by Becky Sciullo | Apr 23, 2021 | Audience
If You’re Selling to Everyone, You’re Selling to No One.
If you’ve ever worked in sales, you might have heard the adage, “If you’re selling to everyone, you’re selling to no one.” This is true with just about every product, including your art. In Build a Dynamic Web Presence, I stress the importance of making sure you are identifying a target audience for your artwork. This step is critical in setting up your art marketing system.
Helping The Bluegrass Painter was pretty easy as far as an audience goes. But, that is not always the case. Finding an audience comes easier to some artists than others. This is one of my favorite things to help artists figure out. While there are many different tactics and strategies that you can do to find your audience, here is an overview of the process that we go through.
How to Find an Audience For Your Art
Step 1 – Assess Where You Are
Take an honest review of your current situation. This assessment includes everything from the kind of art you create to who has purchased work in the past. Other things to consider would be what people have told you about your work. Does it elicit emotion? Does it speak to them? What does it say? All of these things are part of the assessment.
Step 2 – Do Your Research
Once you take an assessment, you start to consider who might be attracted to your work based on this information. Then, you do some research which can be as easy as doing a Google search.
Step 3 – Experiment with a purpose.
Based upon what you’ve learned in Steps One and Two, start to take action. Try something. Experiment with a purpose means that you are taking action based upon what you’ve learned. But, you’re not quite sure what the results will be. It’s okay to try, and it’s okay if it doesn’t work. Guaranteed, you will learn something in the process.
Step 4 – Build upon what you learn.
Did the experiment work? Great, do more of it. If it didn’t work – why not? What can you do differently next time?
Do this process repeatedly until you start to identify the places that might fit to show you work and the people who might love it.
Get Help Finding Your Audience
If you’d like more information about finding your audience, join my email newsletter here.
by Becky Sciullo | Apr 19, 2021 | Learning
Here are some marketing ideas for your Monday Morning.
Five Art Marketing Ideas
1 – Block out one hour a week for brainstorming ideas to market your art.
2 – If you’re holding or exhibiting at a live event, encourage visitors and purchases by announcing in advance that you are offering a discount or a giveaway to attendees.
3 – Increase social media engagement by asking questions.
4 – Gumroad is another option for fan funding.
5 – In a world where people receive everything electronically, don’t give up on sending real handwritten notes to say thank you and relay other messages of appreciation.
Monday Morning Marketing Ideas is a weekly blog post series to offer ideas that you might use in your business. Thoughts provided cover a wide variety of medium and marketing methods. Some may seem a little crazy. Others, you might say, now why didn’t I think of that? These are simply ideas that pop into my head or come across my desk as I work through the week. I don’t always have time to write an entire blog post on the subject, but I thought they might be worth sharing.
For even more ideas and information, join my weekly newsletter here.
by Becky Sciullo | Apr 16, 2021 | Blogging, I Heart Blogs
Blogs I 
is a series focused on artist blogs worth loving.
Gurney Journey is a blog by James Gurney, the creator of the illustrated book series Dinotopia.
Why you will this blog.
It is consistent with daily posts. That is a huge feat and a personal goal I am far from achieving.
Full of highly detailed and useful information to help readers, particularly for his audience of illustrators, plein-air painters, sketchers, comic artists, animators, art students and writers. .
He provides engaging content for those who are not artists but consider themselves to be art appreciators. You will find interesting posts, giving a unique perspective as in John Singer Sargent at San Vigilio.
This sidebar makes it easy to find what interests you.
He produces great videos.
Go check it out. I think you’ll like it.
Do you have a blog that you’d like me to consider for I Heart Blogs? Drop me a line at becky@artisan-advantage.com.
by Becky Sciullo | Apr 12, 2021 | Artist Blogging 101, Artist Websites, Learning
Here are some marketing ideas for your Monday Morning
Six Art Marketing Ideas
1 – Write a blog post about your past year. How did the pandemic affect your art and your business? Have you learned or gained anything during this time? Is it something you feel comfortable sharing? Several artists that I follow have shared this through a blog post or email newsletter, and I appreciated hearing from them on this. Do the same if you feel moved to do so for your audience.
2 – If you use WordPress, install the free plug-in Yoast SEO to help you optimize your site and posts for search with the best keywords. I use the free version and LOVE this tool.
3 – Also, on the subject of search, if you have a presence on Etsy, drive traffic to your shop by using the keywords feature in your product profiles.
4 – Mother’s Day is coming up and it’s one of the biggest gifting holidays. Can you market your art around this holiday?
5 – Consider planning your marketing content six to twelve months in advance. Think about the seasonal opportunities and events that will be coming up over the coming year and add them to your plan. This activity will make the process of creating content easier as your year progresses.
6 – Avoid “art speak” in your communications. Readers want to understand all about you and your work. The best way to do that for the largest audience is to present it in simple terms.
Get More Art Marketing Help
Would you like weekly updates with information like this to help your art business? Sign up for my mailing list here.
by Becky Sciullo | Apr 9, 2021 | Artisan Advantage Book Club, Learning
The best laid plans sometimes get off track. The good news is that you can always get back on track. In this case, it’s with the Artisan Advantage Book Club.
The Artisan Advantage Book Club
If you’ve been reading this blog for a while or a long term subscriber to my newsletter, you might remember the Artisan Advantage Book Club. You might also remember that I posted in one of my weekly newsletters about how I had a very difficult time reading in 2020. With that struggle, I stopped reading my book club selection, The War of Art by Steven Pressfield.
I finally re-started this book, and am so glad that I did. It has really helped me to get focused.
This is not a new book, but it was on my reading list forever.
the War of Art
Here is an overview of the book taken from Goodreads.
Internationally bestselling author of Last of the Amazons, Gates of Fire, and Tides of War, Steven Pressfield delivers a guide to inspire and support those who struggle to express their creativity. Pressfield believes that “resistance” is the greatest enemy, and he offers many unique and helpful ways to overcome it.
Join the Book Club
Joining “the Club” just means that you commit to reading this book and seeing if you can find something useful to help you with your art business.
You could win a free book!
There have been some changes to the Book Club. Instead of randomly selecting a winner from my email list, I am going to offer a trivia contest in one of my weekly emails every month. The last book selection will be the source of the question. This gives you another reason to follow along with the Club!
If you’re not already subscribed, join my email newsletter here.
Do you have an idea for the book club? Share book suggestions with becky@artisan-advantage.com.
