In the Art Marketing Minute Podcast with Eric Rhoads, 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. 

In this week’s Art Marketing Minute, Eric addresses the first things you should do when you’re ready to begin marketing your art; and how to know which media could be the most effective for showcasing your unique work.

The Art Marketing Minute Podcast has been named one of the 2023 “Top 25 Art Business and Marketing Blogs on the web” by FeedSpot.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 131 >

Submit Your Art Marketing Question:

What questions do you have about selling your art? Visit artmarketing.com/questions or e-mail Eric 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, art magazine publisher, Eric Rhoads.

Eric Rhoads:
this is from Sandy White in Colorado who says I am finally getting into marketing my own artwork. What are the first things that I should be doing? Sandy, congratulations. You’ve asked a loaded question because marketing is vast. And it includes so much and I will go into some depth. But all these answers are in my book, or maybe most of them are. But let’s touch on some of the key things. First off, you, you ask yourself, why? Why am I marketing? Why do I want to market what do I hope to accomplish, you need to be very specific, not broad. For instance, instead of saying, I want to sell more art, which is broad, you say, I want to sell $500 of art in every single month, or 5000, or 500,000, or whatever your number is. Now, we all have different reasons for our why. And that’s why we have to define what we want first, because marketing isn’t always about selling art. It is always about selling yourself and your brand. But you might do it for different reasons, you might do it for recognition, you might do it for awareness, you might want to get galleries to pick you up, you might be marketing to get invited to all the great parties in your town. And of course, you might be marketing to sell art. So no, you might want all those things, but you got to pick one, and make that your primary focus. So make a list of everything that you want, prioritize it, define that list exactly into exact terms, and then set some goals, your goals will determine the actions that you take, because each action requires a different approach in most cases. So once you get some goals, break them into small steps, what I call micro goals, I like weekly goals, I have a weekly goal every week of the year for my entire year, based on my big initiatives I’m trying to accomplish. So you can do that, too. It’s not hard, take some time, but it’s not hard. Just follow a plan. So it’s not all or nothing at once, right. So we can’t get it all at once. No matter how hard we try, no matter how much money we have, we can’t get it all at once. There are things you can do to stimulate things better with those things. But to get noticed, to get started selling, you’ve got to gradually build sales with confidence before you pull the trigger. You know, if you decide you want to go full time, and replace your full time income, then you’ve got to kind of get used to it first. So don’t just jump in and quit your job. I mean, I don’t recommend that I think you want to keep that job because things always take longer and cost more money than you think they will and having that job will help you and you’ll be able to just work two jobs simultaneously your art and that job. Alright. Also, you need to decide where your focus is gonna lie is it local, regional, national or international, it becomes more complex and more expensive, the more you add to that and expand, but I want to recommend that every artist ultimately, as a local strategy, and a national strategy. And the reason I say that is because local is really important to you. Because you know, you can get involved in local things and become a celebrity locally, and that’s gonna buy you a lot of parties and invitations and things like that, and you’re gonna get seen, and there’s money in your town who will buy your paintings. But a national strategy is also good because sometimes the local towns have bad economies, and you want to have a strategy so you can go where the money is, jump or fish are jumping into the boat, so to speak, right? So this list, of course, is the top of the iceberg. But start defining what you want your life to look like what you need financially, what you want to be able to do, such as travel or workshops, or other things, perks. And then you know, maybe it’s building the ultimate studio like Lori Putnam did. She’s famous now. But she came to me she was broke. We built a plan. I helped her with her marketing. She built her ultimate studio and makes more money than she ever thought possible in her life. And it’s very possible, it just takes time and dedication. She’s worked very hard at it for 10 solid years. And she made really good progress fast, but she makes more and more progress. The longer you keep it going you build momentum. She’s passionate, she’s driven, she works hard. And she’s also become a better marketer than me, because she’s really good at it. She’s got good instincts, and so if you study it, you can become that too. So hope that helps.

