketing and Advertising?
A brand’s choice of colouring is a critical element that strengthens both its personality and its qualities. Some brands are so memorable that it is possible to identify them from a single Pantone colour without an accompanying logo. Others, including Cadbury, Barbie and UPS, have even trademarked their defining shades. Why do brands place such importance on colouring, and what impact does it have on the way consumers perceive them?
Picking the right colours in your marketing strategy and advertising is a strategy to help you communicate different messages to buyers. Click To TweetColour psychology in marketing and branding is more than just a one-sentence explanation of what each colour represents. A brand’s colours can influence consumers’ choices, conversion rate and so forth. But colour psychology in marketing and branding is more complex than “green conveys calm.”
Using colouring in marketing, decoration, communication, and symbolism is an integral part of human culture.
Psychology of Colours in Marketing
As mentioned above, colour is an important marketing tool. Understanding colour and the impact it has on our minds and attitudes is essential. Here are some of the most important generalisations of colours in marketing.
However, we can’t make swift presumptions about the power of colouring in isolation. The culture of the people will also affect the meanings and interpretations attached to it. So take these colour associations with a grain of salt depending on your culture, religion, and so forth.
Red
Marketing colours like red can capture attention. We associate the red colour meaning with excitement, passion, danger, energy, and action. You might’ve noticed that some brands use red for ‘order now’ buttons for their conversion rate optimisation or for their packaging to stand out on the shelf. The colour red creates a sense of urgency, suitable for clearance sales and customer service. It is also daring, energetic and encourages appetite. Many solid and recognisable brands use red in their logo and other relevant content. It feels bold and vibrant. We know red to boost viewers’ metabolisms and blood pressures, making it ideal for restaurant signage looking to whet customers’ appetite into coming in for a bite—especially a spicy taste. While red signifies danger, we can use it to benefit marketing campaigns that need to evoke powerful emotions. In Asia, they commonly associate it with luck and prosperity. But in western societies, it represents love, passion, or even danger.
Famous brands associated with red include Coca-Cola, Toyota, Oracle, Verizon, Honda, Budweiser, Nescafe, CNN, BBC, ESPN, Life Magazine, Disney, Canon, Netflix, YouTube, Puma, Virgin, KFC, Motorola, Colgate, Mitsubishi Motors, 3M, Adobe, Levi’s Heinz, and so forth.
Blue
Blue spans all kinds of emotional triggers such as peace, water, tranquillity, and dependability. It offers a sense of soundness, curbs appetite, and stimulates productivity. That’s why navy blue attires are popular in the corporate world. It’s also most commonly used by conservative brands looking to promote trust in their products. Overall, blue is well-liked because it gives a sense of calmness and confidence when building relationships, especially in marketing. Blue in marketing is the most universally favoured! It relates to trust and helps with customer loyalty. It is an excellent choice to form the basis of marketing material for companies. We sometimes associate it with feeling down, e.g. feeling the blues.
Famous brands associated with blue include American Express, Dell, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Ford, Visa, HP, IBM, Lowe’s, Oral B, Oreo, PayPal, Pepsi, Skype, Intel, General Electric, Boeing, General Motors, Samsung, Nokia, Philips, Mazda, Unilever, Volkswagen, Hyundai and so forth.
A brand's choice of colouring is a critical element that strengthens both its personality and its qualities. Click To TweetYellow
In branding, we see it as fun, energetic, young, warm, and cheerful. It increases mental activity and muscle energy, happiness, positivity, clarity, energy, optimism and attention-grabbing. If speed, fun, and low cost are essential components to your target audience, you may consider yellow as a superior choice in your branding. Still, it’s relatively uncommon compared to other primary colours. We associate the yellow with just as many warm and playful attributes as stressful and depressive ones. The yellow colour scheme used is also relevant. Lighter hues of yellows mean a lack of confidence but encourage creative thinking.
Famous brands associated with yellow include Nikon, National Geographic, Shell, McDonald’s, CAT, Sprint, DHL, Pokemon, Post-It, Star Wars, Best Buy, Yellow Pages, Hertz, Lufthansa, Bic, Ferrari, Kodak, Lipton, Pringles, Subway, Snapchat, MTN, Fontt Enterprises (shameless plug), and so forth.
Green
Green invokes a feeling of abundance, refreshment and peace, rest and security. Green is warm, inviting, and denotes health, environmental-friendliness, environmental issues, natural products and goodwill. (It’s also the colour of money, so it creates thoughts of wealth.) It’s a generic reference for the whole spread of natural, organic, environmentally friendly. Businesses desiring to appeal to similar audiences or align with similar interests, even if there’s no direct connection, often use a green palette in their branding and marketing collaterals.
