This is an article “How Colors Affect the Mind” by Marc Warren
Why is color important in content marketing? Because it serves as your audience’s emotional cue that can influence them to buy your product or pledge loyalty to your brand. Plus, it can help you stand out in a sea of competition. One of the first things your target audience will see when they visit your website are probably the colors that go along with your headlines. Instantly, these colors will stir their emotions and feelings, but that all depends on how your artist lays out your landing page. If it’s a hit, it can spell good returns for your business.
Colors play a huge role in your branding and they can either entice or repel your audience. This is why color psychology is essential in laying down your art and copy strategies. It is an integral part of your content that can help you send your message across effectively and trigger a call to action.
So, how does color affect the minds of your customers? It’s actually pretty simple.
Basic color theory
Color theory is undoubtedly an essential knowledge for marketing practitioners. Knowing the basics of your primary, secondary, tertiary, and pure or saturated colors will help you determine which ones to use in your marketing collaterals in terms of making a good impression on your target audience. Primary colors (red, yellow, blue) are usually preferred base colors for any visual that aims to represent reality. Of course, these primary colors change in print (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) and for screens (red, green, blue). But basically, from these colors, you create your secondary and tertiary colors, sans the hints of white, black, or a third color, you get your bright pure colors.
Color in marketing
Companies do a lot of research in figuring out what design and colors they should use for logos and key visuals. This is because colors can influence people to the point that it can trigger hunger or cravings, make them feel good, calm or energize them, and even make them feel like a VIP.
Color psychology in marketing offers long-term benefits for businesses and continuously appeals to consumers’ emotions and thoughts, making them turn into loyal followers. Even though there is still no hard evidence that colors can have a truly defining impact on individuals (as we all react differently to various shades based on our unique experiences), colors have general triggers that most people respond to and can be widely used in marketing.
Color Combinations
By studying the color wheel, you can choose the right color combinations that best represent your brand in the form of logos that would appeal to your target audiences. These colors will also serve as your go-to shades and tones for your key visuals in making infographics, posters, or static materials. Try to keep things simple with a maximum of three colors, as people prefer visuals that are easy on the eyes over busy rainbow ads that are more appealing to kids. Keeping a limit to your use of colors also makes your written content stand out and easier to digest.
In choosing your color combinations, review what each color you pick represents in the emotional spectrum. For example, purple which is made up of red and blue is a cool hue that stimulates serenity and creativity, while warm colors such as yellow and orange can stimulate the appetite.
For monochromes, white connotes purity and cleanliness, and black can either be associated with power or mourning depending on how you use it.
Finding the right color combination can help you send the right message to your audience and establish a context that they can relate to which, in essence, is what color psychology is all about.