The second question comes from Scott in Middleton, Pennsylvania, who says this is a long one. I’m driven to specialize in biblical narrative compositions in the style of Caravaggio, late Titian and late Rembrandt in the 10 of Burzum. Tradition. I don’t know what that means. I’m drawing upon it education and biblical studies. 20 years of managing a high end picture framing and manufacturing business, and a lifelong connection with the church. Over the last 24 years, I have researched museum conservation bulletins, technical books, and the old masters and frequented museums. I am making my own on panels using historical pigments sourced from regions in Europe, where old masters are likely to have acquired theirs, you would like our our video that Eric Johnson did. He goes through a lot of that. Anyway, using high quality, linen, traditional techniques for the restricted palette and I aim to create quality paintings that will age well far beyond my lifetime. Let’s hope so I prioritize creating powerful and dynamic images that evoke contemplation. Currently, I’m working on donating two eight foot by 16 foot paintings for a church ceiling. Installation. One is an intimate dramatic composition of the Last Supper, the other is an eerie landscape with Christ carrying His cross. My primary goal is to create a masterpiece that is worthy of appreciation, as though by the hand of an old master, or, as I would say, a new master, right? I feel that I will be ready to begin promoting my work sometime next year. What type or which type of media do you think would be the most effective in showcasing my work? Wow, Scott, that’s very impressive. Man, I’d like to see your work. I’ll look it up. You know, that’s a loaded question. Because it’s really a question that is not answerable. Because you haven’t given me enough data? You see? You have to know the purpose or the desire, you see what a start marketing, but for what purpose? Are you going to give away paintings, you got to do more donations? What are you going to do? Most people think about advertising and where they want to advertise, before they even consider what goals and outcomes they want, which is really not the right thing to do. Because you end up spending a lot of money you don’t need to spend when you don’t know it’s like, you know, taking your car and putting it on auto drive and not knowing where it’s going. Right. So you want to begin promoting your work. To what end? I asked okay, I can imagine a lot of scenarios like wanting more Commission’s wanting to sell collectors wanting galleries, seeking recognition or galleries. I’m sure there’s many, many more. But I’d like you to go into depth with your answers. Asking which media I should use is kind of like saying which tool should I use to build something? Well, it all depends on what you want to build, how fast you want to build it, how long you want it to last, what are the weather conditions it’s going to be exposed to all those things matter because your tools and materials matter. So marketing doesn’t have to be complex, it’s a simple solution to overcome a problem or take advantage of an opportunity. But I can’t solve a problem till I know what the problem is. And you can’t either. So you need to define that. media choices can accomplish a lot of different things for you and at different levels. I magazine Fine Art connoisseur, for instance, reaches a lot of really mega rich billionaire type art collectors, who love realism. But it may not reach people who commissioned church paintings, for instance, you know, my neighbor was put in charge of a megachurch commission of a mosaic and she spent five or 10 years on it. She went, she didn’t even know my magazine existed, she went to Florence found answers there ended up getting an artist there to do it, who spent five years building this and then shipping it over and installing it. So you know, you need to figure out where the fish are that you want to buy, and that you want to catch. Right? So, you know, first off, you got to know what the problem is start by stating the desired outcome. And if that’s I want to get more commissions then get specific, how many more commissions, one commission, two commissions and at what amount of money? If you want one commission within 12 months, and I know you have to work in advance, because you’re going to be working on one for a long time, then, you know, what are you willing to spend to get that commission? Are you willing to spend 10%, five to 10, sometimes 20%, marketing expense is pretty normal. And so if you get $100,000 Commission, whether you spend 10, grand or 10% to get that commission, it’s probably worth it. Right? And so sometimes it’s not about advertising, though, you know, it might be a matter of a couple of phone calls, or asking the right people who the right people are, or maybe it’s advertising, maybe it’s in a church publication that church art curators read or something I don’t know, you’re gonna have to figure out that out. But answer those questions first. And then I can suggest the tools you need. And you can ask again on here and I’ll give you more answers. Might not be immediate at all though. Right? Hope this helps. Anyway, that is today’s art marketing minute.

How to Submit Your Art Marketing Questions: What questions do you have about selling your art? Submit it at artmarketing.com/questions to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.