Engaging words and attractive images alone are not enough to help businesses achieve their goals. Colors play a crucial role in how potential customers perceive brands. Therefore, businesses can highly benefit from the psychology of color in their marketing strategy to connect with their target audience.
Colors are more than just visual aid. They create first impressions and convey feelings and emotions that play a significant role in driving conversions.
In this article, we’ll explain what color psychology is and why it’s important.
What is Color Psychology?
Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung who outlined 12 brand archetypes believed that humans have a special connection with colors. He considered ‘colors the mother tongue of the subconscious’ and believed that they help people process and store details easily. In branding and marketing, the psychology of color is focused on how colors impact the customer’s impressions of a brand as well as how it affects their buying decisions by influencing their mind and behavior.
The aim is to answer whether the color of a product makes us choose one item over another? Does the color of an icon or call-to-action (CTA) button make it more likely to click on?
A study called ‘The impact of color in marketing’ revealed that 90% of customers judge products and make decisions based on color alone. This statistic is significant and emphasizes the necessity for business owners, advertisers, and designers to be aware of this. Choosing colors can either make or break their business venture.
Why is the Psychology of Color Important in Marketing and Branding?
Colors inspire emotions, and it’s not any different when it comes to selecting colors for your business. In the sea of content marketing, color can help your business stand out. Through color, you’ll get your audience to see and feel exactly what you want them to. So, it can help them perceive the brand the way you aim to be recognized.
The hues you choose can affect the usability and whether the content is readable or not. As an example, think of the last product that you purchased from a brand.
Do you remember the color of the logo? Probably yes, and surprisingly, you’ll remember the color more than the product or price itself. Hence, the psychology of color is helpful for brands to attract and connect to their ideal customers. It also increases brand recognition. The brand has literally only got a few seconds to sell itself. So, choosing the right color with the right design is crucial.
However, a poor color selection can damage the impact of your message. No matter how amazing your CTA is if you choose the wrong color for, your content can be less readable, hard for your audience to understand, or ignored altogether. This is why companies are always A/B testing the colors of things like banner ads and call-to-action (CTA) buttons.
A study of the CTA button color concluded that a red CTA button outperformed a green one by 21% when everything on the page remained the same. This does not mean that small businesses should blindly switch their CTA button color. Instead, you should test colors on your website with your audience to learn what works best.
Something as simple as a color switch can benefit your results and boost your conversion rates and sales.
The Human Perception of Color
The psychology of color is not as simple as it sounds. Some color perceptions are universal. For example, when people see doctors wearing a white lab coat, they instantly feel better cared for and safe. Imagine if the medical coat color changed to purple one day? It would cause a lot of confusion and insecurity among people. However, some colors can have different meanings that are dependent on our gender, cultural upbringing, location, and experiences. For example:
- In Asia, the color red is commonly associated with prosperity, whereas in western societies, it can represent passion or even danger.
- The color pink in Japan is associated with cherry blossoms, but in the USA, it is associated with ballet dancers and princesses.
- Brown in America is used during autumn to create a warm and inviting feeling (Thanksgiving) or to stir an appetite through chocolate commercials, but other cultures may use the color for a rugged appearance.
So, if your product or service is international, knowing these differences can help you chose the right brand colors for your business and better tailor your marketing efforts.
Conclusion
Businesses can benefit from having an understanding of the psychology of color in branding and marketing before choosing a brand color scheme. While many sectors have standard colors, you don’t always have to follow the rules.
Choose colors that represent what you want your brand to be or what you want your customers to feel based on their demographics.
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