For Artists Who Feel Lost in the Art Marketing Maze. Research Your Way Out.
This week’s Art Is An Advantage video explains how research can help you ditch scattershot marketing approaches in the art marketing maze and find the perfect marketing tactics for your unique art style.
Weekly Video Recap
Use targeted research to find your way out of the maze and develop an effective marketing strategy for your work. Here are three examples:
1. Researching Audience
Who are your ideal collectors? Are they young, tech-savvy professionals who frequent online art marketplaces? Or seasoned collectors who value the experience of a traditional gallery setting? Or is there a niche you are targeting related to a cause or subject matter? Research demographics, artistic preferences, and buying habits to paint a clear picture of your target audience.
2. Finding Marketing Channels
Once you know who you’re looking for, determine where they spend their time online and offline. Are they active on specific social media platforms like Instagram or attending art fairs focused on a particular style? Research the channels most frequented by your target audience to maximize your reach.
3. What’s Going on in Your Space?
Research is about more than just your ideal collectors. Look at how successful artists in your style or medium are marketing themselves. What platforms do they use? How do they present their work online and offline? Analyzing successful strategies can offer valuable insights that you can use to adapt to your unique work.
Research for Your Art Marketing is an Ongoing Process
Remember, research is an ongoing process. As your audience grows and evolves, so should your marketing strategy. By dedicating time to research, you’ll gain a deep understanding of your target audience and the channels that resonate with them. This knowledge will transform your marketing efforts from a guessing game to a targeted, practical approach that gets your art seen by the right people.
Here are some marketing ideas for your Monday morning.
Seven Art Marketing Ideas
1 – If you offer an email newsletter sign-up on your website, make sure you send a welcome email when new subscribers join your list. Make an impression when they’ve just joined, and you and your work are top of mind.
3 – With all this marketing, don’t forget about your portfolio. A focused, organized, and up-to-date portfolio prepares you to present your work whenever asked. I love Artwork Archive for this purpose.
4 – Identify buying patterns with your customer base and organize your marketing efforts around these patterns.
5 – Are you looking for a way to create graphics or marketing materials with your art? Try Canva! I have zero graphic design skills and find it very easy to use:)
Monday Morning Marketing Ideas is a regular 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.
Here are some marketing ideas for your Monday morning.
Four art marketing ideas:
1 – Share your sketchbook images. People love to look at behind-the-scenes work such as this.
2 – Does your community have empty storefronts? Approach your local development agency or government to find out if there are opportunities for you to display your work.
3 – Will you be exhibiting at an upcoming fair or festival? Make sure to send an email informing people where they can find you – especially if it is a large event – give them the booth number and specific details on finding you. And, it doesn’t hurt to send it more than once.
Monday Morning Marketing Ideas is a regular 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.
Here are some marketing ideas for your Monday Morning.
Seven Art Marketing Ideas
1 – Set up an art loan program where people can make arrangements to rotate art and refresh their walls for a set monthly fee.
2 – Feature up to ten pieces of work in a collection in an Instagram carousel post.
3 – We spring clean our homes. Why not spring clean your business, ultimately making you more effective at marketing and selling your work. Step back and take care of some of those things that may have become cluttered or that you don’t deal with very often.
4 – Take your audience behind the scenes by sharing an insight into your process. Still images are great, but short videos are even better.
5 – Invite followers and readers to “ask me anything”. It’s an engaging way to open up a conversation with them and get insight into what your audience wants to hear from you.
6 – Use a mind-mapping tool like Mindmeister to help brainstorm ideas for anything from blog post ideas to finding an audience.
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.
Here are some marketing ideas for your Monday morning.
Five Art Marketing Ideas
1 – When strategizing about press releases – consider your college alumni magazine. Whether or not you went to the school for a fine arts degree, the information is still newsworthy, and your life experience has informed your work.
4 – Authority is something that may cause someone to purchase your work over that of another artist. Build your authority by making sure you don’t leave out important information on your website. Authority building information includes:
Your education.
Any awards you’ve received.
Classes you’ve taught.
Exhibitions that you’ve won.ar
Don’t worry if you are starting out and don’t have much to add to the list. Blogging regularly about your practice is another way to garner authority.
5 – Yes, artists are on TikTok. If you want to jump in, go here.
Here are some marketing ideas for your Monday morning.
Seven Art Marketing Ideas
1 – Consider an off-holiday flash sale for your work. Flash sales work great for impulse buys and to increase sales during slower times of the year. Choose a short time period, announce your flash sale on your site, and then through marketing channels such as your email list. You can select a specific body of work and even target a select group of clients for the sale. I ran a flash sale for Robert Yonke a few years ago, and we were able to sell some work that had previously not attracted much interest. Don’t sell inferior work that is not up to your usual quality, but instead, offer older work that you’d like to find a home for or a special series created just for the flash sale. If you don’t like the term flash sale, call it a limited-time-only sale.
2 – When strategizing about media outlets to send press releases, consider publications produced by vendors you use. Do you only use a particular company for a unique tool or material? Do they have a blog or email newsletter? Pitch them for a feature story about you and your work.
3 – Gain exposure for your work by submitting an article for consideration to art magazine websites like Ladder and Key.
5 – It’s almost April 1st and the start of a new quarter. When planning for your business, I like to use rolling quarters—no better time to start than now.
6 – If you use Instagram to market your art, make your account public so users can see your profile and content.
7 – When using Facebook to promote your art, set up a separate business page from your personal profile. Then, claim or create a recognizable URL, like www.facebook.com/artisanadvantage, rather than the randomly assigned numbers Facebook will assign you.
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