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 shares advice on using social media for marketing versus paying for advertising, and tips on branding consistency.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 53 >

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
In the marketing minute, I answer your art marketing questions and the way to submit them is just email me [email protected] there is no stupid question. That’s how we learn right? Okay, here’s a question here. This is a stupid ques- No, I’m just kidding. This is a question from Amy in Chicago. Amy is going to hate me she’s never going to write in again. Anyway, she says isn’t social media marketing enough? Why would I ever pay for advertising? Well, I’m not suggesting you should pay for advertising. You have to figure out all of us have to figure out what our strategy is and what our tactics are and what you’re trying to accomplish what you’re, do you want to sell art Do you want to brand yourself to want to get invited to events, what is the purpose of your marketing? And then that will determine what you need to do. We have these misperceptions about social media there are a lot of people think, well, all I got to do is put my stuff on social media and my stuff will sell. It’s kind of like saying, does anybody remember phone books? It’s kind of like saying, well, I just put my name in the phone book, and people will call me Well, the phone books filled with lots of people. It’s like having a website. Oh, I just got to put up a website and everybody will discover me. No, that’s not true. I mean, some might buy an accidental search. But the reality is that they’re going to discover websites when you promote them. And, and so the same is true with other things. Now, if you’re promoting on social media, and you’re doing it properly, and it works for you, and you’re making money and you’re getting your goals accomplished, then that’s all you need, quite frankly, why would you pay for advertising? Why would anybody Why do 10s of thousands of businesses advertise? It’s because they get a return on their investment. They’re trying to reach people. They don’t have, we have this belief that everybody on social media is getting our posts and the reality is on Facebook, only two to 3% ever see any post that you do that means if you had 5000 followers, which is their Max, only two to 3% will ever see that post. And sometimes it’s the same people all the time because there’s these algorithms that they use. And so as a result, you want to be aware that you’re not necessarily reaching people. Now, there’s a lot of strategies. I teach in art marketing Bootcamp, at the conventions about how to penetrate that how to make that work for you. But the reality is, you also need to make sure you got the right people following you and you’ve got to have the right messaging. So if you’re going after collectors, for instance, or people who are buying art, you got to get go after people who you know are going to be the kind of people that you want, and so you got to fill up your followers with that. You can’t be talking to artists, other artists and talking about Artists stuff that other artists are interested in you got to be talking to things that other collectors are interested in. So you got to change your tactics and most of us have our Facebook pages or Instagram pages filled with our friends and as a result we’re not necessarily getting the right kind of followers and that’s why it typically doesn’t work for people it might work for you and that’s great if it does but advertising is about reaching people you’re not reaching and the ability to target to reach people that you that are in a particular category you know, like if I if you want to target people who are known art buyers or known art collectors, then you go to places where you know they are you know, like my magazines plein air magazine, fine art connoisseur, etc. So I pay for advertising I spent a lot of money on advertising I can’t even say how much it’s a lot but I it works for me and I get a return and so the more I spend the more return I typically get. And it takes time it builds up over time but then it just keeps return. As long as I feed it, so that’s why I do it.

All right. Next question comes from John in San Francisco, who asks, How important is it to have consistency in the way that you market your brand? Do you have any tips for being consistent and branding? John, good question. Thank you. Well, think about your favorite brands think about any brand. What are the biggest? It used to be? I don’t know if it still is, but the biggest most well known brand in the world was McDonald’s. What if they started using green arches? Or what if Apple started using yellow on their logo instead of black or silver, whatever they use? These are little things that matter. People are creatures of habit, they want to be comfortable, they get to know you. It’s like a friend that you know, you recognize, right? I remember some actress can’t remember who it was had plastic surgery. And it’s like, I didn’t recognize her anymore. And so it was very uncomfortable for me and I’ve never gotten used to it. So I think the idea is that you create a look a consistent look and you want to stick with it. You want to be careful Though a lot of artists are using their signatures as their logo, and that’s okay, but you don’t want us to use signatures alone because the ad needs to have or the logo needs to have the name under it. Because people can’t usually read signatures unless it’s very, very easily readable and even that I would not assume they can read it, you know. So it just doesn’t hurt to make sure you do that. But you want to look for things like consistency, color, theme, consistency, same look, same type everything on your business cards, website, you know, everything you do your brochures, everything you want, that comfort of consistency. Also, you just want to make sure that you’re reinforcing your brand constantly. You’ve got to, we all think that everybody knows who we are, you run one ad and you think everybody knows who you are. That’s not true. You have to build it up over time. It takes time and time and time again, I always talk about repetition is the key to everything. You’ve got to have repetition to the same audiences. People don’t even read respond to things until they’ve seen you seven times in a short amount of period of time. So you got to figure out how do I solve that problem? It’s about repetition. All right. Anyway, that’s, that’s my tips on art marketing today.

Well, this has been the art marketing minute with me. Eric Rhoads. My goal in life is to eliminate the idea of 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.