I hear my fellow artists and photographers complain all the time – “I hate marketing” but you know what? Marketing is the easy part!
You know what is hard? Creating amazing art and photography worth selling!
Coming up with ideas to paint. Spending hours setting up, painting, cleaning up, retouching, experimenting, creating art. That is the hard part!
Getting up at 4:30 in the morning in 20 degree weather, hiking up to a canyon with a backpack of heavy equipment – that’s the hard part!
Spending thousands of dollars on camera equipment. Spending hours researching and planning out photo shoots. Traveling around the world – that is the hard part!
Buying canvases, stretching canvases, gessoing canvases, buying expensive paint and brushes. Creating art with no certainty that it will ever find a buyer – that is the hard part!
Marketing comes after the hard part is done. Marketing is easy. Marketing is telling the world about what you have accomplished and why they should pay attention. Marketing is about explaining your process and what it took to create this work. Marketing is about talking about the hard part. In comparison marketing is easy!
Marketing is focusing on your customers. Focusing on your competition. Marketing is communicating why customers should choose your product.
Marketing is not just going on social media and saying “Hey, I uploaded a new artwork”.
The marketing mix includes the Four Ps of Marketing – Price, Product, Promotion, and Place.
Selling your artwork at the right price, having the right product, promoting it in the right way to reach your target market and putting it in the right place where customers would expect to buy such a product.
These are all easy thing compared to creating high quality, sell-able artwork and photography that the public wants to purchase.
Pricing can be figured out by studying your competition and experimenting. Your product mix can also be tested and tweaked. Promotion is trial and error but each bit of time spent on promotion builds your brand. Place is just a matter of putting your artwork in a place that attracts art buyers and makes it easy to purchase. This can be galleries, online stores, art fairs or even hanging at a local coffee shop.
None of these things are that daunting if you spend the time and effort. Do your homework and put in the time to learn about the art market. You certainly put in the effort to create your artwork, so why not put the same effort into marketing it?