Marketing Information

Here is a brief overview of marketing materials for artists that I have put together. I am trying to get it more finished and learn more so please post comments and send friends here:-) Thanks!!!! Tina

Websites: There are a number of providers that offer templates and hosting services. The most popular seems to be Homestead. I used them initially but was never happy with the layout and the way that you loaded and viewed images. I did some searching and found a number of other services and eventually came across bigblackbag. The nice thing about their services is that they are specifically geared to showcasing artists work and have nice clean, easy to use templates. They offer copyright protection and it's very easy to load images and information and pricing. It costs about $20 a month for the basic package and they have so far been very responsive and helpful regarding questions I have had, you can upgrade and personalize as well. They can also set you up with system that shows you where traffic to your site is coming from. It is important to update websites frequently so that people come back to them frequently as well. My friend Yuko is a genius at this. Of course if you can design your own that is still the best way to go:-)

Blogs: If you don't want to spend the money on a website at least get a blog. Blogspot is free and insanely easy to use. It can give you an immediate internet presence as a stopgap until you get a website up. You can also use it like I do (here) to talk about your work in a more relaxed forum than a website really allows. People can make comments, which gives you feedback, sometimes from completely random sources. If you decide to blog, try and post at least once a week. If you get into it and develop a following a blog can also generate revenue. A lot of daily painters use blogs instead of websites because they are so easy.

Prints: You might want to consider prints of some of your designs. Imagekind makes it super easy to offer giclee prints of your work without any real work on your part other than uploading images. After that, if people want them they can go directly to Imagekind and order and then Image Kind pays you. People can choose any size image and you can also get notecards from them, I might do Christmas Cards this year through them. They do require very high resolution photographs which can be a little tricky if you aren't so great at shooting your own work or have a high definition scanner. People can become Fans of your work here as well and offer comments on your work.

Advertising: Facebook is a great way to advertise. You can direct your ads to whomever you want (based on demographics, interests, gender, workplace, whatever) and you only pay if someone views your ad, which is called Pay Per Click. You set a daily limit as to how much you want to spend and then you determine the timeline you want to run the advertisement...for a day, a week, indefinitely. You also might consider setting up a Facebook Fan Page, my friend John Kraft directs a lot of his advertisements toward his fan page, the thinking being that a person might like your stuff but not be ready to commit to buying right away and yet might join your fan page, which effectively gets them on your mailing list and the opportunity for a future sale. Google Adwords runs on the same basic concept as Facebook and they have just announced they are making their advertisement capabilities more powerful to allow you to target people based on their internet searches. A bit scary for privacy nuts but a great tool for us. I am happy with Facebook and John (whose opinion I trust) seems to think FB is a better platform. 90% of my unique website hits come from FB. As an aside...I really don't think, as an artist, it is possible to have too many Facebook friends.

Postcards: I think for the commission work I am going for, postcards are probably a better bet than internet advertising, but I do think internet advertising for non-commission artwork is probably better. I just ordered 500 postcards from Overnightprints on sale with shipping for $47.00. It was fairly easy to set up. I am going to take them around to every possible place I can think of...vets, tack shops, high end pet shops, dog parks and keep some with me at all times to give to random people.

Newsletter: I think its great to send out the occasional (say quarterly) newsletter to your mailing list. It's a good reminder to people that you are there and they can forward the newsletter on to anyone they think might be interested. Keep it short, include a visual, make it personal, upbeat and fun. I got great feedback on my first one and am already planning my next one. Send it to everyone, even people you think might not be interested, I got some of my best feedback from people I hesitated to include. I think Sandy does this very well.

Etsy: I know a good number of people who are very positive about Etsy. I have looked at the shop a number of times but yet to set up an Etsy shop so can't speak much about it, but it might be worth looking into. I have tried Ebay but without any luck...probably won't try again.

Coroflot: I signed up with these guys a while ago at the advice of my friend Jenny Belin. It's basically an artist database, but she got a show out of it when someone saw her work there and contacted her. So it's worth a shot.

Auction: I've had a lot of success with a holiday auction I've done 2 years in a row now. Both shows sold everything. I consider it a good way to move inventory, expand a collector base and have fun:-) I show about 15 pieces and have a silent auction and of course wine and snacks. People enjoy the competitive nature of bidding, but you run the risk of selling work cheap, because you have to start the bidding low. The trick is to have as many people come as possible. Also consider asking a couple of friends to encourage people to bid on works and stear conversation to the paintings. Sounds a little sneaky, but you want the focus to be on the work not the party.

Charity: Try to donate work to relevant charities whenever possible. It's a good way to get your work out there were people can see it.

Video: Try to do some kind of video with your work...I have been referred to this site by a friend. I have yet to do anything with video but people who I respect in terms of marketing almost all have video features on their websites and FB pages.

I participated in something down in DC called ARTOMATIC. I thought it was a great concept and it would be interesting to see if something like that could work up here. It's basically a 6 week multi-media art show, held in empty office space. Costs to participate are kept down by donations and the fact that the artists who participate have to volunteer 15 hours as well. 60,000 people attended last year (and that's in DC!) and I got a connection to an Art Broker who specializes in corporate art collections, plus I sold a couple pieces.