Have you heard of the saying, ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’?
Similarly, the color tends to convey more than what is written on a page of simple text. Color is one of the main parts of your strategy that can make or break your marketing campaign.
Before we get into how color can help in taking your marketing to new heights, let’s learn more about color theory.
What is Color Theory?
In simple terms, color theory is the use of colors in various combinations to achieve a particular visual goal. Color theory can also be used to communicate intention and appeal to the audience in nuances, in combination with written text.
Designers and creators use a color wheel to mix and match colors. Having an appropriate color scheme in your design can impact a more significant number of your audience favorably.
Color theory means understanding the psychological impact of various colors on the psyche of the audience. Your marketing strategy should tastefully combine text with images and colors to have more impact.
Understanding color theory means making use of appropriate colors in the background, in any attachment to your marketing, in your logo, and even in the color of your text.
What Are the Main Criteria in Colors?
Colors are mainly split into primary, secondary, and tertiary colors. In the color wheel, primary colors are those that can’t be manufactured by mixing other colors. Red, blue, and yellow are primary colors. These are the three main colors used in various combinations to make a whole slew of different colors.
Secondary colors are produced by mixing any two primary colors. Red and yellow make orange, red and blue make purple, and blue and yellow make green. Mixing primary and secondary colors results in tertiary colors like vermillion, violet, teal, magenta, chartreuse, and amber.
The hues, tints, tones, and shades of various colors can be arrived at by mixing any color with either black, white, or both in different quantities.
How Can Color Theory Help in You Up Your Marketing Game?
A majority share of marketing efforts is concentrated on digital marketing. The different channels you can use to spread awareness about your marketing campaign are through social media, emails, SEO, and advertisements.
Colors impact viewers on an emotional level. There are thousands of good content available online. You have to ensure that what you are marketing stands out. For example, in a visual search engine like Pinterest, any search term gives hundreds, if not thousands of results. What you select for a closer loo depends on what attracted you visually.
Color matters a lot while crafting content. Your brand colors should be incorporated into every piece of content you create as part of the marketing efforts. Your brand logo should be included in every content. Different types of marketing will need a different use of colors to shine.
- Email Marketing
Suppose you are drafting an email to your audience. Depending on the tone of the conversation and the action you want the recipients to take, you should appropriately include the images and colors. When drafting an email with some specific intention, as is done in marketing, every aspect of your email matters. The language you use, the colors you use to emphasize certain aspects, and even the background color impact the outcome of the email.
Research shows that bright colors like an orange and dark blue appeal to those who are impulse buyers. These are the people who make the decision without putting much thought into it. Traditional buyers are those who think a lot before they take any decision. To these buyers, what will appeal more are the soft colors from a pastel color scheme.
- Social Media Marketing
If you are using images or any social platform like Instagram, the use of colors in the image determines if a person is going to stop and read through your post and engage with it.
In video marketing also, the use of colors spells what action you want the recipient to take. Red is a color more commonly used to denote passion, action, and excitement. An image or video that prompts the user to take action and make decisions, as seen in social messages, is usually peppered with the red color throughout.
Blue, on the other hand, is associated with calm and peace. The color is linked to positive and happy things like a blue sky, or a calm river. It is a cool color that soothes rather than aggravates. Many medical organizations, specifically hospitals and institutes dedicated to studying the heart, use blue in their marketing efforts.
How To Apply Color Theory to Marketing?
Before you apply your understanding of colors and how they can influence your audience through marketing, you should first understand your audience.
You must already be aware of your core audience or the demographic you want to target. You can do market research on your audience through social media and get an understanding of their preferences.
Trust will be built only when people believe in you and your message. Using those colors that are very specific to your brand is the best way to keep your memory alive in the audience’s mind. Big brands are recognizable immediately from their logo – for example, McDonald’s for their big yellow M, Facebook for its dark blue F, and Snapchat for its yellow and white.
Conclusion
While deciding on your marketing strategy, you need to focus on what message you will be sending across to your audience. Other than this, you will also need to decide which platform to focus your efforts on and how you will split the process between multiple platforms. Equal, if not more importance should be given to selecting the overall color scheme for your brand.
Rather than just choosing a random color to pop up your message, you need to think about the intention behind using each color. Choose colors that speak for you and provide your audience with the right message you want to convey.
