Did you know your colour palette can affect how you connect with your audiences? There’s a reason why Pinterest and YouTube are red while Twitter and LinkedIn are blue. In fact, colour psychology is an important component of marketing and advertising campaigns. Blending content and design with the right use of colours allows the finished package to have an amazing effect.
Here are some basics about colour use in your digital marketing campaign:
Why it matters
A picture is worth more than a thousand words, but colours are what pictures are made of. There are things conveyed by a simple colour change that you can’t replicate with words. They speak to us on an emotional level and are more effective at persuasion.
Specific colours can make lasting impressions and help focus your audience’s attention to calls-to-action and turn an impression into a conversion. Colour is cited as the primary reason for choosing a product among 85% of consumers. In addition, visual design is usually the most important aspect of a website, and colour selection is the biggest contributing factor.
The effect of colours
Each colour has its own associations that you can make use of to build your digital marketing strategy and develop sales materials. We’ll cover which colours evoke which emotion; this should help you figure out how to best implement them to reach your marketing objectives.
Red
Red is fiery and attention-grabbing. As a vibrant and hot colour, it’s often associated with energy, love, warmth, anger, lust, passion, danger, and confidence. It’s best used to convey a sense of urgency as it’s been proved to increase a viewers’ heart rate and metabolism. People tend to react more forcefully when exposed to red because of its tie to danger and immediate needs.
Orange
Orange is very similar to red in that it stimulates enthusiasm and excitement, warmth, and high energy. It’s less flashy and immediate than red, making it a more grounded choice. Orange is associated with vitality, friendliness, seasonal changes and seasons (particularly autumn), youth, and affordability. It’s not a mistake to call it “budget red” as it conveys similar emotions and meanings but is slightly toned down.
Green
Green is a cool colour that’s great for mature, calm, and professional brands. It’s even known to lower heart rate and blood pressure, making the viewers feel more in control when it comes to their decisions.
Frequent associations with green are growth, finances, health, the environment (eco-friendliness), luck, balance, and so on.
Blue
In Western culture, blue is frequently a very popular choice. It emphasises trust and security, but also creativity. While it’s often considered masculine, that’s not a universal association. It’s similar to green in that it’s associated with calm, tranquillity, stability, and responsibility, but it has a more serious vibe.
Yellow
It’s not surprising that yellow blends orange and red. It evokes optimism and affordability; it’s a colour of cheer, sunshine, and happiness, but there’s an exciting undercurrent to it all. Since it’s easy to spot, it’s often used in safety markings.
However, yellow can be fatiguing on the eyes, so it’s not ideal if you want your users to focus on it for a long time.
How to use the colours
By now, you should have a good idea of which colours you want to use for your site or a specific digital marketing campaign. Start from your logo and ensure the theme flows from it and/or is in sync with your overall brand image. The colours don’t have to match, but you should ensure they complement or contrast each other in ways that provide the best effect. There are even handy tools that can help you with that.
Your call-to-action button is important, so you’ll want to make sure it stands out. Pick a colour that will pop and that matches your overall theme, and then look at the surroundings. White or another neutral colour is great, and it will ensure your CTA is distinct.
Keep it simple, and don’t be afraid to mix it up.
However, it’s important to keep in mind that there’s no one-size-fits-all formula. There are common groupings and suggestions, but you’ll have to do primary market research yourself, experiment on your own, and figure out what works best for your brand, your audience, and your campaign.
In addition:
Keep cultural variance in mind
Not all colours have the same meanings to different cultures or even different people in the same culture. That’s why it’s essential to take your target audience’s demographics into account when you’re choosing a colour scheme. While the colour of envy is green across the English-speaking world, it’s red in Poland and yellow in Germany.
To continue with yellow, it can have vulgar connotations in China; it’s a colour of death or mourning in many Latin American cultures; in the US, it’s the colour of cowardice; and in Japan, it’s associated with courage.
Test it
No plan survives contact with the enemy, and the same is true for marketing strategies and audiences. It’s very likely that you’ll have to make corrections and adjustments depending on how your audience responds. Sometimes, you can make changes just to see if something works better than your initial plan.
Of course, you shouldn’t make changes that are too drastic (unless you’re seriously underperforming), and you need to give each change enough time to breathe. So, monitor all the changes, compare the numbers and other variables, see what works best and then stick with it… until the time comes to change things up a bit. Don’t be afraid to experiment and try out new things.
Wrapping up
That should have given you a good understanding of how to use the psychology of colours for your digital marketing campaign. There’s more to it than just choosing what looks appealing to you. Your audience may have different tastes or come from different backgrounds. Make sure to do online market research and always keep an eye out for results. You may have to make changes to your strategy if testing shows it’s not having the effect you expected it to.
If you’d rather let someone else take care of it, the EBS Marketing team will be more than happy to help. As a full-suite digital and social marketing agency in the UK, we have a staff dedicated to making sure your brand gets the attention it deserves.
Get in touch, and we’ll help you grow!
