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.

How can you get full mileage out of a social media campaign? What are some ways you can start teaching art to a specific demographic? Eric Rhoads answers in this Art Marketing Minute.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 70 >

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:
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 art marketing minute I try to answer your questions you can email yours to me [email protected] And I always love having your questions. As a matter of fact, that’s where I get my content. Here’s a question from Linda Finnstad of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, who says she has a series of sassy Angel drawings and has started a campaign where she posts an image a day on social media going for 365 days, 10 days into the project. She said she’s getting great feedback as well as sales on Amazon. So our question is, how do I get full mileage out of this campaign? Well, I think first you have First off, you have to Oh, she said, I would hate to look back and realize I missed a fabulous opportunity. Linda, it’s a good question. The first thing I always do is I try to define my goals. You know, what is? what is success to you? What do you want that to look like? Because it might be you know, maybe it’s about selling paintings, but maybe it’s about publicity, maybe it’s about branding, maybe it’s about something else. So try to define what is your 80% goal, what’s the one thing that if 80% of it happens, you’ve accomplished a goal, always start there with everything you do. I also would say that you really started a little prematurely in this in the sense that your planning should be done before you ever start. Because there are things you could do in your planning that will give you a better start, try to get your planning done in advance before you launch your program. But in this case, you can’t do that. So there’s a giant PR opportunity. First off, I would write a press release something as simple as that, write a press release about it, attach them images and put it on the internet through PR wire PR web, there are several services, you’re going to have to pay, you know, 50, probably 150 200 bucks, you’re gonna have to pay more if you show an image. But it’ll show up in Google search that way. And also, when you show up in Google search, you know, people will discover it by accident. And so you want to have your website and all that stuff in there. The other thing to do is to post it as a story on LinkedIn, because every story, unlike Facebook, and Instagram, and other social media, if you put a story on Instagram, it also shows up in search. And so oftentimes, you can find that story. And of course, that’ll link to you. I would also hand picked some dream stories that you want, for instance. So this is the kind of thing that people magazine would like. So I’d go on LinkedIn and get some names of some editors of People Magazine, I find you know, as many as you can find eight or 10 or 12 of them and send them all a personalized email with some photos and photos of you with the paintings and let them know that you have a high resolution images as well. And I would hire a professional because, you know, as an editor, we’re always looking for content. I have a friend who used to work at People Magazine. And you know, sometimes they would have dry spells where they just couldn’t come up with stories and they need filler. And they would grab filler, you know, somebody sends in a press release, and it’s got some great images, they don’t have time to send out a photographer. So they just grab that story, use the images. And so you want some fun images and some different images, I think that would be helpful. You want high res available to them. And so they know that because in printing if they have to print it up, and then of course, if you get a story, then you can tell everybody, you’ve got a story. And that kind of gets the momentum going one time, I went to a seminar and this lady said, you know, write your own press release, write your own story and send it off to magazines. And sometimes they’ll publish it. And I was on an airplane coming back from that seminar. So I wrote a story specifically for a magazine about myself. And I got home and I sent it in and they ended up running it and it was in a national magazine, and it was hardly changed at all. And they used my picture and everything else. So that was pretty cool. So you can do that too. I would send releases to 50 of your top dream story places you know People magazine or, or whatever magazine you think and of course these days it’s it’s about websites, it’s about magazines. The other thing you want to do is look for influencers right? So like there are Instagram influencers. And you could go to an Instagram and find somebody who’s got a million people or maybe Instagram or who does something on angels and say to them listen, I would love for you to do something on my thing and in exchange I’ll give you one of the drawings and next thing you know they put it up there for you and boom you know you’ve gotten seen by the potential of a million people however many so the other thing is I’d look for a chance to get a celebrity sale. Now influencers are a great way because then you can set Well, this influencer that influencer has my work. But what about a celebrity? You know, is there a celebrity that might have a fitting story about a guardian angel, you know, select, you know, Google the term celebrity, and guardian angel and see what comes up, maybe you’ll find a celebrity that has a guardian angel story. And then you say, Hey, I loved your story, I’m going to send you my painting, or my drawing, and then send it to them, get them to snap a picture and say, do you mind if I tell everybody about it, they want publicity. Everybody wants publicity, if you’re in celebrity world, and then you now have something else to talk about. So PR is a great way to go. Social media is great, but it’s limited to your presence. And so you’ve got to find ways to get others who have more presence to leverage you to get it, get it shared. Also, keeping something alive for a year is tough, you know, you want to ask yourself, is a year really appropriate? Or do I just really want what do I really want to accomplish? Can I accomplished that goal and, you know, in three months, so I would develop a plan and see if you can just jam it hard for three months, and then you know, maybe a year later, you can, you can get some more publicity. I also would say, try your local newspaper. Nobody thinks about local newspapers anymore. But there are demographics that read them, they’ll go to art gallery shows, and the best part about a local newspapers, they can get picked up and syndicated by other newspapers who are looking for content. I once had a story in 200 newspapers, because the Associated Press wrote a story about my book. And it they syndicated and I ended up in the LA Times, and the New York Times, and Chicago Tribune and a bunch of others. So that was pretty cool. So the other thing, ask yourself, who’s your target demo demographic? Who was it women, men? What age? What do they spend their time doing? You know, if they’re into gardening, then you know, figure out how to get a gardening publication to do a story how to do it, do a drawing of an angel in a garden and come up with a concept. The idea is to think outside of the I hate that term outside of the box, but interview your buyers, to the people who have bought something from you on Amazon, talk to them and find out what was it that appealed? And what is their story? And what does it mean to them, and maybe that’ll give you ideas, and you can learn things you had not anticipated. And maybe that’ll be helpful. Anyway, that’s, I hope that was helpful.

