The Importance of Colors In Marketing - 8 Amazing Choices

Colors In Marketing – Do They Make A Difference?

I’ve been doing marketing in one form or another for a few years now.   And I have Master degree in Internet Marketing from Full Sail University.  I don’t tell you that to impress you, rather give you a little bit of background on why I feel I am qualified to discuss colors in marketing on a blog that a few people might read every one in a while.

First, let me admit that while I am fully qualified to discuss matters of marketing, I am not a psychologist, nor have I ever played one on TV.

However, will a lot of research, and even more trial and error marketing I have picked up a bit about what makes people tick in my markets what my help you out when making color choices for your marketing.

Specifically when if comes to creating your branding.

The Importance of Colors In Marketing

Rather than regurgitating a bunch of psycho babble or digging deep into which colors I think a business should leverage I thought I would take a different approach and let you know some of the ones I use and why.

That way you can look at the infographic I’ve provided (created by stealthblog.net) with an idea of how I look at colors and see if it works for your situation.

One thing I want to note is, my method may not work for the market.

Before you pick your colors, you will have to create a customer avatar and figure out their likes, dislikes, triggers, and problems.

Doing that before hand will almost always show you the direction your colors in marketing need to go.

My Favorite Colors

Two base colors that I start off for all of my brand marketing, blue and white.

White because I am working with professionals and providing a service to them.

I want my web properties to express the professionalism of my agency, and no other color does that quite like a white can.

There is a fine line though when dealing with this color that I have learned the hard way.

If you don’t have enough content on your site, it looks pretty bare, which in turn can give the impression that you don’t offer a lot of value.

However, once you get it right, you can’t go wrong with this color choice in my market.

My second primary color is blue.

I think the internet conditioned us to consider this color more trustworthy.

Think about it.

Almost all websites make their link colors blue.

We have taken that to be a trust signal.

Even if only subconsciously because the author is saying that they essentially vetted this link and it’s a good one.

It’s also why scammers are so successful even today when it comes to getting people to click links in phishing emails; the links are all blue.

You do have to be careful with this color in your design because you can overdo it and make your websites very hard to read.

So I like to sprinkle the color in here and there to highlight key messages or make an element pop more.

Secondary Colors

Yellow – I like using this color a lot in images and fonts.

The color is soft and doesn’t take over the document that you are working on.

It can make things a bit hard to read however so make sure you take that into consideration, especially when working with fonts.

I also suggest you don’t use it with red, that’s way over done and honestly, I think it looks terrible.

Red – I think we have all seen the headlines in blood red demanding that we discover some new and great method to make a billion dollars in 90 days selling some 99¢ service.

I think at one point every landing page and sales page started with a big red headline.

Today, however, marketers have caught on that red may not be the best choice anymore.

They have worked harder to make pages, including their headlines, seamlessly flow.

However, red still has some great uses and it works well to get the attention of your visitors when they are engrossed in your content.

I like to use red for a lot of call to action headlines when it makes sense.

For example, if you are are running a site that is really clean and uses a lot of white, use red in your content to highlight a newsletter signup form for instance.

It makes it really hard for people to not see.

Green – Green is a pretty versatile color.

I like to use a more “highlighter” green color because it really expresses excitement.

My car is Mopar Sublime green, I love that car.

Black – Most fonts are black on the web because it’s just easier to read.

However, when using it in a logo for instance I would recommend using it for borders or perhaps for the color of a center point object.

You want to be very specific with this color and intended purpose of the element that you using it with.

Also, black sites are pretty much dead unless you already have an established brand and community around it.

So don’t make one with this as it’s base color.

Final Thoughts on Colors in Marketing

Your market and customer avatar are going to tell you which colors you should be focusing on with your colors.

That information will also drive your overall website design choices.

And as one final piece of advice, have fun with your colors and test.  You never know you may find a color combination that works so well your brand really takes off.

The Importance of Colors In Marketing - 8 Amazing Choices