Unlock Hidden $$$ In Your Campaigns With Colour (7)
Did you know there's a hidden weapon in the fight for higher CVRs lurking in every ad and landing page you make?
It can make your users trust you, prompt specific beliefs or emotions on a subconscious level, make them notice your ads or believe they're not ads at all.
What's this hidden weapon?
Colour.
It's very easy to choose colours for your ads and landers just based on personal taste or whatever happens to be selected in your Photoshop palette. But by learning some basic rules, you can turn colour into a powerful tool in your advertising arsenal.
What Colour Can Do For You
Colour acts on humans on a subsconscious level. We evolved to take instant note of colours and their significance - from the green of trees to the red of dangerous berries or snakes to the blue of the sky.
And that's bolstered by cultural significance. Because colour is so important to us it gets loaded with significance as a result of the society we live in - from the black worn by bankers (for the last 500 years or so in the West) to the green of money and the blue/pink dichotomy of gendered elements.
- Colour can prompt emotions. Yellow signals excitement. Red signals danger. Some shades of green or blue signal calm. The study of how colours cue us up to feel specific emotions is called colour theory, and it's tremendously powerful.
- Colour can make your users trust you. Colour's one of the strongest subconscious trust symbols because of its cultural significance. If the colour choices in a site match what we'd expect for what it's selling or offering, it appears more legitimate.
- Colour can make or break a smooth transition from ad to lander to offer. As I mentioned above, we react to colour on a subconscious level - and one of the things we use it for is pattern-matching. "Is this thing like the other thing?". If you have a smooth and consistent use of colour from your ad to your offer, your user is more likely to trust the overall flow.
- Colour can affect how the user percieves you as the author of an ad or offer.. A well-chosen group of colours can signal professionalism, which implies trustworthiness under a lot of circumstances. On the other hand, some colour choices - including breaking the "rules" of colour - can signal that you're an amateur, which can be very useful.
Colour Theory
Colour theory is the study of how colours affect us emotionally, and what colours we expect to be associated with professions, activities, and other elements of life - verticals, in other words!
For such an intimidating-sounding concept, it's actually very easy to use colour theory in your own campaigns. Simply take a look at the handy checklist of what various colours represent, and then incorporate the colours that are appropriate for what you want to achieve into your campaign.
For example, if you're running a sweepstake offer, you want people to be excited, you want them to take fast action, and you want them to believe that good things are possible.
Here are two potential ads for an iPhone sweepstake. What do they both make you think of? What emotional reaction do you have to them?
For most people, the leftmost one will be far more inviting. The right-side ad's colours, on the other hand, would work pretty well for an antivirus or security ad:
Here's a rough list of what each colour tends to be associated with. You can go into a lot more detail on this - if you want to know more, Google "Colour Theory".
- Black: Evil, darkness, fear. Also, though, tradition, security, and "old money".
- White: Purity, innocence, cleanliness. Minimalism. Simplicity and coolness - it's the colour of snow.
- Yellow: Happiness, warmth of the sun, activity, energy. Good things happening. Lightheartedness.
- Red: Danger, urgency, passion. It's the colour of blood, dangerous fruits, and sexual arousal.
- Orange: Warmth of the sun, youth, healthy food (think oranges). Enthusiasm and creativity.
- Blue: Calm, trustworthiness, cleanliness, depth. As a cold colour, not good for passion or sensation.
- Green: Nature, safety, healing. Duller green also is associated with money. The most restful colour for the eye - we have more green-receptor cones than any other primary colour. Some shades of green can make people feel ill, though - watch out!
- Purple: Nobility, luxury, wealth. Also mystery and magic.
Complementary Colours
We don't just have to consider individual colours, but also how they relate to each other.
You've probably had the experience where you designed something and the colours clashed horribly. It's an unpleasant experience on the eye, and we as humans tend to avoid unpleasant experiences, so most of the time it's not something you want in your ads and particularly not in your landers.
There are a lot of rules for creating complementary colour schemes, and they can get pretty in-depth. Fortunately, there's an app for that.
https://color.adobe.com is my go-to site for creating any colour scheme. Jump on there and a very user-friendly tool will let you start with a single colour and automatically create an entire colour scheme which should work well for whatever you design.
As a bonus, you can also explore other colour schemes that users have created and upvoted. That's a really powerful tool. For those of you who were at AWA - I used one of the most upvoted colour schemes on the site as the basis for the colour choices in my entire AWA presentation!
More Quick Colour Tips
Here are a few more quick tips on how to use colour in your campaigns:
- Check your ads on the site where they'll run. We're inserting our ads into other sites, most of the time. If you're running on Facebook, POF or another single-source platform, or if you know you'll be running on a single large placement, take the time to screen-capture that site and Photoshop your ads onto their ad blocks to check how they look. This will help you avoid two major problems - 1), looking unintentionally ugly, and 2) blending in or becoming unremarkable.
- Test a colour border. Borders in contrasting colours are excellent ways to make an ad catch the eye more. It's nearly always worth testing a border on any ad you're running, and you can also use them to break up your landing page or highlight specific parts.
- Clashing isn't ALWAYS bad. Clashing colours are ugly and unpleasant on the eye, but they also draw attention. They're a good way of differentiating yourself from other ads, too, so if you'll be one of a number of ads on a page they may be worth testing. Remember - good design is nice, but money is nicer. See this great case study from POF...
- If in doubt, match the offer. As I mentioned above, colour changes scare people. If you possibly can, try to match the colour scheme of the offer at least partially in your lander, and preferably in your ad as well. This single trick can do a lot to reduce click drop-off between ad and offer.
- These are guidelines, not rules. If there's one thing AM teaches you, it's that humans are complicated. Good design promotes trust, but sometimes clashing design can outperform it anyway. Know the theory of colour, but don't follow it slavishly - test stuff that doesn't fit within the rules from time to time, just in case it outperforms.
And that's it for now! Next week I'll look at a different aspect of design-in-affiliate-marketing: typography. After all, great design doesn't matter much if your prospects can't read the ad...
I hope that was helpful! If you have any comments, suggestions, or questions, stick 'em below!
YES! Love anything to do with how the mind works. Would be good to get some more discussion going on the psychology of ads around here. Start a little campaign to raise funds for a university to do research into how subjects react to various ad types.
Reminds me of this infographic.
@bobliu - Damn, that's a great infographic. REALLY useful when trying to decide core colours for a campaign.
Damn Ya beat me to it Bobliu! Great post here though.
I wrote an article touching on some relevant stuff that I have on Linkedin, and one or two other places. Touches again on colour, feelings in the buyer and how colour affects your own brand: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140...mp-reader-card
This is great stuff, indeed, and it does work. I was planning on writing a post on it as well but you beat me to it Caurmen! Great post!
Understading colour is crucial and I can confirm this from my own campaigns and the countless client designs I've made.
"These are guidelines, not rules. If there's one thing AM teaches you, it's that humans are complicated. Good design promotes trust, but sometimes clashing design can outperform it anyway. Know the theory of colour, but don't follow it slavishly - test stuff that doesn't fit within the rules from time to time, just in case it outperforms." - This is also spot on! I always encourage breaking these unwritten rules, or guidelines.
hi Caurmen,
i am really satisfied with the way you explored about the 13 tips to advertise your add in the best way, guide me some more things, which can help me out.
this is a great way to promote business.
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