The psychology of colours in marketing serves as a huge emotional trigger for all types of audiences. By using different colours, tints, hues, shades, and tones, a brand can create a lasting impression within a few seconds of a prospect’s first visit to their webpage.
Colour psychology plays a major factor in amplifying the conversion rate of an offer. It does so by visually pursuing the visitor to perform an action. For example, a CTA button is always bright in colour and demands attention. It helps in highlighting the offer on the landing page and motivates the visitor into accepting an offer.
If you are a marketer looking to re-launch your brand with the right colours or a beginner looking for ways to make your offer more impactful, then the psychology of colours in marketing is a topic you should focus on.
In this article, we will discuss everything you need to know about colour psychology and help you in planning a visually pleasing experience for your audience.
What is the Meaning of Colour Psychology?
Colour psychology is the study of how colour can influence the behaviour and actions of humans. It explores the emotions a person feels when subjected to a particular colour or shade. For example, green is a colour widely found in nature, you will find many people associating it with peace and calm.
Marketers use this impact of colours on our consciousness to engage and influence their potential clients. The colours used by a brand can affect the way a lead perceives their services and products. Psychology of colours in marketing dives deep into how you can use colours to attract audience and make your brand memorable.
Let’s take the example of Slack advertisements:
Slack business communication platform that effectively uses different shades and tones of the colour purple to highlight its brand. The colour combination of purple and white, used by the platform is soothing to the eyes and makes the platform look professional.
How To Use the Colour Psychology Correctly in Marketing
The psychology of colour in marketing has numerous possibilities. So we have created a three-step process that you can use to colour your brand in a way that appeals to your audience and sets you apart from your competitors.
Step 1: Clear your basics
If you are someone who always wonders what are tints, tones, and shades, then this is the right time to learn their meaning.
- Tints
These colours are popularly known as pastels and present a smooth texture. Such colours are created by mixing white with an original colour like blue, red, or green.
- Tones
If you want to decrease the intensity of a colour, then adding grey to it is the best option. The resulting colour is a tone of the original colour.
- Shades
Shadeful colours are created by mixing a pure colour with black. Such colours are mostly dull in nature but have their own appeal.
Step 2: Contrasting Your Combo
A basic colour wheel looks like the picture below.
Contrasting is a crucial way of using two or three colours to appropriately complement what you are selling. By mixing and matching your colours in the background and front of your landing page or website, you can create a visual hierarchy that guides visitors towards the action you want them to take.
Different ways to get the perfect colour combos are:
- Monochromatic Combinations
If you want your brand to be represented by a single colour then a monochromatic combination is for you. You can use a colour’s various shades, tints, and tones to set the mood of your web pages and create a soothing sequence for your audience from a single colour.
- Complementary Combination
In complementary combos, you can choose two colours based on their location on the colour wheel. The opposite colours like, red and green, purple and yellow, are supposed to be taken as contrasting and then used for creating captivating content.
- Analogous Combination
For this combination, you can choose two or three colours that are adjacent to each other in the basic colour wheel. For example, you can club orange, red-orange, and yellow together.
- Shape Combination
Place a triangle at the centre of the basic colour wheel and its sides will point to three different colours. You can then use them for creating your advertisement. Likewise, you can use different shapes like squares or rectangles to get different colour combinations.
Step 3: Test Compatibility With Your Brand
After deciding which colours you want to use for your marketing, don’t forget to check whether they align with the message you want to convey to your audience. Below we have discussed some colours and their usual impact on the audience so that you can get a better understanding of different colours and their meanings.
Blue
Blue is a colour that is highly associated with water bodies and considered a calming colour. It represents :
- Trust
- Dependability
- Loyalty
Some of the famous brands using this colour are PayPal, Facebook, and Nokia.
Orange
Orange is a colour that projects the powerful energy of red and the joyful energy of yellow. It is also called a warm colour as it is sometimes associated with sunrise and sunset. This colour represents:
- Friendliness
- Motivation
- Positive Vibes
Some of the famous brands using this colour are Nickelodeon and Hubspot.
Yellow
Yellow is the most cheerful colour you can go for if you want to evoke the emotion of happiness in your visitors. This colour represents:
- Creativity
- Extroversion
- Summer
Yellow colour is found to be most effective when used alongside a darker colour. For example in one of our dark-themed landing page templates, we have a yellow and black colour combination.
Green
The green colour is all about nature. It is a colour that is soothing to the eyes, even in its pure form. The emotions represented by green colour are:
- Hope
- Freshness
- Growth
Companies like android and Xbox use the colour green.
Purple
Purple is the colour of royalty and is widely used by famous brands like Cadbury, Taco Bell, and Yahoo. It represents:
- Luxury
- Wealth
- Wisdom
Black
Black colour is considered:
- Mysterious
- Elegant
- Sophisticated
It gives a powerful yet simplistic effect to your page design. Famous brands that use black colour are Accenture, Puma, Nike.
White
White colour is not present in the basic colour wheel but it is omnipresent in all web pages. The reason behind it is the soothing effect it provides a page design. When whitespace is used appropriately on a page, it is bound to create clean yet lasting impressions. The emotions represented by the colour white are:
- Pure
- Innocent
- Clean
Red
The red colour represents strong emotions. It is the perfect colour to create urgency in your offer. The colour red represents:
- Courage
- Passion
- Energy
This colour is used by brands like Canon, Netflix, and Adobe.
Conclusion
The psychology of colours in marketing is not that hard to understand once you know the difference between tones and shades while also knowing which colour will represent the values of your brand the best.
By following our three-step process you will be able to come up with colours that are visually exciting and create a positive impact on your audience.
If you want tried and tested landing pages that are built on the basic principle of psychology of colour in marketing then head to our landing page template inventory to get yourself an impactful landing page.
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