Color Psychology in Marketing
The colors you use in your marketing and branding are essential. You’ll use them to create your logo, your website, your ads, and so much more—which means you shouldn’t take these choices lightly. Instead, you should strategically choose the colors you’ll use in your branding and marketing. How? The key is to understand color psychology and use the theory to your advantage.
What is color psychology?
It’s the theory that certain colors elicit a physical or emotional response, thereby shaping human behavior. It’s not quite as simple as seeing red and getting angry or seeing blue and feeling relaxed, but it’s close. Medical studies show that red is associated with increased blood pressure, and blue corresponds to decreased blood pressure.
Because of this effect on behavior, color can play a huge role in creating mood. According to Architectural Digest , this makes choosing the right paint colors essential to setting the tone for your home. Warm colors tend to be energizing, while cool colors tend to be calming.
The psychology of color has a similar effect when it comes to your branding and marketing strategies, which brings us to the next section.
The importance of color psychology in marketing
Color can play a huge role in marketing, whether you care about it or not. The colors you use in your branding, including your logo and other marketing collateral, evoke an emotional response in your audience, whether they realize it or not.
As mentioned in the Marketing Psychology Guide, we make decisions based on emotion, not logic.
Conclusion: You need to consider color psychology when building your brand and creating your campaigns.
How to Use Color Psychology to Improve Your Marketing:
Now that we’re clear on what color psychology is and how using the right or wrong colors can impact marketing, here’s how to use color psychology to make your marketing more effective.
Color Psychology in Marketing: Learn the Basics of Color Psychology
Knowing the basics can go a long way toward employing color psychology in your marketing. We’ve previously covered how red can evoke increased alertness or anxiety, while blue can have a negative calming effect. Here are some basic color associations to consider in your emotional advertising:
- Red: excitement, passion, anger, danger, action, anxiety, power.
- Orange: fun, friendliness, creativity, warmth, enthusiasm.
- Yellow: happiness, optimism, warning, joy, authenticity, enthusiasm.
- Green: youth, vitality, vitality, nature, growth, stability.
- Blue: calm, stability, depth, serenity, trust.
- Purple: royalty, luxury, romance, contemplation, tranquility.
Note how there are some overlaps. You’re not limited to just one color—or one tone of that color—for each emotion.
Focus on emotion first
Whether you’re rethinking your brand colors or deciding on a new billboard, you should start with the emotion you want your audience to feel. Should they respond with fear? Curiosity? Trust? Use these emotional ad copy examples for inspiration.
Once you know what your desired outcome is, make sure you choose the right color.
Take this example of an ad from the Lego campaign with the slogan “Create your own story.”
Lego Ad
The ad shows a Lego Darth Vader barbecue with Leia sitting in the sun hanging nearby. It’s a playful scene with these Star Wars characters, dropping them into a casual, fun setting to create a new story. It’s no wonder the background is orange – an open, inviting color that inspires creativity.
Get inspired by other brands
The best way to improve your use of color psychology is to pay attention to ads, websites, and brands and how colors make you feel. Check out the website of Bloomscape, an e-commerce manufacturer website targeting millennial and Gen Z consumers.
The forest green stripe and the stripe at the top of the toes mark the line between earthy and modern. Cream is a natural, homey accent that pairs well with light peach, a warm and innovative take on millennial pink. The variety of greens is offset by warm terracotta pots, plus touches of red and orange on the plants. This effect makes me want to water and care for my own plants, and maybe even buy a succulent or two.
Make it consistent with your brand
When SEO firm Reboot conducted a study on logo recognition, 78% of respondents were able to recall the logo’s primary color while only 43% were able to recall the company name.
If your audience remembers your brand by its color, you want to make sure it’s the same everywhere. That’s why keeping your colors consistent with your brand is so important, and the most successful brands understand this. Remember Dunkin Donuts rebranding to Dunkin a few years ago? All those images change, same old but iconic color choices.
Dunkin’ is a good example because their branding covers everything – orange, pink, brown, plus variations on those colors. It’s the multiple colors and shapes that (in most cases) prevent your brand from becoming flat or two-dimensional. This brings us to our next tip – give yourself the right palette to work with.
Create a brand color palette
You want to keep colors consistent in your marketing, but you don’t want to miss a single note. Worse, it can look unappealing. The solution is to have a color scheme to work with that allows for some variety but sets some standards.
So if you don’t already have a brand color palette, it’s time to create one.
Here are some common types of color palettes:
Analogous: Colors next to each other on the color wheel.
Complementary: Opposite colors that create high contrast.
Monochromatic: Different shades or hues of the same base color.
If you’re looking for some help coming up with your color palette or some inspiration, check out the free design tool Coolors . It has sample pallets and can automatically generate pallets based on your starting color or even a photograph.
