In today’s competitive world, only brands with the right marketing strategy can hope to climb the ladder of success. However, marketing has several aspects, all of which need to be optimised to gain desired results.
Today, let’s talk about the role of colour psychology in digital marketing and how it can help to define brand image and consumer response. Keep reading!
What is Colour Psychology?
Colour psychology refers to the study of how colours influence and affect human behaviours, decisions, and perceptions. While it may seem as simple as red denoting anger and blue denoting calm, in reality, there are actual physiological changes that take in reaction to different colours. For instance, red increases blood pressure, whereas blue has the opposite effect.
Therefore, colours play a pivotal role in setting one’s mood. Hence, in marketing, brands have to be vigilant about the colours they use for their branding in order to create the right impression among buyers.
How Colour Psychology Influences Consumer Behaviour?
These are the following ways in which colour influences consumer behaviour in the market:
- Brand awareness and recognition can increase by 80% due to its associated colours.
- 90% of first impressions of brands are influenced by colours.
- 93% of customers finalise whether to buy something or not based on nothing but visuals and colours.
Therefore, it is crystal clear that colours affect consumer behaviour to a large extent. Furthermore, a study conducted in 2006 shows that consumers also assign more value to brands that incorporate the appropriate colours for what they are selling. Therefore, more than the colour itself, buyers are more appreciative of colours that correctly correlate with associated products.
How Does Colour Matter in Marketing?
As already mentioned, different colours evoke different emotions in humans. Hence, in marketing, brands use a single colour or combination of different colours to convey their brand personality. Here is what each colour says about a business:
- Purple: Purple is a colour often associated with royalty and nobles. Therefore, brands that use this colour in their marketing campaigns come off as superior, sophisticated, and wealthy. Additionally, purple is also associated with femininity; hence, several brands use purple for women-specific campaigns in order to appeal to a female audience.
- Blue: Blue is an exceptionally popular colour, primarily due to its calming nature. This colour gives rise to feelings like trust, security, wisdom, and strength. Hence, brands can use blue to convey their reliability to their buyers.
- Red: While red could denote anger and aggression, in a more positive sense, this colour is associated with passion, boldness, excitement, and power. Therefore, when used in the right context, red can spread a sense of spiritedness among buyers and attract them to a brand.
- Pink: While pink may seem like a symbol of femininity, in reality, it can also stand for quirky, creative, or rebellious vibes. This is why a lot of brands use bold pink branding to stand out and leave an impression.
- Orange: This bright colour is perfect for conveying courage, confidence, and friendliness. This is why a lot of non-corporate brands stick to orange symbols and images. Additionally, the colour orange also elicits a feeling of warmth due to its association with the sun. Hence, quirky brands can use this colour to convey the nature of their business.
- Green: Green is the ideal colour to represent life. It is a symbol of prosperity, health, nature, hope, and so on. Hence, most eco-friendly, healthy food or lifestyle brands choose this colour to represent their beliefs.
- Yellow: Yellow symbolises cheerfulness and happiness. It exudes a sense of positivity; therefore, brands use yellow to associate their names with warmth and delight.
- White: In today’s time, less is more. Hence, if a brand is aiming for simplistic and minimalist vibes, it opts for white branding. The versatility of white makes it easy to use in any context and helps make a chic impression.
- Black: Last but not least, one of the staple colours in any marketing campaign is black. This colour conveys a sense of elegance and luxury, making it constant in several high-end brands. However, black is often avoided in certain industries, like health and pharmaceuticals, due to its association with mourning and death.
How To Get Started with Colour Psychology?
Here are ways in which you can use colour psychology strategically to improve your brand image:
- Take Inspiration: If you are unsure about how to start setting up your colour palette, you can take inspiration from your competitive brands or companies who are in the same market segment as you. While you should definitely not company any brand’s entire colour palette, this initial research can help you apply a colour scheme to your brand as well.
- Tap Into Your Brand’s Emotion: Every brand aims to convey a specific emotion among its buyers. Therefore, you should first understand what emotion you are trying to elicit among your buyers. Subsequently, you can use the associated colours to create your brand image.
- Keep Cultural Contexts in Mind: Not every culture associates any particular colour with the same set of attributes. For instance, in Western cultures, red could stand for love, but in Indian culture, it is more related to power. Hence, change the visuals of your marketing campaigns accordingly.
- Run Tests: You can deploy A/B testing to evaluate which colour palette works better for your brand. This will further assist you in understanding how your audience perceives your brand and how you can improve your brand image.
- Remain Consistent: Post colour scheme selection for your business; it’s crucial to maintain consistency in your branding by sticking to it. This increases the likelihood that customers will remember your brand based on its colours.
Conclusion
To conclude, digital marketing has a lot of dimensions that need to be taken care of. One such dimension is colour psychology, which is critical in how well a brand will perform in the market. Therefore, if you want to establish your expertise in digital marketing, you must understand colour psychology.
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