Famous brands associated with green include Acer, Android, Spotify, Holiday Inn, Nvidia, Fiverr, Lacoste, Animal Planet, TicTacs, BP, Starbucks, Land Rover, Tropicana, Heineken, Double Mint, Whole Foods, Mauco Enterprises (shameless plug), and so forth.
Purple
We often associate purple in marketing with wisdom, dignity, independence, creativity, mystery, magic and spirituality, royalty, and wealth. Purple represents wealth, royalty, and richness, which also has associations with leadership and revenue. We historically associated purple with efforts to achieve gender equality.
Famous brands associated with purple include Cadbury, FedEx, Hallmark Cards, Monster.com, Yahoo!, BenQ, Milka, Roku, Twitch, Marketo, LA Lakers, Craig List, Taco Bell, One Note, Viber and so forth.
Colour psychology in marketing and branding is more than just a one-sentence explanation of what each colour represents. Click To TweetOrange
In the marketing world, orange is often used to portray youth, playfulness, and being bold. We usually see orange as healthy, energising, and attention-grabbing. It gives a sense of being welcoming, friendly, and warm. For instance, food and beverage companies, e-commerce businesses, vehicle manufacturers, television channels, tech firms, design program and so forth use orange. It can signify importance and command attention. It is invigorating and evokes energy.
Famous brands associated with orange include Amazon, Fanta, Gulf Oil, Harley-Davidson, MasterCard, Nickelodeon, Crush Orange, Timberland, HubSpot, HTML 5, Blogger, TNT, Mozilla Firefox, GSK, SoundCloud, Dunkin Donuts, Continental, EasyJet, Mirinda, and so forth.
Pink
Pink is sweet, young and vulnerable. We associate it with femininity at a subconscious level, making it one of the complex monochromatic palettes to use in advertising if the target market is anything but female. Lighter/Softer/Dusty shades of pink represent sentimentality, romance, tenderness, care, and calm. Bright/Medium Pinks symbolise energy, youthfulness, fun, excitement, strength and confidence. Often considered feminine, pink shades are versatile. Brands that employ pink can keep a sense of energy and cheer blended with a perception of soothing calm. It is a feeling sometimes associated with sex and sexuality. It is thought to be calming and associated with love, kindness, and femininity. Many people immediately associate it with all things feminine and girly. It might also evoke romance and holidays such as Valentine’s Day. Depending on the shade, pink can say a few different things about a brand in psychology. It can evoke feelings of fun and youthfulness, while lighter shades are more romantic and delicate.
Famous brands associated with pink include LG, T Mobile, Haier, Johnson & Johnson, Lyft, Cosmopolitan, Barbie, Mary Kay, Victoria’s Secret, and so forth.
Black
Black is neutral. We often use it to “stabilise” or subdue more vibrant colours that risk being overpowering. Because of these stabilising properties, black can feel powerful. We can associate black with being elegant, formal, slick, and modern. It evokes power, strength, stability, luxury, elegance, sophistication. Using black for selling and marketing to the high-end youth market, including music-related businesses, is groundbreaking and trendy. Black. It’s the colour associated with power, elegance, magic and fear. We associate it with impulse buyers. Black is risky to use in marketing, but some have done it successfully. Black is most regarded for its very functional design aesthetic. It’s often used in situations and content where high-contrast and legibility are the most critical factors. Black is a powerful choice to include in branding. We have traditionally seen black as a symbol of professionalism and seriousness. However, it can also elicit feelings of elegance and substance. Therefore, it is very versatile for your content and other marketing materials.
Famous brands associated with black include Apple, Adidas, Prada, Sony, L’Oréal, Louis Vuitton, Nike, Coach, Gillette, The New York Times, Calvin Klein, Mont Blanc, Mobil, Dior, Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent, Wikipedia, ABC, Bently, Mercedes Benz, World Wildlife Fund and so forth.
Sources: Oberlo, Smallbiztrends & Coschedule
The infographic below contains design principles and design tips to will help you pick out the right colours for your content to convey the right message you intend to your consumers.
Using colouring in marketing, decoration, communication, and symbolism is an integral part of human culture. Click To TweetColours in Marketing
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Conclusion
Mauco Enterprises appreciates how important colouring is in marketing your business. So, we encourage our clients to pay attention to the colours they use in their content and other marketing collaterals.
Pay attention to the colouring your marketing agency or freelance designer uses for your corporate branding, product packaging, your advertising materials, and your office space and decor. The message your corporate colours send can affect your marketing efforts.
What colour scheme do you use in your logo, marketing materials etc. and what’s its impact on your marketing? Let us know on Twitter @mauconline or @ademolaabimbola.
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Updated in March 2021