Linda Andrews from Concord, North Carolina says I would love to share my love of art and landscape painting with young people. What are some ways I can start teaching classes or workshops to this demographic? Well, I think it would be very welcome. Of course, COVID is going to be in the way right now. But it’ll be over one day. So I love I’ve got a goal of teaching a million people to paint and I’m really far along in that goal. But I, you know, I’ve got to hit that million. And then once I hit that million, I want to go to 2 million and 5 million and 10 million and so on. I love the idea of teaching people to paint because it gives them something more in their life, you know, people can be bored, I would first go to Plein Air Force calm. It’s website I put together. There’s a lot of ideas on there on how to speak to groups. I had high school assemblies. To make it easy. We have a documentary you can share. So the idea was that some people are not good speakers, but they could go to a school and say, Hey, I’m Eric. I’m a plein air painter. What does plein air painting Meanwhile, it’s about getting outdoors to paint, you know, and some of you don’t want to be an athlete. And some of you don’t want to be a musician. But some of you want to do something creative. And something that has a really fun potential career with it. Or maybe just a fun potential hobby. Well, plein air painting is getting outdoors, and painting what you see. And when you paint outdoors, you know, give them all the reasons you know, you’re, you’re meeting a lot of people you’re talking to people, you’re painting better color and shape and form and things like that. But then play the documentary, which goes about 20, 30 minutes. And then at the end of that documentary, you can say, hey, what questions do you have? So it makes it really easy to get them engaged. And then you could say, Well, listen, I’m I’m going to supply all the materials and I got a group setting up for plein air painting, and I have some, this is all free. But if you want to sign up for some lessons that’s available to you too, and and you’ll get you know, you’ll get two or three people and you might get 30 people you just never know. And I just start contacting the offices of all the different high schools and maybe even the middle schools and you know, get out there and talk to them and talk to the art teachers. They love somebody to come in and fill their day so they don’t have to teach sometimes, you know, and and get the kids excited, you know, so you can go in and talk to classes. They will welcome it. I would call the Laguna plein air painters association called call Rosemary Swimm. They’re asked for ideas. They bring in busloads of kids from the inner city and they teach them to paint. They have painters painting with them, they have materials, and they make it simple, and it’s really very successful so they can give you some clues. I would also consider right now maybe offering some zoom classes and invite students in for free, maybe, you know, call an art teacher and try it. Get some experience first and you know, just see what works. It’s going to be fine, you’re going to be great. You might want to come up with an incentive or something that makes it really fun for kids and do something to make it cool. Anyway, I think this is a great question. I think it helps. I hope that you can make that happen. I think all of us should be doing that. We should get everybody in every town doing this and we would change the world. Right? Well, anyway, that is this week’s art marketing minute.

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