Tag Archives: Artist Goals 2014

Targeting My Marketing Efforts + Free Worksheet

Nathaniel Spens Master Archer

“I shot an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where…” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Probably not a great marketing strategy!

Marketing takes a lot of time, effort and money but you probably already knew that. You need to be as efficient as possible in deciding “the what and to who you offer your art. Target marketing is matching up the right products with the right customers. The opposite of target marketing has been called Shotgun Marketing. Shotgun marketing has its applications but probably not as a basic marketing strategy for your art business.

The first step in target marketing is to define categories to describe what you are selling (your product list). Next define the categories or segments that best describe your customers or prospects (your customer group list. Once you have matched the right product with the right customer group you can then begin to develop effective marketing strategies for each combination – this is why it is called “Target Marketing”.

In this article I will show you how to develop your customer and product lists and how to put them together so you can start to prioritize and plan your marketing efforts.

Continue reading →

Artist Goals 2014 – Developing and Managing My Brand

Creatives and Business Cattle Branding

Branding is for cattle. Building your brand is what you do!

Ok, your brand is one of the most important things in your art business and it will have a large impact on your overall business success. One thing about your brand is that other people will define it, so it’s imperative that you develop and manage its perception and reality.

Brands are everywhere, you have seen them: Coke, Pepsi, Nike, Ford, Mercedes, Dollar Store, Neiman Marcus, Oprah, Martha Stewart, PBS, Fox News, Prada, Walmart, Bic, Mount Blanc, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Louvre, and the list goes on and on. Each brand name has an experience and expectation associated with it and your brand does too!

Here are a few names that you might not associate with a brand: Picasso, Andy Warhol, Christo and Jeane-Claude, Henry Moore, Salvador Dali, Richard Avedon, Ansel Adams, Jasper Johns, Robert Mapplethorpe, Georgia O’Keefe, Jackson Pollock, Norman Rockwell, and the list goes on and on. Each name has an experience and expectation associated with it and your name does too!

The above examples are brands, some are businesses and some are more personal. For many artists it may be hard to separate your personal brand from your business brand – they may be in the same.

The traditional view of brand

Continue reading →

Artist Goals 2014 – Social Networking or Social Media?

Creatives and Business Social Networking vs Social Media

To get the most out of your online networks you will probably need to do a bit of both!

Ok, whether you are already using online social networks to promote your art business or you are just thinking about it, one of your goals should be to take a look at how you are using social your social networks. In this article we will take a look at two of the ways you can use your social networks – social networking and social media.

Artists and other creative professionals can benefit from using online social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and LinkedIn to build their brand and grow their business. These tools can help you expand your business reach, keep in touch with customers and prospects, and grow your bottom line.

Many artists are using some form of online tools with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest being the most popular. There are a multitude of networks that you should consider but keep in mind that you need to be in the places where you are likely to find the people you are looking for. Some networks skew more towards women than say men. Others may skew more toward different age groups and interests. Some networks are growing and others are in decline. You need to be sure that the social networks you participate in are where your customers and prospects can likely be found.

Social Networking vs. Social Media

Social networking is not the same as social media. Social networking is building a network of contacts and interacting with them on a personal basis. Social media on the other hand is using your social network as an advertising or public relations tool or channel. The uses of social networking and social media are not mutually exclusive – in most cases you will want to use both. The big questions are how to employ each of these concepts and in just the right amounts.

Continue reading →

Artist Goals 2014 – Places to Advertise Your Art Business

Advertising Venues for Artists

It is getting harder and harder to find a place not touched by advertising…

OK, one of your goals for this year should be to take a look at where you are advertising your art business and make changes to suit your goals, strategies and budgets. Are there places where you should be advertising?

Advertising is where you pay to have your message displayed on a particular medium for a particular length of time at a cost that is known to you. The key word with advertising is that you “pay”. Advertising is not free and it is important that you have a well thought out strategy before embarking on any advertising effort or program as it can get quite expensive.

There are a lot of factors that go into having a successful advertising program. The tricky thing about advertising is that all of these factors need to be working in your favor – kind of like an engine running on all cylinders.

In this article I am going to take a look at one of these factors and provide you with some ideas about places or mediums to advertise your art business. There are more places to spend your advertising dollars than you have money to spend on advertising, so choose wisely.

Continue reading →