How To Use Art Marketing To Create Awareness Of Your Art

Have you been wondering how to use Art Marketing so people find your art online?

The first art marketing secret I want to share with you is:

Don’t be afraid to try something new!

The second secret to art marketing is:

Marketing your art is NOT selling, it’s TELLING the world ABOUT your art.

Selling is accepting money for a piece of your beautiful, valuable art

So, what IS art marketing?

Marketing art is the activity an artist uses to make people aware that they are an artist and have art for sale

There are many types of art marketing, and  here are a few I’ve used over the past 20 years:

1. ✅ Email Newsletter Marketing
2. ✅ Website / Blog Post Marketing
3. ✅ Training Course Marketing
4. ✅ YouTube Marketing
5. ✅ Pinterest Board Marketing
6. High-quality Photography of my Art
7. Fabulously interesting descriptions of my Art
8. Facebook Post Marketing and Group Marketing
9. Amazon Marketing via Books and Magazine
10. Art Group Marketing – local groups who host exhibitions or markets throughout the year, where being part of a dedicated group of artists provides many benefits to each artist
11. Art Licensing where a photo of an artist’s work is used to adorn printed products like fabric/textiles, apparel/clothing and other items like tote bags and coffee mugs etc.

The TYPES of art marketing are varied, and it is up to the  artist to decide which ones to try.

Now you know WHAT to try, here’s WHAT to CREATE

We need to create some art marketing “assets” – I cal them assets because it’s like money in the bank 🙂

The assets I use are:

1. photos and images
2. 60-second YouTube #Shorts (tall videos)
3. other videos – square and wide/landscape
4. PDFs – my current  Art Portfolio presented in a pleasing way, or something helpful for my readers, tips about my art piece, or how to use it, hang it, display it — as long as it’s helpful, it’s a worthy asset 🙂
5. Podcasts – consider creating short audio files talking about the art, and publish for free online – I use Soundcloud, it’s quick and easy to add to a website, and share on social media.
6. book covers – I’ve created several artists books and have them on Amazon >>
7. I love using my artwork printed on items like cushion covers, notebooks, calendars and coffee mugs, which make great images for art marketing! (If this interests you, let me know – I’m thinking of creating a training course on how I do this.)

There are many more ways to create the assets to use for marketing, these are just a few of my favourites 🙂

An example of one of my art marketing videos

Why Tracking Art Marketing Results is essential!

Whichever types of marketing we try, we MUST track the results, for example:

1. how many monthly sales from YouTube?
2. how many monthly sales from my published books or my published magazines?
3. how many monthly sales from every single type of marketing?

WHY must we TRACK the marketing RESULTS?

The quickest answer is that if we don’t TRACK THE RESULTS of our marketing efforts, we will never know WHICH type of marketing is working the best.

Once we know WHICH TYPES of marketing are working the best, we don’t need to continue with the other types if they have had little or no results.

By tracking the results of our marketing efforts, we are honing in on exactly WHAT we need to KEEP DOING.

Simple when you understand why, isn’t it? 🙂

Examples of tracking

I use email marketing to keep in touch with followers, clients and customers.

Using email statistics, I can see:

1. IF an email was opened
2. IF someone clicked a link within the email
   1. if the link went to my website page
   2. if the link went to an Offer I made
   3. if the link went to a freebie download I offered, of great perceived value – at no cost to the reader
   4. if the link went to a Quiz or Questionnaire where I wanted to gather more information about an upcoming art product or service, or the quality of a current art product or service.

Using LINKS in email newsletters needs to be carefully considered:

• don’t add TOO MANY LINKS in each email
• making too many offers can be overwhelming to the reader
• use one or two links, but no more, in each Newsletter.

To keep track of all my sales, I use a free Google spreadsheet.

Each month I track:

• how MANY pieces of art have been sold
• where were they sold – YouTube? Amazon? My website? etc
• how many emails have I gathered from these sales? This is SUPER important!

What is the ONE main type of art marketing I recommend?

Hands down the best for me is EMAIL MARKETING.

Emails get delivered, and they keep your name visible in the inbox every month, or every week, or every fortnight – the frequency is up to the artist.

Compare this to the many hours many people spend on social media. Can you remember the last time you received an email name or sign-up from any one of the Instagrram or Facebook posts you’ve published?

In my humble opinion, many social media activities are basically a non-stop stream of social consciousness, filling everyone’s eyes but not capturing email names or making relevant connections to create a warm and inviting community.

How To Get Started With Art Marketing

Now that you know a bit more about what art marketing is, it’s time to try ONE type of marketing – dip a toe in, try something quick and easy:

• try it for a week, a fortnight, a month – whichever works for you
• TRACK the results after that week, fortnight or month
• how was it received? Did anyone sign up for anything or provide their email name? Or was a piece of art sold?
• Were you happy doing the marketing?
• Did you start to get ideas of other types of marketing you’d like to try? Fantastic!

When you’re ready, try a different marketing type, and track your results with this one too for at least a month – more is better, in fact keep tracking EVERY month.

You’ll know when you’re ready to try a new type of marketing, and over time you’ll work out which types you really enjoy – and which types bring the best results.

This gives you a starting point on which TYPES of art marketing to focus on.

Got any questions on How To Use Art Marketing?

I hope this all makes sense – you may need to reread it a few times, and make notes if that helps. Instead of this being a HUGE LIST of things to do – it’s just ONE thing.

1. make images of a piece of art
2. add your link ONTO the image
3. share that image to ONE of the following:
   1. in a Newsletter
   2. on Instagram
   3. on Facebook
   4. on X / Twitter
   5. on Pinterest
   6. in the email footer every time you send an email about your website
   7. choose the one or ones which you prefer, start small, post one thing each day, build up your art “marketing pieces” as images, perhaps try short videos, whatever feels easiest for you to do on the day.
4. now you’ve done ONE, share that image on another place on the list above (and track it)
5. if you’re feeling good about posting that image to TWO sites, consider posting it on others … THAT’s art marketing 😀

Please do get in touch and let me know if you’d like more explanation about anything I’ve mentioned above, I’d love to help you. Here are a couple of easy ways to reach out:

• contact me by writing an email
• contact me on Facebook
• contact me on Youtube
• send me a voicemail on my website – there is a long pink button on the right hand side of the screen 

Have a spectacular week painting on silk! I look forward to talking to you again soon.

Cheers

Teena Hughes in Australia xxx

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