In the Art Marketing Minute Podcast, you’ll learn how to sell your art, how to market your paintings, and everything else you need to know in order to have a successful art career. Each episode answers questions from artists by host Eric Rhoads, author of “Make More Money Selling Your Art,” publisher of several art magazines and newsletters, and author of ArtMarketing.com.

In this Art Marketing Minute, Eric Rhoads explains why it’s important to “build your brand,” and what to do if your sales have slowed down.

Click Here to Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 47

 

Submit Your Art Marketing Question:

What questions do you have about selling your art? Email Eric today at [email protected] (include your name and where you’re from) to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.

FULL TRANSCRIPT of the Art Marketing Minute:
DISCLAIMER: The following is the output of a transcription from an audio recording of the Art Marketing Minute. Although the transcription is mostly correct, in some cases it is slightly inaccurate due to the recording and/or software transcription.

Announcer 0:02
This is the Art Marketing Minute with Eric Rhoads, author of the Amazon best selling book, “Make More Money Selling Your Art.” In the marketing minute we answer your questions to help your art career brought to you by artmarketing.com, the place to go to learn more about marketing. Now, here’s your host, arts magazine publisher, Eric Rhoads.

Eric Rhoads
All right, well in the marketing minute I try to answer your questions and you can email me anytime [email protected]. By the way, that’s a great resource. Lots of articles there. Also go to YouTube and search streamline art video, I’ve been doing marketing videos every day at noon live and you can listen through the announcements and then get to the meat of it. There’s a lot of good stuff there. Lots and lots of new stuff that I’ve never published before or talked about before. So here is a question and this question comes from Tony in Newport, Rhode Island who says we hear a lot about building brand and I don’t think most artists consider themselves a brand. Why is that really important? Well, ask yourself this question quickly. Tony, who is the top actor in Hollywood who’s the top Female Actor in Hollywood? Now ask yourself who’s the top actor, male actor You know who’s the top leading man? You’re probably coming up with just one or two or three names, right? I’m guessing Brad Pitt or maybe George Clooney, you know, something like that. Right? So now let me ask you this, who’s the top guitarist in the world? Or who’s the top blues guitarists in the world are Who do you think of as the best motivational speaker on earth? You know who gets big crowds and motivational speaking? When I asked you about a TV to host who teaches cooking? Who do you think you see professionals in various categories have become brands, not only is McDonald’s or Coca Cola, or subway a brand so as Tony Robbins or Eric Clapton or Martha Stewart or Brad Pitt, you know some of these kind of people, and you see people become brands even without trying. Now most of the brands have been built by excellent marketing and excellent professionals. Most of these Hollywood people have really terrific marketing people behind them. A And so on who worked with marketing people, but you get known as a brand, whether you like it or not you, you need to be able to control that brand so that you are controlling how people think of you, hopefully. And of course, a lot of that depends on your work. But it also depends on your behavior. It depends on your comments on Facebook and your you know, all the different things. And I see artists making that mistake all the time, destroying their reputations because of things they’re saying on social media. And so you got to be careful about that brand is about trust, it’s about standing for something, it can be standing against something, you know, your brand might be, you know, you’re very political and you want to be talking about politics all the time. Well, you can do that. And that will become your brand and that’s standing against something but you also have to know that that could hurt your brand. And so people who do branding tend to stay away from polarizing topics because they don’t want to hurt any they don’t want to lose business. But I guarantee you if the great artist Howard Terpening, the western An artist who sells for you know, million dollar paintings. If he painted something, signed a different name onto it, put it into an auction, it would sell for a fraction of the price of the work with his name on it. You see, quality doesn’t always rise to the top alone. Quality is important and I want to re emphasize that, but you become known for your quality and then your name helps sell. Now Jeremy Lipkin, for instance, is one of those names. He is the john Singer Sargent of our times. He’s incredible. And I know artists who paint almost equally as good as Jeremy. They copy his style, they copy his work, they even copy his signature, but their work doesn’t sell for a fraction of the price. Why is that? If I can get a painting that’s almost equally as good. Well, it’s not as good because it’s not a lip King. It’s just the same as if somebody says to you Well, I you know, I can give you a car that looks exactly like a Rolls Royce or Mercedes Benz But it’s not a Rolls Royce. It’s the name the brand matters. It’s It’s It’s about quality, but it’s also about status. Smart artists understand that if you don’t let others control your brand, it will be controlled for you. You’ve got to take control and make sure that you’re known. build your brand. And it impacts everything about you impacts where you get invited, what shows you’re in, your collectability your value, the articles, you get the prices, you get, all of those things contribute to your brand. So you’ve got to be thinking about your brand is simply not paying attention to just the way that artists sold. I you’ve got to think in terms of how my brand impacts my sales. You know, I know lots of brilliant artists who are absolutely completely unknown and they can’t sell anything and they don’t understand why and I keep telling them, you got to build a brand you got to get known. You know, there are people who will buy quality, but they like to buy quality that’s associated with a big name. So have your name become Your brand. I also know brilliant artists who sell well, because of their branding ability in their art isn’t necessarily as good. But the best combination, of course, is to be a brilliant artist with a brilliant brand. And then that’s the best thing of all. Hope that helps.

