Recently this question was posed by a photographer – How do I market my work to strangers?
I found it curious because I don’t think I’ve ever sold any of my fine art photographs to people I know. Well, except one piece to my high school art teacher.
Even when I ran a sportswear business called “Fishboy Art and Design” with the artist Paul Ocepek (now with Modern Moose) selling t-shirts and other products with his funny fishing related designs, we never sold to people we knew. All the sales were to strangers. friends, family, relatives, your boss, your girlfriend, how likely are they to be your target customer anyway and besides they usually expect to get freebies.
So how do you market to strangers? It is kind of simple really. Offer a great product, let people know about it, let people know about you, your process, your passion, your intent and create context around your art so people can find it.
For example with my recent “Flower Cottages” project, I set out to document iconic Days’ Cottages on Cape Cod. A row of 1930s twenty-two identical weekly summer rental cottages on the shore near Provincetown, Ma.
Before heading to the Cape this spring to stay at my bother’s house, I researched possible photography spots and came upon Days’ Cottages. Even before a single shot was taken I started planning out the series and the end product which is a future art show and accompanying book.
My end product would be a series of individual “portraits” of each of the cottages to be displayed in a gallery wall situation so that the individual character of each cottage could be examined by finding small differences between the cottages. All the same yet different.
I’d also produce a book to accompany the series with the same goal, giving the viewer the ability to spot differences between the seemingly identical cottages.
Influences
The project is heavily influenced by the work of Ed Ruscha who release small art books in the 1960s such as “23 Gas Stations”, “Various Small Fires and Milk” and “Every Building on the Sunset Strip”.
Another influence was the work of the husband and wife team of Bernd and Hilla Becher.
Marketing
When you start a project like this, a natural target market emerges. The theme or niche determines a distinct group of people to target with your promotional efforts.
Basically people who might be interested in viewing, buying a print or buying a book of these cottage portraits. It starts with the current owners of the cottages, (which have recently gone condo) and expands to people who love the Cape, people who have vacationed in Days’ Cottages in the past, photography lovers, art lovers, day dreamers about the good old days, people who grew up around similar beach cottages, etc.
Some of the ways I can promote this project:
- Selling an e-book
- Selling a hard copy book
- Blogging about the project
- Blogging about the making of work
- Blogging about the subject
- Creating a YouTube video of the project
- Sending out a copy of the book to regional publications that have an interest in the subject.
- Using social media to promote the project including Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Instagram
- Selling prints of the project
- Creating a Facebook page for the project
Once you create a series the possibilities for marketing it opens up because the project is unique. It’s not just “hey, I have a new artwork, take a look”.
Related blogs:
Edward M. Fielding’s New Series of Fine Art Photographs Deals With Cape Cod Summer Memories