Last Halloween, I wrote an article about the Trick or Treat method for attracting and keeping customers. In a nutshell, it was about ways to treat your customers very well, so they will want to come back next year (or next month) to get some more of what you’ve got, just the way kids do on Halloween!

This year, it occurred to me that there is another Halloween themed tip I can give you. I call this one:

“Orange and Black is only for Halloween”, and it’s about the colours to use in your advertising.

The idea is this: some colours or colour combinations are automatically associated with certain things.

Let’s face it—as soon as you see ANYTHING orange and black, you think of Halloween, right?

Another such common combination is green and red—that means Christmas.

Those two colour combinations scream their respective holidays. So using them in your ads is generally a bad idea—unless it’s actually Halloween or Christmas!

So, what colours should you use in your ads? Well, it turns out there are lots of opinions on that.

But it essentially boils down to 3 things.

1. Who your target audience is

2. What your product is

3. Where you are advertising

Who your target audience is

Different types of people tend to like different colours. For example, women tend to like pinks, purples, or pastels, whereas men tend to prefer blues, greens, or grays. So, simple logic says that if your target audience is men, you don’t want to use pink or purple—most men just don’t connect with those colours.

Always keep your target audience in mind when choosing ad colours. An oft-cited study by Joe Hallock tells us the following about people’s favorite colors.

Interesting to note that blue, green and red are all popular among both men and women. But while purple is liked by 23% of women, 0% of men liked it! That doesn’t mean these are the only colours you should use in your ads. However, common sense would seem to indicate that using purple when your target audience is male probably isn’t a good idea.

Brown and orange are the top two least favourite colours for both men and women, and purple shows up again, this time as a commonly disliked color for men.

What your product is

You want the colours you choose for your advertising to match the type of product or service you sell. For example, if you are a sports trainer for men who are serious about weightlifting, then you need to choose colours that match that sport. Pink is out—it would subconsciously send the message that your product is feminine, or for women. That would turn most men off. Instead, you would be better off with blue, or green, or even black.

The idea is that certain colours evoke certain emotions. You want to make sure the colours you choose evoke the emotions you want people seeing your ad to feel about you/your product.

I’ve written previously about what emotions different colours evoke. Here is a quick summary to remind you.

Where you are advertising

Another thing to keep in mind is the location that you will be advertising in. That’s because you want your ads to stand out, to be noticed. Let’s take Facebook ads as an example. It is a generally accepted principle that when you advertise on Facebook you don’t want to use blue. That’s because the base colours Facebook uses are already blue, so an ad that is primarily blue may not stand out enough to be noticed.

Similarly, if your ad is seen in competition with other ads, (let’s say in a magazine) then using a colour that stands out from the competition may be a good tactic. For example, many accountants use blue. But if you are an accountant and also use blue, your ad may not stand out from all the others. So using another color might be a tactic to try.

So, just what does all this colour theory mean for you? Well, it’s something you want to keep in mind when you are creating ads (that includes choosing yor company’s brand colours).

I recommend that, when you create your own ads, you keep in mind each of the three factors I’ve discussed today (your audience, the type of product you have, where you advertise). Any one of these on it’s own is just part of the picture. Let’s look at an example to illustrate what I mean.

Let’s say you are an esthetician. Most of your target audience would be women, and women’s favourite colours are:

· Blue

· Purple

· Green

· Red

So you might want to consider using one of those 4 colours in your ad.

However, let’s look at the type of product you sell: esthetics. Now think about how you would want people reading your ad to feel:

· Soothed

· Contented

· Calmed/at peace

· Luxurious

The colours that evoke those feelings are:

· Green

· Purple

· Pink

Green appears in this list as well as the previous one, so perhaps that might be a good colour choice. Or, you may decide that the second list trumps the first, and you go with pink.

The point is that you want to think carefully about which colours you choose for your ads, and use ones that make sense.

Last of all, make sure your colour choice will stand out wherever you choose to run your ad. If every other esthetician in your area uses pink, then perhaps you want to use purple or green instead.

A few closing pointers.

I have just a few other random thoughts on the topic to add.

· Bright blue is supposedly the most noticeable colour, and therefore is often used in signs and online buttons.

· Advertisers often experiment with colour, running the exact same ad, just in different colours, to see which performs better. They then continue to advertise with the winner.

· Orange and black is so strongly associated with Halloween that you probably shouldn’t use it (unless it’s actually Halloween!) Purple together with green is also now associated with halloween (or monsters in general), so you should probably avoid using that combination as well. The same goes for green and red, or green, white, and red (Christmas).

That’s it for today’s article.

Happy orange and black day!

Orange and black are only for Halloween