The next question is from Sarah in Salt Lake. Sara says my sales have been slow recently. Is there any reason anything special I should be doing? Sarah? Let’s assume you go to the doctor and you say, Doc, I’ve been having headaches lately? Is there anything special I should be doing? A good doctor is going to ask you a series of questions to get to the root of the problem the cause, she wouldn’t just say, well, you’re having headaches, you must be smoking too many cigarettes. Or she might say you’re eating too many minutes? No, she’s gonna find out what’s causing the headaches because there could be 1000 different answers to that question. So when I hear a question like that, I know it can be a lot of things and you have to ask yourself questions and dig into your So you’ve got to ask yourself what is what has changed? What am I doing differently? You know lately because of COVID you know COVID has suppressed art sales and some people and made it bigger and others it might be related to that you know so what am I doing differently? What am I not doing that I was doing? Am I promoting or advertising how I stopped doing that was a you know, what did I have articles and now I don’t have them has my presentation or my work changes? My painting is good. Am I overworking things are under working things. If I change styles, I watched an artist who was known for a particular type of painting, he decided he didn’t want to do that anymore. He did this big art show and nothing sold. So because people were used to kind of what he became now he ultimately overcame that but you have to understand sometimes you’re going to go backwards before you go forwards especially if you’re changing things up. If you don’t put gas in your car, it will eventually sputter and then it will stop if you not putting gas in your marketing. It too will sputter and stop your sales will stop as an artist you have to adopt a lifetime of marketing. You know that as long as I’m here to sell paintings, I’m here to do marketing. It’s a reality you may not like it, but it is a reality. And I know that as long as I’m in business, if I’m not telling people about my events like the plein air convention or plein air live, or the figurative art convention, or my magazines, planner magazine, or Fine Art connoisseur magazine or my newsletters, you know, fine art today or plein air today or realism today, or American watercolor are my videos you know from lilla dollar streamline, or creative catalysts, then they will stop selling it’s a constant game of putting it out there repeating it telling people about it, never backing off, always continuing to keep it out there and you always have to look for new and creative ways to get noticed because people get used to the same things all the time. So if I need to speed something and sell more than I have to add more gas to the fire. The same is true marketing is pretty easy when you think about it. It’s about making the invisible visible. And it’s about keeping it visible most artists, and I don’t like to categorize anybody in any way, but most artists tend to think, you know, they put themselves out there one time and that’s enough. Well, you know, having one show isn’t usually enough, you got to do a lot of things. You got to build a lot of awareness. You got to invite a lot of people, you got to stay in front of them all the time. Always ask yourself questions. The answers are always in your questions. Anyway. I hope that this has been helpful.

Well, this has been the art marketing minute with me. Eric Rhoads. My goal in life is to eliminate the idea of the starving artists to help your dreams actually come true. So if you want to submit questions, simply email [email protected]. And to learn more about marketing ideas, you can visit Artmarketing.com. Thanks for listening.

How to Submit Your Art Marketing Questions: What questions do you have about selling your art? Email Eric today at [email protected] (include your name and where you’re from) to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.