This is a guest post by Craig Robinson.
When creating marketplace ads to promote your brand and products on Facebook, the list of ways to obtain success is exceedingly long. Most tips you read touch on different ways to engage, different calls of action, different audiences to target for likes and overall fans, and a thousand other dos of the marketplace system.
That’s all approaching things from a marketer’s standpoint. But what about from a psychological standpoint?
Take the colors you’re using in your ads as a great example. Colors used can actually make or break your entire campaign. Although you may not realize it, people have a strong physiological response to different colors, and using the wrong combination of colors in your graphic-based ads can be a death sentence in Facebook marketing.
A Refresher Course on Colors
You probably learned a lot about colors early in your schooling, but a refresher course could never hurt. So let’s start out with the three basic colors: Red, blue and yellow. Now, of course, these are primary colors, with all other colors created by combining two or three of the primary colors.
For secondary colors, you have green, orange and violet. These brighter colors can be mixed with the primary colors to create the remaining set of colors, the tertiary colors. And of all the colors created by these combinations, you can reach a literal infinite number of colors by adjusting the value, saturation or hue of the colors selected.
This is obviously a quick summary of all colors and how to get there. And this is just the traditional model we learned at school. Today, many refer to the CYMC color model and the RGB color model. But whatever model we choose, the important aspect is how we feel when looking at them.
Good Examples to Use, Bad Examples to Avoid
Next up, we’ll go over color combinations and how a certain color may help or hurt your Marketplace ads.
Kids Products
Let’s say that you’re attempting to market your brand to kids or to their parents. Since it’s kid-specific, you need to play to a child’s choice of colors and use simple primary colors. Look at different Lego ads and even something like Transformers. You will notice very simple colors used. You want to avoid anything that’s overly bright and commanding.
Exciting Products
If you want your ad to evoke excitement, this is where brighter, bolder colors come into play. Using brighter shades of reds and greens and yellows make products feel fun. For a great example of this, just check out any popular ad for an ATV (All-Terrain Vehicle). You will see exciting colors, not bland or darker colors.
What you earn here in attention and lightness, however, you may lose in authority and seriousness.
An Authoritative Brand
Darker colors really bring power to mind. And the color black is also synonymous with clothes that give a slimming effect. This is why most adult fashion ads always use black or darker colors to promote their ads. For basic purposes though, just remember that black is really the color of power – and the same goes for any bold, dark color.
The clicks you’re attracting when choosing darker, more serious colors are often people interested in your brand and/or your opinion. They don’t expect to find a “funny video” or something along those lines.
This is of course good if you want a serious approach. But a lot of more people watch funny videos compared to reading in-depth analyses, so you might lose in numbers of clicks.
The “Green” Industry
Although you do see a lot of the color green with “green” products, environmentally-conscious people are also very earth-driven people, and thus earthy tones can help to sell an ad in this particular instance.
Avoid commanding or bright colors with any green-related ad. Keep things simple and earthy with the color scheme. Think L.L. Bean’s colors for inspiration.
Evoking Tranquility
If you’re trying to convey something calming, like a type of supplement to soothe anxiety, then you need a middle-of-the-road shade of blue. Blue is a color that really brings tranquility to mind. If you’re selling a product that needs to be seen in a calm light, avoid bright colors or bold colors and keep things hovering around neutral blue.
Obviously, colors aren’t the only thing you need to focus on with Marketplace ads on Facebook. However, there’s not nearly enough people who do focus on color at all, and they ultimately end up conveying the wrong message with their ads. Use this color information to help you create the right ad for the brand you’re promoting.
