Marketing Ideas for Artists

Marketing Ideas for Artists by Teena Hughes

I’m always thinking about Marketing Ideas for Artists.

Today I was chatting with my artist friend Amy who is planning a Gallery Exhibition to open in about a year’s time.

There are three artists, and each one has come up with their own theme, and is painting six paintings each.

Amy (the organiser) had thought a 2-3 week exhibition might be a great idea (she’s been involved in quite a few other exhibitions), but realised that the other two women don’t have transport, so it would make it more complicated for them to attend each day.

The new Gallery Exhibition plan is to have a 4-5 day weekend:

install on Thursday
opening night Friday
closing night Sunday
pack up and take down on Monday morning
buyers could take the artwork with them, rather than the expense of packing and shipping after the exhibition closed.

As always, I mentioned my Goldfish Bowl Marketing Technique to gather email addresses at the Exhibition.

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The Goldfish Bowl Marketing Technique for Events

On the day the Exhibition opens, it’s very important to start gathering EMAIL NAMES for a mailing list of interested humans 🙂

In this technique, it’s possible to ask for business cards thrown into a fish bowl – specify a time toward the END of the event, and say the Winner must be THERE to accept the prize. If they’re not there, another Wnner will be drawn out.

set up a large glass bowl which people can see into
add a large laminated sign at the back of it, with something like this on it: “Drop your Business Card in to go in the draw to win XYZ artwork at 4:00pm today! If you’re not here, we’ll draw the next name out 🙂 Want to know when our Sales and Exhibitions are on? We’ll add you to our monthly email list! No business card? No problem! Just add your deets to the Clipboard on the table.”
the idea is to offer something in exchange for their details – if there is no email name on the card, visit the website after the event and find one
everything is permission-based with emails these days, so I like to send a PERSONAL email to each person to remind them they:
1. visited my Event
2. put their card in the fish bowl so they could be notified of upcoming Sales and Exhibitions
let them know that I send my emails out fortnightly / monthly / whatever I usually do.
I like to send this personal email out because it confirms that I have been given PERMISSION to contact this person
in this email I make sure there is a simple way for them to Unsuscribe in case they’ve changed their mind.

What’s for sale at the Exhibition?

As we chatted, I asked Amy a few questions – which she knew I would 🙂

The first one was:

“Will you have anything else to sell apart from the 18 paintings?”

The answer was, “No.”

Really? Let’s think about this …

As all artwork would be taken down as soon as it is sold, I thought this could be a good thing — but what if they all sold on opening night? The cost of the Gallery Space would mean the artists would need to have something for visitors to look at over the coming days.

I suggested it might be a good idea to think about a few ideas to create smaller, lower priced artwork to sell as well:

think about creating great quality prints smaller than the original, frame them and also have them for sale as Limited Edition Prints signed by the Artist
also think about creating high quality cards packaged as a Limited Edition Card Series
it’s rather unusual, but I’d also consider creating playing cards for sale – these would be a marvellous quirky way to present the artwork, and would only need 4 images (for the four types of cards – Hearts, Spades, Diamonds, Clubs). These can be created online through Novelty Card Pack creation websites.

Amy liked these ideas too.

Do you use Instagram?

As Amy is happy to use Instagram, she told me she was thinking about the pieces which have been inspirational for her artwork, and taking photos of them in other locations. I loved this idea!

My brain was filling with more potential ways to sell the artwork, so I suggested:

come up with a catchy name for the Series of images
about a month before the Exhibition opens, print a limited number of each photo as either a card or postcard (print the number of each photo on the card or postcard, and include the “Limited Edition Series” title as well)
sign each card or postcard to create a more interesting, valuable Series
if there were a lot of images (50? 100?), consider how they could be presented in packs of smaller groups of 10 or 20, like Image 001 through to Image 010, for example
throughout the coming year, a short written story could be woven around each image, with a small thumbnail (max 200×200 pixels) or a portion of the image on Amy’s website (a new page per photo), which would be interesting and fascinating for people to read – and follow along over the coming months
essential: make sure there’s a Sign Up on EVERY page for people to receive updates via email when a new Story is uploaded
each of these stories could either be printed on the back of the cards, or added as a separate printed insert
building up the anticipation for the actual Exhibition Opening (using videos and Press Releases etc) would gather lots of interest on Instagram, Facebook, the website and other social media over the coming 12 months.

One of my favourite Marketing Ideas for Artists!

Thinking about clever ways to use QR Codes for the marketing of this event

create a QR Code which can update the LINK if required (essential)
attach the QR Code to postcards, greeting cards, flyers etc – wherever the event is being announced

I’m sure I’ll have other ideas, but these might help as a starting point at this preparation stage of the Exhibition.

I’m looking forward to see how Amy decides to create a great story line leading up the Exhibition in twelve month’s time, and I wish her all the very best of luck!

Did you like these marketing Ideas for Artists?

If you have any questions or ideas to share, please do get in touch – here are a couple of ways to do that:

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